JDS Architects

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Julien de Smedt

Julien de Smedt – © Nikolaj Moeller

Published projects

	Euralille Youth Centre Over the past twenty years Lille has become a European hub; a destination for business and congress, a great place to study and live and also a tourist...
	Birkegade Rooftop Penthouses Optimization and utilization of the city roof: Elmegade district is probably one of the most densely populated areas of inner Nørrebro, CPH. Especially the...
	Park Tower From towers in the park, to towers and no park, to parks in towers. Modern urbanity suggested we live in large scale buildings surrounded by parks. The 20th...
	Rue de la Loi - United in Diversity Brussels: Brussels is a city of contradictions, chaos and utter diversity… it is equally cherished and hated for its capacity at formalizing problems and not...
	Mountain Dwellings How do you combine the splendors of the suburban backyard with the social intensity of urban density? The Mountain Dwellings are located in Ørestad, a new...
	Zoorea - Zoological Garden Empowering the Infrastructural Green Belt: What can we do in an isolated place with little infrastructure, few inhabitants, and almost no visitors? We see the...
	VM Mouses - 230 Dwellings in Ørestad The manipulated perimeter block is clearly defined in its four corners but opened internally and along the sides. The vis-a-vis with the neighbour is...
	Tour & Taxis The new Tour & Taxis masterplan aims to create a modern, vibrant quarter on the outskirts of Brussels Centre. The project site contains a number of aspects and...
	Taiwan Twirl House In the history of architecture there are few moments when a project as ambitious as this have occurred, gathering the worlds leading architects to make...
	Sjakket Community Building A base camp for immigrant youths, JDS designed this facility utilizing an unoccupied, former factory building that had been previously infested with mold. The...
	Rimini Seascape How to massage a city with a vibrant history of pop culture into a contemporary city of high culture and wellness? How to communicate within the settings of an...
	Taipei Pop Music Center The Taipei Pop Music Center will play an acupunctural role in making an urban balance between the east and west of Taipei City. Furthermore, the importance of...
	Ordos 100 - Big Brother House A project with little restrictions leads to many questions: Should a new residential development composed of 100 houses, each 1000 square meters and designed...
	Olympia Kwartier As an optimistic dream born out of the water surrounding Amsterdam, Almere remains one of the live laboratory of contemporary architecture, an undisputed set...
	Maritime Youth House The concept of the project is that instead of using 1/4 of the project's budget, originally allocated by the client to cleaning the polluted soil of the site,...
	Mondri and Elano Hotel How do we make a hotel of genuine experiences in Las Vegas, the City of Pastiche? How do we extract the identity of the Mondrian and the Delano Hotels without...
	350 Dwellings When we were asked to do a study project about typology, intensity, density and water, we quickly realized we were rather investigating topography. Groningen...
	Belgian Pavilion Shanghai The Pavilion: A Dome Made of Soft Hills: From outside the Belgian Pavilion emerges through a series of soft hills, symbolizing the landscape in the southern...
	Beirut House of Arts and Culture The Beirut house of arts and culture is a simple cube of 40 by 40 by 40 meters placed on a hill site in down town Beirut. The site is excavated to permit to...
	Bergen Fish Market Bergen Fish Market has always played an important role in the centre of Bergen and in the hearts of the Bergen people. Both locals and tourists look at the...
	Encants Market Icon: In the growing neighbourhood of Poble Nou the issue of urban identity has been handled by the creation of a few key iconic buildings, of which the Agbar...
	BE Towers The post world war rebuilding of European cities was based on principles of repetitive techniques and initiated the transition to a modernism devoid of...
	Harbour Bath in Islands Brygge Copenhagen’s harbour undertakes a transformation from an industrial and traffic junction towards being the city’s cultural and social center. The Harbour...
	REN Building People's Building; Shanghai Hotel and Conference Hall: The REN building is a proposal for a hotel, sports and conference center for the world EXPO 2010 in...
	Iceberg The Århus Harbour development provides a huge opportunity for Denmark’s second largest city to develop in a socially sustainable way by renovating its old,...
	Kalvebod Brygge Kalvebod Brygge is situated opposite the well established Copenhagen summer hang out, Islands Brygge. Kalvebod Brygge has the potential to be Islands Brygge...
	New Holmenkollen Beacon Intro: I guess nobody really knows why the Norwegians had to fly on their skies?! Maybe a shock of adrenalin was needed to heat up their frozen bodies in the...

Brief description

Founded and directed by Julien de Smedt (also co-founder of PLOT), JDS Architects currently employs some 50 people with offices in Copenhagen, Brussels, and Oslo. JDS Architects is a multi-disciplinary office that focuses on architecture and design, from large scale planning to furniture. Rich with multiple expertises, our office is fuelled by talented designers and experienced architects that jointly develop projects from early sketches to on-site supervision. All of which, regardless of scale, outlines an approach that is affirmatively social in its outcome, enthusiastic in its ambition and professional in its process. At the core of our architecture is the ability to take a fresh look at design problems through experienced eyes. Our approach aims at turning intense research and analysis of practical and theoretical issues into the driving forces of our design. By continuously developing rigorous methods of analysis and execution, JDS Architects is able to combine innovative thinking and efficient production.

JDS Architects is known a number of early competitions, many of which have now been realised, demonstrating our ability to think about architecture in new innovative ways without sacrificing practicality or buildability. JDS Architects has also obtained numerous honors and awards for our work in Europe and abroad. We have received three Mies van der Rohe award nominations for our VM House, Mountain, and Maritime Youth House projects, as well as a Golden Lion at 2004 Venice Biennale for our Stavanger Concert Hall project. Other major awards include a World Architecture Festival award for Best Housing project, an AR+D award, and the Forum Prize for best project in Scandinavia. Most recently, Julien De Smedt was awarded the Netherlands highest architectural honor, the Rotterdam Maaskant Prize.

Key projects

Birkegade - 900 m2, Penthouse Apartment and Roof Terrace, Copenhagen, Denmark, Commission, Completion 2010
Kalvebod Brygge - 8 000 m2, Waterfront Development, Copenhagen, Denmark, 1st Prize - Completion 2010
Tour & Taxis - 50 000 m2, Mixed-Use Towers, Office, Hotel and Retail, Brussels, Belgium
Ordos 100 - Big Brother’S House - 1 000 m2, Residential House, Inner Mongolia, Commission - Completion 2011
New Holmenkollen Beacon - 32 000 m2, Ski-Jump & Stadium, Oslo, Norway, 1st Prize - Completion 2011
Shenzhen - 3 800 000 m2, Urban Development With 1,111 m Tall Tower, Shenzhen, China
Rimini Waterfront - 72 000 m2, Retail, Park and Hotel, Rimini, Italy
The Iceberg - 21 600 m2, Mixed-Use Development, Aarhus, Denmark, Completion 2011
Hua Xi City Centre - 17 000 m2, Development With Retail, Gallery, Youth & Senior Centre, Auditoria, Guiyang, China
Twirl House - 511 m2, 10 Luxury Residences, Ao-Di, Taiwan
Katharinenquartier - 21 000 m2, Mixed-Use Residential and Office, Katharine Quarter in Hamburg, Germany
Dublin Docklands Harbour Bath - 5 000 m2, Public Bath in Grand Canal Basin, Dublin, Ireland
“Zig-Zag” Stavanger Towers - 20 000 m2, Residential Towers, Stavanger, Norway
Two Seasons Hotel - 8 500 m2, Hotel, Stavanger, Norway
Cheonga International City Tower - 400 m Tall Tower, Cheonga, Korea
Barcelona Encants - 34 000 m2, Public Market Space, Commercial and Parking, Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain
Albenga Marina - 120 000 m2, Marina, Commercial, Albenga, Italy
Montenegro Waterfront - 5 000 000 m2, Hotel & Residential Development, Velika Plaza, Montenegro
Wroclaw MoCA - 20 000 m2, Museum Of Contemporary Art, Wroclaw, Poland
House Of Arts and Culture - 15 000 m2, Cultural Center, Auditorium, Gallery, Library, Beirut, Libanon
Mermaid 2.0 - 100 000 m2, Mixed-Use, Hotel, Residential, Retail, Cinema, Wellness Centre
Riga Zakusala - 100 000 m2, Urban Masterplan With Commercial, Residential, Hotel and Leisure, Retail, Riga, Latvia
Cpas Low Energy Housing - 40 160 m2, 350 Dwellings, Brussels, Belgium
Sundsvall Arts Centre - 12 000 m2, Theatre & Arts Centre, Sundsvall, Sweden
Stockholm’S Garden Library - 33 000 m2, Main Library Extension, Stockholm, Sweden
Stavanger Concert Hall - 22 000 m2, Concert Hall, Stavanger, Norway
Mondri and Elano Hotel - 200 000 m2, Hotel Development, Las Vegas, United States
Mountain Dwellings - 33 000 m2, Residential and Parking, Copenhagen, Denmark, Completed 2008
Vm House - 25 000 m2, 230 Residential Units and Retail, Copenhagen, Denmark, Completed 2005
Sjakket - 2 000 m2, Youth and Culture House, Copenhagen, Denmark, Completed 2007
The Battery - 120 000 m2, Mixed-Use Urban Plan, Copenhagen, Denmark
Too Perfect Rebranding Denmark - Energy Research with Bruce Mau Design for Danish Centre for Architecture
Maritime Youth House - 1 600 m2, Youth House and Boat House, Copenhagen, Denmark, Completed 2004
Helsingør Psychiatric Hospital - 6 000 m2, Hospital Extension, Helsingør, Denmark, Completed 2006
Copenhagen Harbour Bath - 2 500 m2, Harbour Bath, Copenhagen, Denmark, Completed 2003

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