Project Overview
- Location
- Copenhagen, Denmark
- Year
- 2022
- Category
- Adaptive Reuse
- Size
- 340 m²
- Status
- Completed
About the project
A former dockside warehouse reworked into a single-family loft, retaining its raw brick shell beneath a new blackened-steel frame.
How This Project Came Together
01
The Brief
02
The Problem
03
The Approach
04
The Outcome
Turn a condemned warehouse shell into one family's home.
The client bought a 1890s dockside grain warehouse slated for demolition and asked for a single-family residence that kept the building's industrial character legible, rather than the usual approach of stripping it to a blank white box.
The brick shell was structurally unsound above the second floor.
A structural survey found the upper brick courses had bowed nearly 90mm over a century of settling — unsafe to simply renovate around. Demolishing and rebuilding in matching brick would have taken the character with it.
A freestanding steel frame that never touches the brick.
We inserted an independent blackened-steel structure inside the shell, carrying all new floor and roof loads on its own foundations. The original brick was stabilised but left to carry only itself — visibly separate from, not integrated into, the new structure.
A house where you can read a hundred years of history at a glance.
The gap between old brick and new steel is left visible throughout — you can see exactly where 1890s masonry ends and 2022 construction begins. The building was saved from the demolition list, and now anchors a small conservation push for the rest of the dock row.
In Detail
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