IT University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

The IT University of Copenhagen is among the first new buildings to rise up in Ørestad. This new district of Copenhagen is located on one of the most attractive sites along the canal.

With its soaring atrium, 20m wide, 60m long, and 25m high, unfolding into plazas on the north and south, the building enters into a spatial dialogue with the site and the surrounding district. It absorbs the adjacent city space as a direct part of its inner spatial quality, so that life in these spaces and the activities inside the university meld into a cohesive whole.

EDUCATIONAL WORKSPACE

The IT education is marked by group work, group projects and a high degree of interactivity between the students themselves, and between the students and the researchers.

The goal has therefore been to establish a building that supports and encourages the social activities with many open study areas, where the extensive use of portable computers and wireless networks make it possible to work anywhere in the building with rich possibilities for informal and spontaneous contact.

CENTRAL ATRIUM DESIGN

Conceptually, the building is organised around the central atrium, which creates a vibrant central heart in the building. The individual functions are placed in an open and three-dimensional structure where study and research areas are distributed through the whole building. They are formed in such a way that they create a rich and varied universe of visual and social connections across the atrium.

The space appears as a geometric installation consisting of precisely formed group and meeting rooms that are placed in a complex composition, where their differing size and placement read like open drawers in the tall atrium. Four large glass elevators offer a journey up through the atrium to the lightweight bridges that connect the northern and southern parts of the space.

A metal clad frame is enfolding the building corpus in one dynamic motion. The open glass facades within this frame consist of horizontal bands with various surfaces and textures within the glass, among them sandblasted, tinted, green and clear. These transparent facades will variously appear as transparent, translucent and reflective.