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on images for larger views. [Google Earth link]
Copenhagen's Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) is a large office with a consistently creative
output that questions preconceived notions about architecture. Process yields solutions that only marginally resemble the typologies their
buildings fall into. As PLOT, Bjarke Ingels (with Julien De Smedt) created the VM Houses,
a self-described improvement over Le Corbusier's Unite d'Habitation that is nothing if not striking, with angular balconies making an aggressive
statement in Copenhagen's Ørestad area.
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The second generation of VM Houses is VM Bjerget, aka Mountain Dwellings, located across the street from its predecessor.
Faced with a program of twice as much parking as dwelling units, the architects adopted a strategy of stacking the two functions and terracing both
the 480 parking spaces and the 80 apartments to create an artificial hillside that absorbs the southern sun and acknowledges the neighbor's zig-zag.
A gap between the parking and residential components makes the division and dependency clear. |
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The articulation of the the building's exterior is basically split into three parts: metal panels covered with imagery from
Mount Everest for the parking, metal panels with windows for the perimeter of the units, and wood panels with glazing for the south-facing terraces.
This makes for a building with a sort of split personality, one outward and one inward, one cold and one warm, one flat and one cascading. The end result is one that expresses the process,
like a diagram in built form. |
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Perhaps the most unique result of the design process is the space between parking and apartments. A Piranesian space
of columns, ramps, terraces floors, brightly painted ceilings and walls, and graphics recalling the exterior Everest print. It's a dynamic space
generated by the gridded stacking of apartments over the ramping system below. Overall the design is as different from the first VM Houses as if
it were done by a different firm, a testament to the creativity and variety of BIG. |
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