FLUID SPACE an experiential garden

This project is a permanent transformation of the inactive water tower in Roskilde, reimagining the former water tank as an experiential garden, and the former restaurant on top as a beacon for the local area as a public pavilion and viewpoint overlooking roskilde.

The project focuses on magnifying the rare location and experience that is found within the water tank and creating a calm public space on top to connect, reflect and just be.

This project explores the spaces within and on top of the vacant industrial water tower and its surrounding site, transforming a place of former utility into one of sensory and spatial experience. The project proposes an experiential garden that highlights and amplifies the phenomena already present on site, light, shadow, sound, moisture, and seasonal change. Allowing visitors to engage deeply with the atmosphere of the structure creating a place for solitude.

The transformation strategy is grounded in four main themes:

Inhabiting the Uninhabited: By opening up the water tower to human presence, the project reimagines a space once defined by inaccessibility. New paths, thresholds, and spatial interventions invite exploration and pause.

Spatial Qualities: Rather than imposing a new identity on the site, the design process began by studying its inherent architectural and material character. Elements such as scale, proportion, texture, and acoustics guided the placement and form of interventions.

Human Experience: Central to the project is the idea of experiential architecture. How the body moves, senses, and perceives the space was prioritized. Through framing views, filtering light, capturing sound, and creating moments of stillness and transition.

Flexibility and Seasonality: The design responds to the changing climate and seasonal rhythms of the site. The tank in uninsulated and will reflect the weather from the outside.  Throughout the year the light and seasons will change the space through the light that is framing the space through the occulus's proposed in the ceiling and in the facade. when it rains the water will be collected in the pond on top of the building and be drip down to the inner tank creating a sensoric acoustic experience connecting the inside and outside of the tank.

Rather than prescribing a fixed function, the building itself becomes a programmatic generator. The architecture reveals and accommodates the activities it inspires, allowing users to reinterpret its use over time. This approach challenges conventional programming by letting the building dictate the program and not the other way around.

The project seeks to demonstrate how former industrial structures can serve as frameworks for new kinds of inhabitation that prioritize atmosphere, memory, and connection to place.