schmidt hammer lassen architects

The Royal Library is one of the most significant architectural landmarks on the Copenhagen waterfront. Clad in black granite, the extension to the Royal Library is known as the ‘Black Diamond’ – with its clean-cut lines and glittering polished surfaces, the library is one of Copenhagen’s architectural gems.

Situated in the historic heart of Copenhagen, the extension marks a radical shift from traditional library structure and accommodates a range of cultural facilities. Open and essentially democratic, the building includes a café, bookshop, exhibition room, restaurant, scientific and literary institutions, as well as a roof terrace and a 600-seat hall for concerts, theatrical performances and conferences. The extension has doubled the library’s overall size – the open shelves can accommodate more than 200,000 books compared to the previous capacity of 45,000. There are six reading rooms with a total of 486 seats.

The new library has seven storeys plus a basement. The solid black cube is divided in two by a vast glazed atrium, housing the majority of public functions. This central space, affording panoramic views over the waterfront, also serves as a significant source of daylight which is dispersed throughout the building.

Address: Søren Kierkegaards Plads, Copenhagen, Denmark
Area: New build extension; 21.000 m2. Refurbishment: 7.000 m2
Construction Sum: € 49 million excl. VAT
Construction Period: 1995-1999
Award: 1st prize
Competition Year: 1993
Competition Type: Open, international
Client: Danish Ministry of Culture
Architect: schmidt hammer lassen
Engineer: Moe & Brødsgaard
Acoustics: Anders Gade
Copenhagen Municipality’s Architecture Prize 2000
Nykredits Arkitekturpris 2001 (the Nykredit Architecture Prize 2001)
Nominated for the Mies van der Rohe Award 2000
Du Pont Benedictus Award 2003

The University of Aberdeen is the fifth oldest English-language university in the world. Established in 1495, it houses over a quarter of a million books and manuscripts. The new library serves a community of 14,000 students: the 15,500 square metre of floor-space accommodates 1,200 reading spaces, archives, historical collections and a rare books reading room.

A new public square is an integral part of the design, linking the university and the city and forming one end of an east-west axis across the university campus. Sitting on a base of Scottish stone, the library is designed to be welcoming - the ground floor, with lounge and café areas, will host regular exhibitions, seminars and poetry readings. The atrium’s vast spiralling volume connects all eight storeys - with its sweeping contours and organic form, this space contrasts with the clean cut exterior profile.

The building is designed to minimize long term running costs and energy use – consisting of an irregular pattern of insulated panels and high performance glazing, the façade will shimmer during the day and glow softly at night, creating a luminous landmark for Aberdeen.

Aberdeen University New Library will be both a meeting place and a cultural centre for the University and the wider Aberdeen community.

Address: University of Aberdeen, Kings College, Scotland
Area: 20,000m2
Construction Sum: EUR 49m excl. VAT
Construction Period: 2005-2011
Award: 1. prize
Competition Year: 2005
Competition Type: Limited, international
Client: University of Aberdeen
Engineer: Ove Arup & Partners Ltd
Other collaborators: Quantity Surveyors Davis Langdon LLP

Amazon Court is a mixed-use, predominantly office development near to Prague’s historic centre. The scheme, along the banks of the Vltava River, forms part of the River City Prague complex, providing offices, shops, housing, hotels and restaurants. The central atrium acts as an internal public square – featuring hanging terraces, water features, trees and flowers, it will be open 24 hours a day, providing a connection through to the Karlinska Nam Park and the leafy river promenade beyond.

The atrium is covered by Foiltech, a transparent lightweight roof material - supported by slender rafters, the mullion-free sheeting gives the illusion of being outdoors while insulating the atrium from the noise of the city beyond.

To reduce energy consumption, a specific type of clear glass has been specified allowing natural light into the building whilst minimising solar gain. This sustainable complex can adapt to a range of user requirements - units can be extended or partitioned according to demand. Additionally, glass bridges traversing the atrium at the upper levels double as office space.

The building’s façade consists of a geometric pattern of glazed and white granite sections with alternating flamed or polished finishes. Danish artist Anne Marie Plough has designed the atrium’s internal screens, decorated with foliage patterns inspired by the Amazonian jungle.


A sustainable building

Environmental sustainability has been an important focus in developing the design of Amazon Court - the sustainable strategy takes into account seasonal and daytime/night-time temperature changes.

Throughout the design process, there has been close collaboration with the engineers in order to reduce the building’s energy consumption. This has resulted in some key strategies - by optimising the use of daylight throughout the building, less artificial light is required; glazing areas are larger at lower levels than on the upper storeys; a specific type of clear glass has been specified allowing the greatest amount of natural light into the building whilst minimising solar gain. The elevated walkways occupy those areas of the atrium that are filled with natural light - darker areas are designed to be used as fire escapes, toilets, photocopying areas and similar facilities.

The building benefits from a combination of natural and mechanical ventilation with the additional option of a heat recovery system. The incoming air is fed in partly through openings in the facades and partly from an air inlet facing the nearby river. The air intake is either preheated or precooled in underground ducts depending on the season. This type of interaction with variable external temperature is also used in optimising lower night-time temperatures. The openings in the facades are used to cool the building at night. This helps to optimise the building’s internal temperature, while keeping energy consumption to a minimum.

Address: Karlin, Prague, the Czech Republic
Area: 24,000 m2
Competition Type: Limited, international
Competition Year: 2004
Construction Period: 2007-2009
Construction Sum: € 35.5 mio
Award: 1st prize
Client: Europolis
Architect: schmidt hammer lassen
Engineer: Battle McCarthy, England and RFR, France
Collaborator: Czech architecture firm ATREA
Winner of MIPIM AR future project award, Office Buildings 2008

Performers’ House, completed in 2007, is an international dance, music and theatre folk high school located in Silkeborg, on the banks of the Gudenå River. The building was designed to connect the school to the town by offering a vibrant environment for the local community, including cafés, a music theatre, cinemas and a media centre.

This is a ‘three-in-one’ design, celebrating the building’s constituent elements: the original boiler house of the paper factory has been modernised and now accommodates two rehearsal rooms, a common room and a stage; a new building has been constructed to house the main entrance, offices, a canteen/restaurant, the student café, a dance stage, kitchen and student accommodation; the new squares on each side of the new building reinforce connections with the local community, acting as foyers, stages, interval spaces and rehearsal rooms.

The new building is clad with perforated rust-red steel panels. After dark light shines through the incised apertures, turning the building into an animated beacon. The ground floor of the new building has a glass facade that can be partially moved to one side, thus transforming the external balcony into a performance arena.

The school’s international talent (half of the students are from overseas) and Silkeborg’s local culture interact to create music, dance and theatre performances on this urban stage.


Address: The Paper Mills, Silkeborg, Denmark
Area: 3,700 m² (refurbishment 1,500 m²/new build 2,200 m²)
Construction Sum: EUR 5m excl. VAT
Construction Year: 2006-2007
Award: 1st prize
Competition Year: 2005
Competition Type: Limited project competition
Client: Performers’ House
Architect: schmidt hammer lassen
Engineer: The DAI Group
Turnkey Contractor: NCC Construction
Other consultants: Martin Lumbye (Secretary General of the Aarhus Festival), and anthropology student Stefan Kvamm
Commended in MIPIM AR future project award, Mixed use 2007

The new school is pointing to the future as a social and educational experiment. The students of the technical educations are deliberately mixed with college students aspiring for later university degrees. Thus, schmidt hammer lassen have made Norwegian thoughts on educational reform concrete.

Schoolchildren are normally divided after secondary school, but in Larvik they will be kept together and blended socially and across educations in an open learning environment. The blend of social classes and the mutual inspiration the students of various trades give each other has the purpose of enhancing equality in society.

"We have chosen to rethink and challenge the traditional boundaries surrounding school buildings. We wanted to create an architectonic base for a well functioning student environment and increased cross disciplinary activity", said associate partner Kristian Ahlmark, design architect on the school project.

The building is laid out to place the buzzling social activity in the axis of the house with informal meeting spaces. As you move  further away from the axis, the spaces turn into half-open niches and the furthest areas of the wings are calm and secluded to allow concentrated studying.

The teaching takes place in the terraced wings. Parts of the classrooms have glass walls to maintain openness and contact to the common areas. The workshops for the technical educations are also in open contact with the rest of the school.

The architecture is a compact vertically oriented structure with a characteristic and dynamic form of four axes. The central structure consists of an open quadratic deck. This deck has deep incisions that give the building a dynamic form and enable daylight to seep into the furthest corners of the building. The deck above is identical but twisted 180 degrees around the central axis of the building. Hence, at series of single and double height areas are created providing visual contact from one floor to the next. The shifting decks create external terraces in a direct flow from the classrooms.
  
The sports arena has room for 4000 spectators. It will be used by the school for cultural and sports lessons during the day and serve as the home arena for the local handball club as well as venue for many other sports and cultural events during the evenings.

When designing the new permanent premises of the International Criminal Court, the point of departure was to communicate trust, hope and – most importantly – faith in justice and fairness. The building should have the courage to be an ambassador for the credibility of the ICC. The project and its architecture should be impressive and grandiose but should always relate to humans and the human scale. It is important that a formal institution like the ICC does not constitute barriers for people. On the contrary, it must express the very essence of democratic architecture.

Located close to the North Sea the site is placed between the nature and the city. Connecting the dune landscape with the edge of the city has a striking potential. By designing a compact building with a small footprint, the landscape is returned to the city so that the open spaces, the sky and the horizon become an integrated part of the architectural composition.

Through the lightness and simplicity in the architectural design, the values of openness and transparency are communicated. The building is designed as a sculptural abstraction – a composition of 6 volumes, firmly anchored to the site and rising from the surrounding dune landscape.

The tallest of the volumes is the Court Tower that rises up as a green element. The architectural idea is to continue the cultivated parterre gardens from the ground floor level as a cladding on the Court Tower. Historically, gardens have always existed as part of all cultures and all religions.  With flowers and plants from each of the 110 member countries, the parterre garden rises up as a symbol of unity, regardless of nationality and culture. The remaining volumes, the office towers, are draped in a tapestry grid, almost like embroidery. The office façade grid is designed with angle and cut-outs, which allows the light to reflect differently in an almost playful way.

The overall architectural expression becomes an abstract and informal sculpture – a backdrop for communicating the values of the ICC.

Facts:
Architect
schmidt hammer lassen architects

Client
The International Criminal Court

Area
46,000 m2 with up to 1,200 work stations

Construction sum
€ 92 million excl. VAT

Competition
2008 - 2010, Won restricted international competition

Status
Construction 2012 - 2015

Engineer
Royal Haskoning
Esbensen Consulting Engineers

Interior Design and Art
Bosch & Fjord in collaboration with schmidt hammer lassen architects

Landscape architect
SLA

The 40,000 square metres five-star hotel complex is situated in the newly developed Schwabinger Tor area along the northern part of the Leopoldstrasse in Munich, Germany. The challenge in the competition was to bring the architectural characteristics of Munich – with the life and atmosphere that the historic centre is known for – into the new and modern part of the city.

The design concept has its origin in three themes: the analysis of the historical city with its arches, vaults and arcades; a close relation to the masterplan with its boulevards, plazas and narrow streets; and a focus on human beings as well as the overall experience offered to the hotel guests.

The arcade motif is well known in Munich and emphasises the passage from a public plaza to the more private urban spaces. The arcade creates a semi-public space where people can sit and observe the urban life. The design integrates this architectural feature into the ground floor level of the hotel.

To the north and south of the building complex, two new urban plazas form natural entry points to the hotel and the conference centre. The entrances are accentuated in the building design by two impressive, golden vaults. For the hotel guests and the passers-by these very unique spaces offer a feeling of being part of something special. The vaults are fascinating, spacious and luxurious.

The hotel rooms have been designed to become unique. The integrated large and luxurious bathrooms appear as private spa-rooms with daylight and visual connection to the outside greenery, and the atmosphere in the hotel rooms become relaxing and impressive. The use of daylight is a general theme throughout the building complex. It offers the hotel guests a unique experience and sets a whole new standard for high-end hotels in general.


Facts
Architect
schmidt hammer lassen architects

Client
Jost Hurler Beteiligungs- und Verwaltungsgesellschaft GmbH & Co. KG

Area
Approximately 40,000 m2

Number of hotel rooms
Approximately 300

Competition
2009 - 2010, 1st prize winner in a restricted international competition

Status
construction 2012 - 2014

The new flagship Campus for City of Westminster College by schmidt hammer lassen architects is designed to support new ways of teaching and learning. The 24,000m² College, won in a competition in 2006, provides much greater amounts of open learning spaces than typical colleges in the UK and holds state-of-the-art facilities for both students and staff. The building is designed to embrace interaction and diversity and allow students to learn from each other, both formally and informally.
 
The learning spaces of City of Westminster College are adaptable and flexible so that, in addition to the integrated technology, the students’ development is supported by the diverse architectural spaces of the very building they are in. It is a design which encourages new ways of teaching and learning.
 
The College is located in the heart of Central London at Paddington Green on the site of its previous building, an inefficient and failing 1960s block. The building has been designed from the inside-out, responding to the needs of the diverse groups who use the College, as well as taking into account the sensitive local context. It appears as a clean-cut, modern building with a distinct Scandinavian heritage. The building’s simple geometric forms rotate around a terraced atrium, creating a unifying yet flexible organisation.
 
The respective floor plans surrounding the atrium have visual connections from one floor to the other, making the atrium a dynamic centre and the heart of the College. The large atrium, which on some floors extends all the way to the façade, enhances the relationship between the inside and the outside. It offers light-filled, open and inclusive spaces which encourage the interaction between students.
 
To support connectivity with the local community, most public functions – including an exhibition area, a theatre and a café – are located adjacent to the main entrance before the security turnstiles. The choice of colours for the building is inspired by its context and by the change of the seasons, whilst the light timber panels lining the interior form a contrast to the exposed concrete surfaces and underline the Scandinavian design heritage.
 
The building is designed to be sustainable and energy efficient and the overall scheme will have a low maintenance liability, significantly reducing the building’s lifespan costs and carbon footprint.