The Brewery Site-OMA

Image courtesy OMA

OMA
Rem Koolhaas, Ellen van Loon
The Brewery Site
Copenhagen, Denmark

OMA recently presented their concept for a new multi-use building on the harbor front in the historic center of Copenhagen. The building will contain new spaces for DAC, the Danish Architecture Center, as well as offices, a restaurant and café, 22 residences, parking and public areas.

Situated between the city center and the waterfront the site, named for the Royal Brewery located there from 1767-1960, possesses one of Copenhagen’s few remaining opportunities to connect the two.

To capitalize on the site’s potential the building introduces the concept of the “urban motor’” actively reuniting the city to its harbor.

“Surrounded by historically significant and protected buildings on three sides of the site, the surrounding context is highly sensitive to the building’s volume.
The urban context made us interested in a large footprint for the building, and in order to fit in the requested program, a solid volume became the base for the design.
Opposed to the typical stacked section, where building programs remain autonomous, the program “heap” can create unexpected and unpredictable situations where each program is made aware of its coexistence with the others.”
OMA

The various program elements are stacked in a seemingly random order. The public program, the urban routes and the DAC, reach into the heart of the building and create a broad range of interaction between the different users.

The DAC program is organized as a vertical sequence through the building. Starting below ground and moving upwards to the cafe with its view over all of Copenhagen, each program is given a unique position and quality making a varied progression through the building.
Looking out over the city of Copenhagen, the DAC Auditorium reconnects the visitor to the city.

As an extension of the urban passage, the surrounding site is reformed into a series of public spaces. The north is small in scale and designed as an intimate public plaza. Along the water, the long and narrow strip is populated with urban activities further intensifying the population of the site. A playground concept, with different typologies of playgrounds, is distributed over the entire site.

By providing a connection under the busy waterfront road, where entrances to the different program elements are strategically located, the site becomes both a destination and a connector at the hinge of the waterfront and the “entrance” to the city.

Total area:: 27, 000 square meters

Client: Realdania / Realea
Architects: OMA
Partners in charge: Rem Koolhaas, Ellen van Loon
Project Managers: Chris van Duijn, Dirk Peters
Project Team: Concept Design
Adrianne Fisher
Ana Martins
Andrea Bertassi
Carmen Jimenez
Daniel Rabin
Gabriele Pitacco
Hyoeun Kim
Joana Sa Lima
Koen Stockbroekx
Konrad Milton
Ludwig Godefroy
Mark Balzar
Marc Dahmen
Ola Strandell

Engineering: ARUP, COWI
Facade: van SANTEN & Associés
Traffic consultant: ARUP, COWI, Gehl Arkitekter
Sustainability: ARUP, EnPlus Tech
Landscape: Inside Outside
Scenography: dUCKS Sceno
Accoustics: DHV
Renderings/Visualisation: Bloomimages
Animation: Neutral

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