Office building thriving with new life

The office building on Islands Brygge has just undergone an extension renovation – designed by OVER BYEN Arkitekter, which specialises in meaningful renovations with a tailored impact and limited footprint.

The building on Njalsgade 72 from 2011 was empty for a long time, but has now been revitalised and transformed into a welcoming multi-user building with many qualities. The location next to a Metro station is a big plus, and the seven-storey building on the flat terrain means that users get plenty of daylight and views. A shared roof terrace on the second and third floors has been landscaped and activated.

OVER BYEN Arkitekter has renovated carefully and effectively, which means that all surfaces that needed it were renovated while replacing as little as possible. Instead, the focus was on creative reuse and refurbishment, including the floors. The renovation and changes to the space mean that the office building can now proudly show off its DGNB Gold certification. The canteen has been moved from the first floor to the ground floor, where all users of the building can eat lunch and hold meetings. This gives the space a more lively and open reception area.

A living, usable building

Overall, the transformation has been about creating more user-oriented spaces so that larger parts of the building can be actively used. For example, the ground floor has been opened up to be inviting and usable as a canteen and meeting point for the building's users for informal meetings, workshops and presentations. In the basement, there is a changing room with custom, carpenter-built solutions where you can take a shower before and after work.

The interior design of the canteen, which OVER BYEN Arkitekter has also been responsible for, is elegantly composed of several types of furniture and zones in the large space. The lighting frames both large and more intimate spaces. As the floor is newly converted into a canteen, it was decided to change the ceilings, and the choice fell on white-painted Troldtekt acoustic panels based on FUTURECEM. The canteen has good acoustics and the panels themselves are manufactured with a minimal carbon footprint. Both parameters add points to the building's DGNB score. On the first floor, the former canteen has been converted into an attractive lease unit.

Green coherence

In the atrium – from the canteen to the seventh floor – a 240 m green vertical wall has been 'planted'²that elegantly distinguishes the building's interior. The moss green colour is a tone that recurs in the new Njalsgade 72. In the canteen with its furniture and curtains, as well as in the bathrooms, there are green-painted Troldtekt ceilings and decorations with more green moss. Troldtekt based on FUTURCEM is a recurring material, as it is also used on the upper floor ceilings and in the newly established shared shower facilities in the underground car park.

On the third floor, a new internal gangway (identical to the existing gangway on the first floor) has been installed from the staircase landing to the shared roof terrace. Two unheated greenhouses on the shared roof terrace make the north-facing roof terrace attractive and usable. The roof terrace is landscaped with plant beds and small trees.

The common-sense renovation has provided the building with a welcome new, green and inviting whole.