OMA reveals design of Bryghusgrunden Project in Copenhagen: new Realdania Headquarters and Danish Architecture Center

The Bryghusgrunden Project is located on the harbor on the site of an old brewery, the Bryghusgrunden, one of the few remaining areas with the potential to link the city to the waterfront. The building itself will straddle the busy Christians Brygge ring road, creating new urban connections for pedestrians and cyclists between the waterfront and Denmark’s houses of government.

The mix of program within the building is unique – for the first time an architecture center will be embedded within its own key subjects of study and research – housing, offices, public space and parking. The DAC will include several exhibition areas, research facilities, an auditorium, conference rooms, a bookstore and a café.

Ellen van Loon, OMA’s partner in charge of the project, concluded that «unlike the typical ‘stacked’ sections where individual programs remain autonomous, the program ‘heap’ of the Bryghusgrunden Project has the elements stacked in a seemingly random order. The public program, the urban routes and the DAC reach into the heart of the building and create a broad range of interactions between the different program parts.»

OMA’s design integrates the existing playground facility on the site into the project and extends it with new typologies for different age groups distributed over the entire site – facing the city as well as the waterfront. A more secure playground is integrated at the transition point between landscape and building and is directly linked to the educational spaces of the DAC. The landscape at the waterfront is designed for older children.

The building is designed in compliance with the highest standards of the new Danish energy code. The building uses a mixed system of mechanical and natural ventilation, a high performance glass facade and other environmentally sustainable systems, such as sea water cooling. The heat gained in the building will be used to heat the public spaces in winter.

Realdania is a Danish strategic foundation created with the objective of initiating and supporting projects that improve the built environment. OMA was selected for the Bryghusgrunden Project in 2006 following an interview procedure.

The project is led by OMA partners Ellen van Loon and Rem Koolhaas in collaboration with project managers Chris van Duijn and Dirk Peters. Van Loon and Koolhaas’s previous collaborations include the design of the new aquarium and science center in Hamburg, the headquarters of NM Rothschild & Sons in London, the redevelopment of Mercati Generali in Rome and the completion of Porto’s Casa da Musica and the Netherlands Embassy in Berlin.

On OMA:
The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) is a leading international partnership practicing contemporary architecture, urbanism and cultural analysis. It is engaged in a large number of projects in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and North America.
The office is lead by six partners: Rem Koolhaas, Ole Scheeren, Ellen van Loon, Reinier de Graaf, Floris Alkemade and Managing Partner Victor van der Chijs.