☉ Copenhagen Plant & Science Center is a selected proposal by Transform and COBE for UBST in 2010. It is located in Copenhagen Denmark in an urban setting. Its scale is medium with a surface of 7.000 sqm. Key materials are metal and vegetal. Luxigon collaborated as visualizer. Concepts such as aggregation atrium lattice and spike are explored.
Copenhagen Plant and Science Center, CPSC, is to be placed on the LIFE-campus in Frederiksberg Copenhagen. The historic campus is divided in 3 parts – 2 historic parts with large green qualities, and 1 part between marked by a large and brutalist building from the seventies, breaking the possibility of a continuous, green area on the campus. In this middle part of the LIFE-campus CPSC is to be added to the large-scale existing, brutalist building – “Højhuset”.
Program
The new building will consist 7.000 m2 of high-end laboratories and classrooms. CPSC has world-class science and education in plants and generated food. The science is focusing on plants potentially essential to the global climate changes, worldwide shortage of food, alternatives to fossil energy, and overall problems with reduction of biodiversity.
Concept
By exchanging the existing orthogonal structure with a 45 degrees rotated structure, it is possible to open up the area to allow all 3 campus parts to interact – through a coherent campus-park. The first 7 meters of the new building are highly flexible with great lighting conditions and without any constraint in form of pillars or walls. All vertical infrastructure and technical shafts are placed in 4 large “trunks” in the middle of the building. The inner part of the building combines the technical “trunks” and the large openings in the deck, witch creates a lively space for exchanging of ideas and energy. The ground floor is open and flexible and connects to the existing building.
Project
Like a giant willow tree creating a shimmering space between the hanging leaves and the 4 large “trunks” – the new building has a very district relation to the research performed in CPSC. The 4 large “trunks”, covered with plantings, are like an enigmatic emblem of the performed science and this creates an informal setting in the inner space.
Facades
The facade consists of four layers.
– The «basic house» constructed of lightweight façade elements.
– Windows installed in the facade. Together the 2 layers will form the climate screens.
– The windows will have a flexible sun-screening layer.
– Aluminum lamellas of different sizes are placed as a layer on top of the façade – as a fixed sun-screening layer. It gives the façade interesting variation and depth.
The ground floor facade is made of glass, which allows view into the building where students and professors move around in the big open space. From the entrance area the visitor has a view to the green outdoor surroundings.