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By & Havn (City & Habour Copenhagen)
STED - By og Landskab
Orientkaj 2A, DK-2150 Nordhavn, Copenhagen
13,300 m2
Completed in 2022
1st Prize - open competition
Infrastructure
The Timber House is a parking garage that intends to show how a simple typology as parking can become a work of art. Thus, it is designed to add value beyond its functional purpose and elevate the urban environment around it, offering a visual and engaging architectural addition to the area.
The building is 13,300 m2, six storeys and holds the space of 430 cars. It is erected in Copenhagen’s new area Nordhavn – an area of approximately 2 km2 and historically a part of Copenhagen’s 19th century industrial Freeport. The location is an area where timber was shipped, stored, and handled, hence its Danish name ‘Trælasthuset’ (translates as a house where timber is loaded)
The three-dimensional pixelated façade of wood and recycled aluminum is designed to interact with light. It references a timber stack as they appear at a sawmill. Here, individual beams never lie exactly on top of each other, and these small displacements inspired the idea of shifting the pixels to generate a relief. This expression is an homage to the area’s history as a place that stored and handled timber.
The basis of the façade structure is a lightweight and luminous recycled aluminium frame, augmented with perforated plates. Each pixel is either at the very front of the facade or 30 centimeters retracted to create an effective three-dimensional relief that captures both daylight and the interior artificial light. The heft of the base is generated through the implementation of expanded wood façade panels, arranged in a patterned formation, and mounted onto a framework of hardwood slats affixed directly onto the raw concrete structure.