Danish practice Bjarke Ingels Group has designed a new office and HQ for itself in Copenhagen’s industrial harbour.
Photos
Laurian Ghinițoiu
In north Copenhagen, at the far edge of a district known as Sundmolen, BIG’s new 4,488-square-meter headquarters has taken its place among a sea of historic warehouses and maritime landmarks.
Completed in early 2024, the new office will serve the firm’s 300-strong Copenhagen-based team. The seven-story, 27-meter-high building, the project represents BIG’s debut of the LEAPP approach —a methodology integrating Landscape, Engineering, Architecture, Planning, and Product Design teams in an all-encompassing design and construction strategy.
“Every single aspect of LEAPP has been involved in our HQ, including the planning, the product design, the very complex stacking of the concrete elements. Because of the way it’s engineered, it only holds one column in the whole building,” said Bjarke Ingels, founder and creative director, Bjarke Ingels Group.
“A series of Scandinavian granite and marble are stacked between the beams and everything else is these concrete walls resting on each other. Every floor has access to an outdoor terrace that is connected to the outdoors terrace above and below. One of the means of egress is that you can walk all the way from the roof to the ground floor. This creates incredibly framed views as you move through the building – sometimes you see a fragment of the Nordhavn community, sometimes you see a frame of the water, sometimes a framed view of the windmills at Middelgrunden.”
Solar and geothermal energy systems supply 60 per cent of the building’s energy requirements, with geothermal systems alone covering 84 per cent of heating needs and the entirety of cooling needs. Passive design solutions — such as natural ventilation — work in tandem with these systems, further reducing the building’s environmental performance footprint.
The building has also been built using ‘Uni-Green’ concrete, a new material developed in collaboration with Unicon that replaces a portion of cement clinker with calcined clay and lime filler, reducing carbon emissions by 25 per cent compared to conventional concrete mixes.
A 140-meter exterior staircase coils around the building, connecting each level to an outdoor terrace and providing continuous circulation from ground to rooftop. This open circulation spine is not only a visual element but also functions as a secondary fire escape, liberating the interiors from traditional core requirements. Inside, a sculptural central staircase of blackened steel winds its way through the building, connecting the seven floors spatially and visually.
Upon entering the building through a three-meter-high glass door, guests encounter an atrium that reveals the building’s full height and layout at first sight. A singular load-bearing column of stone — composed of six different rock types from dense granite to delicate marble — anchors the structure, rotating on each floor to align with the beams above.
The site’s former car park has been turned into a 1,500-square-meter park inspired by Denmark’s coastal scenery. Native trees like pine and oak line the north side, creating a windbreak, while softer landscaping to the south fosters biodiversity and provides a more relaxing setting. Embedded within the landscape, American artist Benjamin Langholz’s installation Stone 40 invites visitors to interact with the environment through a winding path of 40 stones. Herbs for the canteen have been planted along the spiralling outdoor staircase, continuing up to a rooftop terrace designed with timber from a local sawmill, where employees and guests can enjoy views of the city and sea.
Additional images
Source: Architecture Today
