MIPIM in Cannes is considered one of the world’s leading conferences for architects and investors in city-, regional- and housing development. This year has around 15,000 companies, organisations, developers and architects from approx. 80 countries, who meet up in Cannes between March 8th and 11th.
The project is part of a community lift programme for the Sundholm area in Copenhagen. The assignment was to build sustainable housing in a cityscape. The area will have pixel-sized gardens and dwellings in varying heights with roof terraces. In the small pixel gardens each inhabitant can grow own vegetables or flowers, bushes and trees.
The first bit that will be built is a special council housing project. The basis for a sustainable social environment in such a community is to have offers that are attractive to the users, for instance, the ground floors can be made into workshops, shops and other functions, which will create life in the Garden City, explains partner and architect Jens Bertelsen.
With a small corner of the future’s sustainable architectural landscape, Copenhagen is once again on the map as an important metropolis with the sustainable neighbourhood Pixel Garden City.
The heart in the project is how to create an active social life for the residents through the pixel gardens and other meeting places. “We’ve never before made this many pixel-sized gardens, meeting places and houses that all signal “Welcome to our neighbourhood””, elaborates Jens Bertelsen.
The Bertelsen & Scheving practice won the assignment at a competition, organised by the Copenhagen council.
Pixel Garden City in Sundholm South is about sustainability:
- socially, by being a development, open to the residents’ wishes and needs for community spirit, diversity and multiplicity, as expressed by the residents themselves.
- green, because each resident can grow their own vegetables, flowers, bushes or trees and inspire each other. The cradle-to-cradle principle forms the base for the pixel gardens and the balcony greenhouses.
The Garden City. Diversity and coherence.
Pixel Garden City is a dense city dwelling and a garden city all at once. This has been accomplished by building high-rises, all turned in relation to one another for maximum light and air between the buildings. The high-rises leave a small footprint and social meeting places are the basic principle for the garden city, facilitating workshops, local shops, etc. in the ground floor dwellings. The aim is to create life in the garden city around the clock and throughout the week to ensure a sustainable social life among the buildings.
City gardens. Greenery for everyone.
The gardens are enclosed by wire fences and are either private, public or small enclosed wooded areas. The see-through fences make it possible for everybody to enjoy the greenery. The balconies can be turned into greenhouses by pushing the facades’ light plates to. A heavy back wall to the balcony ensures that the heat stays there. The tallest of the houses have roof gardens, collecting rain water for watering the gardens, among other things.
The houses. Spaces and city life.
The Pixel Garden City’s houses and overall plan are unlike anything else in the area, the area will function as a buffer and an informal meeting place between Sundholm’s heavy pavillons and Hørgården’s rational concrete high-rises. The project is a clear expression of the area’s special characteristics and identity where social threads create coherence between the surrounding areas. The development invites residents and neighbours to set up a fresh agenda between the new and the present by being a “trickle zone” with great openness via paths criss-crossing the entire area.
City life before buildings
The informal and democratic openness forms the base of the Pixel Garden City’s character. The project’s social aspect is the leverage for ownership, community spirit and city life, both now and in the future. Also, there’s great potential for variation of the pixel gardens, their degree of privacy, quality, shape and use.
Cultural heritage
Heading up the Bertelsen & Scheving Architects are the two partners, Jens Bertelsen and Hans Scheving backed by a young and creative team of 18. The practice was formed in October 2007 by the two partners.
Each of the projects that the practice takes on has an inherent element of cultural heritage, such as the Savannah stable from 2010 for the Knuthenborg Safari Park’s huge romantic garden, which was partly restored by the practice in 2007-09. Likewise, the extensive renovation of the Rose House from 1914, the former administration building for world famous brewery Tuborg.
At present, the practice is working on a new administration building for Haldor Topsøe (a large Danish catalysis company). An assignment won at a competition in the autumn of 2010.
29.10 2009 was published by the Copenhagen Municipality Center for Bydesign that the task of making plan for the area Sundholm South, has been awarded Bertelsen & Scheving Architects. The studio has prepared the proposal with extract, Breimann & Bruun, Buro Happold and Hans E. Madsen. The decision was taken on the basis of proposals from three different architectural firms, as well Bertelsen & Scheving Architects is the design studio Vandkunsten and Tanja Jordan Architects. Read more
Heading up the Bertelsen & Scheving Architects are the two partners, Jens Bertelsen and Hans Scheving backed by a young and creative team of 18. The practice was formed in October 2007 by the two partners.
Each of the projects that the practice takes on has an inherent element of cultural heritage, such as the Savannah stable from 2010 for the Knuthenborg Safari Park’s huge romantic garden, which was partly restored by the practice in 2007-09. Likewise, the extensive renovation of the Rose House from 1914, the former administration building for world famous brewery Tuborg.
At present, the practice is working on a new administration building for Haldor Topsøe (a large Danish catalysis company). An assignment won at a competition in the autumn of 2010.
Sorry, this entry is only available in Dansk.
On October 29th 2010 Copenhagen Council’s centre for City design published the winner of the district plan for Sundholm Syd, Bertelsen & Scheving Architects. The practice worked together with Ekstrakt, Breimann & Bruun, Buro Happold og Hans E. Madsen on the project. The decision was made based on proposals from three different practices, Bertelsen & Scheving and the practices Vandkunsten and Tanja Jordan Architects.
About the challenges posed by this district plan one can read in the committee’s statement: The starting point has been to balance this dual situation: How can future residents get a vision for this area of the city and how can the city and the life in the area as such create synergies and add an attraction to the neighbourhood at the same time as it is allowed to develop into something special?
Bertelsen & Scheving’s is the only one of the three projects, which takes as its starting point a visible synergy between the vision for the area of being different, creating diversity and at the same time being open towards both residents and the neighbourhood in general to take part in this diversity.
Differences and identity are the bases for a future proofing of the area, which must, in functionality, socially and urban fit in, but at the same time be adaptable and open so as to invite everybody in who may wish to contribute.
About our proposal, specifically the social kit and leading architectural motive in the proposal, the committee writes: Especially the pixel gardens should be pointed out, as they are well defined and based on the active participation of the residents. Both idea and strategy seem attractive and robust.
