8-HOUSE AND little TOWER
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Infinity
Loop
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Copenhagen’s newest
neighborhood, Ørestad,
is considered TO BE a modern
version of Frederiksstaden.
A brand new city, erected
in a bare field.
Where nothing exists,
everything is possible !
... and a little
tower.
Recently we were
commissioned to design a
house - or rather two new
houses - a big block...
this is Amager Common,
an enormous green
area in the middle of
Copenhagen twice the size
of Dyrehaven.
...And here is
Copenhagen
Harbour,
stretching from
Kongelunden all
the way through
the city to
Nordhavnen.
...to Amager
Common.
Ørestad is situated as
a strip along the metro
connecting the inner city...
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If we zoom in,
we see our job clearly: to
create 500 dwellings and
400 workspaces within this
building block.
In the middle
of the block, we need to
place a small tower.
The adjacent building is
an office complex.
...by separating
the two blocks from each
other, simultaneously
giving the neighborhood a
new square.
Rather than
merging the tower and
the block, we propose an
urban cell division...
... the moment
the block
disappears...
If we zoom in on
this emerging
plaza...
...the
tower drops into
the middle of a
plaza.
A monolith
completely
surrounded by urban
space.
Instead of being a strange
appendix on the block, it becomes a
freestanding campanile, similar
to the famous church tower on st.
marK’s square in Venice.
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The footprint
is only 160
square meters
- equivalent to
a typical single
family house but in our case a
single family
house OF 16
floors.
Being a Copenhagen
tower defined by the city’s
traditional spires, this should not
be a giant skyscraper but a tall,
slender tower.
The proportions
are also fixed:
10 x 16 meters,
facing south.
at the top of the building, it
works perfectly. The residences
have a view overlooking the
roofscape of our block.
But the lower
floors look straight
into the back of the
block.
So we
simply twist the
bottom part, like
this...
crunch!
Architectonically, the result
is a facetted triangular gable
motif. Here it actually reminds us of a
traditional merchant’s estate a pointed gable with a pitched roof, in
this otherwise modern tower.
and the
residences
face southwest
toward the
plaza.
The result is a twisted tower
with the same formal language
as a crushed milk carton.
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That was the little
tower. Now to the
last 57.000 m2 in the
big block.
It’s a big house, very big. It’s
actually so big that it straddles
the boundary between building
and city planning.
An entire
neighborhood in one
go, as a single building.
Architecture is most appealing
with simple lines and clear ideas.
A city, on the other hand,
becomes alive when it is rich with
experiences and surprises.
So the paradoxical
challenge is to simultaneously
create simplicity and variety,
difference and coherence in other words, to create a
city in the building.
Today, when creating
a new neighborhood or a new
building we try to recreate the
variety found in the historic city.
But how do you do this ?
In some places,
attempts have been made to create
the apparent variety of Nyhavn’S
BUILDINGS by having one architect
design all THE STRUCTURES and different
architects design the facades.
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A cosmetic
variation, like a 40
cm deep skin on
top of a totally
homogeneous
building mass.
We know this from the
towns in cowboy movies:
different facades are
smacked onto identical
barracks.
But we’re not
interested in this type
of fake difference.
The difference between
building 30 m to the left or
right is not that big. But there
is a world of difference
between building 30 m up and
30 m down.
Especially if you ask a real
estate agent ! What if instead of
simulating different houses next
to each other we stack different
functions, like an urban
layer cake ?
!!
With each activity
placed on top of the next
on top of the next on
top of the next…
BAM
For example, shops and
offices prefer direct
contact with the customers
at street level and large
interconnected floors.
Furthermore, they like
daylight but hate direct
sunlight in the eyes or on
the computer screen.
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!
H!
S
O
HO
W
We therefore
place the whole
commercial part in
the bottom of the
building.
WHAM!!
We therefore
place all the dwellings
on top of the commercial
functions. But shops and
offices have deeper floors
than housing.
The opposite goes for
housing, which loves
sunshine but hates a ground
floor location where people
can look straight into the
apartment.
Along the lowest
residences a path, or
roof garden, appears
AS IT WOULD IN
DANISH POTATO ROW
HOUSING.
Imagine if we could create
a modern version of THE POTATO ROWs
by turning the bottom residences
into two-story rowhouses
with front gardens and a connecting
path so the kids can go
visit each other ?
On top of the rowhouses,
We throw a layer of traditional
apartments, where the lowest
one is located on the 3rd
or 4th level.
!!
...with both
front gardens
and roof
gardens.
CLUNK!!
Finally, on top, we add
two floors OF ROOFTOP
ROWhouses...
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We have now
made a layer cake,
where each function has found
its optimal niche in regard to
needs and wishes in a
form of architectural
symbiosis.
But the master
plan asks for a direct
passage all the way from
Amager Common through
the building block, to Hein
Heinsens Square.
UMPFFF !!!
... creating two
new plazas by extending the
pavement into the building, as
a direct connection between
the two urban spaces, in east
and west.
To create this
east-west passage, we
tie a knot on the building,
converting the rectangular
block into a figure 8...
Thus in the two
sun-facing corners
we push the office
part all the way to the
ground.
As previously mentioned,
the offices are not too
crazy about sunshine.
Where residences
use energy to produce
heating, offices use it
for cooling.
To compensate, we lift up the
commercial functions to a
four-storey office building.
At the same time , we lift up the
rowhouses and the apartments
on top, changing the location
from the boring northeast to
the sunny southwest...
...Where they get a fantastic
view above the opposite
neighbors and the roofscape
all the way to Amager
Common.
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In the opposite corner, we
push the whole block almost
to the ground, to open up
the southwestern courtyard
and its apartments to the
view to Amager Common...
...and let the
courtyard bathe
in the afternoon
sun.
The two distortions
of the block neceSsary to optimize
and provide each function with
maximum view, daylight, and sunlight
cause the walkway to rise and
fall, turning it into one continuous
mountain path which moves all the
way to the northeastern
corner...
...and connects to the upper
part, continuing all the way to
the top of the block and from
this point all the way down to
the bottom again.
except for the cafe, located
in the lowest southwestern
corner, all of the building’s
communal functions have
been concentrated in the
point where the figure-8
crosses itself.
At this
vertical focal point,
we have placed all
the different social
activities (common room,
guest apartments,
lounges, cinema and
roof terrace) and
connected them with a
common stair which
ricochets through the
inner void.
A social tower tying the house
together from basement to attic.
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From the shopping life
of the urban space...
8-H
arc
re
va
... to the social life
of the rowhouses...
...to the inhabited balconies
of the apartments...
...to the roof gardens
of the penthouses...
...to the front
gardens of the
terrace houses...
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8-House makes for one
architectural idea which
results in an orgy of
various architectural
spaces:
plazas...
... courtyards...
... stepped streets
and mountain paths.
Where the public life
traditionally is tied to taking
place on the ground floor,
flat as a pancake, with
everything above privatized...
... 8-House allows the
city’s social life to invade
the higher altitudes.
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