SEB Bank & Pension

Type
Headquarters
Multi-tenant office building
Urban space
Masterplanning

Address
Bernstorffsgade 44, Copenhagen, Denmark

Area
27,110 m²

Client
SEB Ejendomme

Engineer
Rambøll A/S

Landscape
SLA
Lundgaard & Tranberg Architects

Artistic consultant
Finn Reinbothe

Year
Construction 2008-2010
1st prize in masterplan competition 2005

Awards and nominations
2011 RIBA European Award
2011 Arne of the Year
2011 Copenhagen Building Award

The project originates from the winning proposal in the competition of creating a Master Plan for the restructuring of DSB’s former freight yard near Kalvebod wharf, into a new urban area with housing and businesses. 

The bearing element of the Master Plan is an elevated landscape with a varied topography and plants across the area, reaching from Bernstorffsgade to Dybbølsbro, where a number of larger building volumes are placed along the edges, taking in the movement of the ground. 

The SEB project includes two separate buildings, in part the company’s own domicile for approximately 650 employees, and in part an office building with rental purposes with the capacity for approximately 350 employees. 

The two building volumes frame a landscape facility, rising more than 7 meters from Bernstorffsgade in the north to the southern demarcation of the lot. The buildings are shaped to accommodate the location and views of the harbour and city. 

A flexible building structure gives spacious, well-lit working areas, placed round the cylindrical cores in which stairs, elevators, toilets and technical shafts are located.  Both buildings contain 10 storeys, reaching a height of forty-four meters from street level. 

The facades have storey high glass sections in an alternating, compositional rhythm with characteristic, retracted floor structures coated with copper. The landscape is shaped as a facetted, contiguous coated surface, creating a natural path system complying with the accessibility requirements. 

In the meeting between the two buildings, the ground surface forms actual steps in a direct continuance of the terraced floors in the lower storeys of the buildings. Various sized recesses in the surface are used for beds with luxuriant, short plants or as planting holes for groups of taller trees. 

The landscape roofs over the parking- and technical facilities of the development, and gives pedestrians and cyclists access to a projected green city park, reaching all the way to Dybbølsbro near Sydhavnen.