Tag Archives: building

Sønderborg’s new multicultural centre on the harbour

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sonderborg multicultural house

One of the key buildings in Frank Gehry’s Masterplan for Sønderborg is the multicultural centre that will sit at a prominent location in Sonderborg with views of both the harbour and the historical city centre.

There were two architect companies that took part in the contest to design the future centre. It has now been decided by the municipality which submission is the winning bid. And from the pictures published I think it looks like a really nice project.

The winning proposal for the new multicultural centre on the waterfront is created in collaboration between AART Architects, Zeni Architects, Alectia and Hoffmann.

Sonderborg havnefront

The centre will be built around the old warehouse (Ewers pakhus) that is the only old building left on the harbour at the moment.

The lonely warehouse on the harbour

The warehouse in is a pretty bad state but I think that once it has been restored it will add character and charm to the brand new building and be a physical reminder of the times where the harbour of Sonderborg was a bustling industrial port.

The building will bring together under one roof several cultural institutions, and create a place where the focus is on learning as well as other cultural and recreational activities. The building will amongst other things house Sønderborg Library, The German Library and South Jutlands Artschool.

sonderborg library

The building will be 5500m2 and it is expected that 1000 people will use the building daily and the budget cost of the centre is almost 100 million kroner.

sonderborg cafe library

House of Knowledge – TeleBilling, KPMG & Rambøll

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On the harbour of Sønderborg a new building is rapidly taking shape. It’s another of the pieces from Frank Gehry’s Masterplan for the harbour front of Sønderborg. The plan is to transform the harbour into a vibrant new part of town.

Sønderborg Videnshus / House of Knowledge

The first block was the white residential building (to the right in the picture above) – this time it’s a bronze “House of Knowledge” – Videnshus in Danish – (to the left). The building will be the new corporate residence for local IT company TeleBilling, the local branch of KPMG accounting and Rambøll engineering.

house of knowledge

Recently TeleBilling made a film of what the building looks like now as they are still working on the interior. (Skip to 0:23)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwRppy8uZx0

The offices there will have amazing views up and down Alssund and you couldn’t blame the office workers for sometimes stopping what they are doing to stare at the beautiful scenery.

interior house of knowledge

The building has 6 floors and 4750 square meters of office space. The roof will be fitted with solar panels and will comply with the 2020 standard of buildings, which means it’s very energy efficient.

If everything goes according to plan the three residents should be moving in in November. Let’s hope they have an open house reception, so the rest of us can come in and be jealous of their sparkling new office.

Read more at Byens Havn

The First Block in Gehry’s Masterplan

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The architect Frank Gehry and his company created a Masterplan for the harbour in Sonderborg back in 2008. The masterplan was a rough sketch of how the urban landscape along the water across from Alsion could be shaped.

Instead of making specific designs for the buildings Gehry’s plan just had big blocks representing buildings as you can see above and below.

As far as I can tell the building in question is going to be the black buildings on the right on the picture below. It should be in front of the hospital a bit up the hill. (Residential C on this map)

The first building to become more concrete than a big wooden block is designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG). I don’t know the actual name of the house but it looks a bit like a sliced and twisted shoebox. On BIG’s website is a presentation of the house with this description:

How do you create dwellings that optimize the water and the view to the fullest?

[…] BIG’s project, Sønderborg, is a new 1,100 m2 residential building located on the northern side of the harbourfront close to the existing Sønderjylland Hospital.

From the water the building is viewed as a sculpture that rest on a soft hill and invites the viewer to explore the different angles of the architecture. From the other side the building is views as a series of volumes that twists and rises from the park creating an open but yet protected arrival space.

The building consists of 7 exclusive apartments with private terraces that extend the life inside the building to the outside in the warmer months. The terraces have a covered and uncovered area so they can be used even during rainy days.

To archive a better connection between the park where the building is placed, we have lowered the basement half below ground while the other half of the basements is covered by a soft hill. This means that you need to descent half a floor in order to get inside the apartments. This gesture means that the two lower terraces archive more privacy than if they were placed directly on the existing terrain.

–Bjarke Ingels Group

I think it’s a cool and bold building and the views will be spectacular. The sidings on the artists renditions are bright rusted orange, I wonder how that will look in real life.

The building is also set in the middle of a public landscape so unless you are at the top people can peak into your house from almost all sides.

It will be interesting to follow the construction and final finish of this building.

Photos in this post are from Byens Havn, Gehry’s masterplan Design Guide and BIG’s project description. I discovered the project on afasia.