The BLOX project, home of the Danish Architecture Center (DAC), contains exhibition spaces, offices and co-working spaces, a café, a bookstore, a fitness centre, a restaurant, twenty-two apartments and an underground automated public carpark, but it is not the acrobatic mixing of uses that defines this project; its ultimate achievement is in ‘discovering’ its own site.
Photograph by Richard John Seymour. Courtesy of OMA
The Old Brewery site, split into two by one of Copenhagen’s main ring roads, didn’t really register as a building site until the design of the new DAC identified it as such. Straddling theroad, making public connections both above and below, BLOX connects the parliament district with the harbour front and brings culture to the water’s edge. A space for cars becomes a space for people; a space to pass through becomes a space to reside.
Photograph by Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti. Courtesy of OMA
Photographer: Rasmus Hjortshøj – COAST
The Copenhagen inner harbour has a long industrial and military history. On reclaimed land, the building site initially housed a cluster of brewery buildings which burnt to the ground in the 1960s. Since then the harbour has become the home of some of Denmark’s most notable architectural icons; a linear display of the tenets of Danish Modernism: monumentality, simplicity and politeness.
Photographer: Rasmus Hjortshøj – COAST
BLOX adds a new impulse: creating an encounter between the water frontages, Kierkegaard’s Square and the city. Its square volume, positioned directly along the harbourside, creates a sheltered public city square against the traditional yellow buildings and a much needed built front for the existing library square.
Photograph by Richard John Seymour. Courtesy of OMA
Contrary to most city blocks in Copenhagen – often introverted and inaccessible – the building absorbs the city’s life. The urban routes through the building lead to unexpected and unpredictable interactions between the building and the city, linking the different museums, libraries and historical sites around the culturally rich Slotsholmen area. A linear park along the harbour flows down below water level along the quay wall and through the building. The former playground is incorporated into the new building, as a partially covered and terraced public space, which can be transformed in the evening into an open-air cinema acting as a public foyer.
The building’s exterior is marked by a stacking of the same geometric forms in different arrangements. The offices are contained in a rectangular ring of glass facades shaded in a white frit. The ground floor functions are located in separate volumes generating openings which form the public entrances and bring the city in to the center of the building. The apartment volumes are fragmented and recessed for privacy, the landscaped terraces encircle the DAC’s central rooflight. The building’s coloured textures subtly echo the sea tones of the harbour, ever-present in the reflected light of the water.
Photograph by Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti. Courtesy of OMA
The DAC itself forms the core of the BLOX Project, positioned in the centre, surrounded by and embedded within its objects of study: housing, offices and parking. It is organized as a vertical sequence of spaces running through the building, starting below ground and moving upwards to the cafe with its view over all of Copenhagen.
Photograph by Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti. Courtesy of OMA
Photograph by Dragor Luftfoto
Sustainability
A broad sustainability vision has been developed for the project, not just in terms of the usual energy, carbon and resource issues, but addressing the wider social and economic impacts. The Arup SPeAR® assessment served as a tool to analyse the project and record progress against a comprehensive, holistic set of criteria spanning environmental, social and economic aspects within the wider cultural and geographical context.
Photograph by Richard John Seymour. Courtesy of OMA
Denmark’s advanced low energy requirements for buildings, arising from the 2009 CopenhagenAccord, demand an operational energy usage much lower than other countries. Bringing the building’s design in line with these criteria involved rethinking its mass and façade concepts, involving ways to reduce CO2 emissions and embodied carbon during construction and operations, as well as researching new solutions to offset and neutralise the carbon usage. The building makes use of on-site renewable energy and achieves the Low Energy Class with a primary energy usage of under 40 kWh/m2/yr.
Photograph by Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti. Courtesy of OMA
User comfort and lifetime flexibility are important elements for the durability of BLOX. The building is acoustically isolated from road noise and vibrations with a highway bridge construction and high insulation facades. The office facades are fully glazed to provide a generous outlook and to reduce lighting energy usage. Minimal low-energy lighting fixtures combined with user task lights are used, and both lighting and facade sun shading are automated through centralised daylight control, with user controls. The building is served by a high specification heat recovery plant which uses Copenhagen’s district heating and cooling system based on seawater cooling and the use of residual heat from electricity generation.
Photograph by Richard John Seymour. Courtesy of OMA
WATCH Ellen von Loon Interview: Contaminating Architecture where the head architect talks about this stunning project
Project Details
Architects: OMA
Location: Bryghuspladsen, 1473 Copenhagen Denmark
Partner in Charge: Ellen van Loon
Project Directors: Adrianne Fisher, Chris van Duijn
Area: 28000.0 m2
Project Year: 2018
Photographs: Richard John Seymour, Hans Werlemann, Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti, Rasmus Hjortshøj – COAST, Dragør Luftfoto, Clement Guillaume, Søren Svendsen
Engineering: Arup with Cowi
Façade Engineering: Arup Façade Engineering (van Santen & Associés)
Local Architect: C. F. Møller (PLH Architekter)
General Contractor: ZÜBLIN A/S
Scenography: Ducks Scéno
Lighting Design: Les Eclaireurs with Ducks Scéno
Acoustics: Royal Haskoning DHV
Sustainability: Arup with Cowi (EnPlus Tech)
Automatic Carpark Consultant: Niras
Cost and Risk Managment: Aecom
Project description via architects