Architect’s Statement
Saxo Bank is a young, dynamic, internet bank with a strong presence in online trading of the global capital markets. The new head office in Copenhagen is designed by 3XN.
In spite of the fact that Saxo Banks’s clients primarily meet their bank in cyber space, the physical gesture of the head office is of great importance to the bank’s management, who took a great interest in the design process. This was not only due to the client’s interest in the creation of a building endowed with iconographic qualities, but also to the conviction that architecture and design plays an important role for staff performance and dedication to the company.
The architecture takes Saxo Bank’s cutting edge profile as its point of departure. Main lines of the structure explore the balance between dynamic expression and trustworthy solidity, executed with an eye to the framework constituted by planning constraints and intentions. Conceived as two logs facing their gable ends to the canal, joined together by a retracted glass façade, the Saxo Bank building combines curves and sharp angles in a new interpretation of modern seaside architecture. Colours of the sea and the sky in the green glass and white façade elements interchange in the cut-up structure with a lot of X-shapes reminiscent of the letter X in the name of the Bank. Facades are carried out as double curved glass walls.
Inside, a transparent and inspiring environment enhances the sense of team spirit. The open plans centre round a softly shaped top-lit atrium with a winding main staircase. The trading floor located at the top of the building contains state of the art technology and a highly international staff of professional bankers.
Photo
Adam Mørk
Architektur, Innenarchitektur, Technischer Ausbau 2009, n.12, p.88-93
Saxo Bank HQ, Hellerup/Dänemark: Enwurf (Design), 3XN, DK-Kopenhagen.
In the face of the banking crisis, the new Saxo Bank headquarters were completed in the Hellerup district in Copenhagen at the end of 2008. A distinct exterior and a high level of transparency in the interior make this building an inspiring workplace for the employees of the bank specialising in online trading.
The open atrium interlinks all levels and brings plenty of light into the interior.
Plenty of light and an inviting ambience characterise the canteen.
The auditorium provides visual links to the canteen and the gallery.
The sculptural stairway serves as visual connection of all levels.
Whilst the banking crisis in 2008 caused panic among most financial institutes, the new headquarters of Saxo Bank in Copenhagen was nearing completion. Although the internet bank primarily deals with its customers in the virtual space, the management nonetheless attached great importance to a prestigious headquarters building. The Copenhagen-based architectural practice, 3XN won the competition for this building back in 2004. The five-storey complex is situated at Hellerup harbour in the northern periphery of the Danish capital. Even from a distance, the different surfaces in the facade attract the viewer’s attention. On closer inspection, the facade is composed of triangular glass panels, which in combination with the structure behind generate a diagonal, diamond-shaped image. Formally the building consists of two bars positioned next to each other, which are at the shorter sides held together by the continuous facade. Transparency dominates the 16,000-square metre interior. The primarily open layout of the offices and lounge areas is oriented around the glass-roofed atrium. As the atrium varies its shape from floor to floor, it generates an exciting spatial impression. The focal point and centre of attraction is the sculptural stairway, which winds upwards in the open atrium and interlinks all levels. The thus created vertical and horizontal visual axes naturally promote the major principle at Saxo — the knowledge exchange between colleagues. Public areas such as canteen, conference zones and the huge trading floor are accommodated in the extroverted central strip, which stretches in a north-south direction. With the omission of floor slabs on every second level in the northern part of the central section, the architects created double-high, light-flooded spaces, which are on the each upper level surrounded by galleries. This layout generates more visual axes and thus more communication.
