Henning Larsen Architects Wins New Office Building for Nordea Bank

Henning Larsen Architects and a team consisting of Signal Architects and SLA Landscape Architects have won the competition for Nordea Bank’s new office building of 40,000 m2 in Ørestad North, Copenhagen, next to the premises of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation and the Concert Hall – Koncerthuset. The building will comprise Scandinavia’s largest trading floor of 5,500 m2 with a view of the green area of Amager Fælled.

Project Description from the Architects:

Nordea’s new office building in Ørestad North, Copenhagen, will house 1,800-2,200 employees and be ready for inauguration in 2016. The new building of Nordea will border on the Danish Broadcasting Corporation and the Concert Hall – Koncerthuset.

To the south, the building is characterised by a sophisticated, sloping park landscape and to the north by an open ground floor and tile facades on the lower floors. Nordea’s new building introduces a new medium scale in Ørestad – a street level connecting buildings and landscape.

Stage one covering a total of 40,000 m2 consists of two light, sculptural buildings placed on a base. The architectural concept reflects the functionality of the buildings. Thus, the effective office floors are all placed on top of the base, while the shared, outward functions are placed in the base.

The building is organised as a city – offering quiet, more intimate places as well as squares and streets full of life and activity. The individual departments all offer both a quiet and active section.

This functional layout promotes collaboration, innovation and knowledge sharing across departments and professional fields. The interaction between effective open plan offices and meeting places allows the individual employee to find the optimal working situation.

The building interacts with the city, opens up and invites for activity at different levels. It will be a place in the city that offers activity inside as well as outside. The building provides the employees with the best opportunities to produce results in an inspiring work environment in which sustainable solutions contribute positively to the everyday-life of each employee. At the same time, the new office building will be an architectural and functional landmark in Ørestad North.

Sustainability

The new Nordea office building should achieve the highest score in the international certification system in green building, LEED. LEED evaluates the building as a whole – from programme through effective treatment of water, energy, materials, indoor climate to design process.

Henning Larsen Architects applies a unique, holistic design method, developed by the company itself. Focus is on minimising the energy consumption of the building. This is achieved by reducing the energy consumption, then optimising the technical solutions and finally integrating solutions for energy production in the buildings. 

The energy consumption of the new building has continuously been simulated through studies of volumes, materials, room heights, light and shadow, noise, wind and feasibility of indoor and outdoor spaces. Subsequently, the energy consumption has been further reduced by intelligent selection and use of efficient technologies.

With the applied methodology, the building will achieve a LEED Platinum certification, while at the same time offering an energy consumption of 41 kWh/m2/year without use of energy-producing installations. Adding the solar cell system required according to LEED, the total energy consumption will be minimised to 18.8 kWh/m2/year, which is far below the new 2020 energy requirements according to Danish building regulations. This makes Nordea’s new building a sustainable role model.

About the competition

In December 2011, Nordea Ejendomme invited three architecture competitions to participate in the competition for a new Nordea office building in Ørestad. In addition to Henning Larsen Architects, Dissing + Weitling and Lundgaard & Tranberg Architects participated in the competition.

Extract from the citation: ”HLA’s proposal relates to the urban context and in all ways constitutes a beautifully designed and convincing office building. The proposal is innovative and challenges the surroundings and Nordea, but also to a certain degree represents a both recognisable and robust architecture.”

”Trading Floor has been elegantly integrated in the building and offers ample daylight at all workstations. The building has a clear layout, which provides close contact between the functions in the individual departments. At the same time, the layout allows for beautiful views from the office spaces and surroundings directly into the Trading Floor, which is one of Nordea’s most visible and significant functions.”

Project Details:

Project: Nordea
Location: Ørestad North, Copenhagen, Denmark
Client: Nordea Ejendomme
Gross floor area: 40,000 m2 (stage 0ne – with opportunity for additionally 30,000 m2 in a later stage)
Construction period: 2013-2016
Type of assignment: 1st prize in invited competition

Architect: Henning Larsen Architects
Workspace design: Signal Architects
Landscape architect: SLA
Consulting engineer: COWI

Team at Henning Larsen Architects:

Design: Louis Becker (responsible partner), Kostas Poulopoulos (architectural design manager), Søren Øllgaard (architectural design manager), Julian Chen, Brandon Hall, Anders Park (project manager), Blanca Ulzurrun, Ingela Larsson, Marie Hildebrand Frederiksen, Morten Krog and Per Ebbe Hansson

Sustainability concept: Signe Kongebro, Jakob Strømann-Andersen, Erik Folke Holm-Hansson, Philip Johansen and Lise Manfeldt Faurbjerg

Illustrations: Christian Schjøll, Wesam Asali and Hung-Kai Liao

Find also plans and sketches in the image gallery below.