CBS CAMPUS

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CBS in the city – The city in CBS! Our dogma is about developing CBS as a campus that is integrated into the city, where buildings and landscapes work together collectively into the interface of the area. The innovative area will be a link between the international knowledge network and the surrounding local parts of the city. Our vision for an innovative and international city university can be characterized as holistic proximity thinking, where the ultimate resource to transformation, student life, and well-being, is found in the individual actor – having a greater coherent goal in mind.

Project information
Responsible Partner: Ole Schrøder
Design team: Anna Sissela Michalsdotter, Johan Kure, Max Moriyama and Michael Vestergaard Thomsen
Client: Copenhagen Business School and Frederiksberg municipality
Project: Designing buildings and landscape
Location: Solbjerg Square, Frederiksberg
Type: Project competition
Area: 31.000 m² Building + Landscape
Construction cost: Confidential
Team: TREDJE NATUR + Vandkunsten + PK3
Period: 2014-2015
Status: 1. Prize. Phase 1. Completed

THE MAIN IDEA
Inspired by Nolli’s map over Rome in 1742 our proposal unfolds a strategy that is thought out to ‘erase’ the borders between private and public spaces as well as authorizing a network that is more subtle and diverse than the more classic urban spaces. Said in a different way we want to open up CBS to the public making it an extension of the public urban area. This also applies to the open streets, squares and connections going into the CBS area and thereby creating a new opportunity for a synergy between the city and campus. There is a smooth hierarchy of movements and the transitions constantly offers new surprises, in space and architecturally, and has an ambition to unfold the potential for many and varying social interactions and events.

It is as if we have forgotten the joy of surprising and yet staged urban space progress’ – in a larger view on the boundaries between private and public spaces. It is the proposal’s intention to show the necessary link between the city and campus. Not just as a functional disposition that can relate to the ground level, but as a three dimensional edition of Nolli’s maps. In other words we want to draw the urban life into the heart of CBS and at the same time demand that CBS unfolds its potential out into the city by introducing a smooth transitional urban space as well as a spatially coherent transition in urban spaces. We look at it as a dogma for the physical strategy and therefore as a type of foundational answer to the assignment and our basic dogma – to create balance and give CBS campus a new own identity that can consummate the ambition to unfold CBS into the city and pull the city into CBS territory.

THE ELEMENTS OF THE PLAN
The plan’s ‘rambla floor’ is the strong, urban and binding foundational element. It takes its base from the existing rambla that in principle expands to form a large joined surface, which draws in the new buildings and creates a smooth transition between outside and inside. The focus is on the transition between the open public space and the inner alleyways in the new CBS campus and a vision of moving between inside and outside can be made smooth and effortlessly. The level changes are used as a natural staircase for sitting and ramps that support the functions of the squares as a gathering place and naturally leads into the buildings inner atriums.

A series of new building sites are laid out along the east-vestbound main course with the main direction following the surrounding structure. By doing so a new urban space flow is created which supports the movement between Fasanvej metro and The Frederiksberg Center metro. Along with this it offers dense urban spaces and supports the link with the areas south and north of the campus. The location of the building volumes creates new and dense urban spaces and supports the ambition to turn all the backs into fronts.

THE BUILDINGS STRUCTURAL IMPRINT
The expense of large building sites makes it possible to make a future expansion – house by house. Each building suggests to include a combination of all the wanted CBS-functions. Educational areas, study areas, office spaces, multifunctional area and common areas as well as the urban and non-programed functions are dogmatically an integrated part of all buildings. The atrium is the main space – spatial and with an architectural imprint for the identity in the new campus. It is here the city meets the campus and vice versa, and where a synergy can rise in between the citizens and students. The atrium literally grows out of the rambla floor and has to be treated with tender loving care. It also gives a unique aesthetic quality – which is the basic requirements for the atrium.

The Pantheon is ideal. By introducing the vertical movement directly connected to the public space and at the same time place urban functions mixed into the campus multifunctional hierarchic, there is created a potential for a special exchange in between the city and campus. Maybe the municipality will place their future Citizens Advice here! Actually we are just stretching the pattern from Kilen, going from The Frederiksberg Center to Solbjerg 3’s inner street, further into the new CBS and will build on to its existing qualities – in an ambition of strengthening the present motives and give them new aesthetic power.

We will give the atriums names and call them The Expo-Atrium, The Staircase-Atrium, The green Atrium, The plateaus and The secret garden to set images to the reflections and fascination. We think it can be an inspiration to the factual artistic translation in the shape of an architectural ending manifest.

The identity of the new part of the campus is not supposed to compete with Kilen or Solbjerg 3 – it will compliment them. One of the significant and deciphering elements is the urban phaseout that allows for rooftop terraces and green plateaus on several levels, pointing towards different corners of the world. At the same time the phaseout provides an optimal amount of light to penetrate in the outdoor spaces on the ground. The auditoriums are consequently placed facing north with a direct relation to the atrium and optimally located in regards to being energy efficient.

Studying areas and offices can be placed more freely depending on the factual requirements and demands. The idea is to develop a structural footprint for a general applicable building units that is capable of having the capacity for changing programs and thereby demonstrates great flexibility over time. The shown units have a primary volume that is capable of complying the ambition over time – all buildings contain this function. The water tower has its own special story. We like this idea and want to pinpoint it in the central direction of the new square by the metro. We want to make it a great experience in regards to the arrival from the parking lot via. The tower. The first you notice is the beautiful space that announces the atrium as a motive. Changing exhibitions and an upper level that serves as a permanent showcase room, and a viewing platform, will give the tower its dignity back.

THE LANDSCAPE
The landscape embraces the new buildings as well as the existing buildings and thereby connects all the different functions on the levels. By physically upgrading and integrating the connections, buildings and urban spaces it not only creates new places, but connections that intermediates new locations, new functions and thereby creates space for more people.

Frederiksberg is known for its characteristic urban spaces, parks, gardens and its streets with a great amount of trees – close to the green. Frederiksberg’s New City Center consists today of a long row of defined and varying urban spaces. They vary in the pavement, in the vegetation with different trees and in their types of terrain. The spaces are side by side and create a mosaic of different urban spaces making a superb transition between buildings and outdoor spaces.

The accessibility from the areas to the surroundings areas in Frederiksberg can be optimized by selecting, expanding and keeping the qualities of the landscapes that already are there along with adding new elements that are recognizable from the tradition of Frederiksberg. Varying lush green and blue actions will increase the attractiveness and contribute to a new and stronger identity of Frederiksberg. The connection between the City Center and the Metro is the diagonal Rambla path that gathers and connects CBS’s facilities from Solbjerg Square to Kilen. The Rambla will in the project establish direct access to the individual atriums in the new buildings, just like Kilen today is linked with the Rambla. The Rabla floor is more or less viewed in the same way and will only get even stronger roots to the area like a nerve that draws in the urban spaces, city life, movement, functions and buildings.

Four large and varying urban spaces have large functions in the project. They are strategically placed having a connection to the transverse and surrounding streets. Besides that there is to be established 4 small new gardens and urban spaces in the areas. Every urban space will ‘offer’ more than a unique pavement and some special trees. An establishment of new characteristic spaces, water collecting areas or an integration of smaller gardens will take place, making it possible to achieve different frameworks for a temporary stay, different atmospheres, different scales and different user values in the transition between buildings and landscape.

Our project will therefore be an addition to the landscape qualities and characteristics that the areas offer today. The existing qualities are the urban spaces mosaic , the variation of trees and the Rambla, the connection between the urban functions. Pinétet will be a unique urban space that manages to create an attractive urban space for temporary stays due to its scale, terrain and different types of pine trees. The library garden is an attempt to establish yet another intimate garden to the collection.

It is also the project’s ambition to create a new story about the landscape which embraces both the city, city center, urban spaces and buildings. The project has a special focus on the transition between urban spaces and buildings – a zone that exploits to carry out the transition and at the same time be developed with each its functions. Terraces and deep plateaus will be created that both are green, coated and can handle rain. A terrace landscape that is known from Kilen, yet with space for functions the citizens, visitors and students can use actively at all times of the year.

Through this project it is then possible to experience even more special atmospheres, an expanded mosaic of urban spaces with more landscape conscious shapes and characteristic vegetation creating new urban spaces and scales in the individual spaces. It is our ambition for the project to make the areas more user friendly for the citizens of Frederiksberg and make sure that there is something “to come for.” We want to make it possible to have a well integrated campus in the heart of the green well known – The “Frederiksberg-esque.”

ROBUSTNESS
The master plan usually is about creating a robust imprint for a unpredictable development over time – not determination of a static concept. This is the plans foundational structural imprint and tendering necessary. We are showing construction zones that will be expanded one by one and assign a strategy for a multifunctional mixture that is linked to the individual stage. In principle each individual building contains the whole package; offices, studying spaces, educational functions, common areas and urban related functions. Primarily it will be robust, sustainable and stage friendly – one building at a time and strategically a parallel treatment of the undeveloped areas based on a green strategy as it is known today.

The further development is followed up by a strategy for the individual building that ensures the flexibility of the programming and application over time. The atriums are the guiding primary rooms and we imagine that a long row of the multifunctional functions combined with the technical heavy functions are linked directly to this and thereby frees up the outer zones of the buildings. The outer zones can consequently be arranged after their needs and are defined as flexible and changeable over time. The architectural strength is the Nolli map and the derived spatial consequences. This is where the actual robustness lies.

Well on it’s way towards a third nature. The winning proposal is like a meteor strike in the functionally divided city

Boris Brorman Jensen in The Architect

It is captivatingly futuristic and, alongside the other comparatively simple schemes, speculates just how advanced we could be if we hadn’t neglected our urban waterways for so long.

Financial Times on HOW

A jury member described it as ‘academic hippie platitudes – plenty of feel-good, but completely unnecessarily high readability index’.
The most original is in the solutions presented. Not least what a jury member call ‘the Big Rainwater Penis’.

Creative Business Cup jury

The winning project of the Europan competition presents a visionary proposal for how we draw nature back into the city and utilize the qualities that it can give to the cityscape.

City Architect of Copenhagen, Tina Saaby

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