Café Garden at Copenhagen Business School

Lokation: Frederiksberg, Denmark
Client: Copenhagen Business School
Team: Stig L. Andersson, Hanne Bruun Møller, Christian Restorff Liliegreen
Design phase: 2000-2001
Construction: 2001
Area: 450 m2

Directly adjacent to the CBS student café, Café neXus, on Solbjerg Square is the south facing café garden enclosed by tall facades on three sides.

On the garden’s large timber deck the students can relax with a cup of coffee between lectures or enjoy a beer on Friday afternoon s. Around the timber deck there is a wide border of grey-green Øland stone of the same type and colour as the indoor flooring. The garden is furnished with light chairs and tables of aluminium, making it possible to rearrange the garden according to need.

Locust trees with light, airy crowns give a green and luxuriant touch to the garden without shading too much. The trees are placed in five planting containers with seating edges of fibre-concrete.

At night the café garden is illuminated with up-lights that are placed in the planting beds. The light is directed into the crowns of the trees, where it is reflected by the branches and spreads down into the café garden. A low beech hedge to the south screens the garden.

SLA is in the process of designing another café garden on the corresponding area to the east. The new café garden will be a variation on the theme of the first garden.

The planting containers will be the same, while the spatial configuration and planting will be different. The surfacing here will also be of Øland stone, but the colour will be reddish insteadof grey-green.