Playground with view: multi-storey car park in Copenhagen

The new Copenhagen district of Nordhavn is intended to offer apartments for 40 000 people and the same number of workplaces. Large parts of the site in the former port area are artificially backfilled and, consequently, tightly dimensioned.

As building underground garages in this location at the water's edge is extremely expensive, the city's own development association, By og Havn, combined the resident and visitor car parking spaces for the southern part of Nordhavn in an eight-storey car park building. The special competition set up for the design of the facades and roof was won by JAJA Architects from Copenhagen.

On the facades panels of pre-weathered expanded metal alternate with perforated sheets of Corten steel, which the graphic designers from Rama Studio gave a frieze of images. On the narrow horizontal strips of parapet left uncovered the planting troughs hung in front of the south and west façades are anchored. The rust red pigmentation of the precast concrete elements refers to the many brick buildings in the surroundings.

On each of the building's long sides a cascading staircase leads from street level to the garage roof. These stairs not only access the parking levels, but are also used by runners for interval training. Having reached the top they can continue their workout at what is probably the Danish capital's most unusual combined playground/sports facility: 24 metres above the street with a view across the port of a kind otherwise enjoyed only from the luxury apartments in the nearby converted industrial silos.