horsens state penitentiar - town planning

With their proposal the office wanted to create a new and attractive housing area with great respect for the area's special topography and the old prison as a distinctive focus point for Horsens. To arrive from the town to the former state penitentiary, also called "the castle", can almost be likened to arriving at a medieval town's forfifications on top of a hill.The prison buildings appear imposing and the enormous wall that surrounds the scheme moves rhythmically, following the rolling topography across the vast green surface.

The proposal aimed at designing a scheme that was adapted to the surrounding building structure, without losing it's own identity or blurring the "castle's" architectural dominance. It was the office's desire to ensure that the new building and the prison would promote each other in their great diversity and therefore they proposed a dense, low scheme in two stories - in a few cases, three - where the buildings almost crawl up the hill toward the wall and the "castle" as the ultimately highest point, from where one can look out over the magnificent landscape. The proposal is based on a labyrinthine urban structure, where the traffic and the green hierarchy mix and flow together similar to a southern European mountain village, and where it should be an exiting experience to move through the scheme.