Aban­doned

The original buil­ding once served as a wind­mill factory and is a typical example of one of the many mass-produced warehouse or factory buil­dings from the late 1960’s and 70’s found in almost every suburban indus­trial zone in the western world. Cons­tructed from prefa­bri­cated concrete panels or corru­gated steel, these indus­trial lefto­vers are perceived as having little or negli­gible historic, cultural and archi­tec­tural value.

Instead of taking the tradi­tional approach and demo­li­shing the leftover buil­ding EFFEKT wanted to explore how to re-use and re-program this type of insig­nificant and mostly intro­verted buil­ding typo­logy in a quali­ta­tive way and at a very limited budget?

‘However unin­te­res­ting and grey the exte­rior of these boxes appear, they often contain an impres­sive inte­rior space of magni­fi­cent scale and almost cathe­dral-like propor­tions based on a repe­ti­tive, neatly arranged struc­tural system. To us this vast space posed the only true value of the buil­ding – and we wanted to expose and high­light this to the outside world.’ says Tue Foged, Partner at EFFEKT.

Indi­vi­dua­lized alter­na­tives

The func­tional goal of the new Street­mekka is to create a series of func­tional spaces for sports, cultural and social purposes arranged in a highly complex program­matic network. The aim is to meet the incre­asing demand for self-orga­nized and indi­vi­dua­lized alter­na­tives to the estab­lished club-sports and cultural acti­vi­ties, supporting GAME’s mission to attract local youth and create lasting social change through street-sports and culture, enab­ling inte­gra­tion and empowe­ring them in their future lives.

Targe­ting a broad demo­gra­phic audi­ence from across a variety of cultural back­grounds, gender, age and inte­rests, the archi­tects’ goal was to create an open and welco­ming buil­ding, lowe­ring the thres­hold for invol­vement and enga­ge­ment. This was achieved this by making a trans­pa­rent buil­ding with a clear, well-defined orga­niza­tion intui­tive to ever­yone. An anti-elitist, pop-culture take on a hybrid between a sports faci­lity and a culture house, that is robust enough to stay open to the public 24 hours day without super­vi­sion and where the users are in charge and take initia­tive.

Indoor street­scape

The archi­tec­tural concept is based upon the idea of an indoor street­scape. The project opens the intro­verted indus­trial buil­ding and trans­forms the impres­sive central factory space into a new kind of inte­rior space: a covered street­scape open to the outside.  The street­scape concept is used to define and orga­nize the various func­tions and place them in rela­tion to specific requi­re­ments, such as spatial quality, daylight, mate­ria­lity and tempe­ra­ture zones.

The new volume is then wrapped with a func­tional trans­lu­cent poly­car­bo­nate skin, giving the appearance of a light and welco­ming buil­ding while also serving as a giant canvas for the local visual artists to display and project their art but also clearly diffe­ren­tiates the buil­ding from the surroun­ding indus­trial faci­li­ties. Street­mekka in Viborg is the first lot to be trans­formed in the new neigh­bor­hood and will work as a cata­lyst for city life in the upco­ming area.

The surroun­ding land­scape becomes the natural exten­sion of the indoor surface with various street-sports and cultural func­tions placed in a recrea­tional string of gree­nery connec­ting the site to the down­town area through a future pede­strian and bicycle path.