Developer
Statens Forsknings- og uddannelsesbygninger
Main contractor
NCC A/S
Location
Copenhagen, Denmark
Engineer
Architect
In September 2004, HRH Prince Joachim of Denmark cut the ribbon to open the IT University of Copenhagen’s new buildings in Ørestad. And a post industrial monument made of steel, aluminium, concrete and glass – with CSK as an important contributor and steel supplier.
When an architectural competition to design a building for the IT University of Copenhagen was announced at the start of the new millennium, Mads Tofte, who was president at that time, already had a number of thoughts and ideas. For example, he drew inspiration from the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge – a quadratic building that surrounds a covered common area in the centre.
One of Mads Toft’s great ideas was also that people in the new buildings should always be in one of two states: either sitting somewhere where they could concentrate undisturbed; or, as he put it, ‘having the rest of the organisation thrown in their face’.
Henning Larsen’s Tegnestue won the architectural competition with a stringent and consistently modernistic building, wrapped in a frame, clad with galvanised steel panels.
The frame encompasses the panel-clad gable walls and the projecting frame profiles around the window sections to create a light and airy feel.