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
The third of the series of three exhibitions in the Dreyer Gallery at the Danish Architecture centre on young architects in Copenhagen features the work of Søren Johansen and Sebastian Skovsted.
the exhibition continues at Danish Architecture Centre in Copenhagen until 15th January 2017
This is the second of a series of three exhibitions in the Dreyer’s Architecture Gallery at the Danish Architecture Centre with each exhibition running for about six weeks to profile the work of younger, more-recently established architectural practices from Copenhagen.
continues at the Danish Architecture Centre until the end of November
After going to the new exhibition at the Danish Architecture Centre - Our Urban Living Room about the work of the Copenhagen architects COBE this seemed like a good time to go out to the North Harbour to see what is happening at The Silo … one of their major and ongoing projects.
You wait years for a new multi-storey car park and then two come along one after the other ....
Work on Ofelia Plads - a large, new public space in Copenhagen - has just been completed.
To the north of the Skuespilhuset (Royal Danish Theatre or Playhouse) there was a 19th-century staithe or pier that was constructed parallel to the shore with a basin, Kvæsthusbassinet, and a wharf with a large brick warehouse, now the Admiral Hotel, on the west side and the main channel of the harbour to its east. Most recently it was used as the dock for ferries to and from Oslo and to and from the Baltic islands and ports.
In an ambitious and extensive engineering project that has just been completed, the pier has been excavated or hollowed out to create a large car park that has three levels below ground - or, perhaps it’s more important to point out, there are three levels below water level in the harbour - and the surface was then reinstated with a number of simple, small, low, new, metal-clad structures for staircase entrances to the parking levels and ventilation systems.
This hardly sounds devastating or dramatic in terms of city architecture but it actually shows Danish engineering design and urban planning at its very best - very, very well thought through; carefully and efficiently executed and with no attempt or need to show, in any flashy way, just how much money was spent. In fact the project was a gift to the city through a collaboration between the Ministry of Culture and Realdania.
A major exhibition has opened at the Danish Architecture Centre which focuses on the work of the Danish studio of Cobe arkitekter but, in a much broader sense, the exhibitions also explores crucial aspects of urban planning … the current and the future role that planning has in the enhancement of our built environment and the way that architecture and planning together can and must encourage the use of public space in our cities and towns for a huge variety of activities.
What is shown here - with models, drawings, photographs and text - are specific projects completed by Cobe over the last decade or so - the remodelling of Israels Plads; the remodelling of the street space above Nørreport railway station; the building of new libraries and schools in the city and all with a very strong and positive planning agenda - but these are also clever and innovative projects that tell us much about the meeting point of public and private space; about the way that politicians and planners determine appropriate policies for how public space is used and shows how much citizens need and how much they appreciate public space and how they use that space in increasingly inventive ways.
previous posts on work from Cobe:
Our Urban Living Room at the Danish Architecture Centre,
Strandgade 27B, Copenhagen
until 8th January 2017
Taking the harbour ferry was a chance to take yet another photograph of the Amager Resource Centre designed by BIG - the Bjarke Ingels Group - and due to come into service next year. The stack - the one that will blow smoke rings - is finished and much of the exterior cladding appears to be in place and it's now easy to judge the angle of the ski slope that will run down from the top. Perhaps more important, if only from the design aspect, is that the grey colour helps drop the bulk of the building back into the cloudscape and tones down the impact of the building on the sky line.
Work on what initially was called the Bryghusprojektet in Copenhagen but is now known as BLOX seems to have moved forward rapidly through the summer. There are now fewer cranes, less obvious engineering work and with a more open site, where hoardings and builders cabins have been removed, it is now much easier to get a sense of how the finished building will appear.
It still looks a bit like a stack of plastic lunch boxes but, as more of the large panels of pale green and opaque white have been put in place and the scaffolding and covers removed, it now seems to be at least some reference to the use of green and blue slate colours for many of the buildings in the city from the 20th century. It strongly adheres to danish ideals of rational and minimal style and is clearly aware of how buildings can and do use views of the harbour and the light reflected up off the water.
It was obvious that the relationship with the dark, solid block of the Royal Library, the near neighbour along the quay, was always going to be a difficult one … dominate, compete or be subservient … but the decision to simply be different seems now to be the simplest one. There are still some odd issues with the way the new building will loom over low historic buildings around a courtyard on the side away from the harbour and it will undermine the impressive scale of the important 17th-century Brew House but that may well be resolved by the way the open space on the city side of the new building will be quite complex with changes of level with steps and sunken areas, that will form a transition from street level to the interior and then through to quay of the harbour.
That complex interlocking of levels is in part because a major road running along the quay is bridged by the new building but there will be links under the road as one important function of the building is to provide a route between what is now to be known as the Cultural District of the city and the water front.
Work is so far advanced that it was possible to allow the public access during the Night of Culture to see the progress for themselves.
Determined clearly by necessary economic considerations, there will be a mix of uses for the building including car parking, a restaurant, a gym and luxury apartments across the upper levels but the primary function will be as the new home for the Danish Architecture Centre and for BLOXHUB - the Danish Design Council along with other associated bodies and companies working broadly on architecture to focus on the Built Environment … rather than the Natural Environment.
The architect for the project is Rem Koolhas and his studio in Rotterdam - OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture) - and the development is by Realdania who have an excellent web site for more information.
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.
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.... and longer articles about architecture and design are posted on danish design review
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