Images of BIG’s newly opened waterfront headquarters in Copenhagen have been made public after the relocation was completed earlier this spring.
The office known for its familial atmosphere and daily team meals worked on the project collaboratively through its proprietary integrated LEAPP approach (short for internal Landscape, Engineering, Architecture, Planning, and Product Design).
BIG founder Bjarke Ingels shared: "The idea behind LEAPP is an architecture practice as a renaissance, interdisciplinary body of people and knowledge. [...] Every single aspect of LEAPP has been involved in our HQ, including the planning, the product design, the very complex stacking of the concrete elements."
Inside the Piranesian-inspired minimal concrete structure that's located at the tip of a pier in Nordhavn, a sole rotated totem pole-like column made from six types of stone supports a stacked pastiche of open and solid architectural elements combining to equal seven total stories.
The building is home to some 300 BIG employees and relies on a majority (60%) of renewables as its primary sources of energy consumption. The firm says another 84% of its heating and an impressive 100% of the cooling demand comes from a new geothermal energy system that was installed, helping the project to reach the country's strident DGNB Gold certification standard.
BIG has stated it took approximately two years to complete from start to finish after the initial design was first proposed in 2017.
A specially made Uni-Green concrete mix was used for the first time in the project. Circulation is provided via an outdoor spiral stair that provides a secondary egress route and outdoor terraces on each floor. A new 16,000-square-foot public park was also established outside the building, the interior floor plates of which are supported by what has been described as an interlocking 'checkerboard' pattern of 65-foot-long beams.
Inside the park, American artist Benjamin Langholz's sculptural piece Stone 40 completes the makeover in an echo of both the spiral staircase and stone column. Partner Finn Nørkjær joined Ingels in leading the project. Work on the site totaled 52,528 square feet overall.
9 Comments
Brings to mind Pafford Keating-Clay
It does have similarities to Paffard Keatinge-Clay's work, but I think this has a relentless concrete bleakness that Paffard always manged to overcome.
Comes across as neo-brutalist and not very carbon sensitive. Huge cold spaces that dwell more on monumentality than what might foster a warm, intimate, and productive setting.
Characteristic of BIG press releases, this one is a bunch of marketing hooey. As Arun notes, this concrete building has enormous embodied carbon from the unnecessary use of concrete (Bjarke justifies it as necessary because of the marine site - so why put it there?)
They continue to misrepresent the benefits of "low-carbon" concrete which is still poor compared to most other chemicals, and by now he should also know that monolithic hi-density concrete does not significantly recarbonate until it is demolished and crushed.
District heating and cooling systems (including those that use water-source systems) are in use throughout Copenhagen and particarly in new developments. This is not a BIG innovation so much as something that they have connected to...
And while they are bragging that the building's energy is 60% from renewables, they fail to mention that in Denmark generally over 80% of electricity is renewable.
Yeah I dunno Janosh. It looks strong to me as a concept and execution. I dont quite buy the idea that the site is stupid. Copenhagen is expanding into Nordhavnen for a reason and BIG took a difficult site and did something good. The concrete critique is real enough. I would personally be a lot more interested in seeing a building using structural stone and seeing what they could get from that in this environment. There is a stone column in the centre of the building, making me guess they thought about it for at least a second, but I totally get that the big open spaces don't lend themselves to that structure.
The Nordhavnen masterplan is not my favorite, filled as it is with the chock a block, block by block, non-street design style that makes Orestad so disappointing. Cant understand why its still so popular as a planning goal. BIG cut its teeth on those kinds of sites and it makes sense that they contributed a well tuned box to a site that really only wants those. But it is not anywhere near as impressive as the King Street development in Toronto for example, which feels like its creating the fabric as much as its reflecting on what is around it.
The building itself looks brilliant and the planning is excellent. The fact that they are taking advantage of systemic benefits like district heating is not a copout or a failure. Its a budget smart choice. Not every building needs to be a stand-in for the cutting edge future, especially when the future is so uncertain. Just being smart is pretty rare and worth celebrating.
I don't disagree that it is an interesting building. My criticism of BIG is that when design formally novel and often really innovative buildings, they seem to as a reflex overstate their sustainability features and media rarely bothers to check. It will be interesting to see what the LCA of this building actually looks like when the DGNB evaluation is complete.
The notion of hedonistic sustainability is that sustainability won’t win if it isn’t better designed and more enjoyable to live in.
Bjarke
Odd that the firm that gave us the wonderful term "hedonistic sustainability" designed this with cold, even grim masses, especially in such a prominent spot. That aside, however, I like it better than most of their other work. It is more substantial and expressive.
Ahhahah... If the business doesn't go well, Bjarke is prepared to saw it in half. That's good planning ahead!:)))
At least the employees can now all see where their meager salaries are going?
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