Copenhagen is adding a new destination to its evolving waterfront. Set on Paper Island, the Water Culture House is designed as a place where architecture, recreation, and the harbor come together to create an experience centered on one of the city’s defining elements: water.
Scheduled to open in fall 2026, the nearly 54,000-square-foot cultural center will offer a mix of indoor and outdoor water activities, training and meeting facilities, and spaces designed for the public to gather. An outdoor heated pool sits between the building’s distinctive roof forms, while a harbor bath will provide swimming opportunities for children and adults.
Designed by Kengo Kuma & Associates in collaboration with Vilhelm Lauritzen Architects, the project takes a distinctly landscape-driven approach to architecture. Rather than treating the building as an isolated object, the designers envisioned the center as an experience in which landscape, art, architecture, and water are interconnected.
Kengo Kuma & Associates, led by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, is known for an approach that emphasizes material, nature, and a close relationship between buildings and their surroundings. For the Water Culture House, the firm’s design responds directly to Copenhagen’s harbor environment.
Vilhelm Lauritzen Architects, a Danish practice with a long history in architecture and design, serves as the project’s executive architect, bringing local expertise to the collaboration.
The building’s sculptural form is composed of a series of pyramids and cone-shaped volumes. These create a distinctive roofline while also shaping the pools and spaces below. An outdoor pool and hot bath will sit among the architectural forms, creating the feeling of swimming through a landscape of hills and valleys.
One of the project’s defining ideas is the relationship between the city and the harbor. Terraced landscaping connects the indoor spaces with the outdoors and extends toward the water, creating a continuous visual connection between the building and its surroundings.
Brick plays an equally important role. Chosen as a reference to Danish architectural tradition, the material gives the building a warm, tactile exterior while allowing light and shadow to filter through its patterned outer side. After dark, the building is designed to glow against the water.
Ultimately, the Water Culture House is intended to be more than a new cultural facility. It is a place designed around the experience of water’s movement, reflections, light, warmth, and ever-changing nature.
As Copenhagen continues to embrace its waterfront, the new center offers a fitting addition: an architectural destination where the boundary between city and harbor becomes beautifully blurred.
