In , BIG participated in an open design competition for a new Water Culture House in Odense, Denmarks third largest city. The traditional method of designing swimming pools often starts with the creation of a container box from which a hole is excavated to form the water basin. For the creation of a ‘aqua center it seemed more appropriate to look holistically at the pool program.
The building’s double curved, precast concrete façade bows inwards to create a generous urban canopy that responds to the ‘shock wave’ of the park’s circular running track, activity pods and planting vignettes – rippling outwards like rings in water to invade the building’s footprint. Visitors and employees can admire the mothballed ships sitting in the adjacent docks while embracing the Central Green Park.
Like the monsoons, the dust storms and the mountains, the BIG Pin is also an exceptional moment, a point of reference and a mechanism to set the still landscape in motion only this time through the movement of the spectator. Instead of referencing other observation towers, the Pin takes as a point of reference Frank Lloyd Wright’s celebrated Guggenheim Museum of New York. The visitor experiences the museum as a spiral motion looking inward. At the BIG Pin, the focus is reversed. Instead of a void, there is the dramatic landscape of Phoenix, Arizona.
The development consists of two towers rising m to the north and m to the south, linked together at the feet by a m podium housing the main lobbies, a conference center, cafeteria, and exhibition space. The volume and height of the HQ was predetermined by the urban masterplan, leaving BIG with façade design. BIG envisioned an undulating façade like the structure of a palm leaf or the folded screen of a lamp.
The Gare du Pont de Bondy continues the Parisian tradition of utilizing bridges as social spaces and cultural landmarks. Located at the encounter between the communities of Bondy, Bobigny and Noisy-le-Sec, the station is conceived as both bridge and tunnel wrapped around a giant atrium, connecting the riverbank to the train landing. The deepest train tunnels will now open directly to the Parisian sky, and all three surrounding neighborhoods will be united in a single inclusive loop – a new architectural hybrid of urban infrastructure and social space.