Tidsmaskinen (The Time Machine) after-school centre is an example of complementary architecture, consisting of three distinct buildings: an old villa, a new greenhouse and a tower, which together form a cohesive ensemble despite their 100-year age difference.  

The villa, built in 1918 for the school’s headmaster, has been joined by a new tower that draws inspiration from the site’s existing architectural heritage, yet introduces a new typology to the area. 

The garden is based on the headmaster’s old garden plan but adds some small hills to the otherwise flat Amager, encouraging the children to play in the garden.

Villa 

We have not carried out a restoration of the headmaster’s villa, but a conversion featuring new, classic en-suite rooms, just as they might have been in 1918. 

The aim is purely educational: to reinforce the children’s experience of being in an old villa with many smaller rooms, which are also furnished for the after-school club’s quieter activities. 

The ventilation is concealed within the thickened central partition wall, which allows for high-ceilinged living rooms with acoustic plaster, stucco and varied colours that enhance the atmosphere and aid the children’s sense of direction.

Greenhouse

This is the transitional space between the villa and the tower, filled with plants, scents, humidity, warmth and coolness, light and sound from outside. A modern ‘non-space’ for transition.

Tower 

The Time Machine now features a heptagonal tower with polygonal, almost Gothic rooms that facilitate movement and gathering. At the base, between the tower’s legs, lies the assembly hall with a tiered seating arrangement and a stage floor at the same level as the villa’s basement. The other floors are staggered in relation to the villa/greenhouse but are all served by the tower’s lift.

The tower’s colour and material scheme contrasts with the villa’s painted surfaces. Here, the materials are untreated concrete, timber, steel and brick.

It is the structure of the heptagonal roof that has given the tower an odd number of sides. If one looks at the underside of the roof structure, one sees that the straight lines running from the gable’s apex to the opposite side’s eaves meet in the centre. The roof ridges, however, are horizontal from the outside, and the difference in height in the centre is connected by the ‘king’, which, like the hub of a bicycle wheel, brings together a multitude of triangles into a stable structure.

Garden

The after-school centre’s playground is designed as a garden without play equipment, in contrast to the school’s adjacent landscape of asphalt and rubber.  The site is contaminated and covered with asphalt, which is expensive to remove. Therefore, new soil has been added, shaped into hills and mounds that cover the existing surface. The garden is designed as a wild natural space with native trees, shrubs and a wild lawn, which encourages insects and thereby promotes biodiversity and the site’s wildlife.