The community center "Kannikegarden" with facades of Cover clinker panels, a unique product of Petersen Tegl (Denmark), harmoniously fits into the development of the oldest Danish city from the existing ones - Ribe.
The Kannikegarden center, designed by Lundgaard & Tranberg (Denmark), is located in the most important part of Ribe, very close to the famous Cathedral of Our Lady. The cathedral became his customer: the building housed his parish council. The space for one hundred spectators can also host events for the townspeople - concerts, lectures and film screenings. But the most interesting room is the glazed hall below, where you can see the remains of buildings that stood on this site 1000 years ago. This foundation of the refectory of the monastery of canons, that is, those included in the official list - "canon" of clergy - is the best preserved of the oldest brick structures in Denmark: it was discovered in 2012 and immediately awarded the status of a monument. This reminder of the Middle Ages, when brick was still an innovation in northern Europe, echoes the modern material chosen for the facades and roof of the building - Petersen Tegl Cover clinker panels. Cover panels echo their sister monument of the past and thus encompass the entire history of Danish brick, from its origins to the present day.
Equally important, Cover is in harmony with the surrounding area, including the brick parts of the cathedral and the surrounding houses. It is with these dwellings that the Kannikegarden is associated with its form. The slightly curved volume with a gable roof deliberately resembles the neighboring houses, slightly rickety from time to time. Just like them, he takes into account the needs of his “neighbors”: the curvature allows him not to obscure the sunlight to the buildings nearby.
Above the first glazed floor, the community center is completely sheathed with clinker panels overlapping like scales. Lundgaard & Tranberg project manager Erik Frannsen says: "Bricks are alchemy." The architects, together with Petersen Tegl, have developed a special Cover C48 grading - a larger format to make it easier to sheathe the entire building (630 x 350 mm). Tones suitable for the center of Ribet were also selected individually, using mock-ups of parts of the facade on a 1: 1 scale on the construction site. The desired shades of red were obtained by adjusting the oxygen supply during firing.
Each Cover panel is unique, with scorch marks and other traces of the manufacturing process - a tradition of medieval handcrafted bricks fired in a charcoal kiln, replicated at Petersen Tegl. Interestingly, the joints between the edges on the Kannikegarden volume connect the Cover panels in a zigzag pattern, reminiscent of the patterned masonry of medieval houses in the neighborhood: it was for these complex curved seams that the larger size of the panels was chosen. For the retaining walls, bricks were also used from Petersen Tegl - D-format, graded D48.
The modern origin of the community center is betrayed by its radical tectonics: the first, seemingly weightless, glass tier supports the almost monolithic volume of the two upper floors. The transition from glass to masonry in Cover underlines the gutter hidden behind a row of clinker panels on steel brackets: as a result, it looks like a traditional cornice.
Taking into account the historical environment, the architects tried to reproduce the organic, "raw" characteristic of such an environment. So, the clinker panels on the facade are mounted with a centimeter tolerance (in medieval buildings it can reach several inches). By the same principle, the concrete supports of the first tier received traces of "rough" formwork, for which purpose wedges were even specially driven into it (the supporting structure of the upper floors was made of steel). Another "primordial" material is loosely fixed oak planks, which serve to protect the ground floor from the sun and create human-scale openings there: the ruins are intended to be viewed from the outside, and you can get inside only on a special excursion. The floors of this exhibition hall are sheathed with the same boards.
The windows of the upper two floors - different but always small in size - are asymmetrically positioned. Behind them are hidden a spiral staircase made of oak and rooms painted in dark red, ocher, white tones. This color is inspired by the medieval frescoes in the interior of the cathedral. Behind "Kannikegarden" there is a garden open to all comers.
"Kannikegarden" can be translated from Danish as "canon court": the new building is named after a medieval monastery that stood on this site 1000 years ago. Likewise, the modern material used there, the Petersen Tegl Cover clinker panels, pays homage to the medieval brick buildings of the center of Ribe and this monastery.
