COPENHAGEN—Kengo Kuma and Associates‘ design for Paper Island’s soon-to-be Waterfront Cultural Centre along the city’s main canal aims to highlight the significance of water in the city’s history, culture and life. Featuring monumental, pyramid-shaped, rough-hewn brick towers, the centre will house sports facilities, harbor baths and an indoor/outdoor pool, all unified by the centralized theme of water, Designboom writes.
It does not have a single front, but it is multi-directional, allowing it to be recognizable and accessible from various directions. it offers an spontaneous, open, and tangible space that carries the memory of the vibrant and dynamic nature of the present paper island.
Brick was chosen as the building material so as to consider and reflect the structure’s environmental context. Furthermore, the renderings demonstrate a desire to harness the light-reflecting characteristics of the water as the brick pattern yields small articulations in the stone walls sprinkling light on the bath’s below and at night, glow from within.
The proposal offers diverse experiences of water in various states and conditions such as reflection of light and shadow, steam and flow that appeal to human senses.
Landscaping and terraced volumes foster a seamless plane for an unimpeded flow of water between the centre and the harbor, ArchDaily writes.
The new Water Front Cultural Centre will celebrate water through its different forms: steam, flow and the reflection of light and shadow. Each of the indoor pools will be defined by the exaggerated scale of the space above, corresponding to the separate pyramid shaped roofs. Between the coned forms, a valley will be created in which an open-air pool will pass through.
Designboom writes the project, which won a competition for the design, was developed in collaboration with Cornelius+Vöge ApS (associate architects), Søren Jensen Engineers and consultant architect Niels Sigsgaard.
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