new metro station at Orientkaj

/

A couple of trips out to Nordhavn recently meant an opportunity to look at progress on the new metro station at the top of Orientkaj. This is just beyond the point where the metro track emerges from underground and trains will move up onto an elevated concrete track. It is difficult to judge the design of the station but it is clearly very different from the well detailed steel and glass work of the stations on Amager on the two lines at the south end of the existing system.

Here at Nordhavn there are hefty square concrete frames set across and supporting the track and what appears to be a large box or presumably a large container suspended over the platforms that is presumably a reference to the container port here.

Just beyond the station, the elevated track stops abruptly but it should continue on to the Oceankaj Terminals where the largest cruise ships now dock.

top left - view from the south showing the track from the metro rising up from underground just before the station. Tow views of the station from the Orientkaj and - bottom right - the view across the construction site from the west.

 

Orientkaj

/

The large building to the east of the new metro station at Orientkaj - on the north side of the dock - is the new Copenhagen International School designed by CF Møller and completed in 2017. The scheme for swimming and water sport facilities is also by CF Møller.

When the first stage of new metro line M4 out to Nordhavn opens then the trains will leave the circle line at Østerport and head out towards the harbour and, after a new station at Nordhavn, will climb up onto elevated track and a new station at Orientkaj.

Here, as the trains pull into the station, to the right, looking east towards the sound, there will be a view down one of the largest docks in this part of the harbour with a line of large brick and concrete warehouses along Orientkaj itself … most dating from the second half of the last century and most bonded warehouses. These face across the dock to the new Copenhagen International School designed by CF Møller and completed in 2017.

CF Møller have designed a scheme for the dock itself with a series of islands and boarded walkways in front of the school for swimming areas, an area for water sports, - including kayak polo - and changing rooms and a sauna with facilities to be used by the school but also by the local community.

The impressive scale of the dock will be broken and the area takes another step away from its immediate past with nearly all evidence for the container port - the very reason the dock is here - lost but, and again it is a big but, it is schemes like this that will bring at least some nature back down to the quay side and will make the water a strong part of life in this area rather than simply a dramatic backdrop.

 

Nytt Rom 68

/

The theme for this issue of Nytt Rom is 'old meets new' and that, of course, is a key skill in Scandinavian design … to set the best of innovative or bold or even stark modern design within a historic or a rustic interior or to have beautifully-designed classic or antique furniture and objects in an otherwise uncompromisingly modern room.

in the introduction people from four of the homes featured in the issue are asked about their favourite places where they live.

Anne Margrethe Petersen lives in an Art Nouveau apartment in Bygdøy Allé in Oslo with polished parquet floors and decorated plaster ceiling cornices but has bold large pieces of modern furniture - the main bedroom in the apartment is featured on the cover - and there are interesting free-standing steel units in the kitchen. She choses, for her favourite place in the apartment, an old leather chair from her childhood home in Tromsø that is now next to windows facing the street and the city and where she can admire the Art Nouveau details on the roof.

Henrik Kjær Christiansen, of Kjær Architecture, has an apartment in an old building in the centre of Copenhagen with angled walls and his choice of favourite place is sitting at his round kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a view of Nyhavn's canal.

Jonas Gunerius Larsen has restored a wooden house in Oslo and likes to sit on the stairs to get an overview of the different parts of his house and he also sits at the kitchen window to see people passing by the building.

Knud Foldstad, an architect in Stavanger, likes best where the construction and materials of his old house meet new design so it becomes a 'magical place.' This is in some ways the most striking and original of the interiors with beams and joists exposed above plain plaster walls without cornices and skirtings but there are many changes of level and intersecting spaces and the use of cupboards in softwood used as screens and an assured mix of styles with metal units in the kitchen on thin steel legs but a rococo oval mirror above the bathroom basin.

Another apartment, the home of Carsten Nielsen in Aalborg, is featured showing his mid-century modern furniture and there is a spread of photographs of one of the apartments in The Silo in Copenhagen that was recently converted by COBE - the Copenhagen architectural and planning offices who have converted former warehouses nearby as a new headquarters. Apartments in The Silo have very high ceilings and large sections of exposed concrete that were an integral part of the industrial building and make a very dramatic setting for furniture. From large pierced-metal balconies hung on the outside of the Silo, these apartments have views out across the entrance to the harbour with the sound beyond . This building is certain to be featured in many magazines over the coming years.

The interior of the new Hotel Hermann K in the centre of Copenhagen - across the road from the department store Magasin - is featured. It is in a former electricity sub station and has a spectacular lobby rising through three floors in a tight space that has the lift and the main bar.

As always the magazine keeps track of both new designs and of designs from the classic period of mid 20th-century design that have been relaunched. In this issue are Chair LC7 designed by Charlotte Perriand designed in 1927 and produced by Cassina from 1973; Noble Chair by Arne Hovmand-Olsen from 1959 that is now made for Warm Nordic and Model 107 by Ib Kofod-Larsen that was made by Magnus Olesen from 1956 that again has recently been relaunched.

Among the notices about current exhibitions, there is a notice or preview, of the work of the Danish architect Dorte Mandrup who will be the subject of a major exhibition at Danish Architecture Centre opening on 13 March.

And, as always, Nytt Rom has short book reviews or notices including one for Bauhaus Architecture 1919-1933 by Hans Engels … the magazine has an important role when book shops with comprehensive architecture sections are getting rarer and it is too easy to miss new publications.

 

Communities Between the Walls

/

On 15 February a new exhibition opened in the gallery space on the staircase at the Danish Architecture Centre.

Communities Between the Walls is a counterpoint to the recent reports on social housing and ghettoes. Here are a number of major art projects that have been initiated in areas of deprived or poor housing in urban areas including the new library recently completed in the Tingbjerg housing scheme and the major projects in Gellerupparken in Aarhus.

 

continues at the Danish Architecture Centre until 1 June 2019

books on the Bauhaus at Designmuseum Danmark

/

This year, the major exhibition at Designmuseum Danmark is about the history and work of the Bauhaus - the German design school that opened in 1919.

The exhibition opens on the 14th March and will continue through to December but as a foretaste there is a small exhibition in the area to the left of the museum entrance with a display of books and journals from the Bauhaus and some of the many publications about the school that are in the library of the design museum.

Bauhaus #itsalldesign

FindersKeepers at Øksnehallen in Copenhagen

/
 

FindersKeepers - the design, furniture and clothing market - at Øksnehallen in the Meat Market district of Copenhagen from 11.00 to 17.00 on Saturday 16 February and Sunday 17 February 2019.

FindersKeepers

 
 

design by Bjarke Ingels rejected

/

Bjarke Ingels submitted proposals for a large new building at the outer end of Orientkaj in Nordhavn that would have dominated the entrance to the inner harbour. This was to be a new headquarters for his architecture company BIG but the application was submitted anonymously - without the name of the architect or of the occupant - and it has just been rejected.

This would be a very substantial building with eight floors but with a large square footprint that gives it rather squat proportions and the building was to be in concrete and, unfortunately, even good drawings submitted for the application still managed to make it look brutal.

Unfortunate because, as Ingels himself explained in a subsequent statement, he was attempting to use concrete in a more honest way.

I have written here in many posts about the new buildings going up so quickly across the South Harbour or on the new Carlsberg development and here at Nordhavn and they go up so quickly simply because they are built with pre-formed slabs of concrete for floors and walls but the outside is then disguised by a veneer of facing materials that are, in most cases, unrelated to the form of building and the logic of the structure underneath. In strict architectural terms they are dishonest.

The drawings of the building proposed by Bjarke Ingels show that it would be very large and it certainly dwarfs the large warehouses that are to the west of the site on the same quay but the proportions are actually good and the series of ramps or diagonal lines respecting a complex arrangement of external and internal staircases is clever, giving the facades a regular spiral that is an echo of the design by Ingels for Søfart - his brilliant design for the maritime museum at Helsingør - but here rising up rather than there spiralling down.

Concrete done badly for cheap and quick building can be horrendous but it can also be a material of real quality when used well and, although the building here would have been large, and dominate Orientkaj, it would, at least, have returned the harbour front to something closer to the bold forms that are a strong part of the recent development of Langelinie Kaj on the seaward side of the former Free Port and those buildings echo the scale and simple forms of the large historic warehouses of the inner harbour.

 
big nordhavn 2.jpg

the site for the proposed building is to the right of the brick and concrete warehouse - itself a substantial building - view from the south west from Fortkaj

 

Ove Arup and the Philosophy of Total Design

/
 

 

This is the final few days to see the major exhibition at the Danish Architecture Center about the life and work of the Danish engineer Ove Arup whose consultancy was instrumental in their partnership with architects working on iconic building projects from the Opera House in Sydney to the Pompidou Centre in Paris and for major transport projects including the road and rail bridge over the Øresund.

 

exhibition continues until 17 February 2019
Dansk Arkitektur Center, Bryghuspladsen 10, 1473 Copenhagen

major restoration at the National Bank of Denmark

/
 

It has just been announced that the building of the National Bank of Denmark in the centre of Copenhagen - designed by Arne Jacobsen and completed in 1978 - has to undergo an extensive programme of repairs. As this will take several years, the bank and it's staff are to move out of the building until the works are completed.

 

Sonja Ferlov Mancoba at Statens Museum for Kunst

/
 

A major new exhibition of work by the sculptor Sonja Ferlov Mancoba has just opened at Statens Museum for Kunst and continues through to 5 May 2019

Statens Museum for Kunst / The National Gallery of Denmark, Sølvgade, Copenhagen

Forslag til Fingerplan 2019 - Landsplandirektiv for hovedstadsområdets planlægning

/

Suggestion for Finger Plan 2019 - National land directive for the planning of the metropolitan area

the new Finger Plan has a series of maps to illustrate changes to planning in the area around the historic city of Copenhagen

 

A major revision of the famous Finger Plan of 1947 was initiated in April 2016 and after a period of public consultation - when the 34 municipalities of the capital region were given time to submit comments - a first version of a new plan came into force in June 2017,

Published on 24 January 2019, this is the next stage of that report and there will now be a period for public consultation through to 21 March 2019.

The Finger Plan from 1947 was a key planning report that set the course and controlled the form and the extent of development out from the city through the second half of the 20th century and its influence has continued into this century so it has had a huge impact on the city for more than 70 years.

That plan, to control development, was based primarily on existing lines of the suburban railway that radiate out from the centre of the historic city and new development has been centred on railway stations but with a web of green open space between the fingers … protected countryside that has been crucial as space for nature and for recreation that has stopped the expansion of the city from becoming a solid urban block like London or becoming a sprawl of unregulated development.

The new plan is setting out how to allow for but control further expansion of the city and the region through to 2030 and beyond and it will focus on problems caused by climate change that makes green space and the control of surface water and flooding from the sea increasingly more important. Protection of green land is seen now to be a balancing act and new proposals will be controversial as some green areas could be lost - for instance where they are compromised by being close to major transport links - but there appears to be a commitment to add new areas of protected green space and particularly where this has a clear role in enhancing recreational use.

read more

 

 
 

Danmarks hovedstad - Initiativer til styrkelse af hovestadsområdet

/

Denmark's capital city - Initiatives to strengthen the metropolitan area

A planning initiative for the metropolitan area of Copenhagen was launched at the end of January and is based on the findings of a committee that has been working since last May.

This includes proposals for the period through to 2030 and is presented under four main headings to cover Housing; Transport; Growth and the environment with recreation

This is an initiative by the city to bolster the capital area including plans to create homes for 200,000 more citizens. There are plans to improve transport links - so this is for the immediate period after the opening of the new inner city ring of the metro and preparing for the next stages for inner city transport including more metro lines but also improving motorway links in anticipation of the completion of a new road and rail tunnel linking Denmark and Germany.

The initiative also anticipates more work on flood risk from climate change and there are plans to bolster tourism with the potential for carefully-controlled expansion of the airport as a growing hub for a much wider region.

These proposals have been set out as 52 points across those four headings and should be read along with the revised Finger Plan for 2019 that also covers the period through to 2030.

the full report can be read on line or downloaded as a pdf file.

 

Ét Danmark uden parallelsamfund / One Denmark without a parallel society

/
ghetto.jpeg

This was a difficult post to write because it is about sensitive political and social issues but the subject is important and not least because there are broader implications for planning and housing in Denmark that will influence future planning policies and should, as a potential model, have a much wider relevance for many countries where there is rapid population growth in urban areas and where housing is concentrated in housing schemes.

In the New Year the government published a report - Ét Danmark uden parallelsamfund / One Denmark without a parallel society - that sets out a policy to tackle problems in some urban areas in Denmark that will now be defined officially as ghettoes.

read more

“when we reside differently we behave differently”

/
 

 

When the Danish Architecture Centre moved into its new building last summer, their first major exhibition was called Welcome Home and looked at Danish housing. The first section to that exhibition was a timeline that gave an overview of the development of housing in Denmark through the century from 1900 and then the main part of the exhibition looked at recent housing … at how the planning and the building of homes is evolving and changing with new requirements for appropriate homes; new configurations of living space; new approaches to conservation and the use of new building materials and new construction methods.

Immediately after that time line - and really part of the introduction - there was an important section that looked at statistics for housing in Denmark … first at data that marks out some of the differences in lifestyle when people own their homes and  when people rent their homes and then at data that demonstrates that there are now many different types of household. And these different family dynamics seem to suggest that different people now need different types of home at different stages in their lives.

Particularly in Denmark, a well-established and strongly democratic country with less-obvious extremes between wealth and poverty than in may countries - it is easy to assume that change is now relatively slow and that a home is simply a home and most people live in much the same way. In fact, statistics show that society is changing quickly … or at least quickly when compared with the time needed for planners, architects and builders to respond by trying to build the homes people want in the places where people want to live.

read more

data to plan for housing needs in the future

/

Danskerne i det byggede miljø / Danes in the built environment is a detailed annual survey that asks Danes about their homes.

Information for the most recent report was gathered in April 2018, when 7,090 people completed a questionnaire from Kantar Gallup A/S for Bolius. The results have been published by Realdania and the most recent edition is now available on line.

These surveys have been conducted every year since 2012 so now they provide an important data base but have also tracked changing attitudes so they should influence decisions by planners and should prompt architects, builders and designers to assess carefully the real problems people encounter because the surveys show how people perceive problems and show how these are prioritised. 

The survey is published with general points and summaries but most of the information is set out in a large number of tables. These provide a fascinating insight not just into day-to-day practical problems people have and about the way they complete maintenance and repairs but also broader issues about neighbourhoods - about what makes a good neighbourhood - and how all these factors together influence how people rate the quality of their lives.

More than 6 out of 10 Danes believe that their home is important when they consider the quality of their life … for 22% of Danes  their home is of very high importance and for a further 41% their home is of high importance when they consider the quality of their lives.

read more

Realdania - full report to read on line or download as a pdf file

 
 
 
 

images from the Light Festival in Copenhagen

/
 

  • the tower of Christiansborg from Frederiksholms Kanal

  • the beam of light from the tower of Nikolaj Kirke across the statue of Bishop Absalon

  • Pyramid Construction by NEXT Cph on the square in front of BLOX

  • Go Boat on the Amager side of the harbour and Eternal Sundown by Mads Vegas at Bølgen, the Wave, at Kalvebod Brygge on the city side of the harbour

  • Chromatic Fields by Jakob Kvist at Louis Poulsen - Kuglegårdsvej

the Light Festival continues at venues around the city
through to 24 February 2019
the official site has a map and details of related events

Copenhagen Light Festival

Store Arne og Lille Arne / Big Arne and Little Arne 2019

/

These annual awards from Arkitektforeningen or the Danish Association of Architects began in 2007. Winners receive an acrylic statuette that is printed with the face of Arne Jacobsen and hence the name of the awards.

Winners for works from 2018 were announced in a ceremony at BLOX on 18 January 2019.

Store Arne / Big Arne

winner:

Elefanthuset / Elephant House
architects: LETH & GORI

A brick chapel dating from the 1890s that has been restored and converted into an activity centre for patients with cancer. The building was part of the former hospital and old people's home of De Gamles By.

“The project shows an exemplary balance between humbleness and a personal and distinct architectural vision. Precise interventions all characterised by a refined materiality defines the project, that despite its small scale is able to bring new life to the building. By adding new functional layers the transformation opens up for a new era for the historic chapel building. The project is nominated for a vital transformation of a historic building that revitalises the house as an attentive and caring frame that embraces a vulnerable user group.”

Leth & Gori 

nominated for the award

Noma
architects: BIG + Studio David Thulstrup

Hotel Herman K
architects: Dansk Ejendoms Management A/S (inhouse)

Enfamiliehus på Kålagervej / Family house in Kålagervej
architects: Solveig Dara Draško Arkitektur

Tingbjerg Bibliotek og Kulturhus / Tingsbjerg Library and Culture Centre
architects: COBE

 

Lille Arne / Little Arne

winner:

KADKs kritiske forskning om Københavns udvikling / KADK Critical research on the development of Copenhagen

Atlas of the Copenhagens and Boliger Bebyggelser By / Homes Ensembles City by Peder Dueland Mortensen

- Bolig og velfærd i København / Housing and welfare in Copenhagen

“We are incredibly proud that peers at their own prize, acknowledge research as a key contribution to the architectural profession. We work every day to create the world's best architectural education, and we do so on our unique three-legged knowledge base: the practice of the subject; artistic development and, not least research. Therefore, it really means a great deal to us that with this prize research is appreciated on an equal footing with the other architectural disciplines.”

Katrine Lotz - Head of the Department of Architecture, City and Landscape at KADK - the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation.

KADK

nominated for the award:

Klimaflisen /Climate tiles
architects: Tredje Natur

Principper for cirkulært byggeri /Principles of circular construction
Fællestegnestuen GXN, Lendager and Vandkunsten

Resilient Aesthetics / Resilient Aesthetics
Forskningsindsats v. lektor Nicolai Bo Andersen, KADK

 

There are photographs and brief descriptions of the nominated buildings and work on the site of the Association of Architects.

Arkitektforeningen / the Danish Association of Architects

 
 

Femern tunnel link

/
 

Authorities in Schleswig-Holstein have officially approved the German part of the Femern link so work can now start on constructing a rail and road tunnel between Germany and Denmark.

It will be an immersed tunnel - the longest in the world of this type - with the sections constructed at a new production site with dry docks on the Danish side and they will then towed out by tug and lowered into a trench across the sea bed that will be up to 60 metres wide and 16 metres deep.

This is an amazing engineering project - the largest undertaken in Denmark - and I would recommend watching the video animation on the Femern A/S site to see how the sections of tunnel will be made and taken out to the trench.

This is also, of course, a major design project that requires expertise in road planning and for the design of infrastructure at each end and there will be an important design project for the operation stage for signage, marketing, branding and so on.

With completion planned for 2028, the tunnel will be 18 kilometres long and will link Puttgarden on the German island of Fehmarn to Rødbyhavn, on the south coast of the Danish island of Lolland, and the journey through the tunnel will take 10 minutes in a car and 7 minutes for the train.

Many make the trip across now by using the regular ferry service but for heavy freight traffic - now taken up through Jylland/Jutland and across the bridges linking to Fyn and then on to Sjælland - the tunnel will shorten the journey by 160 kilometres.

This may mean more tourists will arrive in Copenhagen by car but the real impact will be for commercial traffic and therefore, of course, for the development of the region of eastern Denmark and the south part of Sweden.

Already on the agenda is the construction of a new metro line to Malmö to run through a tunnel parallel to the Øresund bridge. For anyone commuting between the two cities, this would not make journey time shorter than the current rail journey over the bridge but the new Femern link between Germany and Denmark will mean many more freight trains crossing to and from Sweden so a metro link would relieve some of the pressure on the bridge and planners and governments are also considering a fixed link further north up the sound between Helsingør on the Danish side and Helsingborg in Sweden.

 

the Fehmarnbelt tunnel

next lines for the metro in Copenhagen

/


construction work where the new metro line at Nordhavn emerges from underground and rises up to the new station at the start of the elevated section of track

the new station from Orientkaj

Even before the new inner-city circle line of the metro in Copenhagen has opened, there are ongoing discussions about the stage after the next stage - if you follow what I mean!

Construction work is progressing fast on the spur line of the metro that will go out to Nordhavn - the north harbour district - and, eventually, on out to the cruise ship terminals and, in the other direction, the south spur down to the south harbour - the Sydhavnslinjen - is also moving forward fast with the green boarding up around the site of the excavations for the new station at Enghave Brygge near the power station. That line will continue on to Ny Ellebjerg where it will link with the main suburban train lines and both these metro lines should open in 2025.

So, the next new section of metro, and still at the planning stage, could be an M6 line to form an arc across the top of the island of Amager. It would link the two original metro lines that head south down through Amager - so the M1 down to Ørestad and Vestamager through Islands Brygge and the M2 line down to the airport through Amagerbro - but will also continue west and through a tunnel to re-join the circle line and to the east, beyond a new station at Refshaleøen, the east end of the new line will also go under the harbour - either to form a link back to the new circle line at Østerport or to run north to Nordhavn.

Even more ambitious are proposals for a further new line out from the M6 - an M7 line - that could take the metro under the Øresund to Malmö in a new tunnel some 22 kilometres long to be excavated on a line north of the Øresund Bridge.

From Copenhagen central station to Malmö central station would then take about 23 minutes and the line could be finished and opened by 2035.

Obviously, this will be another amazing engineering project in the city but, more than that, such major infrastructure will influence how the city will work in the future - so which areas will prosper and change because of these new fast transport connections - and it will form the framework for major developments and major expansion of the city through to the middle of the century and on.

 

update Copenhagen metro

/

There have been rather a lot of posts here about the new metro line - the new Cityringen in Copenhagen - that will open this summer but that is not because I'm some sort of train buff.

What does interest me is the design aspects of the new metro - so how much the design of the new stations differs from the existing stations and how graphics and signs will have changed and that also relates closely to the impact that the new stations will have on broader planning issues for the city … so specifically how new stations and new patterns of travel will effect the street scape.

The work by COBE at Nørreport station was seminal. There a busy interchange where the existing metro line goes under a major station for suburban trains, that itself is underground, created what is the busiest transport hub in the country. The street above, with heavy bus and car and pedestrian traffic, crossed by well-used bike routes, created a difficult and in fact an unpleasant urban space. The crunch point came with extensive improvements to streets and a large square with popular food halls a block north of the station that pull even more people to the area.

A complete rearrangement of the street and paving above the rail station and metro station, completed in 2015, started with a detailed assessment of how people moved across, along and under the space.

In much the same way, the new Cityringen has meant the complete reorganisation of the street level for major interchanges at Rådhuspladsen - the square with the city hall - as well as in the centre of Frederiksberg; at the suburban rail stations of Nørrebro and Østerport and at Kongens Nytorv which will surely become the main hub for tourists and visitors and for cultural events.

The new line includes key stations for people going to the parliament buildings from Gammel Strand and to the important tourist area around Marmorkirken - the Marble Church - and Fælledparken the main public open space and the national football stadium from the new station at Trianglen and the park and the palace and gardens in Frederiksberg from the station at Frederiksberg Allé. Finally, but probably not least, new metro stations at Skjolds Plads, Nuuks Plads and Enghave Plads will make apartments in those areas even more of an attraction for young families wanting to live in the city but not able to afford prices in the centre.

Cobbles are going back down and trees are being planted and the metro stations themselves are as subtle as possible - marked by low walls around steps down and with discrete clear-glass structures to throw light down onto platforms below - so all designed to drop back into the streetscape but the new line will have a profound impact on the way people use and move through the streets and squares around each station.

Kongens Nytorv … steps down to the metro on the west side of the square, close to the east end of the walking street. Most of the boarding is down and it looks as if the cobbles or setts are about to be relaid. The theatre and firther round Nyhavn are to the left and the department store Magasin is further down the block on the right


Gammel Strand is now mostly clear of boarding and the rebuilt wall of the quay has been uncovered and the glass tower of the lift down to the metro platforms is in place,

Gammel Strand 12 years ago … the antique market will not return as too much of the long triangular space here has been taken over by the steps and the light wells of the station and one down side for spaces like this is that inevitably they have to have large areas given over to bikes left at street level.