The Wave by Henning Larsen Architects Wins Civic Trust Award

The distinctive residential building the Wave in Vejle, Denmark, designed by Copenhagen-based Henning Larsen Architects, has been selected as winner of the prestigious Civic Trust Award. The Awards were presented at an official ceremony in People’s History Museum on March 4 in Manchester.

The Civic Trust Awards are given to projects that have made a positive civic contribution – socially, culturally or economically. The Awards scheme was established in Britain in 1959 with the purpose of recognising excellent performances in the fields of architecture, design, planning, landscape architecture and public art.

As one of the oldest European awards scheme in the built environment, Civic Trust has recognised Europe’s leading artists and architects with awards during the last 51 years. For the first time, this year’s list of win-ners includes a Danish architecture company.

With its five characteristic wave crests, the Wave in Vejle appears as a sculptural icon both respecting and challenging its location by the bay.

”The Wave demonstrates how Danish architects are responding to global trends without sacrificing the practicality or well-crafted detailing that have long been a signature of the Danes”, the British reviewer Michael Webb wrote in the architecture magazine Mark in February 2011.

Henning Larsen Architects won the project in an invited competition in 2005 with the real estate company Bertel Nielsen as the client. Until now, two of the award-winning waves have been completed while the last three are expected to rise in the nearest future.

Last year, the Wave in Vejle won an international LEAF Award. In 2009, the building was selected as the residential building of the year by the Danish trade magazine Byggeri and, in 2010, it won the local Vejle award.

See more photographs by Thomas Mølvig in the image gallery below.