In the centre of Copenhagen, close to Nyboder, Holscher Arkitekter has designed and constructed a residential project on a very narrow site of seven meters. The structure is unusual in its form, in its detailing and in its relation to the city.

The project 4B consists of a slim structure of glass, a plaster gable and a light cladding of Tombac. From the ground to the fourth floor the building is facing north and south. The structure is extruded from the street to the courtyard taking a cue in height from the tall adjacent red brick house and forming a white plaster wall against the 3 storey neigh-bouring house.

From the 4th to 7th floor the building opens towards west and the Østre Anlæg park. The band clad with Tombac flows over the facades from the main entrance to the courtyard, breaking the scale to the historic urban context.

4B is situated in an area characterized by large edifices like The Museum of Art, Nyboder, a local church, Østerport Station and Østre Anlæg, Kastellet and Kongens Have (King's Garden) parks. 4B is part of a street-sequence which consists of a number of different building typologies.

The university and the church dominate the street locally with their size and the char-acteristic brick facades. The church expresses the same massive solidity towards the pavement level in the street as the university building – but becomes more vertically oriented towards the sky than the long horizontal facade of the university's which is facing Stokhusgade. The stringent facade of the university emphasizes the variation in the sequence of fa-cades across the street.

The street Stokhusgade is characterized by a 6 storey brick housing project with deli-cate details and horizontal bands which accentuate each floor. The adjacent house (no. 4) consists of a six-storied brick house from 1862, which ap-pears with the detailing characteristic for the decade, a tiled roof and a plain and clear expression. The other neighbour (no. 6) consists of a three-storied house from 1878.

Awards:
2008 Nominated for the Mies van der Rohe Award 2009
2008 Copenhagen Municipalitys price for beautiful buildings
2008 The Danish Architects' Associations price “Lille Arne”
2007 Tyndpladeprisen - awarded by the Danish steel industry

Photographer: Peter Nørby
Rights: Holscher Nordberg Architcture and Planning