Cortex Park, designed by Danish architecture office ADEPT, is a building that hosts diverse programmes and is located in Odense, Denmark.

Despite being a young office, ADEPT has developed other complex housing buildings in Copenhagen and Aarhus and public infrastructures such as the Vestre Fjordpark in Aalborg.

The project brings together four educational and innovation programs under one roof.

Connecting students, researchers and staff with shared sports facilities and urban character.

According to the architects, the result is a building designed for the challenge of both mind and body. Placing the sports facilities as a 'roof', they create an experience of sharing, as well as a new hybrid between knowledge and movement.

And to establish a close relation between the building and its surroundings

Spanning between the four houses

The four individual houses are separate volumes but connected in several ways: the urban space floating into the building at the entrance level, the criss-crossing stairs spanning the triple-height space atrium and the common area at the top floor.

The sports facilities at the top floor hovers over the four heavy houses and endows the building with a literally enlightening identity.

When darkness falls, it lights up to tell the story of an active environment for education, research and movement - around the clock.

A large skylight draws daylight down on the common square where a number of social and administrative functions are located.

They work as center points in the central meeting space of the building

Standing on the square looking up, the criss-crossing stairs are experienced as an additional spatial layer in the building.

Each of the individual volumes in the building have their own facade expression in graphic concrete, contrasting the lightness of the stairs.