area 104 | introverted architecture

architect: Ateliers Jean Nouvel

location: Copenhagen, Denmark

year: 2009

Architecture is like music…Building in a new neighbourhood is a risk – a risk that has often proved fatal in recent decades. When it is impossible to use a built environment to evaluate urban potential, it is necessary to turn the question around: what qualities can we bring to this uncertain urban future? How can we, in the worst of cases, meaning almost alone, create in productive conditions? In an uncertain future, our only choice is to respond using the positive force of uncertainty: mystery – mystery that is never far from seduction and thus, attraction. If the surroundings are too neutral, it is necessary to create a transition – a distance that is not a retreat inwards, but a means to establish conditions that allow a specific site to blossom. 072-087 nouvel-3In other words, it is necessary to enrich the context, whatever it may be. To accomplish this task, one must first establish a presence and an identity. I propose to materialize the context by creating an exceptional urban facility that respects the configuration planned for the site. It will be a volume leaving you guessing at its interiority, a mysterious parallelepiped, changing according to the night and day lights. At night the volume becomes a place of images, of colors, of lights, expressions of an intense interior life. The interior is a world in itself -- complex and diverse. An interior street lined with shops follows the path of the urban canal; a restaurant and bar spilt into it. The street is dominated by a covered square, a large empty volume beneath wood panels that clad the concert hall like reptilian scales. It is a world of contrasts and surprises, a spatial labyrinth, an interior landscape: on one side, the world of musicians, with courtyards, exterior terraces and various plants.
072-087 nouvel-5On the other, Piranesian interior public spaces link the different performance halls, the restaurant and the street. Figuration overcomes abstraction; the ephemeral completes the permanent. The facades are diaphanous filters that distant views of the city, the canal and the neighbouring architecture. At night, these facades become screens for projecting images. The architecture asserts itself through details – doors, lighting, ceilings and staircases – a testimony of respect to the building’s visitors, concertgoers and artists. Each place becomes a discovery, each detail an invention: lessons learned from a particular architecture that we must not forget; a discrete homage to Theodor Lauritzen and Hans Scharoun. Architecture is like music. It is made to move and delight us.

architect: Ateliers Jean Nouvel
adviser to Jean Nouvel: Olivier Boissière, Hubert Tonka
competition: January 2002
preliminary studies: April 2002 - August 2004
construction: June 2003 - January 2009
opening: January 17 2009
address: Emil Holms Kanal 20, Copenhagen
client: Denmarks Radio
partner in charge: Stefan Zopp
head of project: Brigitte Métra, Frédérique Monjanel
photo by Philippe Ruault

Jean Nouvel has headed his own architectural practice since 1970. Among Mr. Nouvel’s principal completed buildings are the Arab World Institute in Paris, the Lyon Opera House, the Cartier Foundation in Paris, The Galeries Lafayette department store in Berlin, the Lucerne Culture and Congress Center, the Tours Conference Center, The Hotel in Lucerne, the Andel office building in Prague, the Nantes Justice Center, the Dentsu Tower in Tokyo, the museum of archaeology in Périgueux, the technology center in Wismar, the Agbar office tower in Barcelona, the extension to the Queen Sophia museum in Madrid, the Quai Branly Museum in Paris, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, the Brembo’s research and development centre, the Richemont Corporation headquarters in Geneva, the swimming pool of Les Bains des docks in Le Havre…Among the projects currently under study or construction at Ateliers Jean Nouvel are, an apartment building in Soho New York, the Symphonic House in Copenhagen, a office tower in Doha Qatar, a office building in the City of London, a mixed use building in Vienna, two apartment buildings in Ibiza Spain, the Theater ”Archipel” in Perpignan, an apartment building in Chelsea New York, the Louvre Museum in Abu Dhabi, the Philharmonic Hall in Paris, the Tour de Verre in New York, a condominiums tower in Los Angeles, a mixed use high-rise building in Sydney, The Tour Signal in Paris la Défense.