progress on major projects along the inner harbour in Copenhagen

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Amager Bakke

The incinerator plant designed by the Bjarke Ingels Group is still not up to its final height of 90 metres but much of the framework is in place. It is at least possible now to see just how high and how steep the ski slope will be on this man-made mountain.

 

Papirøen - Paper Island 

It has just been announced that the architectural company COBE has won the competition to produce the master plan for Paper Island, an important area on the south side of the harbour, opposite the National Theatre, that was originally part of the naval dockyards and then warehousing where Danish newspapers stored paper for their printers, hence the popular name for the island, and more recently those warehouses have been the venue for a very successful food hall, Copenhagen Street Food, and the science centre for children, Experimentarium, along with covered car parking, offices, studios and display space for designers including Henrik Vibskov, &Tradition and the offices of COBE themselves.

Initial proposals for the island include a large central square, a swimming pool, apartments, a gallery with the island ringed by a public boardwalk or promenade.

illustrations of the proposed development from COBE and Luxigon 

 

 

Kroyers Plads

Some of the apartments in the south block at Kroyers Plads are now occupied and the other blocks are being fitted out. Designed by Vilhelm Lautitzen and COBE the overall design appears to be a reinterpretation of the historic warehouses along the harbour.

A large, 18th-century, light-coloured brick warehouse to the east includes the restaurant NOMA although they are about to move further back into Christianshavn. 

Originally to have been completed in 2013, but delayed by technical problems, the new cycle and foot bridge - Inderhavnsbroen - appears ostensibly to be finished but is not yet open - or rather it is permanently open and not opening and closing. Extensive new areas of landscaping are being completed on the quays on both sides. This is the first ‘retractable’ bridge in Europe … rather than swinging or lifting out of the way, the two sides will slide apart to let taller shipping through. 

 

Bryghusprojektet 

Bryghusprojektet by Rem Koolhaas bridges a main road and one function is to link the city and the quayside. To be faced with large areas of green and clear glass, when completed it will provide exhibition and conference spaces for the Danish Architecture Centre, now in a warehouse on the other side of the harbour and there will also be shops, a restaurant and apartments in the building.


It might not look like it but all the photographs were taken on the same afternoon this week on a stroll down the harbour … in the late afternoon the cloud began to break up and by the time I got down to Islands Brygge there was at least some blue in the sky.

Copenhagen Mountain in the snow

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That’s The Mountain apartment building in Ørestad designed by Julien De Smedt and Bjarke Ingels and completed in 2008.

It’s on the east side of the raised section of the metro, just south of the Bella Center metro station, and between the two canals.

Julien De Smedt was actually at the Bella Center last week for northmodern, the Copenhagen design fair, where he had curated an exhibition by seven designers from his home city of Brussels but he was also at northmodern with his design partners and team from the Copenhagen based design company Makers With Agendas and gave one of the northmodern lectures - talking about both MWA and the work of his architectural practice JDS.

 

Functional architecture in Denmark?

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farmstead from Eiderstedt now at Frilandsmuseet in Denmark

 

To talk about Functionalism in architecture in Denmark, usually refers to buildings designed in the middle of the 20th century and frequently cited as an example is the work at the university of Aarhus by C F Møller. The term implies an architecture where volumes and details have been pared back to what is considered to be essential and the architects take as their starting point the intended function. At a general level the term is linked with buildings that are often criticised by the public as being stark or even brutal and is usually associated with the use of concrete.

To take the word functional literally, as simply the general and practical starting point for the design of a building, then this building, the farmstead from Eiderstedt in Schleswig, now in the open-air museum, Frilandsmuseet north of Copenhagen, is perhaps the most beautiful and the most amazing Functionalist building in Denmark.

It was also possibly one of the most beautiful factories in Denmark. It is, to all intents and purposes a factory farm with a huge hay barn at the centre with a threshing floor across one side, entered through the large double doors in the end, and with stalls for cows, stalls for cows about to calve, stalls for horses and oxen, the working animals for the farm, and then across one end, under the same roof, the well fitted and comfortable home of the wealthy farmer with a diary and cheese store at the coolest corner of the building.

 

 

The plan and the division of spaces is determined completely by the structure with a massive wood frame supporting the weight of that great thatched roof. With everything under a single roof there was total control of the working process, security and of course sustainability with little natural heating wasted.

Above all, what is so striking about this vernacular architecture is its self confidence; the complete understanding of the building materials, exploited to the maximum, and the simplicity of the roof profile like an enormous sculpture. 

 

Below are a selection of photographs of vernacular and mainly rural buildings from Denmark that show just how confident these craftsmen were in their materials and in their own skills but they also had a clear appreciation of form and colour.

Frilandsmuseet, Denmark

Forge from Ørbæk, Funen

Farmstead from True, Eastern Jutland

Farm from Tågense, Lolland

Farmstead from Ostenfeld

Gentofte Library, Denmark

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Gentofte Library in Hellerup, just north of Copenhagen, was designed by the architectural firm of Henning Larsen and was completed in 1985. Larsen had graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1952 but for 10 months before he graduated he worked in the office of Arne Jacobsen at that point still in the basement of the architects own house in Bellvue, so just up the coast from Hellerup. The influence of Arne Jacobsen can be seen clearly in this building with it’s simple white facades but sophisticated plan, clever use of space and light and the high-quality fittings. There is a freedom of line at Gentofte that is rarely seen in the work of Jacobsen which is based much more on rectilinear forms with almost perfect proportions. What Larsen does at Gentofte is pay homage to Jacobsen by using some of the older architect's vocabulary … so the long proportion of the windows at Bellavista and the relationship of window to blank wall, the completely plain white columns without bases or caps and the recessed large circular ceiling light fittings of Jacobsen’s Rødovre city hall and the restaurant at the SAS Hotel.

Gentofte library is on a large, well-landscaped, plot at the north end of the main street of Hellerup, set back from the road on the west side, on a slope rising up slightly above the road and immediately south of the park and gallery at Øregaard.

There are entrances on either side of the library - on the south side from a car park area and on the north side from a pedestrian area and gardens between the library and the park. These entrances are not in line but form an angled route across the building on the east side of the main library area. The main south door has a flat canopy cut off at a sharp angle with a single column … probably a deliberate reference to the idea of a portico that might have been applied to give dignity to a municipal building in the 18th or 19th century.

The angled porch also makes the transition between the square block of the main building and the gradual stepping in through a number of bold angles to a narrower east end towards the town.

The north door is below the main level, down the slope of the site by half a floor, with a broad flight of steps down to the door and in this lower area is a well-lit cafe, within and open to the main space but set slightly below. To the east of the circulation area is a lecture theatre or meeting room with a large east facing window and there is also a large lobby area used for exhibitions so there is a sophisticated use of space, light and height to differentiate entrance and circulation areas and the areas for books and for study. 

The main part of the building for books and reading, furthest from the main road, is a very large, square, top-lit area for the main reading room and information desk which is open through two storeys at the centre but with deep balconies around the edge with quieter study rooms, the local history collection and administrative office on the upper level and below, on the ground floor, although generally open to the main space, quiet, more enclosed reading and study areas beneath the balconies.

This demonstrates a clever and complicated manipulation of space and light to create views into, through and out of the building … so the initial impression as you enter the library is of light and of spaces which are very open and very welcoming. As you approach there are glass doors and windows so you can see clearly where to go and, after entering, see how each area is used and then, as you are drawn in, the spaces become lower, more enclosed and quieter although you can also sit and read where you can look up and look out to trees and grass.

Externally there are what read as conservatories or single-storey elements with sloping glazed roofs but internally these provide top lighting for some of these more domestic scale spaces. Also of note, in terms of how top light is used is that the centre of the main space has a lower roof and all the way round windows looking into the building, not providing direct light but light that is reflected down by a curved ceiling/wall just in from the windows.

Although the exterior is simple and the clean straightforward interior of white columns and white fittings is deceptively simple, the architectural features such as floors, bookcases and the staircases are of a high quality and very carefully considered.  It has a timeless feel, that is difficult to date but it has certainly worn well and does not look thirty years old. Perhaps the major change since it was completed is that the original desk inside the south door, for bringing back and checking out books by staff, has been replaced by a sort of self-service system and staff have been moved into the centre of the reading room to an information desk. The library is well used and used with respect.  

When I have been to the library it has been full of people and it is obviously a popular and well-used building. Even on a Sunday people are sitting reading magazines or books or using the computer terminals for various library services. Small children clearly love the toys and fittings of their area and there was a mother and toddler group there on one visit. I appreciate that this is a prosperous middle-class area but even so it is clear here that Danish children grow up with good design. It not that it is precious or special but that Danes actually expect this level of design. Nor should that imply good design is taken for granted but broadly there is an underlying sense that it is accepted and understood that if something is done then it should be done well … many Danes will only comment when something is done badly.

But equally this is absolutely not a pedantic or obsessive perfectionism. Buildings like the library are there to be used and enjoyed and seem to be even more appreciated as they gain a patina of age … one important proof that a design is good is that it gets good use. 

 

Gentofte Library bottom left, immediately south of the villa and park of Øregård - from Google

low-level housing and the Søndergårdspark scheme

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An early example of the house type - the Nyboder houses in Copenhagen dating from the early 17th century.

Here the term low level refers to houses that are or were self contained and have a single main floor at or raised just above street level but they might also have basements and attic rooms. 

This is a house type in Scandinavia that has a long history. In part the construction was relatively simple - at it’s simplest just four solid outside walls supporting a pitched roof - and the walls can be timber, brick or stone. They can be built as a single detached house or can be linked together in a row or terrace. They can have a single room but could be much larger with two or three or more rooms in line across the front and if the house was deep, with larger gables and therefore a larger roof space, there could be a large room to the front and a narrow room behind on the ground floor - sometimes called one-and-a-half room plan - or there could be two rooms to the depth - in England called a double pile plan - and with deeper houses there is more space and more useable space in the roof with greater head room.

Why is this relevant for a blog that is ostensibly about modern design?

read more

Groundbreaking housing

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In Groundbreaking Constructions - the current exhibition at the Danish Architecture Centre in Copenhagen - one of the main sections is on housing. Each section has one main example of the type - the other sections being Industrial Constructions, Infrastructure, Public Buildings and Culture - with a video about the site or structure. For housing that main example was the housing scheme at Søndergårdspark constructed between 1949 to 1951 for the Danish Public Housing Association and designed by Poul Hoff and Bennet Windinge..

Initially this appears to be curious as the design is hardly groundbreaking in terms of either style or construction method. Plans of the single-storey houses and their general appearance can be seen as a fairly straightforward development of the plan and the style of the houses of the Studiebyen housing quarter of 1920-24 or the Bakkehusene housing scheme of 1921-23.

What is important at Søndergårdspark was the large open public area at the centre, like a village green, with very little space given to private gardens for each house … just a small area of planting at the front onto a foot path and a square area at the back without walls or heavy fencing but with shrubs and trees providing some privacy.

There were three basic forms of house with detached houses on either side of the green with pairs of houses linked by a wooden structure or shed. There were row houses or short terraces to the west of the green but on a similar plan internally and then further to the west, beyond a service road, lines or rows of slightly larger family homes of one and a half storeys with attic bedrooms.

All the houses were carefully orientated to take maximum advantage of the sun with access from a footpath across the north side of each short row and the main rooms with large windows facing south. 

The area was ostensibly pedestrian and had a short parade of shops at the top corner near the main access from the road and on the way to or from the suburban railway station. This was the first public housing estate to give such prominence to the landscape setting - designed by Aksel Andersen.

more photographs of the Søndergårdspark housing scheme

Groundbreaking apartments

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In the housing section of the Groundbreaking Constructions exhibition there are a number of apartment buildings including the first high rise housing in Copenhagen … the 28 towers of Bellahoj that date from 1951-56 and so almost contemporary with Søndergårdspark but taking a very different form with 1,300 flats in 28 towers varying in height from nine to thirteen stories.

Very large apartment buildings for public housing had first been constructed in Copenhagen in the 1920s as a response to severe housing shortages immediately after the First World War. Hornbækhus at Borups Allé, designed by Kay Fisker was completed in 1923.

Vestersøhus, also by Fisker but working with C F Møller, is also included in the exhibition. It was completed in 1939 and had 242 apartments, ten shops and a hotel with 43 rooms.

Fisker again but working with Eske Kristensen designed the Dronningegården and Christiansgården blocks that were completed in 1958 for a very extensive urban renewal scheme with road widening and the creation of a new square with four L-shaped blocks and again with shops on the ground floor. These post-war buildings move away from the earlier Copenhagen arrangement for apartments that were generally built around a large open communal courtyard that was generally landscaped but included areas for drying clothes.

The exhibition includes two recent and major housing developments with the VM Bjerget building of 2008 and the 8 Tallet of 2010 … both on Amager and both designed by BIG … the Bjarke Ingels Group. The first rejects the type of apartment building with a single rectangular block, using the layout of a V and and M shape to give maximum light and views out for each apartment and the 8 Block returns to the courtyard form but uses levels and mixed use in a much more ambitious and imaginative way.

redevelopment and conversion of harbour buildings in Copenhagen

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Gemini Residence, Islands Brygge, formerly silos for soya, converted to apartments by MVRDV and JJW Arkitekter

With the construction of new terminals for cruise ship and ferries to the north of the city and with the reduction in the size of the naval dockyards there has been an extensive redevelopment of the inner harbour in Copenhagen. The retention and conversion of some of the major dock buildings has required imagination and in many cases complex engineering solutions. Several of the buildings have been included in the exhibition Groundbreaking Constructions at the Danish Architecture Centre.

 

former cement silos and now Dansk Standard, Göteborg Plads, Nordhavn

now the Danish Design School of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts

Vandflyverhangaren from 1921 remodelled in 2001 and now part of the Institute of Architecture and Culture

Customs House and ferry building designed by Kristoffer Nyrop Varming and completed in 1937 but now converted to restaurants and a jazz venue

The Silo now being converted from grain storage to apartments by COBE 

 

Torpedohallen, a former gunboat maintenance dock, converted to apartments by Tegnestuen Vandkunsten and completed in 2003

Internal view looking out south down the internal basin towards the canal

 

 

 

 

below:

the more traditional timber construction of the boat sheds immediately to the east of Torpedohallen converted by Henning Larsen Architects and Tegnestuen Vandkunsten

the nights are drawing in

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In Copenhagen the nights are now drawing in but just at that point where darkness begins to close in over the harbour, when the lights of the office buildings become more obvious and the blue of the sky and the blue of the water of the harbour deepen, it's quite a good time to take photographs.

This is the Headquarters for Unibank on Strandgade in Christianshavn designed by Henning Larsens Tegnestue and built on the site of B&W’s shipyard, following a competition in 1995, and completed in 1999. 

Six long, rectangular blocks are set with their ends towards the harbour - to reflect or echo the arrangement of warehouses previously on the site - but the overall plan is rather more complex and more subtle than first appears: some blocks are set at slight angles, two are linked by a screen of glass-faced corridors at all levels closing off the courtyards while others are linked by glazed bridges and there is an oval link between two of the blocks. Courtyards have an arrangement of water features and formal planting that is sculptural or architectural rather than natural or organic and is different in each with areas of gravel and patterns of cobbles. Landscape design was by Sven-Ingvar Andersson Aps.

End walls towards the harbour have screens set down one edge and set forward of the fenestration and the blocks appear to be built on raised stages - floating bases that over-sail the cobbles of the quay.

The group of buildings are immediately opposite the Royal Library … which was why I photographed them when I was taking photos of the library one evening last week. The elegant but stark and dark, flat-roofed blocks give a distinct character to this section of the harbour, below the road bridge, that is in marked contrast to the red and yellow brick warehouses with pitched roofs on the north side of the bridge.

The spire is Christian’s Church, originally the German Frederik’s Church in Christianshavn, designed by the architect Nicolai Eigtved and built in the 1750s.

Copenhagen Opera

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Right from the start, I have to confess that the Opera is not my favourite modern building in Copenhagen. Designed by Henning Larsen Architects and opened in 2005 it has seemed to me, and I think to many, to be too large and too dominant in its position on the harbour on the axis of the Royal Palace. There is a fine line between being dramatic and being overbearing. 

But I have to say that views from the ferry looking up at the great bow of the glass front, particularly if light is reflecting up off the water, is actually very dramatic and beautiful and the profile - the side elevation viewed straight on is, I admit, very elegant for such a large building and no one can question the quality of the materials or the quality of the workmanship.

Even inside, from what I had seen, I thought that the entrance area, with the curving and stacked walkways flying across the phenomenal space, is beautiful and dramatic particularly at night but even during the day and again particularly when sunlight is reflected up off the water.

I’m not sure if I would go as far as to say that I am warming to the building … it may be that seeing it most days it is becoming so familiar that I don’t notice the bulk and scale … but two things suggest I might actually have to reassess my feelings.

First, with the new bridge over the harbour, when seen from the south, the gentle arch of the south side of the bridge picks up the angle of the underside of the roof of the opera house and acts almost like a stage flat creating a better buildup to the profile of the opera house. This effect of improving the sense of perspective and the relationship of volumes and scale will have to be a major consideration when and if there are proposals to rebuild on the site of the paper warehouses or to develop the large open areas that immediately flank the opera house. 

The second thing that has made me look afresh at the building was actually getting into the auditorium itself for the first time on Kultur Natten. Obviously some people will accuse me of being unfair, judging a building without having been inside the most important space, but to be fair to me, I had deliberately not written about the building on this site while I could only judge it in terms of planning and its urban setting.

As part of the evening’s events for Kultur Natten, the doors of the opera house were thrown open. An orchestra had been moved up from the pit onto the stage and with children brought in to play alongside professional musicians. Singers performed and explained their work and the work of the opera house. The shape of the space with the sweep of the unbroken circles of seating and the heavy use of wood gives a superb effect of being in the hull of a great wooden ship and the stage itself and the back-stage area is enormous so I suppose that it is hardly surprising that the building itself is so large. And with people wandering in and out; with the enthusiastic performance; with the enthusiastic audience and with the staff friendly and relaxed for this open house, the building came alive.

Rising Architecture

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This is Rising Architecture Week in Copenhagen with events around the city from the 15 to 18 September. The main venue for lectures and workshops will be at Papirøen - Paper Island - on the south side of the harbour immediately to the west of the Opera House but there will be tours including by bike and by boat to look at specific new buildings around the city. Major architectural firms from the city are taking part along with international architectural practices, planners, architectural writers and designers.

 

Rising Architecture 15-19 September 2015

KEA in the light of the early evening

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New buildings for KEA, the Copenhagen School of design and Technology, in the Nørrebro area of the city in the light of early evening (above) and a general view of the front that faces towards Nørrebrogade with the lower sunken area on the approach from Meinungsgade.

In the 19th century this was the site of the engineering works and foundary of Smith, Mygind & Hüttemeier and some of the earlier industrial buildings have been retained behind this block, including the Empire building that gives its name to the campus.

 

KEA - Københavns Erhvervsakademi - Copenhagen School of Design and Technology.

Empire Campus. Building completed in 2013. 

Architects Bertelsen + Scheving, Store Kongensgade, Copenhagen.

 
 

people process projects - Snøhetta at DAC

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This summer DAC - the Danish Architecture Centre in Copenhagen - continued their well-established series of exhibitions that focus on single architectural firms with people process and projects about Snøhetta, the architectural studio based in Oslo and New York.

Snøhetta is the name of a mountain outside Oslo and was chosen by Craig Dykers and Kjetil Trædal Thorsen when they established their architecture, landscape design and branding company in 1989. Snøhetta are now a major international practice with projects ongoing in Europe, the USA and the Middle East.

At DAC there were four sections to the exhibition with the first and largest space dedicated to the people, the organisation and the philosophy or approach of the studio. In part here was a reconstruction of key elements of the Oslo office or elements that at least evoked the Oslo studio with sofas around a table and a set of steps - both important places where staff and clients can sit informally to discuss projects - and the ceiling treatment in Oslo was reproduced with plastic bags full of water hung from wires. 

The Snøhetta studio in Oslo

Photographs in this section showed the large communal lunch table that can also be used as a space for spreading out work for discussion. Snøhetta “believe taking time to share meals with our colleagues is critical to our process. Human interaction shapes the spaces we design and the way we operate.”

Text panels emphasised how professional staff in the studio are encouraged to move through the various disciplines to bring a new perspective to different aspects of the work. They call this transpositioning. “It defies narrow-minded thinking and encourages holistic approaches.”

 

The second section of the exhibition showed the central role of the modelling shop, another part of the design process, and formed the link through to the section about the main buildings from the company.

Here, in the third area, there was a wall of photographs showing and identifying eighty or so of the main projects by Snøhetta and, nearby, a large touch screen where it was possible to find further information and there were a number of models, including the opera house in Oslo, and a section of the facing of a facade formed one display wall containing smaller models and artefacts. A number of screens along another wall showed interviews and so on including a video of the Oslo opera house in winter with a figure snowboarding down the slope of the roof.

There was also a clever idea with photographs of a large number of the projects reproduced with information on the back and with punched holes at the top of each so they could be hung from steel pins across one wall and visitors were invited to take copies of the pages they wanted to form their own guide book.

A huge range of building styles are presented here but I suppose that is inevitable given the time-span covered and the size of the practice now although you can see some themes or ideas reappearing … so, for instance, the shift and slide of building planes as if on tectonic plates at the National Opera House in Oslo, the Memorial Pavilion in New York and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, although those three buildings have very different facing materials and very different underlying geometric forms. 

The text of the exhibition does not state it outright but presumably Snøhetta are more concerned with architectural solutions rather than a consistent architectural style and diversity would, in any case, be a consequence of their debate-lead project system. Curiously the text and interviews imply a certain amount of introspection in contrast to the huge self-confidence of the buildings they produce so the Norwegian Wild Reindeer Centre Pavilion, for instance, is hardly overawed by the grandeur of it’s natural setting and the combination of stark iron box on the mountain slope with its huge glass front but organic sculptural wood interior is anything but circumspect.

Gallery space on the first floor, outside the cafe, was filled with a series of wooden pods with sloping ends and pitched roofs. Called On Top of the Mountain, this is a self-contained section of the exhibition aimed at families and children with photographs and information about smaller buildings from Snøhetta that are set in the natural landscape rather than in the urban setting of most of the larger building projects shown on the ground floor.

Here the emphasis was even more clearly on social sustainability and environmental sustainability - a strong part of the studio's ethos … “We actively seek technical solutions that provide the most economical and natural systems for minimising the environmental impact of the buildings we design.”

Buildings here included Tverrfjellhytta, the pavilion for the Wild Reindeer Centre, and images for a new hotel that will snake down a slope to follow the side of the mountain at Lofoten.

 

Perhaps I am becoming too cynical in my old age but as I worked my way around the exhibition I began to hear more and more the input of a brand manager in the extensive text and I became frustrated by what appeared to me to be two significant omissions in the material presented. 

Many of the buildings shown here are extremely sophisticated structures and require extensive and very technical engineering solutions ... particularly for projects such as the proposed floating bridge that could be constructed to cross Rovde fjord near Ålesund ... but there was no discussion anywhere in the exhibition about engineers, engineering, or the ways that collaboration between architect and engineer was required nor how, sometimes, there must have been a conflict between a concept and the reality of the actual construction process. 

And, with some of the projects being not just large but incredibly complicated, in terms of their functions and therefore planning, I was curious that there were no plans shown for any of the buildings … the closest we got to a plan was in some of the photographs of the studio that showed staff apparently discussing a building over its plan. I know that some visitors to an exhibition, who are not involved in architecture professionally, find plans either difficult to understand or less interesting than models but one of the important aspects of the Snøhetta practice is that their projects cover such a huge range of type, size and function of building. It would be interesting to see at least some discussion of how a team works on a hugely complicated building such as the Bibliotheca Alexandria, which must have had an amazingly complex brief setting out standards for book storage, the requirements for conservation and problems to control light and heat in public reading spaces, or for the opera house in Oslo with its integration of public spaces, highly technical requirements for the performance space, back-stage areas for workshops, complex circulation for public and service areas and complicated massing determined by existing road systems, surrounding urban landscape and the natural topography with such a prominent site on the harbour running down to the edge of the water. Much of that could have been done with simplified plans or good diagrams. Understanding how ideas evolve, how plan and space interrelate and how problems are resolved is more interesting and more important than a beautiful photograph of a facade.

A more thorough if brief analysis of the how the design of the opera house in Oslo evolved would, of course, be interesting in this city where just down the harbour from DAC is Copenhagen's own opera house. Compare and contrast exercises tend to be an academic's approach but could be a way to get a wider audience to think critically about their major public buildings in terms, not just of how they look, but in terms of how they work day to day - how they work as public spaces and how they contribute to or interrupt the existing social structure of a neighbourhood and how they fit into the existing urban setting or ignore it.

* Some books and on-line sites give the year the company was founded as 1987.

A recently published book People Process Projects is available and the exhibition at DAC continues until 27 September 2015.

Snøhetta

Danish Architecture Centre

Malmö Live

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At the weekend, on a trip over to Malmö, I had my first look around the new concert hall, convention centre and hotel that has just opened on a large site to the west of the central railway station. The complex is by the architectural practice of Schmidt Hammer Lassen. I had seen the work at several stages when it was surrounded by cranes, scaffolding and construction sites but on Sunday the bright clear sunlight was perfect to show the new buildings at their best.

I have posted some initial photographs under galleries in the navigation bar at the top of the site but will write and post a longer assessment as soon as I can ... maybe after I have been to a concert there.