Seven years later and the new building by C. F. Møller Architects, SLA landscape architects and the engineering firm Rambøll has been completed at a cost of around 200 million Euros. About 40 % of the construction budget was provided by the foundation of the ship owner Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller who died in 2012. In his memory, the building is now officially called the Mærsk Tower. The new-build sits confidently in the centre of a triangular city block, the north-eastern side of which is held by the 350-metre-long Panum complex. St Johannes Church and its kindergarten are situated to the south-west and five to six-storey high residential buildings surround the site on the remaining two sides.
The triangular form of the 75-metre-high new-build is the result of planning regulations for setback distances, whilst the rounded corners, apart from aesthetic considerations, are designed to reduce wind turbulence on the tower facades. The architects compare the building form to a tree with roots. It is formed by a 13-storey tower rising above a double-storey, star-shaped plinth, which creates a connection to the existing Panum complex and also accommodates the new communal facilities, such as a cafeteria, three lecture rooms for a total of 850 people and a generous cascading entrance foyer. At the same time the plinth is the only part of the building which is open to the public at all times; the upper storeys only being accessible via elevators and chip cards. In the basement level there are 950 bicycle parking spaces as well as technical rooms. Space for 1,400 more bikes is provided in the external areas to the rear of the tower.
University life above the roofs
The new building offered the possibility to traverse the relatively large city block with a public thoroughfare. Instead of a straight route, the architects created a meandering path in the form of a 300-metre-long steel bridge, which starts from Blegdamsvej in the south-east, rising and curving several times and crossing the northern wing over the auditorium, before finally extending relatively level towards the north-west. The main approach to the building is from the east across a large, gently sloping forecourt, beneath which is a gravel filter and rainwater percolation pit with a capacity of 650 m³. According to the engineers, this is sufficient to prevent overflow into Copenhagen’s canal system, even with predicted future heavier rainfall. Rainwater from the roofs is collected in a separate reservoir in the basement and used to flush the toilets and irrigate the planted areas around the building.
Atria as communication hubs
On 12 of the tower’s 13 floor levels scientists research, among other things, the laws of human ageing, the human metabolism and management of cardiac arrhythmia and cellular diseases. The uppermost level accommodates conference rooms and the faculty club, a multi-functional space with panoramic views over Copenhagen’s historic skyline.
Each of the tower’s 1,800 m² floor levels can accommodate three research teams each with 15 — 20 people, whose offices are arranged around shared laboratory areas. Vertical circulation is provided by three stair and lift cores, which also give the tower structural rigidity. The 35-cm, in-situ floor slabs are relatively thick in order to reduce vibrations to an absolute minimum. Rather than piles, the tower sits on a raft foundation with lateral anchors.
On the eastern side of the building, a series of vertical atria with open spiral stairways connect the tower in sections of four to five storeys each, supporting the visual and physical connectivity between the various research departments.
The position of the atria is clearly visible on the facade by the omission of the otherwise omnipresent russet brown brise-soleil. Internally the atria are surrounded by informal meeting points and tea kitchens on every level, the parquet floors of which differentiate these areas from the surrounding offices and laboratories, which all have linoleum floors for hygienic reasons.
Copper clad brise-soleil
In order to optimise the views across the city, especially from the uppermost floors, the entire building was designed with floor to ceiling glazed facades, with each facade element 3 metres wide and 4,2 metres high. L-shaped, glass-fibre reinforced concrete spandrel panels protrude from the facade on the edge of each floor slab. Traditional building facades in Copenhagen are plastered masonry, here transparent glass towers are rather alien; thus the architects equipped all facades — with the exception of the atria — with storey-high, copper-clad vertical fins. These all have the same shape in section with one side perpendicular to the facade and the other at an oblique angle. To use the metal economically, the elements are just made of 0.3-mm-thick copper sheeting laminated on a plastic substrate for rigidity.
The copper elements reduce wind turbulence around the tower, but primarily function as sunshades. Thereby, according to the design team’s calculations, the windows are only exposed to 3–4 hours of direct sunlight per day. About two thirds of the elements are also provided with expanded copper sunshades on the angled side, which can be mechanically pulled across the window if needed. Furthermore, all windows are fitted internally with one to two layers of fabric screen to provide further shading and glare protection. One of the two layers allows about 50 percent of daylight to penetrate into the building, while with the other the space can be completely darkened if required.
The tower windows are triple glazed and are not operable except for maintenance purposes. The hygiene requirements of the laboratories, which take up the largest area of each tower floor level, would not permit manual opening. Similarly, for reasons of hygiene the heaters are integrated into the facade supports. They are accessible through lateral access panels, which are sealed in the laboratories with permanent elastic joints. In the offices, where the hygiene requirements are more relaxed, the joints remain unsealed.
Several separate air handling systems
The developers wanted to make Maersk Tower the most energy efficient laboratory building ever built in Denmark to-date. Even though it was conceived in 2010, the building complies with the 2015 energy standards, which set out a maximum primary energy requirement of just over 40 kWh/m²a for non-residential buildings of this size. Like most of Copenhagen, the building gets its heat energy from the citywide district heating network. For cooling it is connected to the university’s own district cooling network, which uses seawater from the Copenhagen harbour as a cooling source. The offices, laboratories and auditoria are cooled by the ventilation system. With a fresh air intake volume of 500,000 m³/h, the air handling system is considerably larger than is normally the case for a building of this scale. A high air exchange rate was required in order to effectively expel not only excess heat, but also any hazardous airborne substances from the laboratories.
Fresh air and exhaust air are separated into several decentralised systems. Fresh air to the offices, entrance areas, cafeterias and auditoria is drawn in above the auditorium’s green roof and preheated in several air handling units with rotary heat exchangers on the lower floor. After passing through vertical risers in the building cores and horizontal ducts above the suspended ceilings, fresh air is drawn into the individual rooms. Exhaust air is filtered out through the air ducts and expelled in the bike cellar, slightly warming the air in this storage space. The ventilation system that serves the laboratories draws fresh air in at lower floor level and expels exhaust air from the roof of the tower. Both are connected through a combined circulation system which uses heat transfer liquid coils to avoid cross-contamination of the air streams.
The energy concept is completed by a 1,500 m² photovoltaic installation on the flatroof of the existing Panum building. Its yield is sufficient to provide one fifth of the Maersk tower’s annual electrical requirements.
