update - Hilton Hotel on the harbour

/

Work is moving forward to convert the old Nordea Bank offices for a new Hilton Hotel on this prominent harbour site by Knippelsbro. Now you can see just how high the extra story will be and you can see just how the hotel will break through to the quay - to colonise it as an attractive new feature - a valuable commercial asset - for the new hotel.

And in return ……… the city gets some new steps down to the quay from the bridge.

The old office building was much too big and, with hefty concrete cladding, brutal and ugly but in part it was those things for clear reasons. When it was constructed in the 1950s, the harbour was a working port and not a tourist destination and this was the offices of the Burmeister & Wain ship yard that was crucial for providing jobs for the city and was a major player in the post-war effort by the country to restore the economy. Looking pretty was not on the design brief.

But right here, right now, if the Hilton Group had cleared the site and started again, a scheme for a building of that size and in that position would not be given planning permission.

And then they pushed the boundaries by asking for and getting permission to add an extra floor on a building that was already too big.

Until last year I lived in an apartment buildings to the south, behind the church, and looked out across the top of the trees in the churchyard with a clear sky line broken only by the church tower and with no one looking in. Then work started and the Nordea building took a deep breath and puffed out and began to loom over the trees.

Those apartment buildings are not the most stunning design but they are well designed and carefully designed to create pleasant living space and good streetscapes on land where there had been dry docks and sheds that no one could see a way of preserving after the yards closed. More to the point, planning controls kept the apartment buildings to the same overall height as the gutter or eaves of the church …. so not to the overall height of the church roof and not to the overall height of the spire but to the height of the body of the church. That development showed at least some respect for the historic buildings that still do and still should dominate the area.

In the general sweep of things I'm only a visitor to the city so it is not my place to be offended on behalf of københavnerne - who are certainly more than capable of defending their own values - but there seems to be something basically undemocratic about these huge international hotels that break the spirit if not the letter of Janteloven. The Hilton will make use of the nearby metro - though I guess most guests will arrive by taxi - and the ferry is at the back door to serve hotel guests and the quay will make a ‘picturesque’ backdrop from their harbour-side café or bar but I'm not exactly sure what citizens get back in return. Presumably, that huge glazed new top floor will be expensive restaurants and spaces for events but how many people in the city will ever use that unless they go just once to see what is up there. They don't need another ‘new perspective’ to see over their own city or a viewing platform to look down on their fellow citizens.

 

Ørkenfortet / Desert Fort, Christianshavn

/

Work is moving forward fast on Ørkenfortet, the Desert Fort - the large office building that is at the centre of the harbour at the Christianshavn end of Knipplesbro - the central bridge that crosses the harbour between the centre of the city and Christianshavn.

The interior at all levels has been gutted and all original windows and all external cladding have been removed. Work has started on cutting down new internal courtyards or light wells within the concrete structure of the block and on removing hefty concrete retaining walls along both the street frontage towards Torvegade and at the level of the quay on the end of the building towards the harbour that formed a base for the building.

Ørkenfortet was designed by Palle Suenson (1904-1987) and was completed in 1962 as offices for Burmeister & Wain who were a well-established and major engineering and ship-building company in the city. However, the engineering works closed in the 1990s and many of the buildings were demolished and replaced with office blocks along the harbour and large apartment buildings along the canal to the south.

The building by Suenson was taken over by Nordea Bank in the 1990s but, in 2017, they moved to a new office close to the metro station at DR Byen further south on Amager and the harbour building is now being converted into a hotel with almost 400 rooms for the Hilton Group.

read more

Planning Statement - appendix to the Local Plan
updated news on the development from atp ejendomme

notes:

In Danmarks Kunstbilbliotek / the Danish Art Library in Copenhagen there is a drawing of the building by Palle Suenson Inv. nr. 53296 - a perspective from Knippelsbro

While tracking down information on the building I came across a web site that revealed that the building was given a nickname by locals who called it Røven or The Arse. Initially, I assumed that was because the building was thought to be butt ugly but actually it was because at lunchtime workers in the office came out onto the forecourt and sat along the parapet of the wall along Torvegade and, for people walking along the pavement below, the only thing that could be seen from the street was a line of backsides.

 

photograph from 1965 showing Knippelsbro and Torvegade with the office building designed by Palle Suenson in the foreground and the engineering works of Burmeister & Wain beyond along the harbour as far as the canal and around the south and east side of Christians Church

 

HC Ørstedsværket / HC Ørsted Power Station

/
 

Designed by the architect Andreas Fussing, work on the power station began in 1916 and was completed by 1920 although there have been several major additions. The long turbine hall with shallow curved roof in concrete was part of the first phase. Additions in 1924 and 1932 were designed by Louis Hygom and Waldemar Schmidt and for that phase Burmeister & Wain built what was then the world’s largest diesel engine.

Some roads around and through the works are open to the public and there is a museum here and open days when it is possible to see some of the machinery halls. 

This is certainly some of the most dramatic architecture in the city and could have been a model for some of the recent developments around the city - particularly for the Carlsberg redevelopment but also for the overall planning of the North Harbour area. 

The power station is Functionalism at its best - carefully controlled and beautifully proportioned buildings in the style known as New Classicism - and the power station is incredibly important industrial archaeology that tells the history of electric power in the city.

Of course, that’s not to suggest that new architecture in the city has to be a pastiche of industrial buildings of the past but that modern buildings achieve the scale but seem thin and flimsy and curiously rather cautious when compared with the bold compositions here that use very strong but carefully controlled colour; strong use of shadow and strong, simple but beautifully proportioned fenestration and rational design where function, generally, is expressed in the form.

A new metro station is due to be built here, just south of the power station and there are plans to build blocks of apartments along the water frontage but it is to be hoped that they respect the form and the importance of the architecture of the power station. There is also to be a new bridge to link this part of the harbour development with the new areas further south … all part of developing the circuit of the harbour to encourage people to cycle, run or walk around the harbour.

Knippelsbro - KULTURTÅRNET

/
 
 

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