STATUS
IDEA
CLIENT
Halmtorvet 29 A/S
TYPOLOGY
Residential
SIZE M2/FT2
50,000 / 538,200
SHARE
Copenhagen’s historic skyline is populated with adventurous 18th century spires and towers. Since modernism, the city has seen an addition of mostly rational and functionalistic but repetitive towers to the skyline, creating a public critique against high rise buildings.
BIG set out to explore utilizing the modularity and rationality of the Danish modernistic building tradition to create a new kind of expressive architecture.
The site is laid out as a grid of 3,6 x 3,6 meter squares, creating one continuous pixelated surface. As a topographic map the surface is morphed to form a terraced landscape of towers, accommodating 40.000 m2 housing, hotel, offices and shops. The project becomes an accumulation of individual niches and outdoor spaces forming a collective organic architecture – a Scandinavian high rise typology incorporating the human scale, the rationality and flexibility of Danish building tradition.
PARK / LANDMARK
— The site will furthermore become part of a new, green oasis in a local network of recreational spaces. How do we create, then, a flexible urban form that is both adaptable to the demands of the spacial program and the demands of the neighborhood for open spaces?
MATRIX
— A structural modular net divides the site into modules of 3.6 m x 3.6 m. This creates a structural grid where each building volume is freely adaptable to outside conditions and programmatic demands.
TOPOGRAPHICAL MAP
— The consideration to neighbors, lighting and views as well as demands of the spacial programme creates a topographical altitude map of the buildings. This way buildings are created that pull away from the street in regard to their heights and achieve various spacial depths for different programmes. The top side of the buildings become a pixel landscape of terraces and gardens.
PUBLIC & PRIVATE SPACE
— The public-oriented commercial tenancies are located on the ground floor where they achieve optimum visibility and accessibility along the Skelbæk Street.
The inner terraced hills will function as a green recreational space for the residents - like a new version of the traditional courtyards found among the blocks at Vesterbro.
ACCESSIBILITY
— The buildings have been placed in a way that allows for access to the markets at the trendy meat packing district, Kødbyen, with paths leading through the area. By angling the top side of the individual squares, a continuous path suitable for trolleys and mobility-impaired persons can be created.
To prove that the concept was affordable with standard techniques, BIG decided that nothing would be more convincing than building it in LEGO. It happened that on the 1:500 scale model of the building, the size of a single pixel was identical to the size of the smallest one-dot LEGO brick. The model showcased the silhouette that combines the stepped figure of the traditional spire with the rationality and rigour of a functional structure.
Bjarke Ingels Andreas Klok Pedersen David Vega y Rojo Doug Stechschulte Maria Sole Bravo Jan Borgstrøm Eva Hviid-Nielsen Camilla Hoel Eduardsen Tina Lund Højgaard Jensen Ville Haimala
