Begins construction of the headquarters of Ferring Pharmaceuticals

Located on the urban fringe of Copenhagen in Kastrup, the site occupies a pivotal waterfront position alongside the Øresund crossing between Copenhagen and Malmö, and is next to Copenhagen International Airport. Bordered by predominantly low-rise development, it affords fantastic views towards Malmö and the Swedish coast – where the company was founded.

Rendering. Headquarters of Ferring Pharmaceuticals by Foster+Parteners. Image courtesy of Foster+Parteners.

The groundbreaking ceremony for the new country headquarters for Ferring Pharmaceuticals A/S in Denmark was held today, attended by Henrik Zimino, Mayor of Tarnby; Frederik Paulsen, Chairman, and Marianne Kock, Managing Director, Ferring Pharmaceuticals A/S; and Grant Brooker, Head of Studio, Foster + Partners. The ceremony marked the start of construction of the 39,000 square-metre company offices which is set for completion in 2019.

Grant Brooker, who led the design of the building said, “We wanted to create a very strong base that directly connects to and celebrates this unique waterside location and lifts the building above that level – so that there are uninterrupted views from the ground floor to the strait and the surrounding harbour.”

The triangular form of the building is driven by the shape of the site, surrounded by water on all sides. At the heart of the building is a generous internal atrium with panoramic views, comprising an entrance lobby, café and breakout space, as well as catered conference facilities and space for social events. Access to the floors above is via a feature staircase or glass lifts that further animate the atrium space.

Brooker recalls that, “For such a significant project it was vital that the building reflected the personality of the organisation and that it would create a collaborative and flexible working environment to carry them through the next century.”

Read less

View more images

Metalocus recommends

Tower 15 by OODA. Photograph by Fernando Guerra

Formal unity and diversity. Tower 15 by OODA

SWITCH, New Simon Headquarters by b720 Fermín Vázquez Arquitectos. Photograph by José Hevia

A house for light. SWITCH, New Simon Headquarters by b720 Fermín Vázquez Arquitectos

Domestic housing in the suburbs. House MF by Balsa Crosetto Piazzi

NORMAN FOSTER

Norman Foster is considered by many to be the most prominent architect in Britain. He won the 1999 Pritzker Architecture Prize and the 2009 Príncipe de Asturias de las Artes Prize.

Lord Foster rebuilt the Reichstag as a new German Parliament in Berlin and designed a contemporary Great Court for the British Museum. He linked St. Paul's Cathedral to the Tate Modern with the Millennium Bridge, a steel footbridge across the Thames. He designed the Hearst Corporation Building in Manhattan, at 57th Street and Eighth Avenue.

He was born in Manchester, England, in 1935. Among his firm’s many other projects are London’s City Hall, the Bilbao Metro in Spain, the Canary Wharf Underground Station in London and the renovated courtyard of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery in Washington.

In the 1970s, Lord Foster was one of the most visible practitioners of high-tech architecture that fetishized machine culture. His triumphant 1986 Hong Kong and Shanghai bank building, conceived as a kit-of-parts plugged into a towering steel frame, was capitalism's answer to the populist Pompidou Center in Paris.

Nicolai Ouroussoff, The Times’s architecture critic, has written that although Lord Foster’s work has become sleeker and more predictable in recent years, his forms are always driven by an internal structural logic, and they treat their surroundings with a refreshing bluntness.

Awarded the Prince of Asturias of the Arts 2009.