Chairman of the Local Renters Organization John Steen Johansen
Social housing is a good thing, intended to provide affordable housing for ordinary people. On rare occasions, however, social housing also includes buildings of significant architectural and innovative value, as is the case with the iconic tower blocks at Bellahøj — the first high-rise buildings of their kind in Denmark. Unfortunately, as the landlord, SAB does not have the financial capacity to undertake a renovation and preservation project. Instead, it is pursuing plans to demolish all ten tower blocks in the development and construct new ones, claiming that this would be more cost-effective.
In its formal objection to the demolition of the Bellahøj buildings, dated June 22, 2026, the Academic Council (Akademiraadet) stated that “it finds the proposal to demolish a substantial part of this development problematic. Even if the buildings were to be reconstructed in a new form, demolition would entail a significant loss of authenticity and cultural-historical value. The architectural value of the Bellahøj buildings lies not only in their form but also in their materiality and construction. Consequently, if the buildings were to disappear, a significant part of our architectural and cultural heritage would be lost.”
There is therefore, quite literally, “cultural heritage at stake,” but there is also a profound human cost, as hundreds of families stand to lose the homes they have lived in for many years and are being forced to move.
As for the technical debate over whether the buildings are genuinely at risk of collapse, stripping the apartments and buildings down to their structural shells would provide an obvious opportunity to examine the structures and the strength of the concrete casting — to use the technical term — between the prefabricated facade elements. If this concrete was cast in the manner described in one of the technical reviewers’ reports, it would indicate that the facade elements are bonded together with considerable strength and would not easily become detached, even in very strong winds or storms.
Several articles have already been written on this subject, and a new article in English by Rune Brincker will be published shortly.
Rune Brincker says the following
I publish the paper to the right for two reasons. I want to show how simple it is to use the theory of elasticity on a building and combine it with the gravity load to make an estimate of the maximum wind load on the building. And then of course compare the maximum wind load with the actual wind load in order to perform an estimate of the safety.
As it appears in the paper, that following this approach we come to the conclusion that we have lots of safety for the Bellahøj SAB II buildings. Nearly as much as an old Italian tower that has been standing there for the last nearly 700 years.
However, we have two important assumptions for using the elasticity theory:
1.
That the pre-fabricated facade element used in the SAB II Bellahøj buildings has been so well connected to the rest of the building that they are a part of the monolithic structure (pointed out by Consulting Engineer Jørgen Nielsen in his review from 2021)
2.
That it is legal to use the elasticity theory on the old building even though current standards assume other approaches to safety than elasticity and gravity that would require a lot of reinforcement (suggested by the Consulting Engineer Jens Peter Madsen in his review from 2023)
One of the conclusions in this paper is that the owners and municipal politicians have to investigate these two assumptions carefully before they decide to tear the buildings down.