Nordea’s new Headquarters brings Scandinavian transparency to the financial world

Henning Larsen is the architectural studio behind Nordea’snew Headquartersin Copenhagen, setting the tone for a new openness in the financial sector. With itsscintillating transparent facadesand inner urban spaces,the building is designedto integrate key elements of public life into the heart of the bank.

A valued trademark of the Scandinavian countries is transparency and openness.Nordea is a Nordic bank, thus the employees have recently moved into a building inspired by Nordic landscapes as well as Scandinavian values such as transparency and openness.

Passersby on the street have the opportunity to glance directly into conference rooms and offices, and employees are working in close contact with both the city and the spectacular nature of adjacent AmagerFaelled. Two, great atriums are connected by a public accessible inner street space, where visitors and street pedestrians can cross through the building, have a view of the sky through the impressive overhead lighting and get closer to the bank industry by looking straight into the bank through the inner glass facades. A great step for transparency in the financial sector.

Nordic Openness

Noget om byen og public space

“With the Nordea building, we have tried to create a transparent and inviting framework for the organization. The large spatialities work like cityscapes where people can meet and live. It feels like the entire bank has transformed in to a small city,” says Design Principal and leading Partner at Henning Larsen, Louis Becker

Two, great atriums are connected by a public accessible inner street space, where visitors and street pedestrians can cross through the building, have a view of the sky through the impressive overhead lighting and get closer to the bank industry by looking straight into the bank through the inner glass facades. A great step for transparency in the financial sector.

Passersby on the street have the opportunity to glance directly into conference rooms and offices, and employees are working in close contact with both the city and the spectacular nature of adjacent Amager Faelled.

A Trading Floor With a View to Nature

Nordea’s new headquarters in Ørestaden, Copenhagen is home to Scandinavia’s largest trading floor that sets the tone for a new openness and sustainability in the financial sector. From here, traders have a panoramic view over the scenic nature of AmagerFælled. 

Six hundred traders have recently settled into Nordea’s new headquarters in Copenhagen. Here traders work with views of scenic AmagerFælled, and by-passers and commuters can look directly into the trading floor when passing the headquarters onthe metro. 

This transparency is not a given in the financial sector. In most cities, trading floors are isolated, hidden behind thick walls without contact to the surrounding world. The trading floor in Nordea’s new headquarters is not only the largest in Scandinavia but an innovative example of how one of the core activities in the financial world, the trading of stocks, can be made visible to the surroundings, and simultaneously live up to security levels and ambitious goals within sustainability.

Sustainable transactions

In the impressive western atrium space, a gentle daylight caresses the 600 workstations. The daylight enters from a controlled overhead lighting. The goal of the daylight strategy has been to ensure that light never hits the computer screens directly, interrupting work. The overhead lighting provides the traders with a comfortable, indirect lighting and a natural work environment enhancing overall comfort. It furthermore reduces the need for artificial lighting thereby saving energy.

A ventilated false floor with micro perforated floor plates and carpets diverts the heat away from work stations, just as water cooling embedded in the desks diverts heat from screens and technical equipment. The surplus heat from the datacenter is used to heat up the employee bicycle parking with room for 715 bikes. With the bank’s total capacity of 2000 employees, 715 of Nordea’s employees now contribute to lowering the CO2 emission by riding a bike to work.

With the LEED Platinum certification, we have reduced the energy consumption in the datacenter with 62.5% compared to a LEED basic calculation.

The ambition to create an open and transparent Trading Floor with scenic views and visibility from the outside – a Trading Floor with a healthy and sustainable work environment is now setting new standards for working environments in the financial world. 

Innovative and characteristic façade for Nordea Bank’s new HQ

For Nordea’snew headquartersin Copenhagen, we developed a unique façade design in collaboration with Scheldebouwand MT Højgaard.

The façade is of crucial importance to a building’s energy consumption, economy, indoor climate and identity. The façade concept for Nordea Bank’s new headquarters combines the best design, climate and energy advantages.The façade contributes to ensure efficient operating economy, lower energy cost savings and better acoustics and indoor climate. The lifespan of the façade is also prolonged and the maintenance costs are loweredcompared to traditional facades.

One of the greatest challenges in relation to the design of Nordea’s extensive glass façade has been to keep the sun out to avoid excessive heat or uncomfortable reflections of light. The new headquarter is locatedin Ørestad in Copenhagen, an area with rough winds, which makes it difficult to place sun screens on the exterior of the building.

The solution has been to design a two-layered window concept that is characterized by a relatively large space between the inner and outer glass panels, where the sensor controlled sun screens have been installed. The glass used for the glass elements is premium quality with a low level of iron, ensuring a natural representation of daylight inside. This is especially important in an office building where employees spend so much of their time.

Nordic influence

The inspiration for the façade of the new building originates from the Nordic nature and the structure of icebergs. This is visible in the façade’s fragmented and angled glass surface. Being Nordic is part of the Nordea identity and the façade symbolizes this.

The façade is designed as a unitized system. The elements were produced and quality tested in the Netherlands and transported to the construction site. By using façade elements, the installation of the façade was simplified and the process shortened. The 1,460 façade elements were installed in 58 days.

The façadeis designed together with Scheldebouw from the Netherlands and MT Højgaard. The building has achieved LEED Platinum certification.