8 Tallet

8 Tallet—Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG)

By: Colleen O’Malley

The bowtie-shaped 61,000 sq m mixed-use building of three different types of residential housing and 10,000 sq m of retail and offices comprises Denmark’s largest private development ever undertaken. Rather than a traditional block, the 8 House stacks all ingredients of a lively urban neighborhood into horizontal layers of topologies connected by a continuous promenade and cycling path up to the 10th floor creating a three-dimensional urban neighborhood where suburban life merges with the energy of a city, where business and housing co-exist.

8 House is a three-dimensional neighborhood rather than an architectural object. An alley of 150 row houses stretches through the entire block and twists all the way from street level to the top and down again. Where social life, the spontaneous encounter and neighbor interaction traditionally is restricted to the ground level, the 8 House allows it to expand all the way to the top. 8 House is our second realized example of architectural alchemy – the idea that by mixing traditional ingredients, retail, row- houses and apartments in untraditional ways – you create added value if not gold. The mix allows the individual activities to find their way to the most ideal location within the common framework – the retail facing street, the offices towards northern light and the residences with sun and views to the open spaces. 8 House is a perimeter block that morphs into a knot, twisting and turning to maximize the life quality of its many inhabitants.