the Vision of BispeBjerg Bakke - Realdania Byg

Craft and
Industry Meet
“If you can’t make a model of it,
don’t try and build it”
Bjørn Nørgaard
This was Bjørn Nørgaard’s mantra, and it
was constantly recited in the creation of
Bispebjerg Bakke. Today, one of the plaster
of Paris models of Bispebjerg Bakke
adorns the Realea offices – a mute witness
to a construction process which was atypical
from the start. The planning phase
of Bispebjerg Bakke revealed exponents
of two specific visions: on the one hand,
the project owner, Realdania/Realea, envisaged
an opportunity to combine art
and architecture; on the other hand, the
Copenhagen Association of Crafts grasped
at the chance to revive craftsmanship
as the central element in a construction
project. Bjørn Nørgaard nurtured these
same visions, but as the planning phase
proceeded, it became increasingly clear
that his dream of erecting a building from
the bottom up without prefabricated elements
and without involving building contractors
was not realistic. As Klaus Bonde
Larsen puts it: “We ran a pre-qualification
to find the right craftsmen for the job. We
got them all together for a seminar at
the Molskroen Conference Centre, where
Bjørn Nørgaard described the building in
some detail. All those present made an
agreement, promising each other that
this project would be the main focus of
their attention. All agreed to support each
other to prove that it could actually be
done. In the old days, the master carpenter
designed the roof, for example, but in
this case all crafts were to be involved in
one common design project for the whole
building. Everything went smoothly
until we reached the pricing stage, and
then it all fell completely apart. Everyone
was piling on the overheads to such an
extent that the project would become unfeasible.
It was getting more and more
NCC
Torben Sørensen is Senior Project Manager at NCC, which is one of the largest building
development and contractor concerns in Denmark, with about 4,000 employees. In
Denmark, NCC was formed in the period 1996-99 by merging the building contractor
companies of Rasmussen & Schiøtz, Armton and Superfos Construction, as well as the
asphalt company, Phønix.
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