STATUS
IDEA
ODENSE/AALBORG, DENMARK
CLIENT
Odense Municipality, Realdania Foundation
TYPOLOGY
Sports
SIZE M2/FT2
5,000 / 53,820
STATUS
IDEA
SHARE
In 2001, BIG participated in an open design competition for a new Water Culture House in Odense, Denmark’s third largest city. The traditional method of designing swimming pools often starts with the creation of a container box from which a hole is excavated to form the water basin. For the creation of a ‘aqua center’ it seemed more appropriate to look holistically at the pool program.
As the result, BIG’s proposal attempts to reverse the relationship between land and water of the traditional swimming pool. Rather than locating the wet element within dry architecture, the design started out with organizing the water.
The pool program is composed of a circuit pool, a diving pool, a play pool and a relaxation pool. The basins are differentiated as pockets along the promenade of the lap pool. Together they form a lake in the landscape, a continuous waterscape that embraces an island in its core. The pool basins are conceived as a concrete relief imbedded in the landscape. The views to the landscape are framed precisely by the façade of the above programs: the monolithic drum compresses the opening down to eye level, controlling views rather than dispersing them.
The façade is a sandwich composed of an opaque and insulated inner layer and of an outer layer made of translucent metal cloth.
The drum itself is carried by the programmatic beams that rest on columns within the island perimeter. When the programmatic beams intersect the drum they cut out the opaque layer of the façade, enabling views onto the landscape through the metal cloth.
The complex is a consolidated ensemble of individual monoliths. Each monolith has been shaped according to its unique purpose.
Bjarke Ingels Thomas Christoffersen Finn Nørkjær Jakob Lange Annette Jensen Hanne Halvorsen Snorre Nash Jamie Meunier Karsten Hammer Hansen Gudjon Kjartansson Oliver Grundahl Lene Nørgaard Thomas Tulinius Eva Hviid-Nielsen Jørn Jensen Peter Voigt Albertsen Rie Shiomi Cristina Garcia Gomez Casper Larsen Jennifer Dahm Petersen Kurt Jensen Christian Guttler Gianfranco Biagini Hao Li Helena Kristina Nyhom
Julien De Smedt / PLOT