At a height of 125 and 110 meters, respectively, the Innovationen and Helix towers are the highest residential buildings in Stockholm. Located in Hagastaden, a new district in the north of the capital developed around the Karolinska Institute (which awards the Nobel Prize in Medicine), they stand as a gate to the city. The project started with two inherited building envelopes, the remains of a cancelled project that proposed two staggered volumes of monumental character. Its initial vertical segmentation was complemented by a second, horizontal manipulation of the envelopes, giving way to a pixelled configuration that is closer to the domestic scale, through an alternating pattern of withdrawn outdoor spaces and protruding living rooms. The buildings’ exterior is given a single, homogeneous treatment: a rough skin of ribbed colored concrete brushed with exposed multi-colored aggregate pebbles. Choosing this technique instead of the traditional in situ concrete allowed speeding up the construction and reducing costs. As for the program, the towers comprise units ranging from 44 to 271 square meters, complemented with amenities like a gym with sauna and retail space.