On the tip of Sundmolen Pier in Copenhagen’s Nordhavn (North Harbor) area, a new brutalist-like building enjoys a confident and commanding presence in its waterside industrial setting. The home of BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group, the seven-story BIG HQ is architecturally anchored amongst the factories, warehouses, and shipping containers of Copenhagen harbor. A series of massive, stacked concrete elements provide BIG HQ with its stark structural and visual identity.
The site’s small footprint presented BIG with a design dilemma: how could the studio organize a single work environment for its large team when they would need to split across a minimum of four levels? “In a counter-intuitive decision, we split all the floors in half and doubled the amount of levels,” says BIG.
BIG HQ is the studio’s first fully integrated example of the “BIG LEAP” transformation — a collaboration between Landscape, Engineering, Architecture, and Product designers at BIG. “Everything from door handles to concrete columns and from urban design to glass facades has been given form by the BIG LEAP team,” says the studio.
The building’s main entrance leads employees and visitors into a “dramatic Piranesian space” — like an architectural fantasy akin to the etchings of Italian architect and artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Here, “the inner life of the building reveals itself through diagonal views all the way up to the top floor,” says BIG.
A single, central stone column composed of eight different types of rock — from dense granite at the base to porous limestone at the top — is a “totem pole to gravity at the heart of the open space,” says the studio.
BIG HQ is structured as a series of cascading half-floors, resulting in one enormous, spatially interconnected open-plan office arranged over seven floors. A central open staircase zigzags its way from the ground floor to the sixth floor. The overall impact is both physical and visual with more than a hint of surrealism.
The floor plates are supported by 20-meter-long (66-feet-long) concrete beams, each stacked one on top of the other — “the exterior facade appears as a checkerboard of interchanging solid beams and transparent windows,” says BIG. The building’s triangular facade elements act as both balconies and escape stairs, keeping the interior free of an enclosed central fire stair. Each floor has access to a balcony that connects to the balcony above and below — this creates a continuous ribbon of outdoor spaces that spiral from the roof to the harbor.
The lift, vertical risers, and a secondary egress stair are located in the building’s northern section, freeing up floor plates and the center of the building.
Large glass panels open up BIG HQ to the harbor: on the ground floor, the entrance and an exhibition space face westward and a restaurant with outdoor seating opens to the south.
BIG HQ’s brutalist-like appearance somewhat hides the fact that the building is designed to achieve DGNB Gold Certification. (The Green Building Council Denmark is a DGNB system partner — Deutsche Gesellschaft für Nachhaltiges Bauen is a sustainability initiative that first originated in Germany.) To achieve this certification, BIG used FutureCem concrete, a low-carbon cement that reduces CO2 emissions by around 25 percent; the building also integrates solar and geothermal energy systems and makes use of natural ventilation in its office spaces.
The Landscape team at BIG has transformed a former parking area into a 1,500-square-meter (16,146-square-feet) public park and promenade. The team found inspiration in Denmark’s coastal forests and sandy beaches: to the north, the setting includes native pine and oak trees that provide shelter from blustery harbor winds; to the south, plants and rocks support biodiversity, creating a microclimate for birds and beneficial insects. A climbable sculpture by American artist Benjamin Langholz, titled Stone 40, sits amidst the trees.
