Scotland | Origin Design Studio

As the new Aberdeen University Library building is unveiled this week, we thought we’d take a look at the Danish architects Schmidt Hammer Lassen. Famed for their ‘Black Diamond’ (the extension to the Danish Royal Library), SHL aim to create distinctive, modern structures that focus on light, open-plan spaces and the interplay between building and its context in the wider environment.

HISTORY

SHL was formed in 1986 by architects Morten Schmidt, Bjarne Hammer and John F. Lassen in Aarhus, Denmark, but remained relatively under the international radar until the 1997 completion of the Katuaq Culture Centre in Greenland. This beautiful municipal building was overlaid with a screen clad with undulating waves of golden larch wood, inspired by the shapes created by the northern lights.

Katuaq Culture Centre: photos by Trine og Mads and Alankomaat

Later came other prolific works in Denmark and Scandinavia, including their most famous work: the Black Diamond. Born out of an architectural competition by the Danish Ministry of Cultural Affairs, the Schmidt Hammer Lassen design was chosen as the winner in 1993. Construction didn’t begin until 1995, however, and the extension was finally finished and inaugurated in 1999. Following this important work, SHL began to branch out, entering and winning design competitions outside of Denmark and Scandinavia, including works on the International Criminal Court at The Hague (2010), an eco-tower based in Warsaw (2011) and the Aberdeen New Library Building (2006). New offices were opened in London and Oslo in 2007, and the practice has undertaken design work as far away as China and Canada, proving their international standing. They also have the plaudits to back up their ideas: seven design awards won in the last five years alone, ranging from the MIPIM AR Future Projects award in the residential category to the 2011 LEAF award for structural design.

DESIGN PHILOSOPHY

In line with their Scandinavian background, Schmidt Hammer Lassen are architects concerned with sustainability, context, welfare and social responsibility as well as the aesthetics and practicalities of a project. They are perhaps best known for their quirky, angular, neomodern structures, but their designs always focus on flexible, open plan spaces with lots of natural light, creating a building designed for its inhabitants rather than its inhabitants having to work around the design. Following the principles of modernist design, function takes precedent over form with lots of multi-use spaces and a heavy emphasis on sustainable design, but the finished product is far from perfunctory and practical and instead takes on a streamlined, minimalist beauty.

Halmstad Library: photo by ET Photo

In terms of design aesthetics, SHL tends to utilise a simple, almost sparse signature look that often centres on the interplay of lines and angles, with the occasional curve. Colours are often kept neutral and natural, with stone, wood and glass existing alongside soft renders and cold metals. The emphasis on natural light plays with concepts of inside and outside, with extensive glazing blurring the line between the two. Reflections of the sky and the surrounding environment within the glass also allows for interplay between the two binaries, as well as allowing designs to settle into the context of their surroundings more easily. A democratic process of architectural design at the practice allows for a recognisable, cohesive style to emerge despite the firm existing across three separate countries and four different offices.

CASE STUDIES

THE CULTURE ISLAND, DENMARK

Opened in 2005, Culture Island (or KulturØen in Danish) houses a library, cinema, restaurant and tourist information, and is set alone in the harbour of Middelfart on the island of Fyn, just off the coast of mainland Denmark. The structure itself is an exercise in the interplay of sweeping curves and sharp angles, shapes inspired by its position on the waterfront and invoking images of sails and waves. In order to make the structure seem light, reflection both of the sky within the panels of glazing and of the structure itself in the water is used, again drawing parallels between the building and the water. The use of silver-grey zinc cladding also echoes the cold greys of the sea around Fyn. Here we can see that the environment of the site has inspired the design of the building, allowing it such a modern building to inhabit an isolated space within the old harbour without feeling out of place.

The Culture Island; images by Schmidt Hammer Lassen

NYKREDIT HEADQUARTERS, DENMARK

Schmidt Hammer Lassen won a 1998 design competition with their distinct riff on the traditional cuboid office block for the new Nykredit Headquarters. Essentially a large, glazed cube, the new headquarters feature cantilevered, glazed meeting rooms suspended in the large central atrium. As well as creating a dramatic visual feature, the building focuses on transparency, imitating the water of Copenhagen Harbour on which it is sited. There is also the suggestion of a transparency of business practices within the headquarters too, with meeting room spaces and offices visible throughout the atrium and even from outside of the building, transforming the traditional office from a place of privacy to a place where passers-by can literally view all of the company’s inner workings.

Nykredit Headquarters; images by Schmidt Hammer Lassen

The light, airy spaces within the building offer a calm place to work with beautiful views over the harbour, and the internal spaces have been decorated with specially commissioned pieces of art, including a 30 foot mural by Olav Christopher Jenssen and a water sculpture by Anita Jørgensen. The finished building won two awards: the 2001 Architecture Prize of the Municipality of Copenhagen, and the 2002 FX International Interior Design Award in the category Best Office Building.

UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN LIBRARY, SCOTLAND

Winner of an international design competition in 2005, the new library at the University of Aberdeen has been designed to serve not only the students, but also the wider community. Set on a bed of Scottish rock, the outside façade looks remarkably like granite under a microscope, giving a connection to Aberdeen’s nickname of ‘the City of Granite’. The Academic Square outside of the library is also designed to offer a link between the University and the wider community, allowing a public space where people can gather, with the library forming the west end of an east-west axis across the university campus.

New University of Aberdeen Library; images by Schmidt Hammer Lassen

The ten storey glass cube is given a surprising delicacy through the use of decorative external cladding, and the sharp angles of the external structure contrast with the organic feel of the interior. Unexpectedly, the sharpness of the exterior is counteracted with irregular curves and an eight storey spiralling atrium. The structure is also built according to sustainable practices, incorporating photovoltaic cells and a rainwater harvesting scheme on the roof and a displacement ventilation system with the technology to heat or cool occupied spaces only, thus saving energy as compared to conventional systems. The external decoration is also part of the sustainable design, as the panels and glazing have been worked out to a ratio that allows for the maximum amount of natural light with the minimum amount of solar loss and gain. The library achieved a BREEAM rating of Excellent.

Cancer affects approximately one in every three people in the UK today, and there’s a large chance that you or someone you know has suffered from cancer at some point in the past. For those that are in the process of diagnosis, treatment and coming to terms with the illness, there are places that offer invaluable help and support – and the network of Maggie’s Centres across Britain aim to provide this with some of the best architecture that Britain has to offer.

The brainchild of Maggie Keswick Jencks, herself a writer, painter and landscape designer and battling against breast cancer, the Maggie’s Centres were born from her belief that ‘in general hospitals are not patient-friendly’. After experiences of hospital environments that were less than supportive, with ‘overhead (sometimes even neon) lighting, interior spaces with no views out and miserable seating against the walls’, meaning that ‘patients who arrive relatively hopeful soon start to wilt’, Maggie began to explore the idea of a space where people could go for help and advice, for tea and a chat, or simply for a quiet space to think. Her ideas included tiny details to help people through the trauma of cancer, including toilets that are private enough to cry in, unlike standard rows of public toilets with gaps at the top and bottom of the doors, entrance halls that ensure that people who are feeling low or scared are not intimidated but feel welcomed, or a kitchen with a dining table large enough to sit around and talk. From this came the brief for the first Maggie’s Centre, built in the grounds of the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh in a converted stable block, spotted by Maggie during her treatment process at the hospital. Designed by Richard Murphy, the new Centre aimed to become the antithesis to sterile and depressing hospital environments, creating a light and airy domestic space in which people could gather, share stories, receive counseling or partake in group exercises such as yoga or beauty therapy.

Maggie’s Centre, Edinburgh: photos by Richard Murphy Architects

Sadly, although the building was completed in 1996, Maggie never saw the finished product as she died in July 1995. Her spirit and philosophy, however, can be seen in the beautiful conversion of the stable block, the rooms with sliding doors to allow privacy or open space as needed, and the garden that was designed to feel like an extension of the kitchen space in summer months and allow a few minutes’ quiet contemplation within the caring space of the Centre. The Edinburgh Centre proved so popular that not only did it win the Sterling Prize in 1997, it also needed an extension – which, in 1999, it received, adding a larger kitchen, small room for one-to-one advice and a large sitting room to its facilities.

Following the success of the Edinburgh Centre, the Glasgow Centre was completed in 2002 with the aid of an appeal by Glasgow Evening Times, who raised £500,000 to match the funding provided by the Heritage Lottery Fund and Historic Scotland. The design by David Page, of Page/Park Architects, converted a former gatehouse lodge of the University of Glasgow into a warm and modern Centre, incorporating a roof-height atrium to maximise feelings of space and light.

Maggie’s Centre, Glasgow: photos by markandlaura (left) and Maggie’s Centres (right)

A further six centres around Britain have since been completed, from Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners’ flamboyantly modernist creation at Charing Cross Hospital in London, to Zaha Hadid’s architectural ‘hug’ in Fife. Maggie’s close friend Frank Gehry has also designed for the charity, describing how she appeared to him in a dream and told him to keep his design simple for the users of the building. The result is a minimalist white tower, with wings on either side decorated with a dancing aluminium roof, combining dignity and a sense of fun. All of the centres have conformed to the Maggie’s architectural brief, which specifies not only the facilities that each centre must provide, but also the spirit of the project, stating that ‘we want the building to make you feel, as Maggie made you feel when you had spent time with her, more buoyant, more optimistic, that life was more ‘interesting’ when you left the room than when you walked into’. As Maggie wrote in her 1995 publication, A View from the Front Line, ‘Above all, what matters is not to lose the joy of living in the fear of dying’. It is this ethos and this support that has made the Maggie’s Centre so successful, and the architecture that has been produced as a result is truly inspiring to all of us. A further three centres are currently being planned.

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