Workspace · 2023
Meridian HQ
An adaptive-reuse headquarters wrapped in a rippling glass skin that filters the afternoon sun without shutting out the harbour. Behind it, the original 1930s frame was stripped back and left visible, so the new workplace reads as an insertion rather than a replacement.
The brief
A headquarters for four hundred people, inside a warehouse built for grain.
The client wanted to stay in the building they had outgrown rather than leave the harbour. The brief asked for open floors, daylight at every desk and a facade that could temper the low western sun without blinds.
The approach
We kept the brick shell and its timber floors, cut a single atrium through the centre and hung a new glass skin a metre in front of the old west wall. The ripple in the glass scatters direct sun into soft light before it reaches the desks.
Steel is left grey and bolted, timber is repaired rather than replaced, and the new glass is set on a slender frame so the old brick is always visible behind it. Old and new sit side by side and neither pretends to be the other.
Project facts
Location
Copenhagen, DK
Year
2023
Scale
4,200 m²
Role
Adaptive reuse & workplace
Client
Meridian Group
Status
Completed
Partner in charge
Erik Marklund
Photography
Atelier Nord
Plan
An atrium that turns a deep floor into two shallow ones.
Each floor is a ring around the central void. Desks sit against the daylight on the outer edge, meeting rooms face the atrium and the cores stay in the thick original gable walls. Every seat is within twelve metres of a window.
01
Central atrium
02
Open workspace ring
03
New glass skin
Ground floor plan
1 : 500
Reuse
The most sustainable structure is the one already standing.
Ninety per cent of the original fabric was kept. Where new floors were needed they were framed in timber and left exposed, so the building reads as one continuous piece of construction across a hundred and twenty years.
Down to the last detail
Three junctions between old and new.
Design intent is protected in the details, and details are decided on site. These are the three we spent the most time on.
01
Glass to brick
The new skin is held a metre off the old wall on slim steel outriggers, so the brick stays readable behind it.
02
Atrium edge
A flat steel plate forms the balustrade and the shadow gap, cut to follow the irregular line of the original floors.
03
Repaired timber
Every original beam was kept; new timber is planed where the old is rough, so repairs are visible but quiet.
Gross floor area
Months from brief to opening
Per cent of the original fabric retained
Atrium, cut through the centre of the plan
“
They understood the building better than we did, and gave it back to us with more light and more room.
S. Lindqvist
Chief Operating Officer · Client, Meridian HQ
