During the first day in Copenhagen, we focused our visit on buildings that architects designed with a lot of attention on universal design. Indeed, people with disabilities are the principal user of those spaces.
Afterward, we could think that universal design is universal when it is specifically supposed to be. When architects design building for everyone then universal design slowly disappeared.
DH Headquarter by Cubo & Force4 arkitekter
The Dansk Handicaporganisationers Headquarter is an office building designed to incorporate all 25 different disabilities organisation by Force4 arkitekter in 2012. It is located proximate by the Høje Taastrup train station. This area was supposed to become a new social and commercial pole.
The design is focused around a short but intense atrium to welcome the visitor. This atrium is a rounded pentagon for two reasons. First, blind people can orient themselves in contrary if it was just a circle. Secondly, the rounded corners are way more convenient for wheelchair users.
The atrium could be a massive acoustic problem for people with hearing issues or blind people who rely on sound to feel space. But the architects fought about it, they designed the guardrails to incorporate rounded perforation, and at the bottom of it, we can find vegetation. Both of them serve as sound absorption quiet effectively unless you have an old woman screaming in the atrium because of her hearing issue.
See trough & perforated guardrail
Small details can be found like little bumps on the handrail to indicate the floor where you are or direction. Every light switches or door openers are always in contrast with the wall it sits on it.
Little bump on the handrail
You can also find seven different design of the toilet with the plan printed on the door so you can easily find your perfect bathroom as a right or left-handed wheelchair user.
Musholm by AART
Musholm is on the west side of Copenhagen by the sea in Korsør. An extension was designed in 2013 by AART architect to receive the Paralympic sports team and their families to follow them. You can also use this facility as a hotel/ youth hostel well designed for people in a wheelchair.
When you enter the building, you can directly feel a sense of unity in the entrance by the wood-framed low ceiling that links the exterior wood cladding to the interior. When you travel through a corridor then space becomes more dynamic by changing is height and form or by being super open to the outside landscape.
The exterior wood cladding link to the interior wood cladding on the ceiling.
Dynamic corridor by entertaining space or open view.
The extension is two circular building placing themselves in the middle of the facility. One serves as multisport hall and the second one is where you can find the hotel room. Those new rooms are very contrasted in comparison with the old one as they are designed in an hotel-style and try to incorporate and hide all the high technology equipment for the autonomy for the wheelchair user. The old ones were more family friendly with kitchen connecting the different bedroom and tried less to hide the technology required for the wheelchair user.
There is also a contrast in the materiality used between the old and the new. The old room used concrete and wood, and this juxtaposition makes you feel the warmness and the coldness of the material. There is a dialogue happening.
Whereas the new is one is less expressive with his materiality using cheaper covered wood and plaster.
Old bedroom (left) in comparison with newer one (right)
Artwork contrast between the old (left) way more expressive and the new (up) more flat, less striking
Circular plan - view to the outside, community inside. [3]
The multi-purpose sports hall used his round shape to propose a challenge to all paralympic sportives as there is a 100 meters ramp design just like the sprint on the Paralympic game.
Citation:
[1] Plan retrieved from Archdaily.com accessible on https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/5347/6623/c07a/80fe/f300/0048/large_jpg/Stueplan.jpg?1397188114
[2] Image retrieved from Google earth pro
[3] Plan retrieved from plataformaarquitectura.cl accesible on https://www.plataformaarquitectura.cl/cl/776714/extension-musholm-aart-architects/5630187ce58ece22ae000440-musholm-extension-aart-architects-ground-floor-plan & https://www.plataformaarquitectura.cl/cl/776714/extension-musholm-aart-architects/56301890e58eceb4c4000458-musholm-extension-aart-architects-first-floor-plan