Kengo Kuma design wins Papirøen Water Culture House competition in Copenhagen

The winning entry for Copenhagen's Water Culture House competition was designed by Kengo Kuma in collaboration with Denmark subcontractors Cornelius Voge, Soren Jensen engineers and Niels Sigsgaard. The project combines a waterfront culture center with leisure and sport facilities centered around harbor baths.

The firm's design focuses on connecting the city and water environments in Copenhagen's harbor creating a cascading flow to blur the lines between these two boundaries. Various access points are woven into the culture house leaving the space devoid of a front or back. 

Kengo Kuma & Associates included features such as indoor and outdoor pools, harbor baths, and sport and wellness facilities. These features take form in a series of pyramid and cone shapes with a brick facade as a nod to traditional Danish aesthetics. The design's cone shaped roofs extrude downwards, and correspond to the pools mirrored below. 

The project takes place on a corner site within a larger development plan for Denmark's Paper Island—highlighting the harbor as a gateway to the city's expansion. 

Among the finalists were Bjarke Ingels Group and COBE.