Bispebjerg Bakke

This apartment building was designed by a Danish sculptor who created the original models from clay. All shapes and materials in this unique building have been selected in the spirit of the artist.

When art meets architecture, the result is anything but ordinary. “It looks like a sculpture, but it’s a house. It looks like a house and it’s a sculpture,” artist Bjørn Nørgaard has said about residential complex Bispebjerg Bakke.

The innovative building consists of 135 exclusive rental properties spread over 11 houses and built with respect for their surroundings in natural materials and impeccable quality.

The undulating lines of the landscape are mirrored in its construction, which winds like a snake – or as it has been called, a Chinese dragon on stilts – through many different levels.

The buildings’ heights alternate between three and eight storeys and, finding inspiration in a musical score, Nørgaard modelled the first versions of it in clay. The development’s waving, handcrafted copper roof represents rhythm: the large gateways are pauses; the brickwork is the bass line and the highly varied windowpanes in exclusive jatoba wood are the descant.

The houses’ red-andyellow bricks are a reference to classic Copenhagen buildings, in which red bricks face the street and yellow, the courtyard. Inside, windows, balconies and walls curve outwards and inwards, and with only a few doors, floor-to-ceiling windows and an elliptical spiral staircase with domed skylight, there is also a brilliant flow of light.