Nansensgade 57

 

This plot on Nansensgade - a street a few blocks out from Nørreport - has been empty since the late 1980s … simply a gap in the street frontage with a garden behind a fence.

The new building here was designed by Christensen & Co and completed last summer.

Built by the city social services, the apartments are for vulnerable young people and are used as a staging post to give them help and support before they move on to more independent lives.

It is a narrow plot, so the entrance door is set off to one side - leaving space for one shop on the ground floor and the staircase is at the back, turned to run up across the garden side. On the floors above, the apartments are arranged to follow the well-established Copenhagen form with two apartments at each level, one to the right and one to the left, with the pattern broken at the top floor where there is a ninth apartments on one side and a roof terrace to the other.

To the street the façade has a checkerboard pattern of plain copper panels that step forward boldly to give privacy to the balconies of each apartment and narrow windows in the sides give views up and down this lively street.

My career has been spent working on historic architecture and conservation but that does mean that I can't appreciate good modern architecture even if, as here in a good street of good buildings with a distinct character, it seems to break many of the conventions.

Breaking rules or breaking conventions or, as here, breaking forward of the regular line of the facades along the street, is fine if it's done knowingly. Rules and conventions should not be broken just for the sake of it but here it clearly adds a dynamic to the street frontage and the choice of material and the colour is spot on.

Christensen & Co

 

new information panels on the Metro

 

Metro stations in Copenhagen are to have new flat-screen information panels on the platforms and these are part of a new information system.

The first of these new signs were installed at Vestamager and Ørestad at the end of 2018 but all the old-style signs will be replaced in all the stations over the next few months.

This is part of the preparations for July this year when Cityringen - a new inner city line - is to open.

It will be interesting to see not just how platforms and linking staircases are laid out at the new main interchanges - Kongens Nytorv will be an exceptionally busy station where the exiting lines and the new line cross - but also interesting to see where signs are placed and how signs and graphics will be used to control and direct the movement of people.

Commuters tend to move fast on auto pilot but at Kongens Nytorv, but also at Nørreport and at the new station at the City Hall, commuters will come up hard and fast against huge numbers of tourists who are new to the city and its transport systems and that's where that interface between design and human behaviour is crucial.

Can anyone explain why people stop in their tracks at the most inconvenient places - like immediately at the top of an escalator or the bottom of a flight of steps - to look at a map or gaze up to the ceiling? Are they looking for divine intervention?

There should be a new code of conduct … if you are lost step to the side.

And actually the same should apply when your mobile phone rings. Watch. It's amazing just how many people either stop walking wherever they are or at best slow down noticeably when their phone rings. I'm not sure that signs with even the cleverest graphics could deal with that problem.

Bornholms Stemme / Voice of Bornholm

glass by Morten Klitgaard

 

Bornholms Stemme / Voice of Bornholm - an exhibition on now at Officinet - the gallery of Danske Kunsthåndværkere & Designere in Bredgade in Copenhagen - has been curated and arranged by Bettina Køppe of the gallery Køppe Contemporary objects in Nexø on the island of Bornholm.

Bornholm is the large Danish Island in the Baltic that is about 35 kilometres off the south coast of Sweden. It's about 30 kilometres wide and possibly 40 kilometres from north to south and is renowned for it's landscape and for it's archaeology … with its position it controlled traffic through this part of the Baltic with major medieval fortresses. It's important not just for tourism but for artists and crafts makers who live here and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts schools of glass and ceramics are based on Bornholm. 

The exhibition has works from four major ceramicists - Michael Geertsen, Nynne Rosenkrantz Christiansen, Christina Schou Christensen, and Jeanette List Amstrup - pieces by the glass maker Morten Klitgaard - works in wood by Tyge Axel Holm and jewellery by Kaori Juzu and Per Suntum.

the exhibition continues at Officinet until 26 January 2019
there are profiles of the artists and the works on Køppe gallery site Voice of Bornholm
Køppe Contemporary Objects

detail of Barrel Ceramic by Chistina Schou Christensen - top right
Stoneage Decon ceramics and works on paper by Michael Geertsen - bottom left
ceramic by Nynne Ronsenkrantz Christiansen - bottom right

 

skud på stammen at design werck in Copenhagen

Skud på Stammen - an exhibition of furniture by students from NEXT - the technical training college in Copenhagen - has just opened at Design Werck.

The students work in partnership with designers to produce the furniture to demonstrate skills and trial new ideas.

the exhibition continues until 10 March 2019

NEXT
Skud på Stammen
Design Werck, Krudløbsvej 12, 1439 København

note: Design Werck does not open on Mondays or Tuesdays

 

street lighting in Copenhagen

 

Around the city, artificial lighting in streets and squares is designed with real care.

The new lighting for Slotsplads in front of Christiansborg is a good example where light levels are subdued and subtle … bright enough to feel secure and warm rather than having sharp white electric light so about as far as you can get from crass spotlights and appropriate for what is one of the most important public buildings in the city.

Light fittings here tend to be low rather than on high posts although traffic junctions are still lit by larger lights set higher, often suspended from wires, because they have to cover a wider area simply for safety.

But on many foot paths and cycle routes the lighting at night is from lamps set in relatively short posts - so below waist height - that throw a pool of light across the paving and where there are steps these are now often illuminated by lights under the hand rails or by small lights set onto the surface.


The annual Copenhagen Festival of Light will be from 1st February through to the 24th.
It’s a good time to visit the city if it feels as if there is still a very long wait for Spring because the festival gives people a reason for going out on a dark night.

 

lighting the square at Christiansborg

Back at the end of November, there was a short post about extensive work across Slotsplads - the public square in front of Christiansborg - the parliament building in the centre of Copenhagen.

The main reason for remodelling this large and important public space was to bring some order to the area where, as a temporary security measure to thwart attacks with vehicles, a line of rough boulders had been set out in an arc on the outer edge of the square. The boulders have been replaced with large granite spheres and new setts were laid across the whole area. Security barriers were in place that drop down into the ground for access to the front of the building but work was ongoing - particularly along the canal in front of the square where new paving has been laid and a line of new trees have been planted.

Plans for this work showed the old lights but in a new arrangement in a straight line across the facade. There were electric cables in place with a rough gap in the cobbles where each light was to go but, given the time of year, there was a line of large Christmas trees here across the front of the building and all strung with fairy lights.

Now, with the new year, the Christmas trees have gone and the new lights have been installed in a straight line across the front, regularly-spaced and just out from a line of shallow steps. Ornate historic iron lamps are set on simple grey, marble bases and the effect is good … ordered and appropriate in a down-played but monumental sort of way.

Out of Office at DAC

Out of Office was established by the landscape architects Adam Roigart and Martin Hedevang Andersen who both trained in Copenhagen.

They work on urban landscapes on public streets and in courtyards in the city and use prototyping to test ideas and to understand and to explore user needs and the users are involved in the construction work to establish a strong sense of ownership.

Materials are recycled and for the urban garden in the staircase gallery at DAC (The Danish Architecture Centre) they are growing zucchini in bricklayers' buckets on recycled pallets. The plants will be cared for by local school children.

The Out of Office on-line site has photographs of their projects including courtyard gardens for apartment building on Jagtvej and Sjælør Boulevard in Copenhagen, a Winter Pavilion, and a street garden in Krusågade in Vesterbro.

The garden at DAC has been set up with the Klima 100 exhibition in the gallery at the next level down.

Out of Office

Dansk Arkitektur Center,
Bryghuspladsen 10,
1473 Copenhagen

Klimabyer / Climate Cities at the Danish Architecture Center

On the staircase at DAC (the Danish Architecture Center) there is currently a small but important exhibition that was initiated and funded by Realdania.

Eighty two of the 98 municipalities in Denmark submitted projects that tackle problems caused by climate change From those solutions 100 were chosen for publication in Klima 100 2018 and a selection are shown here in the exhibition.

These examples confront a range of problems caused by adverse effects from changes in the climate. The best solutions were implemented at a local level and involved local communities but these projects can be adapted or scaled up to be implemented more widely … locally, regionally or globally.

All the projects have been judged against the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.

What can be seen here is not just an impact in the way these solutions mitigate potentially serious and destructive problems but, at the same time, they can be seen to improve our built environment and can make positive differences to the way people live.

For some of these problems there are relatively straightforward and obvious solutions - so, for instance, by planting more trees or replacing hard surfaces with grass to control the run off of surface water - and some solutions employ existing technology while others require imagination and ingenuity to reverse the impact of a man-made environment A good example of this is where former streams and water courses have been reinstated where they had been taken down into culverts and drains or where natural wetlands are restored to manage drainage.

There are gains where nature has been brought back into cities and particularly where children are encouraged to understand how food is produced and to develop a positive and more informed attitude to the natural environment.

Other solutions have focused on encouraging people to change their behaviour. Recycling should no longer been seen as optional or as a chore and one of the projects featured in the exhibition has focused on how we can up-cycle more by using new facilities at city waste centre that can help people repair rather than dump possessions that are broken. 

In all this, at so many different levels, applied design has a crucial role.

 
 

note:

Headings below are taken from the information panels at the exhibition but are also active links to a relevant page on the Global Opportunity Explorer Klima goexplorer site and the numbers refer to the page in the publication Klima 100 2018 where the project is described and illustrated.

 

Sustainable city center [26]

The new City Hall in Middelfart has set new standards for the proposed life-span of its building materials and for energy use and water consumption both through the construction work and now when the building is in use. Solutions here may now seem obvious - so offices and functions spread around the town have been pulled together into a single location; floors use recycled wood; the building has 700 square metres of solar panels on the roof; waste heat is transferred to the district heating system and waste food goes to make natural gas - and together they are clearly effective. But perhaps what is more important is that the appearance of the building is of a thoroughly modern construction where there is no compromise of modern aesthetics. To put that another way, this building shows that nailed on old planks and chunks of moss and weeds on the roof are fine if that is what you want but it is not obligatory to achieve the very best green standards.

 

Sustainable renovation [27]

This is an important project for Copenhagen where the city has a substantial number of well-built apartment blocks that date from the 19th and 20th centuries although these may not be arranged in the best way to provide an arrangement of accommodation that people now expect and almost-certainly do not come up to current standards for insulation or for good natural light or for energy use.

This block on Gammel Jernbanevej in Valby was constructed in 1899 as purpose-built apartments with shops on the ground floor. The location is good, close to a railway station and in a pleasant street, and the building materials are durable but the apartments are small, lack bathrooms and the indoor climate is not good.

The aim of the renovation is to preserve historic features but optimise natural daylight so a new glass façade will be constructed out from the courtyard side to form a climate screen that faces west. This will add 10 square metres to each apartment and, with triple-glazed folding screens and flexible glazed sliding screens, on the line of the present back wall, that space could be used like a large balcony in the summer but during the winter will be a warm and well-lit extension of the living space.

An extra floor will be added to the block - to generate financial returns - and solar panels will be added on the new roof.

This is a Living in Light project 

Fremtidig-snit.jpg
 

A sustainable village from the ground up [31]

This is a new-built residential neighbourhood in Lisbjerg about 7 kilometres north of the centre of  Aarhus. New buildings have been designed to reduce environmental impact and citizens have been involved. The area will develop over 60 years and the municipality has produced a long-term plan for sustainability and has produced “inspirational catalogues” to guide architects and builders working on the next phases.

Building density is high and commercial buildings - and with them employment - have been brought back into the residential areas to reduce distances to travel to work or school. Water is collected after downpours and is filtered through limestone for flushing toilets and washing clothes and that reduces the use of treated drinking water by 40%.

Projects like this show that we have reached an important turning point in our approach to climate change and sustainability. For many of the first solutions, the focus had to be on adapting to the problems - so retrofitting solutions - but for new buildings we can now be proactive.

 

A new concept for food and knowledge production [58]

Impact Farm is a two-storey greenhouse that was installed in Nørrebro in Copenhagen in 2016. Intense cultivation on the top floor can produce between two and four tons of leaf green a year that is sold to local restaurants and cafes and the ground-floor space can be used for work and recreation including education workshops and food festivals.

Rainwater is collected and recycled so growing food consumes 70-90% less water than a regular farm. Components are pre fabricated and the greenhouse is built around a shipping container and after 15 months it was packed up and moved on to a new site.

Schemes like this have a vital role in helping children in towns and cities understand and appreciate how their food is produced.

Human Habitat - Impact Farm

Impact-Farm-Abdellah-Ihadian-2898-800x600.jpg
 

Robust nature in the city [67]

A new area of park and extensive urban garden has been laid out around the Marselisborg Centre in Aarhus with a focus on biodiversity and with integrated wetlands that utilise rainwater both for nature and for children so they develop a positive understanding of the natural world through play and exploration. Schemes like this are changing radically our preconceptions of what urban landscaping should look like.

 
 

Courtyard garden project [75]

An imaginative scheme for a courtyard of 3200 square metres at the centre of an existing apartment building.

Many of these large courtyards in the city simply have grass or low maintenance hard surfaces but neither deals well with the heavy rainfall from storms. In this courtyard, a "climate wall" built with recycled concrete will create a temporary lake to hold back water when there is a storm - in a heavy storm in Copenhagen enough rain can fall over a few hours to flood the ground floor and cellars of buildings, flood streets and overwhelm and damage drains and sewers.

To control storm water by holding it back on the surface, rather than letting it surge immediately through storm drains, is now described as a "blue solution". Here the planting, described as "biomimicry", is closer to true or wild nature and, again, schemes like this are changing attitudes and expectations about planting in urban landscapes.

More information about Fremtidens Gårdhave / Courtyards of the future can be found on the site of the Lendager Group.

 

Ancient landscapes shapes new urban space [96]

In this landscape project in Vejle, Jutland, rain water is held back as it drains down into the fjord.

This is another good example where climate resilience, over a large area, not only creates an attractive new landscape but also creates popular and well-used space for physical activity.

 

Securing the coastline for the future [104]

Le Mur / the wall protects the harbour of Lemvig against rising sea levels and destructive high tides. The solution here has been to build a concrete wall in sections with steel gates to close gaps that normally give access to the water.

Hasløv & Kjærsgaard Arkitekter with the engineers COWI

 

Recycling and upcycling for the future [157]

A former paper factory - Maglemølle in Næstved - is now a centre for green companies that recycle and upcycle materials including the collection and sorting of glass by Reiling Glassrecycling that is then reused by Ardagh Glass Holmegaard.

 

Klimabyer / Climate City
5 December 2018 - 15 February 2019 

The Stair Gallery,
Dansk Arkitektur Center,
Bryghuspladsen 10, København K

 

Danish Architecture Center

Goexplorer.org/klima100

Klima100 2018

 

This is the publication that comes with the exhibition or - to be strictly correct - the exhibition illustrates some of the projects that are set out in this publication from Sustainia and Realdania.

This is the work of eight researchers and lead writers and eight contributors and shows 100 climate change solutions from 80 Danish municipalities. That 82 of the 98 municipalities in Denmark submitted their climate projects for assessment indicates how seriously and how widely across the country problems of climate change are appreciated. This is no longer about theory - about the possibility of climate change and a need to tackle a problem sometime in the future - because these are real and serious problems that have been identified with solutions that were initiated after 1 January 2013 and are now up and running - up and running and open for assessment and with the potential for wider implementation.

 
 

These 100 solutions were chosen for the strategies they adopted and for their impact because they inspire change and they were judged on several criteria including for collaboration, for possible scalability, and on how they demonstrate that knowledge can be shared.

A third of the projects - as you might expect - tackled climate adaptations. In Denmark, generally that means anticipating and dealing with the consequences from an increased frequency of rain storms and, of course, the probability of floods caused by rising sea levels that could increase by 35% in the next 100 years. Denmark is a nation of islands, is low lying land and has long coast lines to the North Sea and to the waters of the Baltic so climate change has to be taken seriously now and solutions have to engage and motivate people.

Klima 100 2018 identifies the lack of projects from both agriculture and food production so these industries appear to be slower in anticipating or pre-empting the consequences of climate change but there were also new approaches that have emerged recently so there has been a growing understanding, at a popular level, of the potential of a circular economy and a growing appreciation of possible gains from these schemes so it is not just a matter, for instance, of controlling inundation, but of understanding how the community could gain distinct benefits from new wetlands or new water courses.

A growing number of solutions depend on accurate data so, for instance, monitoring of weather for a quick response to problems or, for buildings, precise monitoring of the current and long-term use of energy.

The projects or schemes were divided between 12 categories:

Responsible procurement and construction
Green behaviour and education
Renewable energy
Green land us and recreation
Climate-proof cities
Energy efficiency and technology
Climate action plans
Storm surge protection
Climate adaptation of streams and lakes
Transportation
Sustainable communities
Circular economy

 

The list of categories also shows that problems and solutions can sit across categories … so, for instance, new drainage might tackle an immediate threat of damage from storms but might also provide new areas for recreation and that positive gain can, in turn, be used as an incentive for a community to move on to a next stage of work. Publications like this and the exhibition have a major role in ensuring that the community is engaged and involved.

Klima 100 2018 has been published on line in Danish and in English and can be read an issuu file or can be downloaded in full as a pdf file and these projects have also been set out in a different format on the Klima pages of the Global Opportunity Explorer site.
 

Realdania

read on line as an issuu file or download pdf file

goexplorer.org/klima100 Klima 100 2018

... and in with the new

The start of a new year is probably as good a time as any to look carefully at how this blog does or doesn't work and to consider changes.

danish design review has been going for well over five years so one obvious problem is that there are now so many posts and so many photographs that it can be difficult to find things and inevitably some links, particularly links to other sites, may be broken. Over the next month or so, tags and categories will be reassessed and checked so some links might be changed and might not always work as expected but that is a work in progress. That’s basic housekeeping.

The quantity of material is also pushing limits so loading pages can be slow. One solution would be to compress image files but the photographs are an important part of these posts so images will keep as high a resolution as possible and continue to open in a full-screen slide show if you select them. Looking at analytics and at Google search it is interesting to see that the site comes much higher up the rankings if you search for a name or a topic by image rather than by text references.

Analytics also show that relatively few people come to the site on their phone but there are no plans to reduce content or clip it to make it phone friendly. Squarespace software does a good job of scaling content but posts are still aimed at readers who look at the site on a large lap-top computer or use a desk-top screen. I’ve just checked the stats and over 75% of readers look at this site on a desktop or laptop computer. All work on editing and layout here is done on an high-resolution Apple A3 size screen and I guess that shows in what you see.

The focus for the news and for the reviews over the rest of the winter and into the spring will be to look at housing and planning in Copenhagen. Huge areas of new residential buildings are going up on the old Carlsberg site and in new areas of the North and the South Harbour; there is extensive new work on land around the new Royal Arena in Ørestad and new apartment buildings are transforming the beach area of north-east Amager so this is a good time to see what has been completed and maybe a time to criticise.

Much is written about the important role that Denmark plays in design and in prestigious international building projects but the country has a long tradition of building good housing - after all Danes have to have somewhere to put all that good design - and the country has a well-deserved reputation for creating good well-planned towns with a high approval rating among residents and, on top of that, the country is ahead of many nations in trying to tackle the consequences of climate change so, as more and more people in the World are moving into densely-packed cities, Denmark's most important role as a driving force and model could actually be in urban planning and development.

A new series of posts here will look specifically at the townscape of Copenhagen to work out - or not - just why it is such a good place to live. There will also be a new series, long in the planning, to meet and talk to architects and designers and makers in the city to look at their work but also to find out why they are here in Copenhagen and ask them about how they see the future of design in the city.

In the design review half of the site it will be back to writing about more of the chairs designed in Denmark through the 20th century but there will also be a new and separate series of posts on chairs designed and made since the start of this century. In writing about designs from the 1940s and 1950s I kept thinking that there are questions I really wished someone had asked those designers then about what they had done and why as they worked on a specific design … I'm hoping that I can ask some of those questions about designs now.

on with the old ....

L1260730.jpg

Axel Towers by Lundgaard & Tranberg

As the calendar moves to a new year it’s a good time to look back and a time to look forward but that old trope - out with the old and in with new - really can't apply to architecture and planning.

There might be a great buzz as a new building is finished and opened - this year in Copenhagen it was Axel Towers opposite the main entrance to the Tivoli Gardens designed by Lundgaard & Tranberg Arkitekter that won a popular vote for the best new building in the city and the new BLOX building down on the inner harbour designed by the architects OMA that opened in May that caused most 'buzz' - but buildings take years to evolve and major planning decisions take years to resolve and their impact can last for decades if not centuries.

I wonder how many merchants in 1618 muttered and moaned about how difficult it was to get their boats in to the old wharves along Gammel Strand now the King was doing all that work around Holmen and as for those fancy new warehouses on the other side of the harbour emerging out of what was open water … well who could afford those prices and wasn’t it a pity to have lost that nice view across to Amager?

But back to 2018. Particularly towards the end of the year - there was what seems like a rush of planning decisions in December where some major schemes have been put on hold and some, that were apparently abandoned, seem to have been resurrected.

L1320042.jpg

BLOX by OMA

 

If New Year is good for anything then it's as good a time as any to reflect and reconsider.

The BLOX building is a good example. I find it really really difficult to like the building and I'm certainly not alone. It's not a bad building as such but with hindsight - yup that wonderful thing hindsight - I'm curious to know if that project was starting right now, rather than in 2005, when the land was purchased, would Realdania and DAC be sketching out now a building like that for that site?

If you had to pick just one really controversial problem for planning right now, it would be the huge pressure on the city to break the skyline by breaking through the long-established height limit for new buildings. If any developer buys land anywhere in the city outside the centre, even close to the historic centre, then the go-to solution is to go up.

One of those new towers at Axel Torv has 16 floors and taller buildings are proposed for a different development on the area immediately to the north which could involve not only demolishing the much-loved Palads Teatret at the north end of Axel Torv but also building massive towers across the top of the railway as it heads out north from the central station in what is now a wide cutting. The problem with that scheme, as with proposals for any tower building, is that it can have a huge impact on nearby buildings, by blocking views, creating shadows and funnelling wind and of course, as with the new Maersk building on the north side of the lakes, towers impose themselves by dominating the views from a wide area as they rear above the historic roof scape. Permission for a series of new towers on the site of the old post sorting offices south of the central station were delayed in the summer as people protested about concerns that they would throw a shadow over the harbour swimming baths.

Even more drastic changes are proposed but one of the curious things is that although people seem to crave novelty and love the new, when push comes to shove, they are wary or very wary about change.

Maybe that is the real problem for planners … people will be nostalgic when they see a sepia-coloured photograph of a long-lost streetscape or watch an old film of the city and reminisce but if you ask them what a specific building looked like after it has been demolished then they will struggle to remember. A new metro station on the square in front of the city hall is close to being completed and right now they are planting a forest … well all right … planting a glade … of trees across the site of the old bus station but I struggle to remember what that looked like.

The point is that with all the new buildings and all the major planning changes that have been proposed over this year, the real need is for lively and informed public debate both before plans are finally approved but also after a new scheme is completed because it helps to be able to say why we don’t like something … not just, slightly vaguely, that we don’t like it.

Some of the plans in the pipe line will change the city for ever so now is the time for people who live in Copenhagen to decide if what is proposed is actually what they want for their city five, ten, fifteen or more years from now.

People in the city have a proud tradition of protest - sometimes violent - as when housing around Blågårds Plads was demolished in the 1970s or the Youth House on Jagtvej was demolished in 2006 without local consultation.

Some major schemes, like the motorway down the lakes that planners proposed in the 1960s, can be abandoned when everyone, planners and citizens, realise that actually it is a bad idea, but that is rare. Other schemes get built and it's only then that people can see the impact and only then that they realise that the real problem is that buildings like that don’t get unbuilt.

Alfred Nobels Bro

 
Alfreds Bro Map.jpg
 

A new harbour bridge, Alfred Nobels Bro, was opened in the middle of December.

In the south harbour, south-west of the centre, the bridge crosses Frederiksholmsløbet - a wide canal off the main harbour - and links Enghave Brygge and the area around the shopping centre of Fisketorvet - to the large area of new apartment buildings of Teglholmen.

The north side of the bridge is close to the power station H C Ørsted Værket and close to the site for a new metro station. Until the excavations and work for the metro are completed in 2023, the new bridge can only be used by cyclists and pedestrians but it will then take all vehicles.

This is the final link that completes the 13 kilometre circuit around the inner harbour for bikes and walkers and runners.

The canal here is 90 metres wide and the bridge deck is wide with two lanes for traffic at the centre; wide lanes for bikes on both sides and wide pavements. The pavement on the side looking inwards, down the canal, is bowed outwards and has a broad single bench, with its back hard against the road, 70 metres long and with a bowed shape that follows the plan of the bridge itself.

It's not clear why the bench faces down the canal rather than towards the open harbour unless the idea is that people will sit here to catch the last of the evening sun - an attempt to repeat the way that Dronning Louises Bro over the lakes to the west of the city is used as a popular place for people to sit in the evening before they head home from work.

The deck is supported on pairs of concrete columns that lean outwards but the structure is so large that it can hardly be called elegant and until the new apartment buildings are completed it really would be difficult to describe the views from the bridge as attractive.

The team behind the design of the bridge were COBE Architects, the engineers MOE, Arkil Holding A/S and G9 Landscape who made the mahogany bench.

shopping in Jægersborggade

 

 

In the middle of December The Guardian newspaper published an article that listed ten "cool shopping districts around the world". These were "readers tips" so not exactly a methodical survey but nevertheless interesting. Included in the list was Jægersborggade in Copenhagen.

 read more

 

select any image to open in slide show

 

it's all in the details

 

When there are surveys where people are asked if they are happy living in the city or town in which they live then Copenhagen comes high in the rankings.

There are obvious reasons why there are high level of approval from so many in Copenhagen for their city … it is relatively compact for a capital city so it has a human scale …  the climate does what it is supposed to do so it's not ridiculously cold in the winter and it's pleasantly warm in the summer … warm enough to swim in the sea from beaches nearby or the water is warm enough and clean enough to swim in the harbour … and swimming in the harbour is possible because there are no major industries that pollute the environment so clean air and clean water are further reasons for people to be happy here.

There is a good railway service to other parts of the country and to get to neighbouring countries and there is a good international airport with high passenger approval ratings and it's a short metro ride from the city centre. To say that people can get out of a city quickly and easily is perhaps not the most obvious reason for people feeling content but it's certainly better than living in a city where you feel trapped or it feels remote, far from anywhere you want to be.

Planners from around the world come to admire the architecture and the planning here and, in particular, come to see how and why the balance of private journeys are made by bike rather than by car … in themselves further reasons for being happy here or at least for being fitter.

There are also clear economic reasons for the success of the city … it has all the financial benefits and all the facilities that come from being a capital city … so the government, international delegations, national organisations and major companies are based here and the national theatre, the national library and so on are all here … but even so it is relatively small and it is a prosperous city but still a city with a strong if understated socialist ethos so extremes of wealth are not as obvious here as in many large cities.

All this is fine and has been assessed and analysed and written about in what seems like an endless number of articles but there is no simple Copenhagen ingredient … you can't take city X and add the Copenhagen factor and there you are … problems sorted.

I've lived in Copenhagen for getting on for five years and I've known the city for much longer and, for me, one important factor that makes the city an amazing place to live is that it is so rich visually … or do I mean simply interesting and attractive?

It's not just about obvious places like, for instance, the royal palace of Amalienborg and the Marble Church- although the square and the buildings are one of the great public spaces in Europe - but it's the quality and the good design of smaller buildings in the city and it's about the courtyards and the corners and the odd spaces where people really do think carefully about what they are doing with their buildings and with the urban landscape of their city.

This photograph was taken a month ago, walking across from Nørrebro to get to Sankt Hans Torv - so outside the centre of the city but not far out.

Along the side of Guldbergsgade - a busy street of apartment buildings and shops - some land has been divided up for community use. There is, of course, play equipment here for children but also a small zoo where, right in the middle of the city, children can see hens grubbing around and rabbits and other small animals. There are also around two dozen garden plots together along the street edge that have been allocated to local residents for growing vegetables or flowers and all have neat fencing, borders and narrow paths and a shed although to call them sheds is hardly an adequate word to describe these small summerhouses that are potting sheds and stores for tools but also a place to brew coffee and sit and watch or sit and talk and clearly reflect the character and interests of each gardener.

I took a slight diversion along the narrow path between the two rows of garden plots, and paused to take the photo because for me this seems to sum up what are crucial aspects of life in Copenhagen that few academic authors seem to consider when they write about planning and the quality of life here.

First this is a city where there is a strong sense of respect … the respect of people with a quiet pride in the city they live in but also a respect for property - their property, other people's property and the general public property of the city streetscape. There is some mindless vandalism but remarkably little when over a million people live together. These gardens are not in a wealthy or distinctly middle-class enclave … in fact the reputation of Nørrebro is anything but that … but people moving out onto and claiming public space is a strong and an important part of life all over the city.

Second, and perhaps more important, is that ordinary people living in Copenhagen seem to have a strong visual sense …. here, ordinary used to mean people not working in design. People are visually aware and visually literate and that is clear here.

In books and magazines and guides Copenhagen is described as a design city but Milan, Paris, London and New York are design cities but could hardly be more different. In part it is because those are cities where style and fashion but also wanting to stand out or make a statement are driving factors.

That's not, of course, to suggest that Copenhagen is unfashionable or unaware of fashion but visual sense here seems to be more firmly grounded: Copenhagen is a still a mercantile city where, for many many centuries, high-quality goods, made by craftsmen or by small independent companies, were and are respected; it is a city where the public face of a building or a business is important and it is a city where a good education in art and craft skills from a young age has been important in schools and through apprenticeships and technical training. So, in Copenhagen, design is not just about architects and designers and the design industries but good design permeates many aspects of daily life.

 

In the New Year a new occasional series of posts will look at some of these less-obvious aspects of architecture and urban planning in Copenhagen that together make it such a pleasant and attractive place to live.

Dedicate from Roon & Rahn

 

Back in August, when the design market FindersKeepers was at Øksnehallen in Copenhagen, there was a chance to catch up with some of the team from Roon & Rahn.

A fairly new design that they have added to their catalogue is a candle holder called Dedicate.

Product reviews as such are rarely given space here on this site but the candle holder is not just ingenious in itself but is cleverly packaged and presented and it demonstrates very well some of the best qualities that give the best Danish design an edge.

Roon & Rahn, a small design studio based in Aarhus, was established by Nicki van Roon and René Rahn Hansen. They have concentrated on producing a small number of designs including stools and tables - all with a distinct style - all made well with a concentration on technical details that takes their work closer to an engineering approach than to the work of a carpenter.

Their real skill is to tackle product design from a different direction … why simply try to design something slightly better than the competition when actually, if you take a step back, then it might be a good idea to try something very different to do the same job.

Dedicate could not be a better example. If you had to come up with objects the design market in Denmark should not need more of it would probably be more chairs and more candle holders. The new idea for Dedicate is that it comes with a twist … or, to be more accurate, it comes without a fold and bend that you provide … so it's a flat-pack candle holder although I'm not sure Nicki and René would see that as the most flattering description.

It is cut from a single piece of rose steel and comes in a manila envelope where you can add the name of the person you are giving it to - hence Dedicate. There is a clear set of instructions, so, as with all the designs from Roon & Rahn, deceptively simple but in fact very carefully-designed and really good packaging and graphics are a crucial part of their work.

Out of its envelope, you break off a small disc that will support the candle and then bend the main steel cut-out in two directions using the edge of a table to keep the main fold straight - and a standard candle is dropped down to be held on a short spike.

On the current catalogue from Roon & Rahn for 2018 there is a tag line "Passion for clever design". That sums it up pretty well.

 

Roon & Rahn

 

FindersKeepers at Axel Towers

 

This weekend there was another design market from FindersKeepers - this time in Axel Towers - the new building across the road from the entrance to Tivoli. The market was in two parts that have not yet been occupied so it was quite a good opportunity to see inside what has been a much-talked-about development. Given that this was a main shopping weekend before Christmas there was possibly rather less furniture and more clothes and jewellery and food … hardly surprising as most people must be looking for presents rather than looking to refurnish.

FINDERSKEEPERS

Langebro - a new museum

 

Plans have been submitted to the department of Culture and Leisure for permission to create a new museum for Langebro with a new café in the substructure of the bridge on the Amager side.

There has been a bridge here since the 17th century but the present bridge designed by Kaj Gottlob was completed in 1954.

On the 17 January 2019 there will be a meeting about the bridge and the new museum at the nearby Kulturhuset down the harbour from the bridge and there is information about the bridge and about the proposed museum here.