Copenhagen, Denmark
2017 - 2021
KAB HQ
The new head office for Copenhagen’s largest housing association, KAB, combines the administrative with the creative, making a space that joins the tradition of the office with the tradition of the home.
Project details
The 7,400 m²/79,650 ft² new headquarters for Copenhagen-based housing association KAB, is a building at a crossroads – literally and metaphorically. Located on the axis of two major streets in Copenhagen, between one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods and one of its newest, the building bridges Danish office culture with home life.
The building is a gathering place for 44 housing organizations, representing approximately 120,000 residents in Greater Copenhagen and provides the framework for KAB's 400 employees' daily work.
“We were interested in the play between the office and the home and how we could infuse the headquarters with the best of both worlds.”
Troels Dam Madsen
Associate Design Director – Digital Practice
A home for housing
The architectural approach to the KAB headquarters is a deceptively literal one, taking traditional elements of the home – the living room, the stairs, the garden, the kitchen – and applying them to the workplace. Things begin traditionally office-like: The ground level is open and airy, the large reception desk flanked by a plant-filled seating area behind which the office canteen nestles. It is once you make your way up the stairs that the feeling changes.
“With KAB, the challenge was to create something simple out of something complex,” explains Signe Kongebro, Global Design Director and Partner at Henning Larsen. “We were interested in the play between the office and the home – the two places in which we spend the majority of our daily lives – and were interested in how we could infuse the headquarters with the best of both worlds,” says Signe Kongebro, Global Design Director, Urbanism.
Within the atrium, nearly everything is clad in wood, giving the space a soft, 'hyggelig' feeling and adding scent and texture not often associated with the workplace. The slender stairs cut back and forth across the middle of the atrium, alighting on large community kitchens on each floor.
The western edge of the atrium is a wall of windows, behind which the main meeting rooms – outfitted to resemble rooms in a house – and office are located. This move marks the border between the private workplaces for KAB and the space that is accessible to the public, while also suggesting something a little more subtle. When you peek into the windows of the meeting rooms from the stairs, you are observing a household at work.
“The stairs are a play on the classic stairwell of residential buildings, which is typically the place you meet your neighbor,” explains Troels Dam Madsen, Associate Design Director at Henning Larsen. “In the KAB House, we added a layers of visibility, texture, and beauty to what is usually a very practical space.”
Troels Dam Madsen
Associate Design Director – Digital Practice
The house at the crossroads
For all the cues inside, the KAB headquarters could hardly be mistaken for a home on the outside. Located in a ‘leftover’ space that is not quite in but rather between several neighborhoods and perched on a multi-layered intersection that sees traffic from cars, buses, bikes, and trains, KAB is located squarely in the center in Copenhagen’s sites for future growth.
In response to this medial situation, this house is designed with no front or back, its pentagonal shape opening onto the city on all sides and framing views on to Vesterbro, Sydhavn, Carlsberg, and Valby. The sturdy, red-brick exterior evokes the materiality and pragmatism of the properties it has overseen since the 1930s, with some flair in the bricklaying that is unmistakably contemporary.
Contact
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Associate Design Director – Digital Practice
Head of Design
Senior Designer
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