Year: 2023-
Location: Ebeltoft, Denmark
Size: 850m2
Status: 1. prize in competition, under development
Collaborators: Søren Jensen Rådgivende Ingeniørfirma

Our winning proposal for a new community center for the European Film School proposes a building that, under one roof, forms an assembly room set into the terrain between four precise volumes of space. With its simple geometric approach in the form of a circle, it fits into the architectural composition of the existing building. The hollow in the hill creates an earthiness in both a concrete and figurative sense – a foundation firmly rooted in both the moraine landscape and the folk high school tradition.

With clear references in materials and building components to the existing, the addition of a new gathering space aims to both update and recreate the original grand visions in the form of a new Kosmorama in the landscape.

Our main approach to the overall facility is a conservation strategy, where the strength of the minimalist approach has been central. The proposal is fundamentally based on the idea that the intervention in the site should be as small as possible, but with as much impact as possible, so that the contact with the great attraction – nature and the great landscape narrative – is preserved and strengthened.

The grounds around the folk high school are a beautiful and valuable example of a low-key, unpretentious and multi-purpose facility that has been created with few resources and in beautiful interaction with the site’s architecture. Through a restorative approach, the facility can regain significance and enhance the value of the existing school and the new community centre.

The new community centre is inscribed in the architecture and composition of the existing buildings with its overall geometric approach. The building is laid out as a new but smaller circle next to the existing open circle of the student building. The shape is tangent to the parterre and the geometries are tied together in a compositional whole with a new centre of gravity.

The circle is established as a flat disc that forms the roof of the new community building. The disc is positioned precisely – open and lifted towards the arrival and close to the hill to the south, emphasising the slope of the landscape from south to north. The circular shape both hovers above and lies in the landscape.
Beneath this disc and interacting with the surrounding landscape and its natural topography, the living room – the unifying space for community – is established. The contrast and interaction between the existing building complex and the landscape is thus continued in the new extension of the school.