The Aarhus Harbour development provides a huge opportunity for Denmark’s second largest city to develop in a socially sustainable way by renovating its old, out-of-use container terminal.
The area is meant to become a living city quarter, comprised of a multitude of cultural and social activities, a generous amount of workplaces, and of course, a highly mixed and diverse array of housing types.
The Iceberg Project, takes its inspiration from floating icebergs in continual motion, seeks to locate itself within the goals of the overall city development.
A third of the project’s 200 apartments will be set aside as affordable rental housing, aimed at integrating a diverse social profile into the new neighborhood development.
The project’s main obstacle is the density set up for the development, the desired square meters are in conflict with the specified site height restrictions and the overall intentions of providing ocean views along with good daylight conditions.
The Iceberg negotiates this problematic, by remaining far below the maximum heights at points and emerging above the dotted line at other moments. “Peaks” and “canyons” form; eliciting the project’s iconic strength while ensuring that all flats will be supplied with a generous amount of natural lighting and waterfront views.
The design team reshaped the masterplan that consisted of closed blocks, into four L-shaped wings. Its peaks and canyons elicit the project’s iconic strength while ensuring that all apartments take in a generous amount of natural light and feature waterfront views.
At 7 and 8 stories and 21,500 m2, Isbjerget houses 155 one or two story apartments and commercial space on the ground floor. The varied building shapes create a series of apartment types.
At ground level a number of 2 story townhouses are integrated into the volume. Penthouse apartments are located within the stunning peaks of the building. Balconies feature glass changes in gradations of deep blue at the base to transparent at the top in keeping with the color of an iceberg.
A mix of apartments with different balconies, shapes and orientations ensure an urban living environment with social diversity. “With the Iceberg we get unique housing qualities as well as a city architectural expression of the highest quality”, says Kent Martinussen, adm. dir. of DAC (Danish Architecture Centre).
Location: Aarhus, Denmark
Architects: SeARCH, CEBRA, JDS, Louis Paillard
Project Leader: Andy Vann, Edna Luddecke, Heechan Park, Kristoffer Harling
Project Team: Alexandros Geroussis, Andrew Griffin, Carlos Cabrera, Felix Luong, Henning Stüben, Michaela Weisskirchner, Reid Leslie, Ruxandra Stroe, Sandra Fleischmann
Size: 25,000 m²
Budget: € 32.600.000
Year: 2008 – 2013
Client: PensionDanmark
Images: SeARCH, CEBRA, JDS, Louis Paillard
Photographs: Mikkel Frost, Soeren Kjaer, Julien De Smedt
