Culture Hotel in Herning

Project description

The listed Herning Højskole (Folk High School), a local landmark, has been gently transformed in an energy renovation and remodeling project. The college's buildings from 1962 are listed and its high-rise building is a characteristic landmark when approaching Herning. The building mass was built between 1960-62 as a visionary project and designed by Tyge Arnfred and Viggo Møller-Jensen formed the framework for Herning High School for 45 years.

The site will be transformed into a modern culture and hotel building and will function as a melting pot for the meeting between art, culture and people. The high-rise building is 2000 m2 and the other building is 3700 m2. The total building mass contains rooms, conference rooms, fireplace room, lecture hall, kitchen, restaurant, etc.

A general principle in the renovation was recycling and to avoid changing the load-bearing structures and to preserve as much as possible of the individual building parts in the building mass. In this regenerative transformation, SJ, as an engineering consultant, has contributed to renovating and optimizing the technical installations, renovating the climate screen, and ensuring that the Culture Hotel can be operated as a cultural hotel.

With sensitivity and the greatest possible preservation of the existing building stock as keywords, one of the important methods was to reuse as many recesses as possible for installations in the load-bearing structures, but still modernize the technical installations to contemporary standards. This meant that everyone involved had to think creatively and give high priority to the building's original expression.

SJ has provided all engineering services and project management. We have scrutinized our own, other consultants' and the main contractor's services on an ongoing basis, and with our in-depth knowledge of constructability, we have contributed to the interdisciplinary overview in a good collaborative climate with all other parties.

The project is an example of consultancy engineering for the total renovation of research and teaching laboratories, as well as teaching and meeting facilities. It is a complex and installation-heavy project, as the greatly increased amount of installation had to be fitted into the existing building framework.

Extensive constructive interventions are carried out in the form of large breakthroughs in floor decks and in facades. The complexity of the project has placed great demands on the quality control processes and commission work. Furthermore, an example of a project covered by the complexity that lies in the fact that the Danish Building Agency is the client, but the university is the client/user.

When the renovation was complete, many different types of needs are covered, with the building mass brought up to today's energy standards.

The Culture Hotel is nominated to the EU Mies Award 2024 and has received the Architecture award from the municipality of Herning in 2023.

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