Maritime Youth House

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK

2004

CLIENT

Kvarterløft Governmental City Renewal Project | Lokale og Anlægsfonden | The Urban Development Fund

TYPOLOGY

Sports

SIZE M2/FT2

2,000 / 21,528

STATUS

COMPLETED

Maritime Youth House is located on the island of Amager, in Copenhagen. In 2002, PLOT (BIG + JDS) was invited to design a new building for two user groups with different requirements: a sailing club that needed most of the site to moor their boats and a youth center that wanted outdoor space for the kids to play. The geotechnical report revealed pollution on the site with 2/3 of the building budget allocated to moving the topsoil from the site to a landfill.

BIG turned the conflicting user needs and the pollution at the site into a key driver for the design: by covering the site with a wavy wooden landscape, the polluted soil could stay where it was (and the funds could instead be spent on the building and amenities), the underside of the deck could be used for boat storage while the kids could run around and play on top of it.

Digging up the topsoil and covering it with clean dirt would be equivalent to putting a lid on the ground.

BIG asked: why don't we cover the site with a big wooden deck?

The giant terrace would allow to leave the pollution where it is and instead spend the funds on public space.

When hammering piles into the ground, we could stick some of them deeper creating a beach...

All activities could be accommodated by pushing and pulling the deck.

The interior of the building is very low key: the front room oriented towards the coastline, is used as a common room where most of center’s daily activities take place. It utilizes a higher level of materials and detailing than the workshop and storage areas.

The floor in the workshop is a standard grey concrete whereas the commons area has a polished Aalborg white concrete with white aggregate. The presence of hard surfaces used on the interior is meant to contrast the wooden exterior, an inversion of what is commonly done. This is meant to reflect the dominance of outdoor activities of the youth house.

In 2018, AFoL (Adult Fan of Lego), Anne Mette Vestergaaard recreated Maritime Youth House out of 25,000 pieces of Lego for BIG's Formgiving exhibition.

Bjarke Ingels Thomas Christoffersen Finn Nørkjær Annette Jensen Bo Benzon Marc Jay Jørn Jensen Henrik Juhl Nielsen Henning Stüben Mads H. Lund Nina Ter-Borch Xavier Pavia Pages Jesper Wichmann

AWARDS

Træprisen Danish Wood Award, 2008

Mies van der Rohe Award Honorable Mention, 2005

AR+D Emerging Architecture Award 1st Place, 2004

Copenhagen Award for Architecture, 2004

European Architecture Award Luigi Cosenza, 2004