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CEBRA is Danish in a strange way because in our work we unite two opposing Danish philosophies – making CEBRA architecture a new Danish hybrid.
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In cases where Arne would have said, “My way, or the highway”, we go with the flow and design our way around the problem.
Danish A couple of years ago, we visited Iceland to see if we could meet some potential new clients and get some work – obviously this was before the global economy blew up and Iceland turned out to be anything but rock solid. During one of our presentations, a developer stated that our work was very Danish and when asked to clarify what he meant he said, “Well, there´s a lot of cutting and pulling going on!”
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I immediately dismissed it as a typical layman remark, as volume subtraction is not a particularly Danish way of working, and in my mind we were among the very first to ‘cut and pull’. Besides, I believed at that time that our work had an indefinable international aura to it – that it could, in fact, have been made anywhere. However, the superficial remark stuck with me and turned into an almost existential question: is our work visibly Danish and what does this mean? I have come to the conclusion that it is. I can’t get away from the fact that every word I utter and every line I put on paper will somehow reflect my upbringing. My youth and childhood were spent without the internet, with one TV channel and behind closed European borders, so there is no way around it. I am Danish and so is our architecture. But CEBRA is Danish in a strange way because in our work we unite two opposing Danish philosophies – making CEBRA architecture a new Danish hybrid. Arne If we forget about Utzon, who was too brilliant to belong to any architectural discourse but his own, Arne Jacobsen would most certainly have to be the father figure of Danish modernism. Of course, he was part of a very talented generation that includes outstanding architects such as Wilhelm Lauritzen, Kay Fisker, Erik Møller and many others, but Arne – this is what architects call him today – did the major commissions of the sixties and in doing so gained an international reputation. Arne Jacobsen was a charismatic yet authoritative architect who always managed to get his way in design matters. His work was perfect – too perfect as Bruce Mau later stated – and he considered architecture an art form. For Arne, architecture was architecture and he
focused primarily on design and composition. Everything was balanced with not a molecule out of place. The work of his heyday shows a cool elegance and an aristocratic straightness. Detail and perfection was everything. It is said, and this is one of many curious Arne anecdotes, that he once drove past an apartment block he´d recently designed, and when he noticed that some of the inhabitants had put up ‘the wrong’ curtains, he pulled over. He allegedly rang the poor people´s doorbell to tell them that they were ruining his facade. Many Arne Jacobsen buildings are full-blown designs, where he as the master builder designed every little detail from door knobs to lamps and curtain patterns. This was more common back in the fifties and sixties but Arne excelled as a keen detailer, decorator and even landscape designer. His furniture and industrial designs are simply beautiful and have become world famous yet strikingly commonplace at the same time. When I was a child, my family had a set of Arne´s 7 chairs around the dining table in our home, and now I have my own lovely set of Jacobsen teak chairs with armrests in my dining room. Even here at the Frankfurt air terminal, where I am writing this on my way to Mexico, I find the notorious chair in yet another color variation. Arne was and is everywhere. In the late sixties – partly inspired by the student riot in 1968 – young architects started taking an interest in the users of buildings rather than buildings and their design. Architects such as Oskar Hansen were some of the first to promote ‘open architecture’, a less workoriented architecture receptive to user demands, and around 1970 the role of the architect started changing. The Jacobsen-type hero designer was challenged by a new and more socially-conscious architect, more loyal to the users and their wishes than to the actual client. This could be because at this time the state increasingly took over building jobs, which meant that often the client was society rather than an actual person. Jan This was at the time Jan Gehl wrote his ground breaking book ‘Life Between Buildings’ in which he studies the use of public spaces. He literally went around counting people
and cars in different urban environments and studied people´s behavior on the streets and in public squares. In trying to find the perfect human habitat, he observed humans, very much like a zoologist would study animals. In Gehl´s mind, the vast modernist housing areas, based on Le Corbusier’s visions of solitary concrete blocks floating in gigantic parks, was a total disaster. In the name of safety and efficiency pedestrians and drivers had been separated and the ‘urban’ spaces of the new developments from the sixties seemed completely empty and lifeless. Furthermore, the straight concrete buildings dominated and there was little space for individual influence. In these areas, which have mostly turned into ghettos today, people seemed reduced to numbers on a shelf.
Marxism is not a particularly popular topic for anyone these days, but even so I believe that every Danish architect still feels on a subconscious level that he has to choose between design and users, Arne or Jan. On the one hand, he can choose to do hero architecture and impress the world with architectural somersaults. On the other, he can join the fans of the so-called ‘user driven innovation’ – a group of architects who believe that every single user should be involved in just about anything concerning the building he or she will be using for a period of time. CEBRA At CEBRA, we combine the two mindsets making social responsibility and user needs the creative fuel for our architecture. For us there is no contradiction. We don’t understand why user-friendly buildings cannot be
We also embrace all the obstacles that invariably show up during a building process. Certainly any young architect will quickly learn that a sketch proposal never ends up the way it was meant to in real life. This is true for even the most fantastic works of architecture, such as the Sidney Opera House. So instead of stubbornly fighting changes brought about by budget restraints, legislation or statics, we always try to see bumps in the road as design opportunities. If the engineer suggests a column, it might actually be a chance to design a neat detail for the building. If the contractor introduces an idea, we listen to it – it might actually be good. We call this tai chi design since we incorporate outside forces in the design process instead of getting run over by them. In cases where Arne would have said, “My way, or the highway”, we go with the flow and design our way around the problem. We do believe that the architect should always remain the master designer, and as such do great designs, but this doesn´t mean that we cannot listen. In the end, no matter what happens, the architect will take either the blame or the glory for architectural disaster or success. Nobody will know the real story that the client cut the budget too late in the process or that the idea for an elegant glass roof construction came from the contractor. So even if you don’t listen for the sake of others – do it for yourself. In the CEBRA office we have always been comfortable creating architecture influenced by many people. We believe in Jan Gehl´s conscientious user investigations, but never at the expense of architecture. We believe in the artistic capabilities and the authority of Arne Jacobsen, but never at the expense of the users. CEBRA architecture represents many voices, but it is drawn by a single hand. In this sense, CEBRA is a new Danish hybrid. Mikkel Frost, CEBRA Mexico, January 2011
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For the new generation of architects such as Gehl and his contemporaries, aesthetics was secondary to human needs. The avant-garde search for new designs was replaced by semi-romantic village projects mimicking the good old days. This spurred a whole movement of dense and low-rise small town settlements in the suburbs, which has proven a limiting urban method that we are only beginning to see the end of now. You can almost say that design became unfashionable in the early seventies. I clearly remember the old thesis booklets I found in the dusty basement of the school library when I was looking for inspiration. To some extent, they were impressively thorough and comprehensive describing everything from a social and sociological point of view. But they were totally dry and heavily Marxist, and even in the seventies the theories of good old Karl seemed somehow dated and certainly created for another time. Regardless of how you feel about Karl Marx, it is still fascinating to think that a thesis paper by a student of architecture was highly political and totally drained of all architecture with little or no discussion of composition, design or materials. It seemed that architecture had become merely a practical need and could not be an art form at the same time.
design works, just as impressive and beautiful as any work of art. We might start by discussing user needs and social structure, but our end goal is always physical architecture. And in this sense we are an odd breed of architects – half-Jacobsen and half-Gehl. This is visible in our architecture, which is mostly vivid and playful and the result of the fact that we are positively open towards the many different people involved in the design and building process. We listen to users and can honestly say we enjoy the interaction with them. We interview extensively and collect information from users, who are at the end of the day experts in the daily problems caused by a given building. Obviously a zoo keeper knows a lot more about zoo processes and animals than the architect designing a new elephant house. This doesn´t mean that the zoo keeper should actually design the house. But it does mean that the architect should use input from the zoo keeper in the design.
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BĂœLOWSVEJ SCHOOL IDEA
The school at BĂźlowsvej consists of individual buildings spread out across a rudimentary city block in Frederiksberg. With one of the buildings severely infested with dry rot, we were offered a chance to both connect the different school buildings and build a new section that will close off the block to the street. The infested building has been torn down and will be REPLACED with a new section for elementary school children. This building fills a gap in the street facade and closes off the inner school yard. Thus the central space in the middle of the block is PROTECTED and the solitary buildings are BROUGHT TOGETHER with paving and green surfaces. The new building is organized as a straight GRID divided into three rows of four units. Each unit has the size of a classroom but only the units with facade contact are used as such. The other squares are dedicated to flow and common spaces for breaks and group work. To accommodate different needs and create variation, the units are reorganized from story to story in TETRIS-INSPIRED shapes. The three rows of the building have different purposes and are designed accordingly. The front towards the street is more formal as it is part of the street facade. The elevation facing the yard has cantilevering green garden terraces and the middle layer of this SANDWICH is the inner space for flow, breaks and group work.
Client: Frederiksberg Municipality Place: Frederiksberg, Denmark Purpose: Public school, 1st to 10th grade Surface area: 68,889 ft2 / 6,400 m2 and 53,820 m2 / 5,000 m2 school yard Commission: Public Status: Built 2013 Photo: CEBRA
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ICEBERG
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Like many other industrial harbor fronts, the former container port of Aarhus is being transformed into a dynamic new neighborhood. On completion, the area will be home to 7,000 inhabitants and provide 12,000 workplaces. Its total site area amounts to 800,000 m2 making this development one of Europe’s largest harbor front city developments. The Isbjerget (the Iceberg) project was designed back in 2007, but the financial crisis has slowed development by a few years. However, at the time of writing construction work of the NEW DOCKLAND has started once again. At this PRIME LOCATION, with its spectacular VIEW across the bay, the seemingly simple task was to maximize views and SUNLIGHT for every apartment. Instead of following the master plan made up of primarily closed blocks, Isbjerget is laid out as four L-SHAPED WINGS in which the street spaces between the parallel wings open towards the water. To expose the view to as many apartments as possible, a jagged roof profile has been introduced. The L-shapes are arranged like carefully organized mountain PEAKS and valleys allowing even apartments in the back row to enjoy fantastic views of the rising peaks and the water. The simple ALGORITHM used in the design has resulted in a stunning iceberg structure.
Client: PensionDanmark Place: Aarhus, Denmark Purpose: 208 housing units Surface area: 328,299 ft2 / 30,050 m2 Commission: Private Status: Built 2013 Collaboration: JDS, SeARCH, Louis Paillard Photo: CEBRA
Site plan • 1:50.000
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MINIHATTAN
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Unlike most halls of residence, which are located on the outskirts of a city, these are located in the heart of Aarhus, right next to the Iceberg on the harbor front. To reinforce the purpose of the building, which is to provide a place for students to live while they study, we chose to work with vertical STRIPES as a metaphor for books. From afar this makes the building look like BOOKS on a shelf, while close up it resembles a condensed MICRO MANHATTAN with small bundles of mini towers. Each little tower is treated differently both inside and out with different materials and window openings. This creates a variety of living accommodation, suitable for singles, couples or friends living together. The towers are placed on the perimeter of the site creating an inner space for circulation. The individual apartments are reached from balconies flanking the 12-story ATRIUM. To maximize the amount of daylight and expand the sense of space, all the balcony fronts are covered with MIRRORS, which create an illusion of ENDLESS space. The towers are designed to be different heights to incorporate technical facilities on the roof, create a main entrance and provide a spectacular terrace on the top floor. These purely functional considerations end up giving this micro Manhattan a unique SKYLINE of its own.
Client: Grundfos, Engineering College of Aarhus Place: Aarhus, Denmark Purpose: 159 housing units for student dormitory Surface area: 67,812 ft2 / 6,300 m2 Commission: Private Status: Built 2012 Photo: CEBRA
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KILDEBJERG RY
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IDEA Ry is a popular residential area for families
because of the beautiful surrounding countryside that lends itself to a wide variety of outdoor activities. The area already has a golf course and a number of recreational facilities such as hiking tracks, scout camps and a whole NETWORK of connected paths for leisure, fitness and exercise. Since the community wants to expand this integrated system of leisure and sports CEBRA was asked to design three activity zones for different purposes. THE PLAY ZONE is designed for both playing and working out. People of all ages can go to this group of GEOMETRICAL TREES right next to the local gym to either climb, swing or train with weights. THE PULSE ZONE is a literal BULGE on the existing paths as it prompts horizontal movement. The paths loop into a group of BOWLS created for running, biking and skating at speeds dictated by the actual slant of the bowls. The third zone complements these active zones and provides a more CONTEMPLATIVE space. This is THE ZEN ZONE where people can enjoy slower and gentler activities such as yoga or stretching. This zone is a green and quiet environment partly shielded under trellises, which allows for MEDITATIONAL activities.
Client: Kildebjerg Ry Place: Ry, Denmark Purpose: Recreation and sports Surface area: 24,057 ft2 / 2,235 m2 Commission: Private Status: Built 2012 Photo: CEBRA
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EXPERIMENTARIUM
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IDEA
Experimentarium, the science center in Copenhagen, needs more ROOM and wants more VISIBILITY in the public space. However, this has to happen within the footprint of the existing building, a former bottling plant for soft drinks, which means that the only way to extend is by building inwards and upwards. We have reorganized the building completely by adding new floors and CUTTING it across in two places. The resulting atriums divide the science center into THREE ZONES: private areas for the staff, exhibition spaces for paying visitors and an open public front where people can go without tickets. Functional BOXES containing a cafÊ, a stage and a conference room are added onto this basic structure. The boxes are covered in perforated aluminium sheets, By using varying patterns and degrees of PERFORATION, each box obtains an individual expression. Large expanses of glass are inserted in some of the boxes’ faces and serve as the EYES of the center as they let people see the surroundings from the exhibition spaces, as well as serving as interactive media screens exposing the inside activities. This new design opens the Experimentarium and exposes its wonderful scientific toys.
Client: Experimentarium Place: Hellerup, Denmark Purpose: Science center and museum Surface area: 322,917 ft2 / 30,000 m2 Commission: Private Status: In progress Collaboration: Die Asta Experience, Kollision
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UDK This building is a pretty standard office building. However, it owes its unusual shape to special demands in the competition brief regarding the amount of DAYLIGHT and sun screening. The client requires a minimum of 2% daylight for every work station and an efficient sun protection system that operates automatically and can be removed on cloudy days. In short, the client wants lots of daylight but without the inconveniences caused by direct sunlight and overheating. To accommodate this requirement, we designed a building with NO SOUTHERN FACADE but with an extensive facade to the north forming an equilateral triangle flush with the nearby ring road. At Danish latitudes this means that the north-facing facade will only be exposed to direct sunlight in the summer time before and after people actually go to work. It also leaves more unblinded facade so people can see the surroundings. The inside triangular-shaped atrium is flipped 180 degrees so the tips connect with the outer building perimeter. Since it is slightly asymmetrical and ROTATES with every floor, spaces with different heights emerge. This simple operation results in many different types of office areas making the building FLEXIBLE and suitable for different types of work situations.
Client: ATP Ejendomme Place: Holstebro, Denmark Purpose: Office building Surface area: 49,514 ft2 / 4,600 m2 Commission: Public Status: Built 2012 Photo: CEBRA
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ADULT EDUCATION CENTRE
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IDEA
The basic idea was to design a school that doesn’t look like a school - a building that adapts to the student and not the other way around. So we aimed at creating a flexible and diverse learning environment that gives room for INDIVIDUAL NEEDS in a collective building. The design is characterized by a system of curved lines and rounded forms, which cut through the building volume’s regular form and create transparent and various spatialities around a central atrium. A series of CURVED incisions in the basic volume ensure interaction between the building’s activities and functions and the city around it. The building is organized around a transparent and very active atrium, called the AGORA and named after the public gathering place in ancient Greek cities that constituted the center of political, spiritual and artistic life in the city state. The levels of ACTIVITY decrease gradually from the Agora and outwards and upwards with the most calm and private spaces located along the building’s outer edges. Thus, the new AEC focuses on offering specialized and at the same time diverse learning environments, where students turn to those spaces, which match their individual needs and learning style.
Client: VUC Fyn & Fyns HF-kursus Place: Odense, Denmark Purpose: Adult education centre Surface area: 134,549 ft2 / 12,500 m2 Commission: Private Status: Under construction
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CHURCH OF TOMORROW
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The Norwegian village of Vaaler was in need of a replacement for the village’s old wooden church, which burned down to the ground in 2009. Our proposal is based on the most widespread symbol for the Christian church: the CROSS. When the cross shape is tilted and the church’s roof forms a sloping plane the motif becomes visible at eye level as well as from the air, creating the same image from both points of view. The building volume appears as a stairwell or a STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN – a pictorial metaphor that appears in several passages in the Bible and stands as a synonym for spiritual cognition. Light is a fundamental element in our proposal - both in the plan layout and the orientation of the church and as a spatial and ATMOSPHERIC medium for artistic expression. The design uses light - internally as well as externally - for the staging of cultural and church events. A series of incorporated techniques such as prisms, camera obscura and peg mirror capture and UTILIZE NATURAL LIGHT form the skylight to support the liturgical and ceremonial proceedings, thus creating an additional dimension of experience. the incorporation of natural light as artistic element also means that experience of the church space constantly changes depending on the season, time of day and type of weather.
Client: Vaaler Parrish Council Place: Vaaler, Norway Purpose: New church building Surface area: 11,840 ft2 / 1,100 m2 Commission: Private Status: Competition proposal closed
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ROSKILDE HQ
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IDEA
This new administration building is located in Roskilde’s new creative neighbourhood Musicon, which is emerging from the remains of an old concrete FACTORY - built on the vestiges of the city’s industrial history. As organiser of a wide range of cultural events - mainly the Roskilde Festival - Roskilde Festival-gruppen’s staff numbers vary constantly depending on the event calender. So for us the basic challenge was to design a creative and very flexible working environment with an effective internal flow and synergies across the floors. Thus, we decided to fit the building with an integrated LUNG EFFECT that gives room to absorb larger numbers of employees and volunteers during peak times. The concept places the main vertical flow areas on the floors’ outer edges. This SPIRALLING shifts throughout the building - combined with the central core - optimise daylight conditions and views by ensuring direct contact to the facades for every office floor. While the offices are laid out as more secluded, private spaces giving room for calm and concentration, the climbing atrium provides an open common area - a BALCONY - to the individual floors. Those balconies are linked to the office spaces and act as the building’s lungs, into which the different project organisations can expand when needed.
Client: Roskilde Festival-gruppen Place: Roskilde, Denmark Purpose: Administration building Surface area: 56,618 ft2 / 5,260 m2 Commission: Private Status: Ongoing
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REBILDPORTEN
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RebildPorten is a new visitor’s centre and exhibition space for Rebild, one of the most popular tourist destinations in northern Denmark - Rebild Hills and Rold Forest. RebildPorten creates an ideal setting for the narrative about cultural history and NATURE experiences in these unique surroundings. The idea was to design a building, which bids you welcome by telling the local stories and offering knowledge before guiding and distributing the visitors into the hills and the forest. The structure is designed as a HYMN to the nature, next to which it is situated. Visitors will experience it as a small section of stylised forest with stems and branches made from a sculptural structure of bluff TIMBER, thus making the building accessible to the eye of the observer - very similar to a forest’s opening and closing when one moves through it and looks upwards through the BRANCHES’ chaotic network of crossing lines. By shaping the building out of raw cut timber, the visitor not only experiences a ‘walk in the forest’, and a particular atmosphere determined by Nature’s own strength and rustic weight, but also the SCENT of wood and nature, which sets the mood for the visit to the forest and hills.
Client: Rebild Municipality & Realdania Place: Rebild, Denmark Purpose: Information portal Surface area: 5,813 ft2 / 540 m2 Commission: Public Status: Built 2013 Photo: CEBRA
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HELSINKI CENTRAL LIBRARY
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IDEA This design proposal’s basic intention is to
create an urban square inside a public building, i.e. a city space that is an integrated part of a building as well as the city. By flipping the traditional introvert shopping plaza to a vertical position a VERTICAL PLAZA emerges. The central open space acts as the visual and infrastructural focal point that ensures ACCESSIBILITY and direct views from the lobby to all of the floors and variety of functions while at the same time offering a visual and spatial connection to the city. The library’s collection is laid out as a LOOP around this open space so that all categories can expand in both directions along the loop, thus ensuring a high degree of organisational flexibility. Alongside this “TRAIL” a series of zones are located - casual meeting points and rest areas for immersion.These public spaces are organised in subdivisions of varied SPECIALISED SPACES with clearly defined functionalities, The specialised spaces take into account the varying working methods and learning styles that demand different degrees of transparency, openness and sensitiveness to sound and light. The specialised spaces are connected to the path along the loop and are oriented towards the central interior space.
Client: The City of Helsinki Place: Helsinki, Finland Purpose: Public Library Surface area: 144,236 ft2 / 13,400 m2 Commission: Public Status: Competition proposal closed
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BOW KINDERGARTEN
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IDEA
The Bow’s location in Valby - a low-rise, low-density suburban area of Copenhagen - was the basis for our design proposal’s general scope: to create a HYBRID between a CITY kindergarten, with a high level of infrastructural accessibility and an intensive programming of the outdoor areas, and a NATURE kindergarten, with generous recreational outdoor facilities. The result is a kindergarten that rethinks the interrelation between building and playground: By using a both unifying and expansive design strategy the Bow creates a varied and flexible children’s environment, where the building itself functions as an active playground and learning environment in a SEAMLESS interplay with the site’s terrain. The arrival and resting areas are incorporated as functional extensions of the building and thereby form the structure into the shape of a LETTER S. The volume’s ends are lowered to ground level and connect the building’ two opposite sides in the shape of three superposed figure eights. Thus, the landscape is tied together over, under, through alnongside and across the building into one CONTINOUS PLAYGROUND, which acts as direct extension of the kindergartens internal organisation.
Client: Copenhagen Municipality Place: Kerteminde, Denmark Purpose: Kindergarten and day care center Surface area: 17,760 ft2 / 1,650 m2 Commission: Public Status: Competition proposal closed
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FUTURE ORPHANAGE
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IDEA
The Future Orphanage is a pioneering project for an entirely new type of 24-hour care centre for marginalized children. The concept combines the traditional home’s SAFE environment with new ideas and conceptions of what a children’s home is and which needs it should fulfill. The project therefore takes the familiar basic shapes of the typical Danish home as its starting point: the classic PITCHED-ROOF house and the DORMER motif. By using the shapes in a new and playful way the design marks the house as an out of the ordinary place, which at the same time is recognized as a dwelling with a safe and homely environment. The Future Orphanage is basically organized as four interconnected houses in order to reduce the building’s SCALE and to create selfcontained, varied units for the different groups of residents. The quartered shape is modified by the distinctive dormer profiles, which grow into and out of the individual houses, are turned upside down and even rise to form an observation tower. This flexible concept gives the residents the opportunity to set their own mark on the arrangement, décor and use of these ‘bonus spaces’ according to needs and activities - MORE HOME, less institution.
Client: Kerteminde Municipality Place: Kerteminde, Denmark Purpose: Care centre for marginalized children Surface area: 16,146 ft2 / 1,500 m2 Commission: Public Status: Under construction
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SKI DOME
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The Ski Dome concept is our take on rethinking indoor skiing. The proposal offers over 3 km of indoor and outdoor slopes, a freestyle park, hotel, and consists of three centrally connected ARCHES, which resemble the basic shape of a six-armed SNOWFLAKE. The arches each span 700 m across the river Gudenåen and the top arch’s highest point rises 110 m over ground, creating a distinctive landmark for the entire region. The basic idea of the Ski Dome is to share and pass on the joy of skiing to the Danes by creating spectacular indoor facilities that bring skiers as close as possible to the experience of HURTLING DOWN a mountain side in the Alps. In order to meet this ambition, we have been inspired reversely, so to speak. Most ski domes around the world are designed from the inside with no or very few windows. However, an essential part of the skiing experience consists in being able to enjoy the surrounding SCENERY. The proposal’s high-rise composition combined with a filigree façade structure allows for spectacular views over Randers and the river-meadow area.
Client: Danski Place: Randers, Denmark Purpose: Ski dome, street sport facilities, urban park Surface area: 1,076,391 ft2 / 100,000 m2 Commission: Private Status: Concept proposal Web: www.skidomedenmark.dk
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3B
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2013
IDEA The competition brief asked for a concept
for 150 apartments that shall serve as reference and inspiration for the building of social housings in the years ahead. Social housing forms a substantial supplement to the commercial marked and contributes to making sure that our cities have room for all social groups - cities that are INCLUDING rather than excluding. Our winning proposal REMIX is inspired by Copenhagen’s classic motifs – brick facades and pitched roofs – and mixes the housing’s and the city’s traditional elements in a new and distinctive way. REMIX shows that DIVERSITY can thrive and develop in social housing complexes. Varying apartment types and forms can be combined depending on preferences regarding content and in consideration of the surroundings. The apartments can be assembled and stacked almost freely in a PLAY OF FORMS and combinations, thus creating functional and visual variety both vertically and horizontally. At the same time, the combinations allow for a diverse SOCIAL MIX of residents. REMIX provides a highly flexible concept that can be adapted to any program or setting – without becoming self-effacing: The residents’ sense of pride and IDENTITY by the means of their home and surroundings forms one of the project’s key elements.
Client: The housing association 3B Place: Copenhagen, Denmark Purpose: Concept for the social housing of the future Surface area: Variable Commission: Private Status: Concept proposal competition 1st prize, ongoing
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SOCIAL EDUCATIONS
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IDEA
Our proposal for this new social and health care college can be divided into two ovarall types of spaces. On one side REGULAR and welldefined spaces that flank the atrium and on the other side organic learning environments that emerge on and between the SWEEPING balconies in the centre of the building. This dual strategy provides a high degree of ADAPTABILITY in terms of different types of teaching by means of spatial diversity and variation. The central atrium space is shaped by soft organic curves, which shift contrapuntally to each other - like sinus waves OSCILLATING out of tune. These shifts create bridges across the space, which connect the building internally and reduce distances. In addition this means that the atrium only in selected spots is experienced in its full height across all three floors. Despite this seemingly simple system of layered WAVY lines the building provides an enormous spatial variation that is able to meet the individual needs in a diverse group of users. As a first hint about the vivid and undulating universe of the interior the building’s rectangular volume is “SQUEEZED” in selected sections, marking areas of particular significance and creating transitions between the inside and the outside.
Client: Social and Health Care College Aarhus Place: Aarhus, Denmark Purpose: Educational institution Floor area: 127,014 ft2 / 11,800 m2 Commission: Private Status: Competition proposal closed
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CEECD
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2013
IDEA The Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Center
of Excellence in Early Childhood Development is the first project of its kind in Abu Dhabi and it will serve as a PROTOYPE for future institutions in the region. The overall building layout is based on an ancient court yard model where the building itself embraces an inner world – an enclosure around INTIMATE outdoor court yards where children can play and learn in a protected environment. This way of laying out a building is very much like the local “BAIT AL SAHEL”, and this is one of several ways in which we have tried to relate our architecture to the history of Abu Dhabi. The overall volume is designed as a TENT (khaimah) inspired structure composed from circular shapes and Booleans. The idea is to create a building that looks as if it is gently protecting something valuable and at the same time expresses childhood and playfulness. Three outdoor play areas each contain a giant MAGIC THREE, which serves as a wind tower (barajeel) as well as a playing device in which ropes, swings and much more can be suspended.
Client: Salama Bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation Place: Abu Dhabi, UAE Purpose: Early childhood education center Floor area: Approx. 43,056 ft2 / approx. 4,000 m2 Commission: Private Status: Concept design - ongoing
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COLOPHON Publisher Mikkel Frost, Carsten Primdahl and Kolja Nielsen, owners of: CEBRA a/s, architects maa, Vesterbro Torv 1-3, 2nd floor, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark Tel: +45 8730 3439, fax: +45 8730 3429, web: CEBRAarchitecture.dk, email: cebra@cebra.info Editor Lars Schäfer Layout Lars Schäfer Image rights All image rights belong to CEBRA a/s. Mechanical, photographic or any other form of reproduction or duplication is strictly prohibited without prior written permission from CEBRA a/s. Printing Bogbinderiet Aarhus Contact Vesterbro Torv 1-3, 2. 8000 Aarhus C Denmark P: +45 8730 3439 E: cebra@cebra.info W: CEBRAarchitecture.dk F facebook.com/CEBRAarchitecture
© CEBRA a/s 2013