SLETH is transforming the former hospital ward building S26 in Herning into PLUS1 — a new platform and catalyst for innovators, creatives, and curious minds. Situated on the central square of Herning+, the municipality’s ambitious new district filled with housing and public spaces, the 8,000 m² building is being reimagined into a vibrant professional community where education, business, and culture intersect.
The transformation builds on the logic of the original hospital structure. Patient rooms become offices for entrepreneurs, corridors are turned into event spaces, and the former administration wing is reworked into a public auditorium. Where the building once served healing, it will now foster creation, exchange, and innovation.
Originally constructed in 1966–1967, the ward building reflects the architectural doctrine for hospital buildings of the time: equal access for all, expressed through modular, rational, and efficient modernist design. Its robust and repetitive concrete structure offers a clear spatial rhythm and is continued in our transformation, while introducing new interventions.
The most significant architectural gesture is to open up the structure. Sections of the original facade are peeled back to invite the outside in. The central atrium is expanded, allowing more light, air, and connection to flow through the building. New large-scale spaces contrast the original intimate rooms, creating a dynamic spatial experience.
Throughout the transformation, SLETH has worked with four essential values for preserving the buildings architectural heritage. The original structure is preserved, maintaining the characteristic layout of rooms and corridors that tell the story of the building’s former life as a hospital. The facade’s distinct division between base and top — a hallmark of Danish ward architecture, is reinforced and reinterpreted to strengthen the building’s visual identity. Materiality plays a central role, with continued use of concrete and aluminium that echo the building’s 1960s modernist origins. And finally, the transformation embraces the cultural traces embedded in the building: raw concrete, painted walls, solid doors, and furnishings in wood, metal, and textiles are all preserved or reused, forming a material bank for the ongoing transformation.
Across all five levels, the building is transformed with its constructive logic. The basement is retained largely as existing. The ground floor is reconfigured with open public spaces and direct contact with the surrounding city. The first and second floors offer flexible offices and meeting rooms within the former patient rooms, while selected areas become event and gathering spaces. On the rooftop, a new garden is situated, working as a shared space for all users and a potential site for artist residencies or atelier dwellings.
Through SLETHs transformation PLUS1 becomes a socially, digitally, culturally, and economically vibrant environment, grounded in the values of 1960s modernist architecture and the functionalist ideals of the original buildings.
