Fjordenhus

Company:
Waagner Biro steel and glass GmbH
Client:
Kirk Kapital
Investor, Builder:
Kirk Kapital
Designer:
Architect: Studio Olafur Eliasson
Country, City:
Denmark
Object category:
architecture building
Material:
glass, steel
Services:
Engineering
Completion:
2018

Fjordenhus, or house on the fjord, in Vejle, Denmark. Designed by the Danish-Icelandic Studio Olafur Eliasson as a castle-like office headquarters for Kirk Kapital, which is the holding and investment company for the three brothers who are direct descendants of the founder of Lego. It also features a publicly accessible ... ground floor. The architecturally striking building rises sharply yet smoothly from the water out of the Vejle harbour and beyond the footbridge has an area of over 4,800m². The shape is a creation made up of four 28-meter-high intersecting cylinders with negative ellipsoidal spaces carved out of them at various angles, all of which are formed out of just under a million bricks. The parabolic cut-outs create arched, multi-floor windows. This interplay of open and closed surfaces, torsions and arches, inside and out, makes the brick body an organic, almost filigree structure. The steel and glass facades and pivot doors designed and built by Waagner Biro Steel and Glass follow the complex geometry created by these intersections and were manufactured using millimetre-tight templates before being welded together on the construction site. Most of the facades and doors are not vertical but tilted by up to 13°. These unusual angles led to special bespoke solutions being necessary, especially for the doors in order to enable their functionality. In keeping with the architectural design concept, special attention was paid to the design of the connection details to the masonry in order to achieve a discreet appearance and for the glazed façade to seamlessly integrate with the surrounding facades externally. Internally, with the use of extremely slender posts and bars, the structure of the façade was minimised in order to allow for maximised views of the harbour, without dominating these views.