ADEPT . MVRDV

Rødovre SkyVillage . Copenhagen

ADEPT . MVRDV

The demand for a new tower in Rødovre, the periphery of Copenhagen, raises the issue of what kind of tower should be added to the skyline of the capital. Should it be a sphere, a spire, a cube? And is it only form that counts? Can we imagine a tower that is more than merely form-driven? What content can be given to such a tower? Can it be critical and improve the somewhat commercial and hollow architectural icon of the previous decade?

After several boom years, the Danish real estate economy is now relatively unstable and unclear. That demands a new concept for the buildings, particularly skyscraper which rely heavily on investment: flexibility. Offices must be easily be transformable into housing, and vice versa; Small apartments must be able to be transformed into bigger ones, and vice versa. How can it be done?
By creating a tower that is a simple grid structure with a minimum pixel size, any spatial configuration can be imagined and filled in. The grid-size is 7.8 x 7.8 m which combines size requirements for parking with those for a small housing unit or office type. The pixels have been organised around a central core that consists of four individual shafts. Around the core a two-bay (or -pixel) band is positioned. The result is a cube of 46.8 x 46.8 x 48 meters. By varying the the floor plates of cube however, shallower offices and houses can be created and thus more light and views. This process was guided by ‘pulling away’ pixels out of the cube, and repositioning them on top, creating composition of terraces and balconies that respond to sunlight and views. The tower’s pixels continu into the ground plane, providing small shops, plant rooms and a parking garage for the public plaza around it. By using the identical pixel-unit sizes, the plaza retains the functional qualities and aesthetic character of the rest of the tower, so that it appears to emerge from the ground.This forms a vertical, pixilated ‘rock’ of different unit types; a distinctive design that goes beyond the form-driven excersizes in ‘the iconic’. The building is a lively vertical village, with its diverse mixture of different occupants and functions. A village in the sky….

Design Team : Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs, Nathalie de Vries
with Fokke Moerel, Joanna Gasparski and Noemie Cristobal
Partners:
co-architect: ADEPT Aps, Denmark
Engineers: Søren Jensen Rådgivende Ingeniørfirma, Denmark
ABT bv, Velp, The Netherlands
Model: Made by Mistake, Delft, The Netherlands
Location : Copenhagen, Denmark
Year : 2008
Client: Brainstones ApS, Denmark
Program: 36.000 m2 mixed use tower, initially containing retail, offices, housing, a hotel and parking, but designed to be completely flexible