Scale model of the skyscraper designed by acclaimed US architect Daniel Libeskind
© AFP/File Valery Hache

WARSAW (AFP) - "It is a new quality of building. It is not a box, it is a shaped space," Daniel Libeskind said Thursday at a conference near the construction site.

The 54-floor tower, 192 meters high (630 feet) and shaped in the form of a sail, will house 251 deluxe apartments and rank as one of Europe's tallest residential buildings. Orco intends to complete the project by 2010.

Dubbed Zlota 44 (its address means gold in Polish), the tower will symbolically face the Stalinist-era Palace of Culture, a specimen of socialist-realist architecture measuring 230 meters planted in the heart of the Polish capital.

Numerous towers have sprung up in the city centre since communism's demise in 1989. More ambitious projects are being planned in the Polish capital, almost completely destroyed by Nazi Germany in 1944 and rebuilt under the Soviets with a distinctly communist flavour.

"Warsaw is a magnet in Central Europe," said Libeskind, himself a Polish Jew. "I think that after two generations of grey communism, Warsaw has entered a period of renaissance."

Born in Poland in 1946, Libeskind left for Israel with his parents and later moved to the United States where he gained citizenship in 1965.

A world-class architect, he is the author of Berlin's critically acclaimed Jewish Museum and the plans to rebuild New York's Ground Zero, the site of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.

©AFP