The Turning Torso is, with it’s 190 meters (623 feet) and 54 stories, the tallest building in Sweden when created, but also one of the most spectacular with it’s crazy 90 degrees twisting of the 9 cubes in the tower from top to bottom and irregular pentagonal shaped floors rotating around the vertical core.

A true artwork in structural expressionism by Santiago Calatrava (follow the link to read more about this fantastic engineers work!) from 2005, inspired by his own sculpture called the Turning Torso which the Swedish contractor saw and asked him to copy his design as a building.

Featured in Discovery channel’s TV program, Extreme Engineering – always so incredible fascinating – where they did show how a floor of this twisted tower was constructed. It’s also built with sustainability and an environmentally friendly way of life in mind and the building is supplied only with locally produced and renewable energy.

Santiago Calatrava (from Valencia in Spain) is considered to be one of the worlds elite designers who has won gold medal’s. A truly gifted structural engineer with an unusually artistic approach in his creations! I’m totally blown-away by several of his other architectural wonders too.

He also contributed (but did not won) in the architectural competition for the Swedish Öresund Bridge in the nearby area, which we had to pass over to get from Sweden to Denmark on our next leg of Lifecruiser Europe trip…

©Lifecruiser Love Unusual Architecture
 

So despite the fact that we were very tired from being out all day yesterday, we went into the city to meet up with my sister Susan. The weather was gorgeous, so we were not only hoping to get some Paella, but also enjoy the summer weather.

The rice dish “Arroz a Banda” (a fish paella) ingredients are: olive oil, swordfish, octopus, saffron, garlic, parsley, yellow onion, paprika powder, bay leaf, tomato puree, Mediterranean rice, turmeric, water, salt.

I think the paella were done by www.esmia.se, or at least the products were from there. Spanish deli in Sweden – not a bad business idea actually. We Swedes are extremely interested in all kinds of food!

I really loved their sign they had put up at their tent:

The sign says: “Be happy! You are in Spain!” Need I tell how happy we were? *giggles*

Below you can see a few photos we did take there.

So what did we do after that delicious lunch? Were there anything else going on in Stockholm this particular day?

Stay tuned and you’ll find out what in our next post coming up as soon as I’ve sorted the photos…

Lifecruiser ♥ Spain