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...

...And here is
Copenhagen
Harbour,
stretching from
Kongelunden all
this is Amager Common,
the way through
an enormous green
the city to
area in the middle of
Nordhavnen.
Copenhagen twice the size
of Dyrehaven.

...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.

Rather than
merging the tower and
the block, we propose an
urban cell division...
...by separating
the two blocks from each
other, simultaneously
giving the neighborhood a
new square.

If we zoom in on ... the moment

this emerging the block
plaza... disappears...

...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
Being a Copenhagen family house -
tower defined by the city’s but in our case a
traditional spires, this should not single family
be a giant skyscraper but a tall, house OF 16
slender tower. floors.

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 So we
block. simply twist the
bottom part, like
this...

crunch!
and the
residences
face southwest
toward the
plaza.

Architectonically, the result

is a facetted triangular gable The result is a twisted tower
motif. Here it actually reminds us of a with the same formal language
traditional merchant’s estate - as a crushed milk carton.
a pointed gable with a pitched roof, in
this otherwise modern tower.
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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

BAM
placed on top of the next
on top of the next on
top of the next…

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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 S H! !
HO O
W

We therefore
place the whole WHAM!! The opposite goes for
housing, which loves
commercial part in sunshine but hates a ground
the bottom of the floor location where people
building. can look straight into the
apartment.

We therefore Along the lowest

place all the dwellings residences a path, or
on top of the commercial roof garden, appears
functions. But shops and AS IT WOULD IN
offices have deeper floors DANISH POTATO ROW
than housing. 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

CLUNK!! gardens.

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

To create this
east-west passage, we
tie a knot on the building,
converting the rectangular
block into a figure 8...
new plazas by extending the
pavement into the building, as
a direct connection between
the two urban spaces, in east
and west.

As previously mentioned, Thus in the two

the offices are not too sun-facing corners
crazy about sunshine. we push the office
part all the way to the
ground.

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 A social tower tying the house
inner void. together from basement to attic.

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 From the shopping life 8-H
of the urban space... 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 plazas...
results in an orgy of
various architectural
spaces:

... 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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