WE architecture at Dreyers Arkitektur Galleri

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"The name WE Architecture is based on the philosophy that architecture is not the result of only one person's stroke of genius" … but  "believe that the best results occur through teamwork and transdisciplinary networks."

 

Jagtvej 69

WE architecture was established in Copenhagen in 2009 by Marc Jay and Julie Schmidt-Nielsen.

Much of their work takes, as a starting point, an exploration of how people and the community respond to and use architecture … what they describe as understanding how physical surroundings "inspire people to create new relationships or to cultivate existing relationships" … exploring the "potential for innovating the framework of communities."

This raises interesting questions because it implies that there can be an enlightened and well-defined relationship of trust between the architect and the end user as well as with the commissioning client. This is not the place to discuss the issue of politics and economics in social architecture, in the broadest sense, in Denmark but possibly a place to raise this important subject.

One project, shown here through a number of models, is a new and ongoing development for Jagtvej 69 in the Nørrebro district of Copenhagen with temporary housing for homeless people and community gardens. This is now an empty plot but was the site of a community centre, Ungdomshuset, which was cleared and demolished in 2007 precipitating street riots … cobbles thrown in the riots are one of 30 objects chosen for an exhibition at the National Museum - Din Ting - to represent key events or movements of the first years of this century. This is precisely what makes Danish architecture so important … designs that responds to the changing needs of society with an awareness of and a sensitivity to broader political issues.

Certainly, looking at the work of the studio over the last ten years it is good to see that so much of their work is in housing, education and culture and all these projects have a strong relationship with their landscape or townscape setting. Models - so massing of elements and overall form - are clearly important as different options for sites are explored through making many models at the initial stages.

The Dreyers gallery has three main levels alongside a steep staircase down from the main exhibition area and WE Architecture have exploited this by stacking up timber boxes to break down the sudden transition from each level to the next. This provides platforms and surfaces for displaying models and photographs of the projects undertaken by the team but they have also incorporated work stations where, for the period of the exhibition, staff will work but are available to discuss their buildings and answer questions.

WE architecture 

the exhibition continues until 2 November
in the Dreyers Arkitektur Galleri at the Danish Architecture Centre

 

ELEMENTAL at Louisiana

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A dramatic exhibition and one of a series at Louisiana under an overall title Arkitekturens Værksteder / Architecture Workshops - ELEMENTAL profiles the work and the approach to architecture of the office in Santiago of Alejandro Aravena.

The process of design is here a main focus of the exhibition that begins with a display of sketch books - a primary stage in their design process. With excellent visuals, on small screens around the edge of the display, you can select a sketch book and explore the contents by swiping through the pages that include both notes and detailed drawings.

In conjunction with this are films running across three large images on a nearby wall that turn through sketchbooks page by page. 

The design process for this exhibition space - from initial ideas through to the construction of the final display - was treated like a specific design project by ELEMENTAL to explain their work process and philosophy. A series of large panels on a lower level of the galleries trace through the whole development of the exhibition from the first letter from Louisiana proposing the exhibition through to the construction in the space. It is rare, as a visitor to an exhibition, to be able to track in such detail the work involved in producing an exhibition on this scale and of this complexity.

There are separate areas with photographs forming a time line for projects and models showing the primary volumes and forms of major buildings. There is a sequence of photographs and drawings of the now famous social housing - half fitted out in the initial construction and half to be completed by the families at a later stage and a sequence of prototypes showing the development of the design of Silla Chair - an open source design. Under a huge suspended box, there is a film of the projects from a drone.

 

ELEMENTAL opened on 11 October 2018 and continues until 28 February 2019
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

Boliger til Folket / Housing for the people

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Immediately after the War there was clearly a shortage of housing but also cities realised that poorly-built housing - particularly the dark and tightly-packed housing that had been built in courtyards - had to be demolished and replaced with appropriate homes of a much higher standard

The exhibitions at Arkitektforeningen for the Day of Architecture is an opportunity to see here again the exhibition Boliger til Folket / Housing for the people about social housing in Denmark after the Second World War, so through the1940s and 1950s.

This was shown first in Copenhagen in the central library in March 2017 and was reviewed here. 

This is a second chance if you missed the exhibition the first time round but it is well worth a second look with profiles of several major housing schemes and includes comments by residents from interviews some remembering what the apartments were like when they were new. 

One aim of the exhibition was to re-establish the merits of these apartment blocks by focusing on the quality of the design and the high quality of the initial building work but it also emphasises the reasons for good and sympathetic restoration work to ensure that these buildings not only survive but that they have an ongoing role as good and desirable housing.

LETH & GORI - The Art of Building

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One of the series of exhibitions of the Dreyers Arkitektur Galleri to show the work of new or young architects, architectural practices and studios.

For this exhibition the architects have produced a timber-framed structure that steps down three levels of the gallery and creates distinct partly- enclosed spaces where models and photographs of their buildings are displayed.

Dreyers Arkitektur Galleri at DAC

Leth & Gori


the exhibition continues at the Danish Architecture Centre until 5 October 2018

 

restoration I

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Work is progressing on a major project to restore the famous Nyboder houses in Copenhagen. These long terraced rows, with cobbled streets and narrow yards between the rows, cover a large block in the north-east part of the historic centre of the city within the old city defences  … so south and west of Kastellet - the fortress or citadel - and close to Østerport railway station that is on the site of the old east gate.

The first of the rows were built in the 1630s and 1640s at the instigation of Christian IV for naval personnel and were single storey but with attic rooms. More rows - the two-storey terraces - were constructed in the middle of the 18th century and the last houses, in grey brick, date from the very end of the 19th century.

The houses from the 17th and 18th centuries were built in pale-yellow brick but given an external wash of lime with deep ochre pigment but this wash has just been removed so the brickwork can be repaired and, where necessary, repointed.

Stripped of this ochre wash, the facades reveal important archaeological evidence to show clearly how window and door openings were constructed. There were no obvious lintels but lines of headers above the windows so, almost certainly, the timber frame of the floor structure would have been set out to take the weight and outward thrust of the roof to prevent the outer walls bowing out or the ground-floor openings failing under the weight of the brickwork and roof above. 

In contrast, more precise coursing in historic brickwork can be seen in a house on Wilders  Plads in Christianshavn with alternate rows of different colours of brick so that brickwork was clearly built to be exposed and left without render. The Nyboder brickwork is not of the same quality so the houses must have been covered and protected with was of lime and pigment from the start.

It is also clear that by using lime wash - rather than a thicker and smooth coat of render - the final surface is not just more resilient - as each thin layer is applied, the lime oxidises and bonds to the stone or brick it covers - but the visible and slightly irregular brickwork gives a texture to the surface that seems to make the colour deeper … modern brickwork, in contrast, seems mechanical and flat or, if anything, dull.

more images and historic map of Nyboder

FRAMA - the apartment

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For 3daysofdesign Niels Strøyer Christophersen of FRAMA opened his apartment on Strandboulevarden in Østerbro.

It's on the ground floor and at the corner of an apartment building that dates from around 1900 and, from the start, it was a shop with a small apartment behind as accommodation for the shopkeeper. This was a common arrangement in the city where many of the apartment buildings - from the late 19th century and then on through the 1920s and 1930s and 1940s - have commercial and shop space on the street level and particularly at the corners of the buildings.

The entrance into the shop from the street - with the doorway set across the angle of the cut-off corner - is typical of the period as are the high ceiling heights. The FRAMA store in Fredericiagade is another, an up-market version, of the same building type …. there a former apothecary shop, at the corner of an apartment building, with ornate ceilings and with shelving from the late 19th century surviving.

Beyond the main front room of the shop in the Strandboulevarden building, the apartment was relatively small with the windows of its main rooms looking out to the side street and smaller rooms, including the kitchen, with windows looking into the courtyard and with a door in the corner of the kitchen for access to a 'back' staircase and access to the courtyard itself ... a practical and, again, a common arrangement.

The last occupant of this shop and apartment was a watchmaker although it had been empty for several years before Niels took over the property.

Niels has combined together the space of the shop and the apartment for his home. He has stripped back the walls to raw plaster but decorative mouldings of plaster cornices and moulded decoration on the ceilings, where they survived, have been kept. However, architraves and all doors have been removed so that the space flows from one area to the next.

With the high ceilings, the windows are large but, because these look out directly onto the pavements to the street to the front and the street to the side, plain white blinds and plain full-length curtains in linen and in natural silk have been used to give some privacy. This use of plain textiles also means that there is a subtle control of light and a fluid and softer definition to the spaces and again the emphasis is on natural materials and in their natural colours.

Furniture in the apartment is, of course, from the FRAMA collection, and in this setting looks, of course, absolutely right. Again, this furniture is about using natural materials, so steel plate or wood or stone, and again used to emphasise natural colours and natural textures. Forms are plain and tend to look industrial because they keep to relatively simple shapes and emphasise or respect techniques and methods of fixing determined by the way the material are used when they are used honestly so used without pretension and, ostensibly, without reference to historic styles or traditional forms and shapes.

Although plain and without decoration, the furniture and the interiors are far from being unsophisticated and far far from being crudely made or simply designed so this is about a distinct and rather intellectual aesthetic that looks at interiors and at furniture in a different way.

FRAMA might appear to be a life-style design studio - particularly now with their apothecary range and with the book they have published with recipes - but it is about a serious and coherent design aesthetic that looks at materials in particular but also at texture and colour and form in a different way. It has to be significant that Niels has not followed a traditional design-school training. His is not a unique but is a rare way of seeing the design world … so perhaps the most obvious comparisons should be with the work of the English architect John Pawson - particularly his photography and his publications - and with interiors by David Chipperfield or the work of Vincent Van Duysen.

This is an aesthetic that is stripped back but not strictly minimal - plain and, in part, close to industrial design - particularly early industrial design from the late 19th and early 20th century - but not brutal and although, ironically, about product design it is also about very careful consideration and calm reflection before acquiring anything.

From seeing the apartment, there is a strong sense that anything from anywhere might be considered for inspiration but essentially this is about materials used in a simple almost engineered way that has to respect intrinsic qualities of colour, surface and texture.

 
 
 
 

Copenhagen Architecture Festival 2018

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13th April 2018

Copenhagen Architecture Festival opens on the 3rd May and continues through to 16th May 2018. 

Yesterday the full programme was launched on line and this year, for the first time, there will be events in Odense as well as Copenhagen, Aarhus and Aalborg … all cities with a “strong architectural identity.”

The theme for this year is HOUSING HOMES / AT HUSE HJEM with lectures, film screenings, exhibitions, workshops and guided tours to look at ideas of home, housing and belonging … “to look at what constitutes a home, what does it mean to be home, and how homes are created in different and difficult situations.”

The ambition of the festival “has always been to share architecture with a wide audience by being unpretentious, curious, and bringing a new perspective to the table. We want to create new encounters between subjects, people, and ideas in the city’s space. The intention is for architecture to act as a character in the dialogue through the audience’s personal experiences of the spaces. Architecture is thus for everyone- not just for architects.”

 

download the programme from CAFx

brick cladding

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Out near the beach on the east side of Amager there are large new apartment buildings that are going up and at an incredible speed because of the method of construction being used with large panels of preformed concrete lifted into place by huge cranes before then being fixed or linked together. 

Then, on the outer face, goes insulation and a veneer of brick in large sheets made in a factory …. and that is where I begin to have reservations.

read more

 

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.

the architecture of Kløvermarken

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architecture, design and planning in Copenhagen ........... 

 

the houses of Dyssen and the area between the water of the 17th-century defences and Kløvermarken on Amager

 

good architecture in Copenhagen is not just about aluminium window frames, sealed glazing units and Scandi-clean design ... here is cladding and the use of materials and a sense of colour at its best

the towers of Brøndby Strand

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Significant problems have been identified in five of the tower blocks at Brøndby Strand.

These iconic apartment buildings are 16 storeys high and were designed by Svend Høgsbro and Thorvald Dreyer. They are about 12 kilometres from the centre of Copenhagen and are a striking sight from the train as it follows the the bay on the coastal line down to Køge. 

Built between 1968 and 1974 and, as was common at the time, fittings and structural materials in the towers contain Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) that are now known to be toxic - so possibly electrical equipment, cable insulation, thermal insulation, floor finishes and even oil-based paint would have to be removed to comply with current building standards and health regulations. The towers also need repairs to concrete that has degraded and, given the age of the buildings, services and fittings do not match current building standards or tenants expectations and would also have to be upgraded.

There appear to be no technical solution for removing PCBs that are viable financially with remedial works estimated to be almost four times the cost of rehousing the 196 families that live here and then demolishing the apartments.

 

Boliger til Folket - Housing for People

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A small but important exhibition of photographs of housing estates that were built in Denmark in the 1940s and 1950s has just opened in the central library in Copenhagen. 

The exhibition was funded by Realdania, Grundejernes Investringsfond and Landsbyggefonden with the Department of Culture and continues at the central library in Copenhagen until 26 March 2017

read more

 

the house of Arne Jacobsen and a rare opening to the public

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In 2005 Realdania purchased the house in Gotfred Rodes Vej that Arne Jacobsen designed and had built for himself and his young family in 1929. The house has been restored and many features returned to the original arrangement. The house is normally occupied by tenants so access for the public is rare but the villa was opened for two days on the 11th and 12th of February.

Gotfred Rodes Vej 2

the house of Poul Henningsen

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The house designed by Poul Henningsen for himself and his family in Gentofte, a suburb of Copenhagen, and completed in 1937 was purchased by Realdania By & Byg in 2014. 

After an extensive programme of restoration work, returning the house to its original appearance, it will be leased but just for this week the public has been allowed access. 

It will be open on Saturday and Sunday the 17th and 18th September from 13:00 to 17:00.

Brogårdsvej 72, 2820 Gentofte