ADEPTs recently completed Cubic Houses in Copenhagen, DK shows a playful residential complex that breaks down the scale of a large building volume while offering a generous variation to the in-progress development of a new neighbourhood.

The design of the Cubic Houses aims to balance the client’s wish for a large amount of square meters with the envisioned character of urban life in the new development neigbourhood. The result is a residential complex that breaks down the building volume into several individual ‘cubes’ - stacked and shifted on top of each other.

The configuration of cubes reflects the rhythm of a human scale and works against long stretches of street with no variation or human activity. The design adapts to the overall urban scale of the neighbourhood, yet contributes to a varied and lively small-scale atmosphere along the central canal.

In its basic concept, Cubic Houses is a regular building slap with spacious and simple apartment layouts. Maintaining the vertical stairways, the eight brick cubes shift in relation to each other, both at the ground floor and higher up. The shiftingof volumes breaks eventual turbulence and adapts the building to local microclimatic conditions.