Svanemølleværket is to be a new museum of technology

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It has been confirmed that Svanemølleværket power station will be decommissioned by 2023.

After the building is passed to the control of By&Havn - the port authority of Copenhagen - it will be converted to be a new museum of technology with the collections of Danmarks Tekniske Museum in Helsingør moved here to the old works. Dorte Mandrup has been appointed architect for the project.

This was announced provisionally in February 2019 but the final decision has been delayed by the pandemic.

Swan Mill Works was the last major design by the architect Louis Hygom (1879-1950). Work began in 1947 and the massive building was completed in 1953. The power station is constructed in reinforced concrete but is faced with brick.

Originally the power station was coal fired but in 1985 it was converted to gas to produce area heating from its six boilers and five turbines. 

The works is dramatic and monumental in scale. Hygom, who also designed later parts of HC Ørestedsværket - the power station at the south end of the harbour - was an architect of the  Neoclassist school in the early decades of the 20th century and the design is not only rational and functional but it has striking and even beautiful proportions.

The challenge in this next stage will be to keep to a minimum changes to the fenestration and restrict the insertion of new windows and doors.

HC Ørestedsværket

Danmarks Tekniske Museum
Dorte Mandrup

 
 
 

Irreplaceable Landscapes - by Dorte Mandrup

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model of Vadehavscentret / The Wadden Sea Center in Vester Vedsted - completed in 2017

 

With the title Irreplaceable Landscapes, this major exhibition at the Danish Architecture Centre starts with the new Icefjord visitor centre and research centre that overlooks the Sermeq Kujalleq glacier in Ilusulissat on the west coast of Greenland.

Then, in the main exhibition space at BLOX, are models and information panels for an astounding trilogy of buildings - the three new visitor centres designed by Dorte Mandrup in three different countries that overlook three of the distinct seascapes of Vadehavet / The Wadden Sea.

Vadehavscentret - The Wadden Sea Center - overlooks the marshland of Vester Vedsted in Denmark; the Vadehavscenter - Wadden Sea World Heritage Center - in Wilhelmshaven in Germany incorporates the remains of a war-time bunker and Vadehavscenter - The Wadden Sea Center -  is on the tidal waters of Lauwersoog in the Netherlands.

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Irreplaceable Landscapes continues at the Danish Architecture Centre until 26 May 2019

Jægersborg Water Tower by Dorte Mandrup

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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.

Prismen

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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

 

Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter

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Næstvedgade Day Care Centre, Copenhagen (2004)

 

Slowly but hopefully surely more architects and designers are being added to the menus that drop down from the bar at the top of the site. These pages are simply a broad introduction to the work of an individual or a studio ... a quick reference point for a reader wanting to find links to a person or a company that has been the subject of a post so links will be added to existing works, to provide a context, or for new work or to web sites, exhibition details, and references to catalogues and monographs.

The latest addition is a brief summary of the works of the Copenhagen architects Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter.