DTU, Technical University of Denmark, hosts 12.000 students, teachers and researchers. How to add yet another office/laboratory to the existing structure?
The university area is conceived as a forest. Inside the forest a large clearing space for buildings. The buildings are strictly and rationally organized, as a circuit board. In the middle a large avenue spans 2km – as a giant order that clearly transcends the scale of buildings and humans. 4 quadrants with 4 squares will in the future be focus of attention. The building is conceived with the following principles:

– Use the landscape: The building absorbs and subordinates to the large landscape plan – the landscape moves and puts «pressure» on the building and even enters the building – a building marked by the forest.
– Use the neighbors: The buildings unique position makes it possible to connect the existing buildings – and thereby take advantage of the neighbors’ social and professional energy. The new pixilated formal language is a polite way to introduce the diagonal into the strictly orthogonal.
– Create a modern structure for science and training: The building is structures with drop-down workspaces in the ground floor and more traditional office rooms in the 2 upper floors. The hallway are zigzagged to create lively and varied spaces to enhance communication and sharing of knowledge.
– Sustain large openness in the ground floor: The building is raised on pillars – to sustain openness between Elektrovej and Matematiktorvet. This creates a new public space on DTU – a place where students can gather in groups, discuss in between the lessons or maybe just pause in the new café.