Danish firm Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects has won a competition to design former industrial beer brewery site of Riga in Latvia, the redevelopment of the historic Kimmel Quarter forms an 11,500-square-metre area that assumes nearly an entire city block in Riga's Central District.

Riga, the Baltic states' largest city, will see the mostly abandoned buildings of its historic Kimmel Quarter transformed into a thriving commercial development by preserving the city's historic features that can easily be read with their arches and brick facades.

View from common area 

Beating top architecture offices, including Henning Larsen Architects and Zaha Hadid Architects, SHL Architects was one of eleven participants in an invited competition.

"Kimmel Quarter is the former home of Brewery Kimmel, a 19th century beer brewery that in its wake left an industrial complex filled with buildings that, while now mostly abandoned, are rich with history. The project called for a design that realizes the vision of a vibrant new city block with deep historic roots," said SHL Architects. 

The firm's winning proposal aimed to revive the brewery site by transforming it into an office building and hotel with public facilities on the ground floor that will bring new life to the area such as a public gym, child care centre, café, spa, food court and convenience store. The redevelopment plans will include beautiful, inviting courtyards and plazas that connect old and new, which will create a strong urban expression with a timeless, classic appearance that is also uniquely contemporary.

View from an office terrace

"We wanted to create a new composition of building volumes as pragmatic and straight forward as the old industrial complex with a dynamic façade that pushes back and forth and up and down," said Rasmus Kierkegaard, Associate Partner at Schmidt Hammer Lassen. 

"The resulting architecture is distinctly modern, but in a rewarding dialogue with the old restored buildings. We have designed a new Kimmel Quarter in which history and the future are bound by timeless architecture."

SHL Architects' concept centres on a 30,000-square-metre office building that is open and inviting with direct access to indoor and outdoor public areas with urban qualities and atmosphere. The existing buildings at Kimmel Quarter will remain as unaltered as possible, enhancing the charm and authentic character of Riga's historical fabric. The new office building's ground floor is inspired by the arches of the brewery, and with the use of recycled bricks from the site, its material is traced back to history.

View from a patio

Outdoor spaces such as terraces and roof gardens allow access to the outdoors from all levels and bring users of the building closer to nature. In addition, the new design turns the Brewery Kimmel's former industrial backyard into a vibrant plaza revitalized with a new surface made of more recycled bricks, lush landscaping, brick and timber benches, and mirroring water elements fed with water from the roofs.

"The plaza is one of the primary elements that will bring new life back to Kimmel Quarter," said Geerte Baars, architect at Schmidt Hammer Lassen. 

"It will be a place to enjoy a meal or a cup of coffee; an informal breakout space; a place to meet, to exchange ideas and to have a good time."

Kimmel Quarter Riga Flow

Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects' proposal will also be following comprehensive sustainable strategies throughout the building, specifically by applying on the building's facade orientation and materials to balance between indoor and outdoor climate. 

"Riga is a city with ambitions of transitioning into a sustainable city with long and short-term strategies that start with the first step of reaching the European Union's 2020 climate & energy package goals. Kimmel Quarter will become a leader in applying these measures from day one," said the firm.

Kimmel Quarter Riga - section diagram

The new office building's rectangular grid facades are designed to allow maximum daylight deep into the building and secure great views to the surrounding city, while making the interior life of the building visible from outside. In order to avoid overheating and to reduce the need for cooling the exterior, lamellas provide shading from a substantial amount of direct sunlight. 

In addition, the amount of glass in each panel is adjusted according to the orientation of the facade, so the north side is almost fully open and the south side more closed.

Kimmel Quarter Riga - sketch 1

Kimmel Quarter Riga - sketch 2

Moreover, having an unflinching sustainability strategy with BREEAM as the driving force, Kimmel Quarter has the potential to become an example for future development of the city of Riga.

Site plan

Floor plan

North-east elevation

North-west elevation

South-east elevation

South-west elevation

Section AA

Section BB

Section CC

Section DD

Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects, now part of global architecture and design firm Perkins+Will, is one of Scandinavia's most recognized and award-winning architectural practices. The studio is currently working on a new Sports and Culture campus in Aarhus, as well as a new campus complex for the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute in Oslo, Norway.

The studio's splitted-volume CaoHeJing Guigu Creative Headquarters is also under construction in Shanghai. 

The company was founded in Aarhus, Denmark in 1986 by Morten Schmidt, Bjarne Hammer, and John F. Lassen, and is led today by all three founding partners along with senior partners Kim Holst Jensen and Kristian Lars Ahlmark and partners Rong Lu and Chris Hardie. The studio has offices in Denmark and Shanghai. 

Project facts

Client: Modern City

Architect/ Landscape Architect: Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects

Building Area
Renovated buildings: 6,500 m2
New office building: 30,500 m2
Basement parking garage: 11,000 m2

Competition: 2018, Winning proposal in an open competition

Status: Ongoing

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