The National Bank of Iceland, Landsbankinn held an international design competition for a new building in the center of Reykjavik, to consolidate the bank&#;s operations under one roof instead of operating from different locations around the country. BIG&#;s proposal was chosen for it&#;s vision to combine both the bank&#;s and the public&#;s interests: a corporate HQ that could function as an urban center.

By using a clover structure in organizing the residential program each patient’s room is oriented toward its own part of the landscape &#; two sets of rooms facing the lake, and one set of rooms facing the surrounding hills. That way the intimate living program has been folded into the landscape being on a level with the lake. Between the functions emerges a new collective space that is embraced by offices and bed units and populated by small patios.

The building’s structure is designed as a stack of two volumes, or rectangle ‘blocks’ &#; two per floor &#; with each pair rotated degrees from the floor below. On the interior, each individual volume is expressed as a rectangular wood-clad truss on the long edges, and as a floor-to-ceiling glass facade on the shorter sides. The continual rotation of each floor creates a sky-lit, central atrium at the heart of the building that provides direct views into classrooms and research spaces from all levels.

Oslo Science City aspires to be a good example of a holistic approach to planning, where efficient land use and densification go hand in hand with increasing the amount of biomass in the area. Environmentally friendly buildings, climate adaptation with the help of nature-based solutions, incl. a new green and densely vegetated corridor through OSC, extensive tree planting throughout the entire neighborhood, emission-free mobility, energy efficiency and circular principles will characterize all development in Oslo Science City.

Located in Copenhagen’s Nordhavn neighborhood, BIG’s new HQ building recently topped out its -storey structure. The new HQ is architecturally anchored in Copenhagen harbor’s heritage of warehouses and factories. The small footprint at the end of the pier became the main design dilemma: how to organize a single work environment for all of us when we would have to be split between a minimum of four levels. In a counterintuitive decision, we split all the floors in half and doubled the amount of levels.