Architect：Cubo Arkitekter A/S

Location：Thomas Koppels Gade, Aarhus Municipality, Denmark

Category：Shops Apartments Social Housing

In a former industrial area with freight train terminals, old warehouses and a railyard, a new cultural city district has seen the light. It has been framed as Aarhus K – ‘K’ for ‘Kultur’ (culture) - a diverse urban area, where the brand-new Aarhus School of Architecture merges with workshops, cafés and a variety of new and transformed buildings.

© Martin Schubert

In these surroundings, The Seahorse forms a chain of volumes that varies and adapts vertically and horizontally along the narrow building plot towards the intersection between Aarhus K and the lakes and green meadows west of Aarhus.

© Martin Schubert

With its distinctive and patterned cladding by Wienerberger, the 10 floors the building marks itself, facing the street, and levels down in a rhythmic movement towards a sunny side view. The ground floor is meant for community activities, whereas a mix of small apartments, tiny offices, micro-shops and small cafés reaches out and integrates with the diverse surrounding neighborhood. Rooftop terraces offers less public shared spaces for the residents.

© Martin Schubert

The construction links the urban with the rural areas, surrounding the city

A full extended volume is placed as a rod

The volume is oriented southwest with sunny rooftop-terraces, that provide the residents with a magnificent view towards the green Ådal-meadows and the viaduct with the infamous ‘Ringgade-bridge’

The volume is divided into minor housing modules, acting as shifted building blocks. This creates a variation in the facade and breaks down the volume to a compliant, edible human scale.

Further adjustments of the highest volumes resulting in a well-utilized and accurate adaptation, that stretches to the very edge of the construction site.

Rooftop gardens adds a green and lushy expression.

The whole building site is situated for optimized daylight with all-day-sunny rooftop gardens.

Spatial representation of the entire building

The shifted modules behave like chained pistons that recurs both vertically and horizontally