Flammespor / Scorched traces - ceramics by Charlotte Nielsen

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Ceramic works by Charlotte Nielsen that are fired using raku techniques that traditionally means rapid firing at a high temperature and rapid cooling so the fired clay takes on the colours and the sharp look of weathered and rusted iron. These incredible pieces are inspired by ironwork with ribs and spirals that make the pieces look like worn machine parts. 

 

Officinet
Danske Kunsthåndværkere & Deignere
Bredgade 66
14 July until 18 August 2018

One Two Three Swing! by SUPERFLEX

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The first major installation for the opening show in the large main gallery space of Copenhagen Contemporary is by SUPERFLEX - the Copenhagen collective established in 1993 by Jakob Fenger, Bjørnstjerne Reuter Christiansen and Rasmus Nielsen.

This work was created in 2017 and was shown first in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern in London. The swings are each for three people and the metal tubular framework runs through the whole space at different angles and is even taken through to the outside to mark out and create spaces and routes through the hall. The repeated but separate movement of each swing is an expression of a common human experience from childhood but also shows the potential energy from the collective action of three people working together.

In the second hall the carpet there - reflected in a great silver pendulum - is woven with stripes in the colours of a Euro note.

at Copenhagen Contemporary, Refshalevej 173A until 30 December 2018

One Two Three Swing! /  SUPERFLEX at Tate Modern 

One Two Three Swing! / Copenhagen Contemporary

 
 

SONG 1 by Doug Aitken

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A sound and video installation at Copenhagen Contemporary with six curved screens forming an almost enclosed circle so the 35 minute programme can be viewed from the inside or from the outside.

This uses the classic pop song "I only have eyes for you" interpreted by very different singers and musicians but what runs through the sequence is a persistent but very beautiful feeling of melancholy.

In some sections of the sequence, images are separate to each screen or in others they are repeated on alternate screens; some images are mirrored in pairs or they wash around the full circuit as a single scene like an amazing modern version of a fairground round-a-bout.

The original version of the song is a jazz standard from 1934 but listening to so many versions, recorded over so many decades, it seems truly timeless. Cultural references abound in the images and above all it seems to be a love song - not actually to a lover but to what is truly great about the United States and it's architecture and its graphics with universally recognised symbols from the 20th century about being American in modern America so there are scenes in diners and on free ways driving inter state or in all-night bus stations.

So this is not about the natural landscape of the States but about man-made settings - the built invironment imposed on the natural - generally larger but also smaller urban and anonymous man-made spaces. It's a view of metropolis that seems indescribably lonely and sad but here mesmerising and hauntingly beautiful.

at Copenhagen Contemporary, Refshalevej 173A through until 30 December 2018

Copenhagen Contemporary / Song 1

 
 
 

Fang din by 2018 / Catch your City 2018

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Today - 8th June - an exhibition of photographs of Copenhagen opened on the square in front of the new Danish Architecture Centre.

This is the annual show of photographs of the city that were taken for an open competition that this year had 2,600 entries. 

Run in coordination with Copenhagen Photo Festival, the theme for this year was ‘my home in the city’ so it complements the first major exhibition from DAC in their new building about housing in Denmark under the title ‘Welcome Home.’

 

winning entries can be seen on the DAC site for Fang din by

the exhibition is on Bryghuspladsen in Copenhagen through until 31 August 2018

 

 

multiple shadow house

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the only selfie you will see posted to this site

 

A light installation by the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson for the opening of the new building and new exhibition spaces of the Danish Architecture Centre in Copenhagen. Multiple Shadow House was shown in New York in 2010 and at the Musée d'art contemporain in Montréal, in 2017.

At BLOX, it is in a smaller so what will be, presumably, a temporary exhibition and event space at the first level up from the entrance and book shop and before the main exhibition.

This area has been divided into three simple but linked spaces of different sizes to create what feels like a set of giant boxes.

At the back of each space, strong coloured lights are set low down at floor level to project a wash of colour up and forward across the front wall but when anyone enters the space they create a series of sharp overlapping silhouettes onto the front wall that, with people in the space, becomes a screen.

Each silhouette, created by one of the lights, seems to have a distinct colour and it is  the overlap of the silhouettes that is black. These multiple silhouettes are stronger in colour towards the centre and drop back becoming lighter or paler to left and right to create a sense of three dimensions in a light effect that should surely be and look flat.

The colours of the lights and the overlapping mixtures of colours are different in each space and all curiously quite subtle or at least not glaring and the pattern of overlapping silhouettes is intriguing … normally, with a single shadow, although the outline can be distorted by the angle of the light, limbs and movement, although they are elongated, can be quickly recognised and identified but here, although the shadows are 'larger than life' it is the multiplication of the image and the pattern of the overlap that is confusing so, with a group of people in the room, or even with someone on their own, the common response seems to be to exaggerate movements just to distinguish a hand or a foot from the limbs of someone else so light, instead of bringing clarity, seems to inspire the exaggeration or distortion of a stance or a movement.

 

Visitors become distracted - as they realise that the patterns of their multiple silhouettes respond to what they are doing or how they are standing - and, as they become absorbed, they seem less and less aware that they are illuminated by those same lights so there is an overlap of watchers watched as they become performers so it is interesting to stand quietly at the back to watch an impromptu performance.

 

continues until 10th October 2018

Dansk Arkitektur Center / Danish Architecture Centre
Bryghuspladsen 10
1473 Copenhagen K

 

Alvar Aalto Paimio Sanatorium

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 This small exhibition - described by Designmuseum Danmark as a "pop-up exhibition" - is based around two chairs from the permanent collection - Armchair No 42 and the Paimio Chair - also known as The Ring Chair - designed by Alvar Aalto and both used in the Paimio Sanatorium. The hospital in south-west Finland designed by Aalto was built specifically for the treatment of patients with tuberculosis - and was completed in 1933.

The chairs are displayed with historic photographs and copies of drawings that have been selected to show how important the hospital was and to put those two chairs in context.

Aalto was born in February 1898 so he was four years older than Arne Jacobsen. The exhibition does not compare directly the work of the two architects but there are marked and very important similarities. They grew up and then studied as architects in a period of massive social, political and economic changes in Europe and in a period that saw rapid advances in technology and industrial production that had a huge impact on architecture and furniture design. Political changes were more dramatic for Aalto because Finland only emerged as a nation, independent from both Sweden and Russia, in 1918 after a revolution.

Both architects, through the 1920s and through their first commissions, absorbed and readily adapted their designs to building in the relatively new material of concrete and the new techniques of construction that went with that material … so generally buildings with piers in concrete that supported concrete floors and, as a consequence, with freedom to experiment with external and internal walls that were no longer load bearing and with few restrictions in terms of height in buildings that could be constructed quickly.

Crucially, both architects worked on all aspects of a project … so not just the plan and structure of a building but all details of windows, door handles, light fittings and, for both men, designs for furniture.

They each achieved a uniform aesthetic in their buildings, and that was important, but it was also driven by the need for efficiency and an attempt to rationalise construction and manage costs - to produce as much as possible off site and to reduce the number of variations and options for the same reasons … so what became important was how they put together the parts and that was determined by function and not a hierarchy of fittings as in so many public and domestic buildings before the 20th century.

 
 

Here, in this exhibition, the two chairs show how Aalto was at the forefront of technical developments in furniture manufacture. His grandfather was a forester and taught at the Evo Forest Institute south of Tampere and Aalto himself developed a specific technique of cutting down into a length of squared-off timber, interlayering with thin slips of wood inserted into the cuts and with glue and steam bending and formed the timber for the frame for chairs and tables and other furniture.

He was one of the first designers to exploit and develop the use of plywood which again was bent - rather than used as flat sheets - to create a continuous surface for the seat and back of a chair but he also extended the bend or curve of the plywood to form a rounded support for the head and a rounded support for the back of the legs.

It is important to look carefully to see how the plywood shell of the seat and back and the bent-wood frame are joined together - with lugs or tabs in strategic positions on the edge of the plywood that fit into slots in the frame - and how crossbars link the frame on each side but also support the plywood at critical points.

 

Because of its topography and climate, Finland does not have the variety of native timbers for furniture making and house building that are found in Sweden and Denmark so the form of the chairs is not an odd whim of aesthetics but was necessary to be able to use native rather than imported timber - to do what was possible with native birch - a relatively small tree.

And the design of the chairs - and the distinct features of the building - reflect the nature of the disease treated at the hospital.

Tuberculosis was a contagious disease that effected the lungs but could also infect bones and the nervous system. By the early 20th century it was the cause of death of 7,200 people a year in Finland or about 13% of mortality year on year in the country.

When the hospital opened, treatment was based around providing patients with good nutrition and bed rest in the early stages of the disease and then with sun and fresh air although bright light and noise effected many sufferers badly.

The chairs are relatively low and long so the sitting position is close to reclining and the bent-wood frame and plywood provide a level of flexibility for long periods sitting in the sun or fresh air. The construction in wood was lighter than anything comparable that used tubular steel, so the chairs could be turned easily to be angled towards the sun and they were not upholstered to reduce contamination. Note that the Paimio Chair has narrow horizontal slits cut through the head rest so that air could circulate around the face.

The first private Sanatorium in Finland was opened in 1895 and the first owned by a federation of municipalities opened in 1914 but after passing a Tuberculosis Act in 1929 eight large sanatoriums were constructed with total of 2,500 beds and Paimio was the last to be completed in 1933 for 296 beds for patients from 52 municipalities including the city of Turku with an allocation of 100 beds. Because tuberculosis was contagious, the hospitals were generally set in countryside away from towns … the Sanatorium at Paimio was 20 kilometres east of Turku set in an area of woodland.

With the discovery of anti biotics, it became possible to alleviate and then control the spread of the disease and in 1960 the sanatorium buildings were modified and converted for use as a general hospital.

 

the exhibition at Designmuseum Danmark in Copenhagen
continues until 21 January 2018

 

note:

comments on this post were received today (19 February 2018) and, because these were interesting and raised some important points, it was worth posting a longer reply that has been posted on Copenhagen architecture & design news as an update

Lenschow & Pihlmann at DAC

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The current exhibition in the Dreyer Architecture Gallery, on the upper level at the Danish Architecture Centre, explores the work of the Copenhagen partnership of Kim Lenschow Andersen and Søren Thirip Pihlmann. This is the first of exhibitions here through the Autumn that will look at three young architectural companies.

Parts or elements from the construction of recent buildings by Lenschow & Pihlmann are detached and isolated here, rather as if they are sculptures. Although these are simply components, when they are spotlit like this, they do justify closer scrutiny. A building is the sum of its parts so here, reversing the process and extracting parts of the buildings, it emphasises the technical and engineering aspects of many modern buildings and highlights how our increasing focus on insulation and on appropriate and careful use of materials has changed radically the way that buildings are constructed.

As a consequence, contemporary buildings seem to be less concerned with space and architecture in a plastic sense - about form and shadow defining and enclosing space - but buildings as relatively light structures with thin walls that are arranged as a series of flat planes.

 

continues at Danish Architecture Centre Strandgade until 4 November 2017

Lenschow & Pihlmann

RAMT AF BYEN / CITY STRUCK

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This will be the last major exhibition from the Danish Architecture Centre in their present space in the large, historic, brick warehouse on the Amager side of the harbour because early next year they will move across to the other side of the harbour to BLOX … to new buildings designed by Rem Koolhaas and OMA and now close to completion

The exhibition has been curated by Marie Stender and is a selection of striking images by different photographers who explore the city as a place for people that is moulded and adapted by people for the way they really live day by day.

Divided into three areas - Boundaries, Meetings and Flows - this is the antidote to all those perfect images that are seen in so many architectural journals and glossy coffee-table books were perfect buildings are shown in the best light, from the most flattering angle and invariably devoid of people ... stripped of their reason and, metaphorically and literally, stripped of their humanity. 

When you watch people en masse in complex urban spaces you see quickly if the planning has failed -  so anything from a curiously empty and unused and unloved space to exactly the opposite where a street or a square or a building seems to be overwhelmed by the people passing through or trying to use the space. In these photographs, you see how people colonise public space and use it in ways no architect or planner had envisioned.

the exhibition continues at the
Danish Architecture Centre on Strandgade
until 28 February 2018

Circular Economy

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A major exhibition at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation to show fourteen projects that offer new solutions and strategies for the development of new sustainable materials along with the development of new technologies, the exploration of new approaches to building and construction and the recycling or re-circulation of materials.

“The conversion means that we need to work innovatively and experimentally on the development of new materials and the recycling of old ones, while also using our knowledge to create solutions that people actually want to use. That is the way we work at KADK, so our research and the skills of our graduates can play a major role in terms of giving people a better life without putting pressure on our planet.”

Lene Dammand Lund.

 

Through the Autumn there will be a series of open seminars to “draw on knowledge and experience from some of the world’s leading architects and designers in the field of circularity, who will be invited to talk about their work.”

 

the exhibition Circular Economy continues at KADK at Philip de Langes Allé 10 in Copenhagen until 3 December 2017

 

Side by side outside - Cabinetmakers’ Autumn exhibition 2017

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This was the first day of the Cabinetmakers’ Autumn exhibition at Designmuseum Danmark.

It was raining and cold and the leaves are turning but it didn’t matter. In fact it meant I had the garden of the museum to myself. 

For me this annual exhibition - to show the work of the cabinetmakers - is always one of the best exhibitions of the year. It never fails to challenge or delight or make you look at a material or a form or a convention in a different or new way.

In a city where there is so much good architecture and so much great design, it is actually this exhibition that comes closest to summing up what this site is about - about looking at and taking photographs of and writing about those works where imagination; the ability to translate an idea into a working and feasible design; a command of the materials being used and the skill of the craftsman or the quality of manufacturing - all come together. 

photographs of all the works

 

Side by side outside continues at Designmuseum Danmark
until 5 November 2017