The 8 House in Copenhagen, Denmark, which allows its residents to bike all the way from the street up to its 10th level penthouses, receives the 2012 AIA Institute Honor Award for Architecture that recognizes achievements that elevate the general quality of the architectural practice. The 8 House which entails 650,000 ft² is honored by the jury panel for the buildings distinctive design and ability to contribute to the city and its surroundings.
“The 8 House masterfully recreates the horizontal social connectivity and interaction of the streets of a village neighborhood through a series of delightful accessible ramps in a mixed use, multifamily housing project. The skillful shaping of the mass of the facility provides an invigorating sculptural form while creating the ramped “pedestrian” street system and providing full depth dwelling units which are filled with light and views. People really ‘live” in this newly created neighborhood with shopping, restaurants, an art gallery, office facilities, childcare, educational facilities and the sound of children playing. This is a complex and exemplary project of a new typology”. 2012 Institute Honor Awards for Architecture Jury.
The bowtie-shaped mixed-use building of three different types of residential housing and 110,000 ft² of retail and offices comprises Denmark’s largest private development ever undertaken. The 8 House has previously been awarded the World Best Residential Building at 2011 World Architecture Festival in Barcelona, the Scandinavian Green Roof Award and the Utzon Prize for its innovative use of concrete.
“Having established ourselves in New York City this past year we are honored that the AIA has given this great distinction to the 8 House which is a further realized example of our approach called architectural alchemy - the idea that by mixing traditional ingredients, retail, rowhouses and apartments in untraditional ways - you create added value if not gold. Housing projects are rarely brought out as world architecture. The fact that the 8 House has now achieved this honorable status, can be seen as a symbol of a piece of architectural alchemy that works. Moreover, I am genuinely happy that our long and inspiring cooperation with Per Høpfner and St. Frederikslund is rewarded in the other parts of the world.” Bjarke Ingels, Founder & Partner, BIG.
About BIG BIG is a Copenhagen and New York based group of architects, designers and thinkers operating within the fields of architecture, urbanism, research and development. BIG has created a reputation for completing buildings that are as programmatically and technically innovative as they are cost and resource conscious. In our architectural production we demonstrate a high sensitivity to the particular demands of site context and program. BIG’s recently completed projects include The Danish Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo (2010), The 8 House (2010) and The Mountain (2008), the latter two both being awarded the Best Housing project in the world at the World Architecture Festival in Barcelona, Spain. Projects currently being designed in North America are the St. Petersburg Pier competition, the Kimball Art Center competition in Park City, Utah and the New York City based 600 unit West 57th Tower designed for Durst Fetner Residential which will break ground in the Spring of 2012.
