A sporting life

Architectural Review, The, April, 1997 by Henry Miles

The Danish practice, Nielsen, Nielsen & Nielsen has already been seen in these pages as author of the landmark Architects' House in Copenhagen (AR December 1996), a most sophisticated contribution to the cityscape of the capital and an extraordinary brave and imaginative investment in its future by the Danish architectural profession. The headquarters of the Danish Gymnastic and Athletic Associations (DGI)(1) is a slightly earlier work which shares with its successor the aim of creating a largish office building that is simultaneously an efficient and flexible instrument with which the organisation can pursue its aims while providing a lattice of places where individual workers and groups can find identity.

The building is at Vingsted, near Vejle in south Jutland, hard by the sophisticated and extensive local sports grounds. The site is in the beautiful wooded valley of a little burn, an area too steep and delicate for athletics. This strategic locational decision means that the long south elevation looks point-blank at a steep north-facing slope. Not perhaps the most promising of relationships, but one which the architects have exploited with sensitivity, for the natural vegetation of the valley has been very carefully preserved. The shape of the section between the natural slope and the extensively glazed south facade means that low winter sun is largely occluded, while high summer sunshine is intended to be shaded by trees.(2) The relationship between the offices that so closely overlook this lovely slope and the hillside is made more intimate by balconies which at the upper level are connected to the wild reservation by bridges.

This description seems to have run away with itself a bit in concentrating on the ways in which the architects have dealt with the site. The building itself is in two parts: what the architects call the 'wing' and the 'tower'. The long two-storey wing is the element that faces the slope and is roughly parallel to it. The four-storey tower is aligned with the west side of the site, so it impinges on the wing at an angle. At its lowest level, the tower is the entrance hall, and is a floor below the lowest one of the wing. The wing is a bridge cantilevered at both ends, and wild plants of the slope are supposed(3) to sweep under it to greet you at the entrance.

Broadly, there is functional differentiation between the parts: the wing is the office area in which the gymnastic and athletic associations have been brought together in (initially) a rather shotgun marriage; the tower is more devoted to visitors, with the double-height entrance hall topped by the cafeteria and, above that on the top floor, large formal boardrooms which look out over both the valley and the sporting grounds below.

As soon as you get near, you can see that this is no low budget building - perhaps to its cost. Panels of sawn stone and elaborate glazing mark the entrance to the tower, while the the wing is clad in what a Danish critic has charmingly (and accurately in the circumstances) called cigar-box wood(4) - Canadian cedar. What with the wood, no less than three types of stone(5) and a Mondrianesque glazing pattern, the outside is rather exhausting, almost as if the building is trying to perform too many gymnastic feats simultaneously (but in a very controlled Danish fashion, with the skin drawn pretty taut over gawky flesh).

Inside, the wilful lavishness of the exterior is distilled into delicate refinement. The plane of the external flange of ruddy Italian marble squares is continued into the entrance hall, a high and dignified glazed space dominated by the cylinder of filigree pierced grey steel that contains the stair, itself surrounding the glass walls of the lift shaft. The expense, quality and propriety of the building are brought home as you cross the floor of rosy limestone to meet stairs in dark hardwood with fine little brass strips set in at the nosings: this is modern Danish building craft at its very best, recalling in a contemporary building the decency with which office workers have traditionally been treated in Denmark in buildings like Nyrop's Copenhagen Town Hall, and Jacobsen's post-war set-pieces.

The office areas in the wing have very dark hardwood floors (wenge) discreetly patterned with silvery-yellow ash covers of the telecommunications access points. Ceilings shimmer with very well-made perforated metal tiles. Walls are white plaster. There is a degree of dignity and generosity about the bare shells of the offices. It is complemented by the specially designed office furniture that gives each workplace a measure of privacy according to the taste of individual users. (The system was developed and perhaps refined in the Architects' House.)

The careful organisation of glazing which alternates views to the forest bank and the sports fields, glimpses and panoramas, ensures that there will be a variety of interchange between interior and outside, no matter how workplaces are reconfigured. The initially apparently arbitrary relationship between the tower and the wing is resolved internally with much finesse. The angle of the collision undoubtedly reduces any tendency of the wing to become a boring office slab: it offers dramatic views down into the tall entrance hall from the first office floor, and a companionable relationship between the two kinds of eating rooms on the second.