The Danish Architecture Centre in Copenhagen has redesigned their web site.

In part this is in anticipation of the move, early next year, from their current building - an historic brick warehouse on the Amager side of the harbour - to BLOX a new building designed by Rem Koolhaas that is close to the National Library and close to completion.

The new web site is clean and minimal. The horizontal bands of images that scrolled through and were a hall mark of the older site have gone. The redesign site is very much in progress as with the move, presumably, more and more features will be added with new programmes for exhibitions and new services provided by the centre.

There seems to be a stronger emphasis on the study tours and outreach teaching programmes for schools from the centre and a focus on commercial aspects for the book shop and with on-line booking for the restaurant that I don’t remember being on the old site. The gallery of buildings - a quick reference tool on the old site that could be searched by architect, name of building or street name - has been removed for now but I have been told that this will return as work on the site moves forward.

Interesting that the font is Helvetica throughout … a clean typeface that obviously has well-established credibility for a design site but can look slightly compressed and therefore not as easy to read at smaller sizes or with a lot of information that might need bold or italic to suggest a hierarchy of information.

The site reconfigures well for the narrower proportions of a mobile or iPad screen. Wide, cinemascope images also make the scroll process quicker but may be limiting for some subjects.

Danish Architecture Centre