Kengo Kuma's 300,000-Brick Bathhouse Opens in Copenhagen in December

Some 300,000 handmade bricks now rise over Copenhagen's harbour in five staggered pyramids, and on 5 December the public can finally walk through them. That's the opening date for the Kai Water Culture House by Kengo Kuma & Associates, a 5,800-square-metre aquatic centre on the artificial island of Christiansholm, known locally as Papirøen, or Paper Island.

The Tokyo-based firm didn't work alone. It teamed up with three Danish practices — Cornelius Vöge, Søren Jensen and Vilhelm Lauritzen Architects — to deliver a facility that packs ten indoor and outdoor pools, wellness areas and cultural spaces onto the waterfront.

"The Water Culture House is a significant new landmark on Copenhagen's waterfront," said Yuki Ikeguchi, lead architect at Kengo Kuma & Associates. "It is part of the story of the city and the harbour's transformation from an industrial to a cultural harbour."

New photographs released ahead of the opening show how the building sits together. Five tapered brick volumes perch on a glazed base, with a wooden pier reaching out to give visitors direct access to the sea.

What does 300,000 bricks actually look like?

The answer is texture, and a lot of it. Vilhelm Lauritzen Architects explains the effect plainly: "The bricks are arranged in a staggered, stepped pattern, giving the building its distinctive texture and sculptural character."

Light matters here too. Triangular and square openings puncture the tapered volumes, filtering dappled light into the indoor pools.

"A total of 403 windows of varying sizes act as viewing apertures, framing the surroundings and creating captivating experiences of natural light as it shifts throughout the day," the Danish firm added.

Towers, pools and a harbour-side onsen

Each of the five volumes does a specific job. The tallest, dubbed the Culture Tower, holds the centre's cultural programme, including a third-floor events space. The other four towers each contain lofty indoor pools.

Between them, on the first floor, sits an outdoor pool framed by the building's sloped facades. Beside it, an open-air Onsen — a Japanese-style hot spring — looks out over the harbour, a nod to the project's Japanese lead architect.

"As the cultural cornerstone of Papirøen, the house is a gathering place with water and community as its focal point, embraced by a public harbour bath," Ikeguchi said.

The building is one piece of a bigger transformation. Danish studio COBE leads the wider redevelopment of Paper Island, which has already produced a 20,000-square-metre apartment complex informed by the area's 300-year-old warehouses.

Not everything arrives at once. The Kai Water Culture House opens on 5 December, but its wooden pier won't be finished until early next year — so winter swimmers get the pools first, and the full waterfront promenade a little later.