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Grobund

learning and activity house Nye

The new learning and activity building for an emerging neighborhood in Aarhus called Nye will be a place to grow. Designing a place to grow for children and community has been a guiding principle for the design from day one. As a result the new building is created to be a central meeting space lush with learning experiences for adults and children alike, including facilities for both sport and culture.  

A central architectural feature, are the distinct roof-top-tower, which will become a beacon of learning for the neighborhood. Smaller towers with decentral entrances, covered learning terrasses and exterior workshops are organized adjacent to the central roof-top-tower. From the smaller towers, learning spaces flow out into the surrounding nature – here children will learn about nature from nature. Thus 20% of the learning that will be part of the children’s school years, are intended to take place in the fresh air and the layout of the exterior learning spaces are closely linked to the organization of the interior learning environments.

A green incubator

At the heart of the building, the botanical herbarium provides the local community and pupils with both a social and a biological incubator. The herbarium is a covered court yard with spaces for exhibitions, climbing activities and views into sporting areas. Here sustainability is ever present as an immersive experience including lush greenery all around and focus on an active lifestyle close to nature. In the herbarium, children and adults can meet, experiment and relax in an stimulating social space where plants are selected by their ability to purify the air.  All around the herbarium the learning environment branches out into a set of learning hubs, each with it’s own theme, covering music, food, creativity and movement.

Sustainable initiatives

At Grobund, sustainability is both an approach to how we build and select materials and a principle for letting architecture become a tool, which ensures that learning about sustainability becomes a tangible experience. Thus, easy access to learning about growth processes and the relationship between water, soil and plants’ lifecycles are central to the unifying botanical herbarium. In the same way, constructive principles, energy design and double use of spaces are some sustainable concepts in the architecture. At the same time, we display how these concepts are part of a sustainable lifestyle.

The project is created to live up to DGNB standards and the UN Sustainable Development Goals has been used to identify innovative solutions pushing the sustainability agenda. In addition, to qualify decisions on constructive principles we’ve conducted preliminary Life Cycle Assessments on different scenarios during the competition phase.

Client
Århus municipality
Area
14.000
Year
2024
Location
Nye, Århus
Collaborators
Kjaer & Richter architects, CC contractor, LYTT, AFRY
Images
EDiT, Christensen & Co, Kjaer & Richter.