Kengo Kuma’s KAI Water Culture House Is Built From Roughly 300,000 Handmade Bricks
The textured towers play against a glazed lower level, where wide windows pull harbour views and daylight inside.
Summary
Kengo Kuma & Associates unveils Copenhagen's 5,800-square-meter KAI Water Culture House.
The complex features handmade brick towers above a glazed base.
Opening December 5, it offers ten pools and wellness facilities.
Kengo Kuma & Associates, in collaboration with Cornelius Vöge Atelier for Architecture and Vilhelm Lauritzen Architects, has announced the upcoming opening of the KAI Water Culture House in Copenhagen, Denmark. Set to officially open to the public on December 5, 2026, the expansive 5,800-square-meter facility is situated prominently on Papirøen (Paper Island).
Conceived as a major public waterfront destination, the monumental complex seamlessly combines ten distinct indoor and outdoor pools, comprehensive wellness facilities and versatile cultural spaces to establish a dynamic new focal point for recreation and community gathering within the city’s rapidly transforming harbor. The project’s roots stretch back nearly a decade: in 2015, the City of Copenhagen asked residents to pitch ideas for a cultural and leisure venue on the island, drawing 160 submissions, many of which imagined a swimming facility that doubled as a place for relaxation and community.
Architecturally, the building reads as a cluster of five brick towers rising from a transparent, glazed base. Each tower takes its form from the pool positioned beneath it, giving every interior its own character while producing an irregular, stepped roofline across the skyline. Around 300,000 handmade bricks went into the towers, a tactile counterpoint to the lighter glass level below, where large windows open up harbour views and draw daylight deep inside. The standout moment sits between those towers: the Valley Pool, an outdoor basin on the first floor that lets swimmers do laps beneath an open sky, joined on the same level by an outdoor onsen-style pool looking out across the harbour.
Inside, the program is organized by level and purpose. The ground floor houses a 25-metre fitness pool, a teaching pool and three play pools for children, while the upper level adds a therapy pool, a hot pool, a cold plunge and the two open-air pools. Rounding out the wellness offer are three saunas, a steam bath and a heated stone. Developed by the Paper Island Water Culture House Foundation together with the City of Copenhagen and backed by the Nordea Foundation, KAI is part of a broader push to turn the city’s harbour into a space for public recreation and culture.
The building opens on December 5, 2026, with dedicated swimming and dipping zones along a timber boardwalk, facing the Royal Danish Playhouse and Opera Park, slated to follow in early 2027.
