Eber’s water towers 2007

The leading trade journal in Sweden, VA-tidskriften Cirkulation has since 1998 an article series under the heading Ebers vattentorn (Eber’s water towers), where Eber Ohlsson with text and photo presents interesting water towers in the world (except Scania and Sweden). Below is a free translation to English of these texts.


Eber’s water towers in Cirkulation 1/2007

A free translation to English:

Must a water tower be beautiful? Not always, which the water tower in Carnon-Plage in the south France is obvious to everyone. It doesn’t need to be beautiful, only it serves its purpose – to be an anchorage point for the mobile phone installations. The tower has even get the task to give the name to the bus stop at the tower – Carnon, Chateau d’eau.

Moreover has the water tower, hopefully, even the function to supply good drinking water to the consumer on the of salt-filled winds exposed sand bank outside the coast of Montpellier, half-way towards the large holiday resort la Grande-Motte.

Published 2007-02-14


Eber’s water towers in Cirkulation 2/2007

Stockholm has the epithet the Venice of the North.

A free translation to English:

Venezia, Venice, Venedig is attractive names. It is many cities that try to compare themselves with the old city state. One close example is the Venice of the North. It is therefore not surprising that cities are using reputation loans, as Venice in Florida.

The landscape conditions exist here in the water rich state, there the ground not raise many meters over the ocean. However is there lack of the architecture likeness with the universal heritage city. It is more car than gondola. There is however a heart in the city, painted on the spheroid water tower, there it even is telling that Venice is a city on the Gulf of Mexico.

Published 2007-03-24


Eber’s water towers in Cirkulation 3/2007

A free translation to English:

A view with water tower, wagons loaded with brown coal and two-stroke cars. The impression of DDR is clear, which not the air was. The smell of brown coal is still perceptible, when the picture of the German water tower on the Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin is projected on the retina. The area around the water tower was from the beginning a wind mill hill, there the English 1855/56 built a water work, which however was closed down 1915.

Still stand, excluding a 150 years old standpipe of bricks, is the water tower on the picture. A water tower with stand pipe built 1875, that was housing flats already from the beginning. It has meet experience from many of Berlin’s political regimes.

Published 2007-04-27


Eber’s water towers in Cirkulation 4/2007

A free translation to English:

In The Eternal City Rome, the old and the new are mixed. At Porta Maggiore there are many old aqueducts, but even a 70 year old water tower. The tower has inscriptions above a temple gable. Uppermost the acronym SPQR, Senatus Populusque Romanus (The Senate and the Roman people) used under the Roman Empire as well as in modern time.

Under the SPQR there is an asymmetric time denunciation; 1934 in Latin letters, as well as a vacant space. The year of the vacant space, EF XIII, is able to get with help of the wall ties. EF stands for the Fascists Time, Era Fascista, that started 28/10 1922. Everything do not last for ever.

Published 2007-06-07


Eber’s water towers in Cirkulation 5/2007

A free translation to English:

The new water tower in Tienen, a town in the Flemish part of Belgium, has been build with the ambition to be an open construction in the landscape and not disturb or blockade the sight. For even if water is transparent, so is concrete not.

Architect Ortwin Deroo has drawn the 46 meter high white water tower, there one from the outlook platform on the top, get a good view over the surrounding. The halfway up located footbridge has got a dark grey colour in order to strengthen its function. The tower, that was finished 2001, is built in reinforced concrete and have room for two reservoirs, each on 500 m³.

Published 2007-08-29


Eber’s water towers in Cirkulation 6/2007

A free translation to English:

The Hungarian capital Budapest is divided of the tremendous river Danube. Once time it was two cities, Buda and Pest. Pest on the east side, there the Hungarian flat land spread, and Buda on the west side of Danube, there the hilly landscape begins.

On one of the heights here, which has got the sacral name the Hill of God, were there built an octagonal water tower after drawings from the architect professor Szilárd Zielinsky. He drew many water towers and was one of the pioneers of the reinforced concrete. The tower at Buda got a total height of ca. 33 m and a reservoir with the diameter 6,2 meter and a volume of 200 m³.

Published 2007-10-03


Eber’s water towers in Cirkulation 7/2007

A free translation to English:

It is not quite unusual that older water towers that not longer are in duty get a new task as belvedere. As a rule will in that case pipes and reservoirs be remain intact, either it happens because of the expense or by building antiquarian reasons. Unusual is it however that the whole upper part of the tower is lifting away and replaced with a copy.

That happens nevertheless in year 2001 in the Estonian town Viljandi, when its 30 meter high water tower, built 1911 and out of duty 1960, through a collection of the Rotary Club in the town, get a new octagonal three storey upper part. You can now here see both the view and historic pictures of the town.

Published 2007-11-07


Eber’s water towers in Cirkulation 8/2007

A free translation to English:

Herlufsholm in Denmark was a medieval Benedictine monastery that 1565 was transformed to a boarding school, there preferably the Danish noblesse sent there boys. As many other independent enclaves, was part of the infrastructure even here regulated inside the institute, as the water tower of the school from 1911.

As a pretentious star school there it even here an astronomic observatory. It was built on the top of a pump house; there the water was taken from the small river. When this building was demolished, the new observatory was 1970/71 located to the roof of the water tower. The pupils could then again sight towards the stars.

Published 2007-12-12


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