The city of Uppsala invited BIG to design a biomass cogeneration plant to supplement Uppsalas existing energy infrastructure during the peak loads in the dark and cold fall, winter, and spring. With its beautiful old town, home to the oldest university in Scandinavia and the impressive Uppsala cathedral, it required careful consideration to integrate a vast structure into the historical skyline.
BIG’s Landscape, Engineering, Architecture and Planning teams come together to give form to the future of education, business and living in the Wadden Sea on the west coast of Denmark. The masterplan for Education Esbjerg – a new educational institution and campus on the island of Esbjerg Strand is informed entirely by the site’s environmental parameters: the noise from the nearby ship recycling yard and offshore rigs, dominant westerly winds, high tides, storm surges and sunlight.
With Chongqing’s unique location between the mountains, impressive cloud formations shield the building from direct sun exposure and creates a special atmosphere condition that allows the façade designs to be more transparent than usual. To protect the façades and exterior public spaces from further sun radiation and heavy rain, the building’s rooftops are extended by a significant distance, depending on the façade’s orientation. The roof also drops all the way to the central courtyard in one place, creating access to the roof lush garden, and in other places, the roof lifts in two corners to create entryways from the inside.
The site includes several historic buildings which King Toronto wraps around like a new organic frame. Each building unit is set at the size of a room, rotated degrees from the street grid to increase exposure to light and air. The resulting urban volume is an alternative to the tower and podium typology prevalent in Toronto. It echoes some of Moshe Safdies most revolutionary ideas from Habitat in Montreal, but rather than a utopian experiment on an island, it is nested in the heart of the city.
The , m residence includes units of public housing to be built for Billund Housing Association, elderly care homes for Billund Municipality, and rental apartments for development group Kirkbi. The building forms a gentle curve along the corner streets of Vejlevej and Hans Jensens Vej, rises to the height of the building on the opposite street, while the corner ends are pressed down to meet the scale of the neighboring buildings.