The site is located north of Copenhagen, Denmark. It is a a beautiful building from the 1930’s, originally designed by the renowned Danish architect Arne Jacobsen.
After doing extensive research in the area, I believe that I can come up with a concept that will both respect the original design and add some well deserved functionality to a very frequented spot.
Even though the building itself is closed, the beach is not, and people (both local and tourists) visit this place regularly, even in the colder winter months.
It is a space that people use a lot for activities related to contemplation, meditation, and appreciation of the landscape. Since I thought this is an excellent aspect to focus and promote, designing a multi-purpose-wellness-focused building seemed like a sensible approach.
I have contacted the local authorities and got a copy of the original plan and section, as well as access to the inside to take some reference photos.
I have now the pieces to start working on the concept of the new building, keeping in mind the existing structure and amazing landscape views as top factors to consider.
I have been working on the main idea for the repurposing of the building. As I mentioned in my original post, I have in head something related to meditation/contemplating/relaxing activities.
I started analyzing the site, and I think the building is situated in an optimal space to have amazing visuals of the beach front and of an existing pier. It is also located at the end of the terrain, so people walking up to it can have a full view of the building for a while before reaching it.
I’d like the building to open gradually to the beach, so the use of the space and functions inside will reflect on the outside as well, from ‘closed’ to ‘open’.
The main access will be in the middle, and probably more private stuff like changing rooms, toilets and the such will be on the back part, and then followed by a flexible-public space like a lounge/cafe, finalizing in the most important part of the building; the main room, facing the beach (and maybe a couple extra rooms more for similar activities).
The materials are also coming to mind already, because of the plain aesthetic of the existing building and the potential to mix it with unique local textures, like the old ships in the area. I am thinking about using a aged-rusted-like material for the two modules protruding on the front, and then white for the rest, so the contrast is more dramatic. Also the existing building is somewhat short, so in order to accommodate the new uses and get more sunlight in (very important in Scandinavian countries, where the light in winter is very little), I will raise the roof and create a new window module going all the way around.
Next step I think will be to play with the floorplan in AutoCAD and come up with some reasonable layout.
Cheers!
I’m back!
I’ve been working on the new use for the building! And after many many painful attempts I’m now satisfied with the current layout. I might have gone overboard with the technical/constructive details but oh well, can’t really get rid of being an architect. So I started with the original plan, which I got from the local authorities, and extracted the structure layout and modules. I resolved on keeping the structure and facade modules as close as possible as the original, because I believe that good renovations pay respect to the original design and are very delicate and cautious as to what to remove or replace. The main use of this welness center was to relax and reconnect with one self, so the layout comprehends 2 multi pourpose rooms facing the beach (metitation, yoga, etc), 2 saunas, 2 massage rooms, and a cafe lounge and dressing rooms.
I wanted to give the most unobtrusive visuals from the main 2 rooms to the sea, so I ended up modifying the beach facing facade and also did a second opening on the main facade, using the original modulation.
So far the project looks like this:
After I was happy enough with the new layout, I started working on the terrain. Oh boy, did I waste time trying to make a crazy-accurate model using LIDAR scans. After a few days of crying I ended up using a mix of LIDAR, heightmaps and Google Maps info and crafted a pretty decent environment to start placing some rough shapes. I wanted to start thinking about composition/framing.
I will now start working on the 3d model of the building itself! Cheers!
Started blocking the landscape and main elements inside UE, and doing some base texturing.
Thanks! I’ve been putting a lot of work inside UE these past few days. It’s getting there!
I keep going back and forth from 3ds max, to substance, to UE, and back. I kind of figured a workflow that works for me but it took way longer that it should have. There are tons of things I want to add, but there is also a ton of documentation and tutorials I have to go through to implement them. Hopefully with the 2 week extension I will be able to do a few of them that otherwise I would have had to scratch off the board!
Since I submitted my final entry and had to select only 3 images, I might as well share a few extra ones I made that tell the complete story