A new store for the holdings of Rigsarkiv - the State Archive - was designed by PLH Architects and opened in 2009.

It was built across the back of the long concrete building of the Danish Railways freight building from the 1960s and was on the site of the train shed of the freight terminal building.

Externally the archive building reads as two parts - a flat-roofed section below and, in fact forming, the high-level landscaped garden and two large warehouse blocks in line with a gap between them on the back of the plot so along Carsten Niebuhrs Gade.

The street facade and the parts of the block visible above the garden are faced in yellow/grey bricks that is enlivened by a shallow but strong relief pattern that is inspired by runic lettering and is created by breaking forward courses of the brickwork by just 6 cm and the graphic effect is created by the shadow.

Inside the two tall blocks, there are enormous storage halls that are 15 metres high with racking that is 12 metres high. In total there are said to be 370 kilometres of shelving in the archive.

Windowless facades and the garden across the roof maintain the temperature and the microclimate of the storage facilities - crucial for the historic documents, books and maps stored here.

The courtyard between the two ranges is 190 metres long and just under 30 metres wide and the garden area is described by the architects as a green street although it is at the level of the second floor so 8 metres above the level of the pavement along Kalvebod Brygge.

The garden is open to the public with access from either the slope up between the buildings of the SEB offices to the north or from the upper garden of the Tivoli Conference Center and Hotels to the south and there is now also a new external staircase at the city end of the main office block that was added as part of the recent and extensive remodelling of the main freight terminal building along Kalvebod Brygge - now known as KB32.

PLH Architects
The National Archive

the two blocks of the archive store from Carsten Niebuhrs Gade

Kaktustårnene or the Cactus Towers at Dybbølsbro will not be finished until the summer and it is still difficult to see how the high landscape of Det Grønne Strøg / the Green Line will transition across from the roof of the new IKEA store - still under construction - and then drop down steeply to the level of the entrance to the NEXUS building.

From the street and from the shopping centre of Fisketorvet, you can see what appears to be a large, square slab of concrete set at a sharp angle at the base of the towers and that forms, in part, the roof of a large, open, lobby or entrance into the towers and supported on high and slender columns. Drawings show that there will be a sharply-winding path dropping down between the towers through planting.

The towers were designed by BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group - and they have experience of forming steep landscapes at 8Tallet in Ørestad and on the roof of the Bakke or incinerator which is steep enough for a ski slope.

When finished this summer, there will be 495 apartments in the towers that are wedge shaped and each has a striking and sharply-angled balcony.

There will be a few apartments with two rooms but most are single studio rooms of just 33 square metres and have been described as providing "Micro Living" so it is slightly ironic that publicity material promotes the location as next to a new IKEA store when the furniture in the apartments is fitted and with little space for anything else. They even seem to have a bed that is, it appears from drawings, to be a mattress on the large windowsill.

Marketing of the apartments is aimed at young, single, people and there will be communal spaces in the towers for meeting and eating but they might also appeal to professionals who want a base for working in the city during the week but return home at weekends.

Copenhagen has a chronic shortage of housing for students and for single young professionals so it will be interesting to see how quickly tenants are found but my guess is that living in Kaktustårnene will be popular and fashionable.