Trælasten block Aarhus, Denmark
The Trælastenblock is an urban transformation project that develops a 36,000 m2 industrial and commercial site into a mixed-use neighbourhood combining 500-600 new residences with various office and commercial spaces. CEBRA has developed the project’s most prominent plot, a former lumberyard site.It turns the plot into a diverse urban block that will act as a gateway to the new neighbourhood. In addition, CEBRA has designed the entire district’s landscape and contributed to the master plan, as well as the new district plans for the area.
CEBRA’s part of the site consists of a perimeter block structure with a variety of functions and programs: a flexible multi-tenant office building, different dwelling types and sizes, including 4,000 m² social housing, and a day-care centre. By opening and “flipping” its south-eastern corner, the block structure appears as four wings with individual identities, which create a diverse neighbourhood.
Towards the ring road, the office building forms a narrow, terraced wing that shields against traffic noise, punctuated by two distinctive “keyhole” openings that visually and physically accentuate access points along the elongated facade. Whereas the northern wing is designed to contain the day care centre and apartments, the eastern wing comprises social housing and assimilates the sloping terrain by stepping down towards the stream to the south, creating a more intimate scale. Here, the southern wing of linked townhouses, each with an individual front yard, completes the block.
Recycling and DGNB certification
To minimise carbon emissions, the development consistently focused on incorporating recycled building materials from the existing buildings on the site and other sources, e.g., production by-products. The strategy includes a DGNB Gold certification, visible SuDS-based drainage systems, and a consistent focus on incorporating recycled building materials from the industrial buildings that previously occupied the site.
A consistent palette of recycled materials, especially wood, creates coherence and recognisable feature elements across the four wings. All four building wings include one or more wooden features, which refer to the site’s history. For instance, the wood trusses from the lumberyard’s warehouses are reused in the roof structures of the residential buildings, whereas the cladding of the large “keyhole” openings in the office building facades is clad with repurposed wood. The individual buildings appear as easily readable units, while the overall neighbourhood forms a diverse collage, where coherence is created by visible material recycling.
