within 500 metres of the new metro station

When writing about architecture, guide books for the city tend to start with obvious buildings and sights that are close to the centre or are easy to reach.

Walking around Trianglen - and around that part of Østerbro - to take photographs for recent posts, it was obvious that here are important buildings that probably do not get the attention they deserve.

Together they illustrate an interesting period in the history of the city around a hundred years ago and also show how there is very good architecture in the outer districts of the city across a wide range of building types … so here is interesting social history and architecture with a strong sense of a specifically Danish style with buildings of a high quality. Much of the appeal is from a good use of materials and a subtle use of natural colour and texture to produce what is a very attractive urban landscape.

It might seem odd to start with the tram depot but it is a building that would be easy to miss and it is also a building that shows how this area north of the centre and out from the historic core, expanded rapidly through the late 19th century and through the first decades of the 20th century. It was the trams that took people living in all these new apartment blocks into the city to work and it was the trams that brought people out from the city to walk in the park or to watch a football match.

Much of the building work in Østerbro is about the expansion of the city; about apartments built to house the growing population and about city planning and about civic pride and about public buildings of a high quality.

It is also about new building types for that growing population so about public parks and swimming pools but also about engineering and new materials like concrete that together made such large buildings possible.

When the new metro station at Trianglen opens next year, all these buildings will be within 500 metres.

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