Scandinavian Reflections

scandinavian

reflections

arkitema architects

Atmospheric photos from our office in Aarhus

scandinavian

reflections

Editorial team Niels Christoffersen, Holger Dahl, Kenn Hoff Lassen, Anne Strange Stelzner Text

Holger Dahl, Anne Strange Stelzner

Translation Easy Translation Photo Ragnhildur Adalsteinsdóttir (cover, p. 68-69) Niels Nygaard (p. 2-6, 60, 96-99) David Trood (p. 8-11, 14-17, 20-23, 28-31) Klaus Bang (p. 12-13, 18, 40, 42-43, 52-55, 64, 86-87) Lars Gundersen (p. 19, 94-95) Thomas Mølvig (p. 24-27, 38-39, 66, 68 , 69) Asbjørn Haslov (p. 32-33) Helene Mikkelsen (p. 34-37) Stig Nørhald (p. 41) Kenneth Nguyen (p. 46, 48-49) Jens Larsen (p. 45, 47) Kenn Hoff Lassen (p. 50-51, 82-85) Jesper Ray (p. 56-59, 62-63, 77 ) Tom Jersø (p. 61) Bent Strand (p. 68 ) Hallgrimúr Thór Sigurdsson (p. 72-73) Torben Eskerod (p. 74-75, 91) Jens Bygholm (p. 76, 77 ) Thomas Kåre Lindblad (p. 78-81) Roberto Fortuna (p. 88, 90) Thomas Grave Larsen (p. 89) Layout

Kenn Hoff Lassen

Printer Scanprint Print run

300 copies

© 2011 Arkitema Architects – www.arkitema.dk

ISBN 978-87-991419-4-4

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Contents

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Foreword

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The human being

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Empathy

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Simplicity

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Materials

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Light

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Afterword

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Arkitema Architects – cool facts

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Foreword ‘Reflections’ can refer to thoughts or to light; mirror i­ mages or contemplation. In Scandinavian architecture, these are two sides of the same coin. Nordic architecture is about light and reflection – about mirroring the lives of human beings in materials and space, and about the simplicity that is a natural feature of the cold Nordic landscape. Arkitema ­Architects is part of this Scandinavian tradition. Our projects come into being in dialogue with their future users, with the location, and with the changing light in the sky.

This reflective sensing forms the foundation for our selection of materials and detailing, which always aims to provide the users of our buildings with strong spatial and aesthetic experiences.

Reflections can be thoughts or mirror images – and the reflective is an essential element of Scandinavian architecture, partly because we often build beside water and like to use glass in our projects, but also because our buildings mirror the life that is lived within them. We want the users to “recognise themselves” in our architecture, and a slightly higher level, our projects also mirror the society in which they participate and to which they contribute – with careful thought.

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The Human Being Scandinavian architecture is driven by a fundamentally democratic attitude. We do not possess the monumental tendencies that create showy and noisy architecture. Even our royal residences are famous for being rather unassuming. This modesty is not due to meanness, but is borne by a sense that the essence of architecture is not to be found in its outward trappings, but rather in its inner qualities. The function of spaces as the backdrop for human life has always been a key element in the Nordic building tradition – including at Arkitema. It is here, indoors, that people laugh, cry, work, love.

Arkitema’s projects arise “from the inside out”. We begin by observing how people use buildings – we aim to understand and listen to the reality and to the people who will spend time inside our designs. From an informal meeting with a married couple, discussing their innermost dreams towards their future home over coffee and sandwiches, to more complex workshops at which we uncover the needs of housing associations or the staff of the health service and educational institutions. Here we listen and talk to users and developers, and try also to reveal their unrecognised needs and dreams. We want to get right in to the essence of the human spaces that we leave behind when the last line is drawn, the artist has put down his brush, and the furniture has been moved in. Spaces for learning, spaces which promote health, good workplaces – we are proud of having helped to enhance the quality of life of many people, and we work constantly to develop our understanding of what it is that makes a good home. That is why, for us, sustainability is never just a matter of technology; we are equally concerned with social sustainability.

Hellerup School

At Hellerup School, the people and the learning spaces were our principal challenge and the focus of our attention. Before you even reach the main entrance, you have already passed through a vivid and unusual school landscape: planting which meanders across the schoolyard, small humps painted in bright contrasting colours, a pool with stepping stones, happy children playing. Now you arrive at the actual school building, which reflects its context: a neighbourhood dominated by industrial buildings. The school has a simple design, with clear, uncluttered lines – a Scandinavian building with horizontal window bands and facade elements in metal that echo the horizontal motif of the windows.

Inside, you take off your shoes and contribute to the landscape of footwear that both students and teachers build up when they switch to slippers. You sense at once that something is different here, and you are forced to sharpen your internal senses. Without your shoes, you feel slightly undressed. You lack the shield they offer against reality – but you are also closer to the floor and its pleasant wood material. The wooden material is used throughout the school: on walls, floors and ceilings. It helps to create a certain mood – a warm atmosphere, while also offering pleasant acoustics, with the squeals of children and their light voices resounding through the school’s spaces.

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A landscape for learning.

Stairs and mountains to climb – A world to grasp Hellerup School (2002)

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Learning can also be jumping in a universe of books Kolding Library (2006)

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Up the stairs, down the stairs, by the stairs, on the stairs – movement and reflection in a shared space Ganløse School, Stenløse (2005)

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Ganløse School

We can see each other, we can work – both together and by ourselves Arkitema, Aarhus (2002)

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The floating space around the panoramas – at eye level with nature Natural History Museum Naturama, Svendborg (2004)

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Dare to look Natural History Museum Naturama, Svendborg (2004)

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Samsø Energy Academy

Empathy At Arkitema, we adhere to the Scandinavian tradition of always taking our starting-point in the location, in order to call forth the spirit of the place, and we apply this approach wherever in the world our buildings spring up. In all our projects, we insist on presenting the locality’s spirit in a manner which enriches both the construction and the location. We highlight what is special about the place, and use scale and proportion to secure new sites of importance for both the residents, the users and anyone who might stop by.

Stopa moment, take in the space, and be present.

Our task is to understand and condense what the new space must be able to do, and how it can become a pleasant place to be. The ability to empathise with a place is an art that endows the architecture with true artistic content, in a world where finances, fire safety, escape routes and insulation thicknesses often take up a disproportionate amount of the daily work in a project.

If the building and the location can engage in a low-key conversation across different times and changing habits, the architecture will appear many times stronger than if it loudly shouts to attract attention.

In the shadow of Brorson Church on Rantzausgade in Copenhagen lies the kindergarten ‘Stenurten’ (p. 28-31), which engages in just such a quietly empathetic conversation with its urban context. The adjacent church is a listed building, and the street, once an important local shopping area, now presents a mixture of open views to neighbouring streets, greengrocers, pizza bars and buildings which seem to have their best days behind them. In this very mixed context, the task was to build a kindergarten for the local children – a sustainable kindergarten. The solution was a wing building that presses itself down on one side towards street level in order to respect the listed church in that direction, while being correspondingly open along its entire length towards the open space to the north. The location of the wing is subject to the geometry of both the church and the open area, but through its high facade, it enriches the plaza space north of the kindergarten, thereby creating order in a street sequence which was otherwise beginning to slip into accentless ‘terrain vague’. The facade materials are in black-stained wood, further emphasising the informal nature of the building. The roof is in green sedum, which serves to camouflage the kindergarten towards the church, while at the same time contributing to the building’s energy accounts and underlining the kindergarten’s sustainable profile. Inside, the walls are in unfired brick which is both beautiful to look at and pleasant to the touch, and helps to regulate the temperature and humidity, to ensure that Stenurten enjoys a comfortable and sustainably-regulated inner climate.

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A poetic interpretation of the vernacular Samsø Energy academy (2006)

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The warm sun on my back Here in my favourite spot by the window The Kindergarten Stenurten, Copenhagen (2002)

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The surroundings are reflected in the sustainable nature of the kindergarten.

Inside the building Vermeer would feel at home The Kindergarten Stenurten, Copenhagen (2002)

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A modern courtyard in the city center Housing, Vesterbro 21 f-G, Aalborg (2004)

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Here you always find yourself close to the green greens and the white golf ball Lyngbygaard Golf, Brabrand (2009)

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When the building is correctly placed on the site it is as if it has always been there – and the rest becomes simple Lyngbygaard Golf, Brabrand (2009)

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Rhythmic architecture – close to nature Housing, Ă˜ster Hurup Sea port, Hadsund (2007)

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A development that wants to use the water for more than a view – diversity becomes standard Housing, Sluseholmen, South harbour, Copenhagen (2005-09)

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Sluseholmen

Simplicity Simplicity takes many forms. At Arkitema, we seek the kind of simplicity that is like a glass of cold water on a hot day; a simplicity that seeks to satisfy immediate human needs, and seeks out solutions that will accommodate both materials, organisation and expression. This kind of simplicity is inclusive rather than dismissive, open rather than closed, and invites dialogue with its users and other interested persons.

At Arkitema, we work to achieve this kind of simplicity by studying the demands and conditions of the task very carefully, and then allowing the human senses to lead the way.

This is the same simplicity that lies in the sensation of drinking a glass of cold water, or of breaking through the water surface when you leap from the side of the swimming pool.

You move from your body’s normal situation into a completely different, wet and inclusive element. You are present and enclosed by water.

One place where human beings encounter water is at Arkitema’s Bellahøj Swimming Stadium, where the sounds of serious competitive swimmers mix with the more sedate back-and-forth strokes of the keep-fit enthusiasts. There is warmth here, and the body’s lightness in the water is ­reflected in the architectural impression, through the simplicity of the space and the carefully-selected materials, which speak a purely architectural language of swimming.

Two crawls and a backstroke later, you’re out of the water again, and can look straight out into the green park just beyond the large glass window panes. On the horizon, you glimpse the vibrant life of the city. Outside the main entrance, local and visiting skateboarders have occupied the forecourt, where the simple steps and broad landings with distinctive red railings provide challenges for daredevils.

A new swimming stadium and a new social meeting-place have sprung up in Bellahøj.

By designing the hall itself as a tight rectangular volume on a terraced plinth, with an emphasised fascia edge, we created not just a beautiful setting for swimmers, but also simple architecture, which in an honest way defines a free space amid all the traffic chaos. A new location in the city thus arises which makes sense of the traffic, anchoring both the swimming stadium and the park in relation to the surrounding city.

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Bellahøj Swimming Stadium

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The stair landscape draws skaters like a magnet – a lively space has been created Bell ahøj Swimming Stadium, Brønshøj (2009)

Bellahøj Swimming Stadium

cool elegance Vestas Technology, Aarhus (2008)

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Simple effects, a good place to sit – right by the canal Kommandantens Gaard, Copenhagen (2006)

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Kommandantens Gaard

A space to watch the sky and the sea – a frame for contemplation Casa Spodsbjerg, house in spodsbjerg, L angel and (2010)

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light and space Casa Spodsbjerg, House in spodsbjerg, L angel and (2010)

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Built in network – the modern office building is open and changeable Mikado House, Copenhagen (2010)

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Renovation with respect for history – a new sensibility and simplicity Office building, Marselis TvÌrvej, Aarhus (2010)

Materials Brick meets brick, which meets brick, stacked and composed in different bonds. Brick walls are works of masonry that tell a story of Scandinavian building style. Brick fired in different ways and at different temperatures, and in all kinds of different colours. From hand-moulded, hard-fired yellow brick with its dramatic black-brown markings, to machinemade brick in red or anthracite grey.

In Arkitema’s work with the restoration, conversion and extension work at Nørre Vosborg manor, the local brick has a very special history. Originally, the manor’s farm building was built with bricks from Nørre Vosborg’s own brickworks. The bricks were manufactured on site, and laid one above the other by a local mason some time in the 1700s. In our restoration of the farm building, we did everything we could to preserve these bricks.

Parallel to the manor farm building lies the modern hotel wing designed by Arkitema: a hotel that respects the spirit of the place, partly by echoing the profile and elongated shape of the farm building, and partly through its parallel orientation in relation to the farm building. We consciously chose an unusual material for the hotel wing; a prized Nordic material – wood, which is unpretentious and natural, and forms a contrast to the red-brick buildings. A material which pervades the entire hotel, even the roof, which is clad in planks of radial-sawn Siberian larch, laid in a clapboard pattern.

You can immediately sense the solid history of the brick, its calmness and objectivity, while the encounter with the hotel is a story told in a warm and gentle voice, created by the tactility of the wood and its close ties with nature.

Youth housing, Skejbyparken

In Akureyri, the main town of northern Iceland, lies a cultural centre which, right on its facade, uses a location-specific material that speaks its own unique and powerful Icelandic language. The facade is clad with bars of the special Icelandic granite Studlaberg, laid in a vertical pattern which endows the circular form of the cultural centre with a pleasant rhythm. The robust and highly tactile facade is continued inside the building, which also has strong references to Icelandic nature. Here, the interior public street is reminiscent of a ravine between rock walls; a ravine in which the building’s core is clad with horizontal rods in wood, like geological layers in the ravine, and which with their warm expression provide a fine contrast to the raw concrete wall.

This meeting between two materials gives visitors to the building a direct sensory experience which increases their awareness of the origins of the materials and their references to the surrounding landscape.

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wood, wood, wood Nørre Vosborg, Hotel and conference centre, Vemb (2008)

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Historical spaces that continue to tell stories.

Restoration and rejuvenation go hand in hand Nørre Vosborg, Vemb (2008)

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Iceland – built with stone on stone Arts Centre in Akureyri, Icel and (2010)

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Arts Centre, Akureyri

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A building in transformation.

From dark brown copper to light green – a new landmark for the harbour of Copenhagen The copper Tower, Copenhagen (2004)

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Everyday poetry Casa Bohnsen, House in Aarhus (2010)

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The writing on the wall in modern materials Alpha and Beta student halls of residence, Viborg (2007)

Alpha and Beta student halls of residence

Light A building reflected in water. A sunbeam through bright curtains. A skylight that sends a patch of sun down into the living-room. Light is a fundamental element in architecture, and in the Scandinavian countries, in particular, sunlight is of great importance. For half of all the days of the year, light is a very scarce resource in Scandinavia.

What is rare, we handle with care. That’s how human beings are. As a result, the treatment of light has become a key quality in Scandinavian architecture. For northerners, light is not something you take for granted. In summer the sun barely sets at all, while in winter we spend several months in a state fluctuating between soft twilight and the darkest night. The light alters a great deal in strength and nuance in the course of the day, and in the course of the year. Light, and also to a large extent shade, are living partners in the architecture.

The orientation of a Nordic building relative to the sun is always a factor to be considered. It is important to get the most out of the low afternoon sun in winter, and in summer it is equally important to derive full benefit from the varying light during the long days. Summer in Scandinavia brings long, bright days, but never the kind of harsh sun you find in warmer climes, so we have no need for screening and heavy shutters. The light is in other words always included as partner in the design of our projects. We know how light, at the most fundamental level, can create joy and well-being, and we are also very conscious of how it can highlight the quality of the materials and the details of the architecture.

The architect composes architecture using light as an important partner – like a melody that peps up at intervals and is given life with a perfectly clear and pure tone: the tone of light.

Light to work by must be both appropriate and beautiful. In the KMD headquarters in Aarhus, the facade windows are not large, but they are located so as to provide views of the building’s natural surroundings. KMD works with IT, and all of its workplaces are computer workplaces. Windows which were too large would produce many annoying reflections and glare on the computer screens. Instead, the workplaces here obtain most of their light in the form of soft, indirect illumination from the central atrium. Here, light floods down through skylights and spreads out across the meandering deck that defines the office areas. The light acts as a direction-giver, and creates a focal point around the atrium, helping to indicate that this space is the central meeting-place for the whole company. The soft light, in interplay with controlled direct light from the facade windows, creates a complex lighting situation and good workplaces.

KMD

In the Canal Houses of Nykøbing Sjælland (p. 92-95), light is omnipresent and predominant. This is intensified by the location of the houses right next to the canals, where reflections and golden glimmers on the water create a symphony in light which sings its way right into the homes through full-length windows in the facade.

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Windows which adapt to the working environment on the inside, tell a story about punch cards and movement from the outside KMD, domicile in Aarhus (2008)

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The Øresund’s changing light and weather is the main attraction – paintings on the walls are obsolete Tuborg Sundpark, Housing in Hellerup (2007)

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Artistic reflections Frederik VIII’s Pal ace, Amalienborg, Copenhagen (2010)

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A royal residence, an art gallery, a home.

The restauration of Frederik VIII’s Palace embraces the present respecting the past Frederik VIII’s Pal ace, Amalienborg, Copenhagen (2010)

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Did you hear the lapping of the water Canal houses, Nykøbing S (2007)

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Did you see the sky reflecting on the surface of the water Canal houses, Nykøbing S (2007)

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Afterword Reflection is also consideration, which for us means always having sustainability as an immediate part of our projects – not just in relation to energy and materials, but also social sustainability. By consciously designing with an eye to the possibilities of the location and the sun’s movement across the sky, we have developed a refined approach to sustainability in which we do not merely seek technological solutions, but derive most of our energy design from the classic architectural virtues of solar orientation, natural ventilation, sustainable and durable materials, and other passive measures. At the same time, we build for people. Our buildings are designed to be used – used with joy – and must create the best possible spaces within which life can be expressed.

They must inspire consideration and reflections – Scandinavian reflections.

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Atmospheric photos from our office in Copenhagen

Arkitema Architects – Cool Facts Arkitema Architects has a long history which stretches right back to 1970 when it was founded. During this time of over 40 years, Arkitema Architects has designed an extensive list of innovative housing projects, and countless schools, town halls, recreational facilities, office buildings, hospitals, renovation, urban planning, landscape projects and much more.

All of our projects have a common ambition to create a social and environmentally sustainable architecture with a close cooperation with both owner and end user. An architecture which is both beautiful, unique and relevant. Our main offices are in Aarhus and Copenhagen, Denmark, but have a growing presence in Scandinavia with offices also in Stockholm and Oslo.

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We create our projects with the breadth of expertise that our office has to offer – an expertise that includes, in addition to design, knowledge of sustainable energy design, user involvement, and the latest advances in 3D building information modelling.

Arkitema is a limited company owned by Architects MAA Bendt Almvig, Jørgen Bach, Wilhelm Berner-Nielsen, ­Thomas Carstens, Per Fischer, Kim Risager, Poul Schülein and managing director Peter Hartmann Berg. Architects MAA Helge Tindal, Erling Stadager and Michael Harrebek are senior partners with special ties to the company. Architects MAA Niels Christoffersen, Glenn Elmbæk, Dorthe Keis and Hallgrimúr Thór Sigurdsson are associated partners.

Arkitema has around 200 staff members, all of whom strive to create the best possible architectural works as architects, landscape architects, client consultants, constructors, construction managers, construction economists, designers, technical assistants, graphic artists, Humanities graduates, communications officers and administrative personnel.

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arkitema architects Arkitema K/S www.arkitema.dk Frederiksgade 32 DK-8000 Aarhus C arh@arkitema.dk T +45 7011 7011 Mikado House Rued Langgaards Vej 8 DK-2300 Copenhagen kbh@arkitema.dk T +45 7011 7011 Arkitema Sweden Alsnรถgatan 12 S 116 41 Stockholm sthlm@arkitema.dk T +46 (0)8 640 39 60