In the design concept for Ellsinore Psychiatric Clinic BIG steered clear of all clinical stereotypes: the traditional hospital hallway without windows and rooms on both sides; artificial easy-cleaning materials like plastic paint, linoleum floors or ceilings made of gypsum, etc. Instead, all materials have their natural surfaces. Cast floors in concrete or lively colors and walls made of glass, wood and concrete. Functionally the hospital is tailor-made to modern psychiatric treatment and therapy. Experientially the hospital appears as anything but a hospital.

BIG was invited for a competition to design a Maritime museum inside the neighboring decommissioned dry-dock, where ships used to be built. Instead, BIG proposed to place the museum underground, just outside the wall of the dock in order to preserve the dock as an open, outdoor display, maintaining the powerful structure as the center of the Maritime Museum. By placing the museum this way, it appears as a discreet part of the cultural environment associated with the Kronborg Castle and the neighboring Culture Yard, while at the same time manifesting itself as an independent institution.

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 m site is positioned next to the existing urban fabric in the future development zones of the Yongsan masterplan. BIG’s design includes two elegant towers with a height of and m. To meet the height requirements of the site, the exceeding building mass is transformed into an upper and lower horizontal bar, which bridge the two towers at m and m height. The two towers are additionally connected through the arrival bar at the ground level &#; and a courtyard below ground.

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.