notes, reviews and photographs about current design, design shops, cafes and restaurants and exhibitions and galleries in Copenhagen
news, notes, photographs and thoughts about design, architecture, planning and townscape and exhibitions in Copenhagen
Work progressing on building the Allépavillonen in Kongens Have - the summer pavilion in the King's Garden in Copenhagen.
The pavilion - by the Swedish architects Krupinski / Krupinska - was the winning design in the annual competition by the Architects Association and will open from the 18th August.
This is the exhibition that was the Danish contribution to the Venice Biennale of Architecture last year. The main section is an extensive display of architectural models from major architects and design partnerships in the country and the aim is to illustrate the importance of high-quality architecture in Denmark and, in a broader sense, the contribution of architecture to the community as a whole.
There is an important audio visual show by Jan Gehl about the work of their planning office in Copenhagen.
at the Danish Architecture Centre in Copenhagen until 1 October 2017
There is an exhibition of the projects and work of the students who have graduated this summer from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation (KADK) in Copenhagen.
There are profiles of the students with some photographs and short descriptions of their work on the KADK site.
The exhibition ends on 13th August.
KADK, Danneskiold-Samsøe Alle, Copenhagen
At the centre of the harbour is Knippelsbro - the bridge between the historic centre of the city and Christianshavn. There has been a bridge here since the early 17th century when houses and warehouses were first built on land claimed from the sea in what was then a wide stretch of open water between the walled settlement of Copenhagen and the island of Amager.
The present bridge was completed in 1937 - designed by Kaj Gottlob and built by Wright, Thomsen & Kier with Burmeister & Wain - an engineering company whose works were just to the west of the bridge and whose ship yards were then to the east at Refshaleøen.
Earlier bridges had been at the level of the quay so had to be raised for most shipping to pass and were relatively narrow. As the port expanded, traffic crossing over and passing under the bridge increased so the new bridge, with a deck well over 27 metres wide, meant there could be tram tracks in each direction down the centre, wide lanes for traffic and wide pavements and, set much higher, with long approach ramps on both sides, the bridge only had to be raised for the larger ships passing through to the quays where the National Library now stands and to a long line of quays along the Islands Brygge side.
With its two copper-clad towers on distinctive stone piers, set just out from the quays, the bridge is an iconic and perhaps the iconic feature of the inner harbour.
Those towers held control rooms and sleeping accommodation for the men who supervised and opened the bridge but with the decline in harbour traffic the bridge is now controlled from the tower on the city side and the tower on the south or Christianshavn side of the bridge has been redundant for many years. A long campaign of lobbying and a serious programme of restoration work has lead to the south tower reopening as a new cultural attraction in the city. Visitors can climb up to the upper viewing gallery for amazing views up and down the harbour and in the process appreciate the quality of the well-thought through and careful design of the tower itself … now restored as one of the major monuments in the city from the 1930s that can be seen in its original form.
Some facilities were upgraded, including the fitting out of a new kitchen, so the tower can be used for social and cultural events including as a venue for meetings and meals and there have even been a couple of jazz concerts.
For information - Kulturtårnet or email l.lyndgaard@gmail.com
Work has now started on clearing the ground and erecting temporary hoardings on Karen Blixens Plads at the centre of the south campus of the University of Copenhagen in North Ørested. The reorganisation of this important urban space by COBE will create sunken areas and low man-made hills over them to provide storage for over 2,000 bikes but also create
“a central urban living room connecting the three main entrances of the university buildings. The new square will be a campus landscape, offering high functional performance as well as recreational resource. The necessary infrastructure is turned into a three-dimensional student hang out.”
quote from Our Urban Living Room - Learning from Copenhagen Arvinius+Orfeus 2016
Walking from the metro station at Islands Brygge, going through the wide opening under the buildings and entering the square at the north-west corner then the space seems vast. From there to the canal to the east it is 185 metres and in width, from the blocks of the humanities buildings to the north front of the library – the square building at the centre of the area – is over 40 metres and from those northern buildings down to the arc of water in front of Tietgenkollegiet – student housing by Lundgaard and Tranberg built around a circular courtyard – is around 170 metres.
The brothers Mogens and Flemming Lassen were born at the beginning of the 20th century. They were contemporaries and friends of Arne Jacobsen - the three were at school together - and all three went on to be architects and furniture designers becoming well-established by the early 1930s. Flemming Lassen and Jacobsen worked together to design Søllerød Town Hall and its furniture and fittings completed in 1942.
The company By Lassen was formed by younger generations of the family to continue the production of designs by Mogens and Flemming Lassen.
For 3daysofdesign their store in Holbersgade in Copenhagen had special displays for visitors with the main level just up from the street laid out as an apartment furnished with designs from the collection and at the lower level - a few steps down from the street - Mogens Lassen’s work room and desk had been recreated with historic photographs, original possessions and early and trial versions of production pieces that are still owned by the family.
There were also architectural drawings and historic photographs of buildings designed by the Lassens - again from the family collection of archive material.
Erik Jørgensen Møbelfabrik have offices and display space out at Pakhus 48 in Nordhavn where they are in one of the huge former warehouses along with Vola, the tap and bathroom fittings company, and with Kvadrat, the Danish textile company. Joint events here on the first evening of the three days are a very popular high point.
Not only is this a good opportunity to see the furniture from Jørgensen in the generous space and in the natural light of the warehouse but for 3daysofdesign - they had rebuilt Portal ..... an installation designed for the Milan furniture fair in the Spring by the Norwegian architects Snøhetta, working with Jørgensen.
An oak ladder covered in leather appears to be standing free between two round mirrors to create an infinite sequence of images but this is not simply a visual game because it also demonstrates the craftsmanship of fine leatherwork from Jørgensen.
Pakhus 48 has large windows that look south down the harbour so the space has bright natural light - particularly in the afternoon - with strong shadows and very strong patches of light across the floor and with light reflected up that comes up off the water so it can be dramatic anyway, even without mirrors and with a lot of people around for the opening and a fair bit of wine the whole thing was a bit disconcerting.
Many of the pieces in the Smaller Objects collection have been designed by the Swedish architecture and design studio of Claesson Koivisto Rune but there is also a Swedish stoneware bowl, some glass from Italy and objects designed and made in Japan.
What unites all the objects is not just the very high quality of the materials used but the pieces have that hall-mark of design at the highest level in that form, function and material are balanced. In fact, it is that balance of form, function and material that makes these objects minimal in the most obvious sense … in that you realise as you look at and then you hold the objects, it would be very very difficult to add anything more or take anything away without destroying that balance. These objects are refined - not in the sense of being polite and cultivated - though they are that too - but in the sense that the design has been refined or reduced down to that point where it looks and feels right. Good minimal design is about reduction … not about going straight for the basic.
These objects also demonstrate that incredibly important aim for the best design when actually you realise that although the piece appears, at first, to be primarily about appearance and style … what, in fact, is crucial is the obvious and careful consideration of how the pieces function to make even an everyday task more enjoyable.
The Japanese notebook is a good example where you realise that here is something that not only is beautifully made - with the experience that comes through a manufacturer who has long-established craft skills - but how someone uses a notebook has been carefully reconsidered so that even turning back a pre-cut tab to mark a place becomes a simple pleasure. That probably sounds precious or pretentious but one clear reason for - maybe the justification for - designing something that is better - or is more beautiful or is better made in beautiful materials - is that the finished object should enhance life every day when doing everyday things.
Stoneware by Ingegerd Råman 1997
Stoneware by Ingegerd Råman 1997
porcelain by Claesson Koivisto Rune with BrittonBritton 2010
Italian anthracite marble
Claesson Koivisto Rune 2017
Italian anthracite marble
Claesson Koivisto Rune 2017
unglazed bisque porcelain
Claesson Koivisto Rune 2015
sand-cast blackened carbon steel
Claesson Koivisto Rune 2016
ash
Claesson Koivisto Rune 2017
vegetable tanned leather
Claesson Koivisto Rune 2016
aluminium ash
Claesson Koivisto Rune 2012 + 2015
soapstone
Claesson Koivisto Rune 2015
porcelain
Luca Nichetto 2016
Nendo 2016
Nendo 2016
graphics showing how to mark a page with a tab
Major construction work for the new apartments at The Silo seems to have finished with all the balconies and the cladding and the glazed penthouse now clear of scaffolding but standing outside to take the photographs it is clear that work continues on fitting out the apartments themselves.
This new area of redevelopment in Nordhavn - the old commercial harbour area of the north harbour - is rapidly getting its new landscaping and loosing its hoardings so, in this early-summer light, it is looking truly amazing.
In any major city, industries change or the way that utility services are provided have to adapt or are modernised and substantial and striking buildings can become redundant.
In Copenhagen many of these industrial buildings have been converted in an imaginative way to become housing or major gallery spaces for exhibitions or have become venues for concerts or theatre … buildings mentioned here recently include the former locomotive works that are now an exhibition hall - used for Finders Keepers and the installation by Hiroshi Sambuichi in The Cistern - an imaginative conversion of an underground water reservoir in Frederiksberg that is now a dramatic gallery space.
Many of the buildings are not just striking or unusual but are normally exceptionally robust - they were built well and built to last - and some were designed by well-established or well-known architects and engineers so, from that point of view alone, they merit being retained but in reality that means justifying the cost by finding new uses.
It seemed worth starting an occasional series of posts here about some of those buildings.
The water tower at Jægersborg is on a high point above the city - about 12 kilometres to the north of the city centre and close to the rail line and Jægersborg suburban station. Designed by Edvard Thomsen and completed in 1954, it has a large circular water tank supported on a complicated and tight arrangement of concrete columns with 12 outer columns and 6 inner columns forming an inner hexagonal pattern of cross beams.
The initial scheme included a plan for apartments but it seems the idea was abandoned because of noise pollution.
An extensive remodelling of the tower by Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter was completed in 2006 to provide leisure facilities on the three lower levels and student housing above. Accommodation is in pods with bed-sitting rooms with large, full-height windows angled to make the most of the views and the sunlight.
The Cistern in the park of Søndermarken - close to the zoo and just south of the the palace of Frederiksberg - is a vast underground reservoir that was constructed in the middle of the 19th century to hold fresh drinking water for the city. Its use as a reservoir ceased in 1933 but it was not until 1982 that the space was drained of water and in 1996 it was converted into an exhibition space that is now run as part of the Frederiksberg museum service.
The current installation, designed by the Japanese architect Hiroshi Sambuichi, brings water back into the subterranean space and uses natural light from above, controlled and directed by giant mirrors, to create a wonderful and disorientating experience with the space explored in deep gloom on broad walkways that have been constructed just above the water by Japanese craftsmen using timber from Japan.
To be discovered on this route through the dramatic space are a traditional Japanese wood bath tub; a giant clear-glass cube; a timber Japanese-style bridge that is crossed with the help of the light from paper lanterns and there is a mound of almost luminous, violent green, moss lit by light flooding down from the park above.
The opening times for the installation are controlled by the hours for sun rise and sun set and will change through the Summer and Autumn.
the installation The Cisterns X Sambuichi continues at Cisterne until 2 Feb 2018
An exhibition that explores the work of the Japanese architect Hiroshi Sambuichi
... an architecture that attempts to be in balance with nature and with the landscape in which the buildings are set. It requires extensive study, sometimes over a number of years, of the passage of the sun and an awareness of how natural light across the site changes through the day but there is also a deep empathy for the climate of a specific location so the effect of wind, rain and mist across the land at different points of time or season. It is those elements of climate that are the Moving Materials.
continues at the Danish Architecture Centre in Copenhagen until 25 June
OK … I could hardly wander around Kløvermarken and Refshaleoen with a camera in bright clear Spring sunlight and not take more photographs of the new waste incinerator designed by the Bjarke Ingels Group.
The steam released from the chimney shows that it is up and running although the building is not completely finished and, as yet, there is no sign of the promised smoke rings or the ski slope that will run down from the top.
I still have some reservations about the size of this building so close to the historic city centre but actually the scale - along with not trying to hide or disguise it - is really the point here because you just can’t hide something this big. The only alternative would have been to banish it to some distant fringe of the city but that would defeat the need to reduce the impact and cost of transporting and dealing with the waste that the city produces.
And making it bold and impressive and - hopefully - fun then that makes the proximity and, to be honest, the cost possibly more acceptable. It is a huge investment by the city but they have ended up with a pretty amazing chunk of engineering and if it’s covered in trees and snow and if you can ski down from the top then maybe the citizens can at least see it as their BIG BFG ... even if they don’t all love it.
On the walk across to look at the new Pelican storage building the light was good for taking photographs of the Prismen sports and culture centre that is just to the south - on the opposite side of Prags Boulevard.
Designed by Dorte Mandrup, the sports hall opened in 2006.
This part of the city lacked sports facilities and the hall covers a large space for a variety of community activites and although its envelope of polycarbonate panels might look like an out-of-town shopping shed from the outside - the inside has amazing natural light and it feels more like a large public square that happens to be covered.
The shape and volume is deceptively simple so, although it looks like a large wedge, there is a complex relationship with buildings to the east with two traditional Copenhagen apartment buildings of U shape - both around three sides of a courtyard - and with a short street between them so the slope of the roof runs up to four high gable ends and the building closes off two courtyards and a short street. The plan is also a wedge shape that tapers in on the north and south side and forms interesting triangular public spaces towards Prags Boulevardand to Holmbladsgade to the south.
PRISMEN, Holmbladsgade 71
In the Wasteland exhibition at the Danish Architecture Centre about the pioneering work of the Lendager group on up cycling building materials there were separate sections on their research on reusing glass or timber or brick and so on and in each section, as well as discussing broad ideas, they focused on a building that illustrates in a more tangible way what they have achieved already or what they are doing with ongoing projects.
For their work on up cycling concrete they showed drawings and plans and a section of shuttering they are using for a new self-storage facility for Pelican where work is now well in hand.
The new unit is at Prags Boulevard, less than 2 kilometres from DAC, so it seemed like a good idea to show photographs of the building itself.
Concrete from the old paint factory that was on the site has been crushed and reused following demolition. There were some old workshops on the site so new workshops have been incorporated into the new building on the ground level and there is space on the site for 600 square metres of urban garden where locals will be able to grow vegetables.
Lendager on the Pelican building
At KADK on Danneskiod-Sasøes Allé in Copenhagen … an exhibition to show a wide variety of recent experiments and research projects in architecture from architects and teachers from the Royal Academy itself and from the School of Architecture in Aarhus and the School of Architecture and Design in Oslo.
This is about research into how we can design better buildings now and in the future: “the artistic experiment is … an important cornerstone of KADK's architectural and design education and is a central part of KADK's community commitment as an educational institution. “
This is the first in what will be a biennial event and continues at KADK until 5 May 2017
There are just a few more days to see the project work from the architecture and design students in the Winter 2017 graduates’ exhibition at the Royal Danish Academy.
KADK, Danneskiold-Samsøe Alle, Copenhagen
exhibition continues until 5 March 2017
In 2005 Realdania purchased the house in Gotfred Rodes Vej that Arne Jacobsen designed and had built for himself and his young family in 1929. The house has been restored and many features returned to the original arrangement. The house is normally occupied by tenants so access for the public is rare but the villa was opened for two days on the 11th and 12th of February.
The Infinite Happiness, by Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine, is a fascinating film profile of the 8House - the large block of apartments in Copenhagen designed by Bjarke Ingels. It is in their Living Architecture series and looks at the building by talking to people who live and work there … so the best people to understand and appreciate or criticise the architecture. The film was screened recently by Arch Daily and the series has been acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Work to complete the Amager incinerator is progressing … this photograph was taken today in the late afternoon as I walked back across the new bridge over the harbour. External facing seems to be complete and the single stack is in place but wonder how the gizmo for blowing smoke rings is coming on.
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