Biography|Bengt Haak — The Triangle Tower That Became Kockums Head Office

People treat Haak's career as a straight line from a Stockholm law desk to a Skanska boardroom.

The first company that put him on a payroll as counsel was a shipyard in Malmö.

He joined Kockums Mekaniska Verkstads AB as bolagsjurist in 1956 and stayed until 1962.

That interval is printed both in Vem är det and in the later Wikipedia summary that follows the same handbook line.

In January 1958, two years into his tenure, the yard opened this tower.

Gängtappen, also called Kockumshuset, stands at Stora Varvsgatan 11 in what is now Västra hamnen.

Paul Hedqvist designed a fifteen-storey triangle, 65 metres high, then the tallest office building in Sweden.

The plan put 15,000 square metres around a core of six passenger lifts for about 900 staff.

Haak's years as company lawyer therefore include the move into this house and four years of work inside it.

The yard itself is older.

Kockums had been building ships on this water since the nineteenth century.

The tower was the head-office statement of a firm that still launched hulls in the next basin.

Haak left in 1962 to run his own law office for two years.

In 1964 AB Skånska Cementgjuteriet hired him as finance director.

The path from shipyard counsel to construction treasurer is the documented turn.

The building outlived the yard as an employer.

Kockums kept the address until 2015, then moved a short walk to a smaller house.

Länsförsäkringar Skåne later bought the tower and sits there now.

A visitor finds an insurance office, not a legal department.

The silhouette is still the one Hedqvist drew.

Photo: Jorchr, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons