The Danish Immigration Service

A design steeped in democratic consciousness

Location

Næstved, Denmark

Developer

The Danish Building and Property Agency

Size

9,900 m2

Acquisition

Winning proposal in public private partnership competition in 2017

Status

Completed in 2020

Architect

AART

Engineer

Arne Elkjær

Contractor

A. Enggaard

The new head office of the Danish Immigration Service is rounded by a deep democratic consciousness. It has been designed to strengthen cooperation among the agency’s employees and to welcome visitors to the citizen service centre with great dignity, while also ensuring that it seamlessly integrates into the city centre of Næstved.

Opens across floors and functions

The office landscape stretches across five storeys with 360 degree views of the city. What makes the office landscape special is how it is separated into three connected atrium structures with a high degree of openness across functions and storeys, creating a bright and vibrant work environment. A work environment with a fine balance between knowledge sharing and immersion in one’s work, where the workplaces are spread along the facade on each floor while the meeting rooms, flex rooms, cafés and separation spaces are located by the atriums.

A dignified experience for visitors

While the office landscape has been designed to share knowledge and immersion in one’s work, the citizen service centre on the ground floor has been designed to provide a dignified experience for visitors. The layout features intuitive wayfinding, giving room for discretion and respect for the visitors’ life circumstances. Dignity is also expressed in a more classic, architectural way, with the ground floor consisting of honest, warm materials - both inside and outside.

Striking a balance between the human and the monumental

On the large scale, the domicile has been downscaled to three atrium structures that shift among themselves and collectively possessing a sculptural quality that strikes a fine balance between the human and the monumental - beautiful, solid and stringent - and where the architecture expresses the authority of the Danish Immigration Service in a subtly understated manner.