fold

Architecture and interiors, Copenhagen.

Work Workplace

The Printworks

Islands Brygge, Copenhagen. 2022. Built.

A glass-walled meeting room with a long table and round-backed chairs, set inside a large concrete hall with a stone feature wall behind.

The main meeting room is a glass box in the middle of the hall. It has a floor of its own, laid 40 millimetres above the slab.

The agency had grown out of two floors in the city and wanted a single room where everyone could see everyone. The print hall had the volume, a floor that carried the old presses and a row of tall north windows. We left the hall alone and built rooms inside it.

The hall

The print hall is 30 metres long and 16 wide, with a floor that held six presses and a ceiling at 4.6 metres. We did not insulate the walls, drop the ceiling or paint the concrete. The hall is the room, and the offices are furniture inside it.

Thirty-two of the old press bolts are still in the floor. They are marked with a brass cap.

A tall entrance hall with a wall of planted steel shelves, a curved terracotta sofa and chairs, and glass-walled rooms on the right.
The entrance, with the plant wall on the left and the glass rooms on the right.

Rooms inside the room

Six meeting rooms and the kitchen are built as glass boxes on their own floor, and none touches the ceiling. The sound stays inside, and the light from the north windows passes through.

A designer at a desk sees the full length of the hall and everyone in it. The agency asked for that, and also for a place to go when it is too much, which is the library at the south end, with a door.

The plant wall

At the entrance, 340 plants stand in a steel frame that also hides the cable trays. The wall humidifies the hall and acts as its thermostat. It is watered by a rainwater tank on the roof, and a gardener visits on Tuesdays.

Before and after

A long open studio with a row of desks, black office chairs, glass partitions, a timber shelf wall and a suspended linear lamp.
An empty room in black and white with two tall windows, a radiator below them, a stack of timber leaning in the corner and a patch of light on the floor.
The north end of the hall. Before: Before. A side room of the press hall, empty since the presses left. After: After. The same side of the hall, with the studio desks under a linear lamp.

Drawings

Plan of The Printworks Plan at floor level, with the north windows at the top. Scale 1 to 200. Rooms: Entrance hall, Library and lounge, Open studio, Meeting rooms, Kitchen. Entrance hall 64 m² Library and lounge 64 m² Open studio 224 m² Meeting rooms 64 m² Kitchen 64 m² 30 m 16 m 5 m N
Plan at floor level, with the north windows at the top. Scale 1 to 200.
Cross section of The Printworks Cross section through the open studio, looking east. Scale 1 to 100. The roof is flat, with the eave at 4.6 metres and the highest point at 4.6 metres. Levels: Floor level, Top of glass rooms. Floor level 0 m Top of glass rooms 3.1 m Span 16 m Eave 4.6 m Ridge 4.6 m
Cross section through the open studio, looking east. Scale 1 to 100.

Materials

What the building is made of, where each material is used, and who supplied it.

  • Close photograph of pale oak veneer with a fine straight grain.

    Oak

    Library shelving and the studio desks

    Ravnkilde Sawmill

  • Close photograph of terrazzo tiles, with small chips of stone set in a pale binder.

    Terrazzo

    Entrance floor and the kitchen counter

    Gram Terrazzo

  • Close photograph of a brushed brass surface in a muted gold tone.

    Brass

    Press bolt caps and door handles

    Brøndum Messing

  • Close photograph of coarse, undyed linen cloth with a visible weave.

    Linen

    Acoustic curtains between rooms

    Lerche Weavers

Credits

Architect and interiors
Fold
Planting
Ingrid Solvang
Acoustics
Lydbureauet
Glazing
Glasmester Dahl
Builder
Havnefront Entreprise
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