restoration of the railway station at Østerport

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Østerport station is at the centre with its distinct hipped roof. The track to Klampenborg and Helsingør is to the north and the later tracks, along the line of the fortifications, to the south - the bottom left corner of the view. The road across the front of the station is here called Oslo Plads with the Nyboder houses to the south - the bottom of the view - and the edge of Kastellet - the earthworks of Kastelvolden to the right and the trees and lake of the public park of Østre Anlæg to the left. This was taken before work on the metro station was finished but the glass pyramids over the metro platform and the steps down into the station can be seen in front of the apartment building north-west of the station

photograph of the station from the marshalling yard to the south taken in 1896 - before building work was completed

the construction of the Boulevard line in 1917 to link Østerport to the central railway station. The corner of a building on the left is Statens Museum for Kunst with the trees of Østre Anlæg beyond and Østerport station in the distance

 

outline history of the station …..

1897 Østerbro Station  designed by Heinrich Wenck (1851-1936) completed

Station known to local people as Østbanegården

1917 Boulevardbanens / Boulevard Railway constructed along the line of the old city defences across the north side of the old city to connect Østerport through to the Central Station via new stations at Nørreport and Vesterport

1923 Østerport Station rebuilt under Knud Tanggaard Seest (1879-1972) chief architect for Danish Railways from 1922 to 1949

1934 suburban line to Klampenborg opened

1 July 2000 new service started with trains from Helsingør to the central station and then on to the airport and across the newly-opened bridge to Malmö. 

September 2019 Metro Station on Cityring opened

Danske Statsbaner - DSB or Danish Railways - have restored the railway station at Østerport with an extensive and major project that has taken two years.

The station was designed by Heinrich Wenck (1851-1936) and it was completed in 1897 as the terminus of the coast line from Helsingør to Copenhagen although, twenty years later in 1917, the Boulevardbanens or Boulevard Railway was constructed along the line of the old city defences across the north side of the old city to connect Østerport through to new stations at Nørreport, Vesterport and then on in a wide curve to the Central Station.

The railway lines here are below street level and the distinct station building runs across the top at street level and faces on to a broad street called here Oslo Plads but in fact a part of the busy main road out from the centre to Hellerup and on along the coast to Klampenborg.

The building takes the form of a large elongated hall parallel to the street with timber posts that support a large hipped roof. Inside there are two cross corridors, running back from the street with high barrel ceilings lit by semi circular windows set in large dormer windows in the front and back slopes of the roof.

Over the years the interior had been altered with secondary walls subdividing the space but, with the restoration, waiting rooms and a large information office have been removed and suspended ceilings taken down to open out the space.

In the new arrangement, there is still a large station store, a coffee shop and office space but by using glass walls there are now open views diagonally through the building that creates a new feeling of this as an open and unified space.

Archaeological investigation uncovered the original colour scheme and this has been reinstated using linseed oil paint with deep iron red and dark blue green colours that give the interior a richness but without being overbearing … an effect that is in part achieved because the paint finish is matt rather than having the gloss of a modern paint.

The terrazzo floor has also been restored.

The original building had a deep veranda across the front and the ends but in the alterations in the early 20th century, the outer walls were moved forward to the front edge of the roof but it was not possible to reinstate those features.

It is where the building looks weakest because this later brickwork, along with poorly detailed windows, look too simple and too rustic or 'vernacular' for what is a major public building.

However, we should just be grateful that the building survived because in the 1960s there were plans to demolish the fine 19th-century station and replace it with a high-rise tower although, fortunately, that scheme was abandoned.

A strong feature of the new arrangement of the interior is the broad and open corridor that runs across the full width of the building to provide a clear access to the doorways to the staircases down to the platforms so circulation seems obvious and rational with good natural and good electric lighting and careful placing of signs and departure boards. At one end the corridor takes you out to the Irma food store - while keeping under cover - and at the other end there will access to take passengers out and down to the new metro station that opened at the end of September.

With the completion of the large new metro station, this restoration of the railway station is part of the complete re-planning of public transport for passengers coming into or travelling round or through the city.

Østerport will now be a major hub with an interchange between suburban trains, a regular service with trains to the airport and from there over the sound and on to Malmö and the new metro circle line and with local buses and links to the ferry terminal for the boats to Oslo and with the terminal for cruise ship further out at Nordhavn. For now these links are by bus or taxi but the metro station at Østerport will be the start of the next stage of the metro line with the completion of the M4 line to Orientkaj and then an extension to the terminal for cruise ships.

Passenger numbers for Østerport are expected to increase from 30,000 to 45,000 people a day.

The work on the restoration has been by KHR Architecture who designed the concrete shopping centre and the sunken office with a pyramid roof and a third staircase down to the platforms for the trains to Sweden that are all also being restored and extended.

Climate - Change for a Sustainable Future

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The last week of this major exhibition at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation in Copenhagen.

Climate - Change for a Sustainable Future - Architecture, Design and Conservation shows the work of 29 major research projects that look at different aspects of the impact of climate change and look at innovative solutions to our need now to build and manufacture in a sustainable way.

These projects look, for example, at reassessing waste in the fashion industry; look at how new materials can be developed or at how materials that are now considered waste can be used and there are projects that look at how traditional techniques, like those used by carpenters in the past, when they constructed timber-framed buildings, might provide solutions to modern problems that now we have to tackle or at how computers and new techniques, like laser cutting or the use of computers and scanners, can determine the most economic way to cut timber for different products to eliminate waste.

This is a daunting subject but an inspiring exhibition that shows that problems that effect our buildings and our towns and streets as the climate changes and the need to use materials in a sustainable way is now a core framework for the teaching of architecture and design in the academy.

The problems have been identified but, with imagination, the changes we have to make - in the way we design and build or design and manufacture - can be seen as not just a challenge but as a change to a new approach that can and has to be seen as something positive.

the exhibition
Climate - Change for a Sustainable Future
at KADK, Danneskiold-Samsøe Allé, 1435 Copenhagen K
ends on the 15 November 2019

Reinventing Cities

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This exhibition was organised as part of the C40 World Mayors Summit in Copenhagen in October and shows the winning designs in a global competition for carbon-neutral and resilient urban regeneration.

“14 cities have identified together 31 under-utilised spaces to redevelop, including several empty plots of various sizes and abandoned buildings, historical mansions, underused markets, a former airport site, car parks to transform, and an abandoned incinerator and landfill.”

Through this competition, C40 and the participating cities invited architects, developers, environmentalists, neighbourhood groups, innovators and artists to build creative teams and to compete for the opportunity to transform these sites into new beacons of sustainability and resiliency with innovative climate solutions that combined noteworthy architecture and local community benefits.

  

Reinventing Cities continues until 15 November
DI (Dansk Industri) H C Andersens Boulevard 18, Copenhagen

P-hus Ejler Billes Allé in Ørestad Syd by JaJa Architects

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Copenhagen may well be the city of bikes but there are also some good car parks. This is the the new P-hus at the corner of Ejler Billes Allé and Robert Jacobsens Vej in Ørestad Syd with space for 600 cars. The facades with a grid or large-scale chequered pattern with Corten metal sheet on the upper levels and large areas of open or pierced-work brick for the lower floors was designed by JaJa Architects who also designed P-hus Lüders in Nordhavn …. the car park with an urban square on the top that opened in 2016.

 

Cityringen / The City Ring

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Today - Sunday 29 September 2019 - Cityringen / The City Ring - the new metro line in Copenhagen opened with a ceremony on the square in front of city hall. For the afternoon and through to midnight transport around the city was free and people were out in large numbers to see and to use the new stations and the extended train system.

Construction work started over eight years ago so citizens are now reclaiming large parts of the streetscape and squares of their city that have been fenced off behind high green hoardings as the seventeen new stations were constructed.

Bus routes too will alter drastically on 13 October with fewer buses actually crossing the city … buses will come in to a station on metro City Ring and then head back out again or will run around the edge of the city centre rather than cutting across. So, inevitably, over the coming months and years, the ways in which people move around and through the city will change.

There will be major interchanges at Kongens Nytorv and Frederiksberg where the existing lines and the new metro circle line intersect and major interchanges to other forms of transport at the new metro stations at existing stations for suburban and country-wide trains at Østerport, Nørreport and the central railway station.

All these new stations have extensive areas for leaving bicycles at street level or underground so it is clear that people will make their journeys by swapping from bike to metro to foot to bus or whatever combination makes for the best or the easiest or quickest route.

The engineering work - constructing over 15 kilometres of tunnels and huge excavations below street level for the new stations much of the work below important historic buildings, below residential area, under the canals or under existing infrastructure of water pipes, sewage pipes and so on - is clearly very very impressive but, and quite deliberately, the new stations follow the form of the existing stations so are relatively low key at street level with simple glass boxes over the lifts to the platforms and simple steps down and, for most stations, glass pyramids that throw light down into the station concourses below.

But that does not mean that the stations will not have a huge impact as most have been constructed along with dramatic improvements to the squares and streets around the station so, over the coming years, the real change will be in the ways that the metro will revitalise and transform some areas of the city - areas such as the newly renovated square and the streets around Enghave Plads or the area around Trianglen - and the metro will mean quicker and easier access to and from the densely-occupied residential areas of Vesterbro and Nørrebro and - with the next phase of work - the new residential areas of the north and south harbour …. planning that has been described by the newspaper Politiken as “binding together the suburbs.”.

the Copenhagen metro

the impressive new concourse below Kongens Nytorv and the area to leave a bicycle below street level at Marmorkirken / The Marble Church

you can be certain that it will never be possible to take a photograph like this again ….. that is with the cycle store empty

 

De Forenede Sejlskibe / The United Sailing Ships

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Three ships of De Forenede Sejlskibe - United Sailing Ships - are berthed at the quay across the front of the large brick warehouses that wa built as grain stores in the 1780s but is now the Admiral Hotel.

The schooners are the freighters Mira built in 1898 and Halmø from 1900 - both from the shipyards of Rasmus Møller in Faaborg - and the training ship Lilla Dan built in Svendborg in 1951.

In talking about modern design in posts here, much is made of functionality, materials, technology and quality of production but of course these are hardly new concepts. Generally Functionalism describes a style of architecture and design from the early decades of the last century but describing something as functional can now be almost pejorative - implying it’s something slightly basic that works - anything from an orange squeezer to a stripped down and basic kitchen - almost as if buying something that actually works properly is surprising and might even be worth using as a sale pitch.

But in the design and construction of these ships, functionalism and well-crafted and hard-wearing fittings were not primarily about aesthetics but rather a matter of life and death and profit … the parts, and therefore the ship as a whole, had to be robust and, to be efficient and, generally, had to be managed by the smallest number of crew possible. That they are also strikingly beautiful is a bonus that reflects the skill of the craftsmen and the quality of the materials they used.

If you want to trace through how the specific qualities of materials along with craft or manufacturing skills focused on function for the starting point that determines form of a design and how function and form and materials and techniques for working those materials are a framework or control for the design and all working together then a good place to start is to look carefully at an old water mill or a windmill or an early steam engine or, as here, at hand-built sailing ships. Not just at the separate parts but at how the whole functioned.

The harbour has become more and more sanitised and being given the opportunity to see working ships should remind people that the bustle and noise of goods being loaded and unloaded on these wharfs and dock basins was the reason that the city is here and that was the source of its wealth and significance.

De Forenede Sejlskibe

select an image to open photographs in a slide show

the quay in the late 19th century where Skuespilhuset - the Playhouse of the National Theatre - stands now, looking towards north east towards the sound with the buildings of Kvæsthus to the left that in this view hide the warehouse and the quay that is now the Admiral Hotel

masted trading ships at the quay in front of Børsen - The Copenhagen Exchange - in the 1890s

 

The Viking Ship Hall in Roskilde

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There is growing controversy about the future of the Viking Museum in Roskilde.

The ship hall designed by Erik Christian Sørensen was completed in 1968 to house the remains of five Viking-age ships that were discovered and recovered from the Roskilde Fjord in the 1950s.

It is a stark concrete building - some would say brutal - but it provides a dramatic setting for the archaeological displays with a wall of glass that looks north out to the sea.

But there are serious problems with the concrete - with water damage and iron reinforcements too close to the surface - and, because the necessary repairs would be prohibitively expensive, permission has been given, with some reluctance, for the building to be demolished even though it was given protection status in 1998.

Now, a European conservation group has listed the Ship Hall as one of the top 100 modern concrete buildings in Europe and it is not clear quite what the museum and the government agency responsible for historic buildings - Slots og Kulturstyrelsen - will do now.

curious!

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April 2019

August 2019

And no the captions are not the wrong way round. That’s what is curious.

This is the new building alongside the suburban railway station of Østerport in Copenhagen designed by KHR Architecture … or rather it is an extensive remodelling of an existing line of shop units that had a fairly brutal street frontage in concrete and now has a new frontage, now offices above the shops and a new office building behind.

Everything is clad - or more accurately everything was clad - in rather distinct panels of glass with a sort of strong raspberry-ice-cream colour. The design has been heavily criticised in the press, in part as being inappropriate on this prominent site, and in part for the glass that reflected bright sunlight and was said to dazzle or even blind car drivers. One critic described it as the “grimmest building” in the city.

Photographed yesterday - as I happened to be walking by on my way somewhere else - it looks as if all the cladding on the front towards the road has been removed. I’m curious to know exactly why and will watch to see what happens next.

Oslo Plads
voted the grimmest building in Copenhagen

 

Lille Langebro

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Yesterday a new bridge in Copenhagen opened for cyclists and pedestrians to cross over the harbour from the city side just south of BLOX to Christianshavn.

There appeared to have been no opening ceremony and no notices in the newspaper.

It’s very elegant and forms a gentle curve as it crosses the harbour and my first reaction, on crossing over the bridge, is that it makes the bicycle and pedestrian bridge from Nyhavn to Christianshavn look clunky and over engineered.

 

the new circle line of the Copenhagen Metro to open 29 September

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The major new extension of the Metro in Copenhagen - the circle line round the historic centre - will now open on 29 September.

Above is the important new station at Trianglen at the south-east entrance to Fælledparken. It shows that much of the new hard landscape in place but the planned avenues of trees along each road edge are still to be planted and architectural features - such as the glass pyramids that will throw natural light down onto the platforms - are still to be installed.

Most of the new stations are at about this stage of completion above ground but the main reason for delay appears to have been caused by late delivery of the trains and the postponement of mechanical, electrical and safety testing.

Photographs of the station platforms and various designs and the different and specific colours for tiling, appropriate for the particular neighbourhood, have been published in some newspapers and show not just different and specific schemes for each station but mark a clear departure from the consistent design and the concrete finish of the existing stations on the first two metro lines that were constructed at the beginning of the century.

update - Lille Langebro

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Lille Langebro is almost complete with final work on the hard landscaping on the quay at at each side almost finished.

This is the new bridge for cyclists and pedestrians that will cross the harbour from Christians Brygge, from the quayside opposite the end of Vester Voldgade, to the Christianshavn side and lining up with Langebrogade.

Current traffic surveys suggest that there are around 40,000 cycle journeys a day across the main road bridge - an astounding number - and planners hope that at least 16,000 cyclists a day will change there route to the new bridge and also avoid the heavy and relatively fast road traffic along Hans Christian Andersens Boulevard.

The official opening is set for the Autumn but opening and closing of the new bridge is already controlled from the tower of the main bridge so presumably the wait is for safety tests.

There was a post on this site when the sections of the new bridge were lifted into place but Realdania have since posted a time lapse record of that work over two days when the four sections were delivered by barge from where they were manufactured in the Netherlands and were lifted into place by a giant crane.

post on Lille Langebro in September 2017

lifting the sections of the bridge into place April 2019

 
 

Kunst i Byudvikling / Art in Urban Development

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Kunst Realdania cover.jpeg

Realdania have just published a report on sculpture and art in public space that is aimed at municipalities, development companies and other professionals to inspire them "to consider art as a value-creating asset in their own projects."

“Culture and temporary activities are often included in urban development to open up new urban areas and give them identity, involve local citizens, or attract investors and outsiders.”

Christine Buhl Andersen, director of the Glyptotek in Copenhagen, has written an introduction or overview and she emphasises the importance of art in public space …  "art is increasingly used strategically to make urban areas, urban spaces and buildings vibrant and attractive."

The report points out that art in public spaces has a clear role in helping to create a good urban environment but requires a partnership between politicians, architects, planners, developers, builders and artists.

read more

 

KADK graduates and UN Sustainable Development Goals

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Lene Dammand Lund, Rector

Shown in this outdoor exhibition are seventeen innovative study programmes or research projects by graduate students from the Royal Academy Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation and each represent one of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Rigsdagsgården - the courtyard immediately in front of the parliament building in Copenhagen - is an amazing public space that is easily accessible for everyone and has a regular series of open-air exhibitions but, more important, given the subject of this exhibition, it brings these problems - and the urgent need to find potential solutions - right to the doorstep of national politicians.

These are innovative and imaginative projects that show architectural, design-led or conservation solutions to major global problems but all are based on established design principles and the use of existing technology or of technology being developed now.

This is the best of Danish architecture and design that can and should be harnessed to tackle serious problems that have to be resolved now.

Solutions shown here are a response to huge range of serious questions including questions about:

  • how we can reclaim methane gas from melting permafrost as a source of green energy

  • how to use sustainable materials to design textiles and make them a preferred choice

  • how we create healthcare solutions for elderly citizens that involve people and maintain their dignity

  • that developing traditional handicrafts can be a starting point for women to start a local business

  • how novel solutions can ensure that people everywhere have access to clean water

  • design solutions can tackle the problem of over production of food or food waste and encourage people to share food resources to combat hunger

  • the design of lighting in the class room can be used to reduce noise levels and encourage calm and concentration in schools

  • research can find a way to use the waste from fish farms to fuel biogas energy

  • major architectural projects - changing the use of large but now redundant buildings - can reduce inequalities by enabling everyone in a community to participate

  • hemp can be an alternative to cotton because cultivation requires less water and less fertilisers

Each project is shown across two large panels for maximum impact but are repeated - two or more projects to a panel - on the side of the exhibition towards the pavement - where the text is in English.

There are important statements here from Jakob Brandtberg Knudsen, Director of the School of Architecture; Mathilde Aggebo, Director of the Design School; Rikke Bjarnhof, Director of the School of Conservation and Lene Dammand Lund, Rector of KADK. 

 

Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademis Skoler for Arkitektur, Design og Konservering
The Royal Danish Academy Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation

the exhibition of graduate projects from KADK in Rigsdagsgården
 the courtyard in front of the parliament building in Copenhagen
continues until 30 June 2019

 

select any image to open in a slide show

 

update - Lille Langebro

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The four sections of the new cycle and pedestrian bridge have arrived from the Netherlands on a gigantic barge and are being lifted into place … the work started yesterday and it looks as if all the sections will be in place today.

These photographs show what will be the first fixed section from the city side as it was taken off the barge by a huge floating crane and swung across the harbour and lowered into place to be guided down by engineers on the quayside by BLOX and engineers in two small boats by the pier in the harbour. The sections in place, in the photographs, are the first section from the Amager side and the part that swings open on the the city side - general views are photographed here from Langebro.

The bridge will be completed by late summer and then the opening and closing of the swing sections will be controlled from the bridge house on the existing road bridge.

earlier post
earlier thought

 

Copenhagen: Solutions for sustainable cities - a report from Arup

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This report from the engineering consultants ARUP sets out many of the important principles that now guide planning policies for the city of Copenhagen.

It has a short introduction by Frank Jensen - the major of Copenhagen - where he writes about the efficient use of limited resources and concludes that "It was thought that environmentally friendly development would limit economic growth. However, quite the reverse turns out to be true. Green growth can, indeed, boost economic development and the quality of life .… the business of introducing sustainability into the city poses very different issues than affecting it in the country as a whole … and require city specific solutions."

The report sets out the problems and some of the solutions that the city has adopted - often through the use of innovative technology - and the achievements, in terms of environmental gains, along with lessons to be learnt.

There are good, clear graphics, a lot of information and interesting details about projects under eight main sections.

Headings for those sections of the report give a good indication of priorities for the city, in terms of sustainability, both now and for the future ….

THE HARBOUR TURNS BLUE
MEETING THE RISING DEMAND FOR WATER
CYCLING: THE FAST WAY FORWARD
TRANSPORT: THE GREEN LIGHT
MAKING THE MOST OF WASTE
THE FORCE OF PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR WIND POWER
KEEPING THE CITY WARM EFFICIENTLY
KEEPING COOL UNDER CO2 PRESSURE 


ARUP - Copenhagen: Solutions for Sustainable cities

ARUP publications

 

just a few of the facts:

  • 22% of Denmark's total electrical consumption is produced from wind turbines … the highest proportion in the World

  • there are 42 kilometres of Greenways through the city where cycling is prioritised

  • waste sent to landfill is now less than 5% of the amount dealt with in that way in 1988

  • the city heating system is one of the largest in the World and supplies 500,000 people with reliable and affordable heating

 
 

SolarVille

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This is a research project by SPACE10 about democratising access to clean energy … exploring ways to bring energy to 1.1 billion people who have little or no access to electricity. Neighbourhood generation could get around high investment costs for centralised energy networks where there is little incentive to innovate.

This miniature neighbourhood in wood has been built to a scale of 1:50 as a working prototype to show how some households could generate their own renewable energy using solar panels and some households would purchase excess electricity directly from the producer using block chain to make a self-sufficient community.

The scheme would include power storage to provide energy at night - now more feasible with the rapid development of batteries - and Blockchain technology could regulate the system for the sale of electricity and payments by verifying and recording transactions.


The project was a collaboration between SPACE10, Blockchain Labs for Open Collaboration; WeMoveIdeas India and Blocktech with the model by Tempral and SachsNottveit.

 SolarVille can be seen at SPACE10 until 29 March
SolarVille
SPACE10 

 

SPACE10 have published a related online report
A Brighter Tomorrow


the harbour and the future of Nyholm

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The Danish Navy maintain an important though reduced presence in Copenhagen - with the main naval bases for the country now in Frederikshaven and Korsør - but there are plans for much that is still here to be moved away from the city and recently there have been discussions to decide on the most appropriate use for the historic naval buildings on Nyholm.

This is an important part of the harbour and not just because Nyholm is prominent on the east side of the entrance to the historic inner harbour but also because the island has an important and symbolic place in the history of the city … on the emplacement at the north end of the islands are guns for official salutes to mark royal and national occasions; the flag flown here has huge significance and when the royal yacht returns to Copenhagen, it is moored immediately north of Nyholm.

There are important historic buildings here including two of the most extraordinary buildings in the city … the Mast Crane that is an amazing example of maritime engineering and the Hovedvagt, or Main Guard House, with a feature on the roof that looks like a giant chess piece. Both date from the middle of the 18th century and both are by the important architect Philip de Lange.

read more

photograph taken from the harbour ferry as it pulled in at the landing stage just below Skuespilhuset - the National Theatre.

Nyholm is the island between the Opera House and Refshaleøen and at the centre of this view is the distinct silhouette of the 17th-century Mast Crane

note:
the cormorants are on an artificial reef that was created in 2017 to encourage biodiversity in the harbour. The University of Aarhus has produced a report …

Restoration of Stone Reefs in Denmark

 

view across to Nyholm from the south - from the canal to the east of the opera house

Spanteloftsbygningen looking across the canal from the south east

above, the Mast Crane from the south with the low but wide Drawing Building to its east

Søminegraven - the canal along the east side of Nyholm from the south

Hovedvagt - Main Guard House or ‘Under the Crown’ from the east designed by Philip de Lange

Workshops at the south-east corner of Nyholm built in the late 19th-century

 

Lynetteholmen - a new island across the harbour

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Included by ministers in the launch in January of their 52 point Capital Initiative was a major project for a large, new island to be constructed across the entrance to the harbour. Work could start in 2035.

Under a heading Room for Everyone it was, in fact, the first point of the 52 - but already the proposal seems to have generated a fair amount of criticism.

The island, to be called Lynetteholmen, could have housing for at least 35,000 people and eventually work for as many and would include coastal protection measures to stop surges of storm water entering the inner harbour but it would have a fundamental impact on the character of the inner harbour by closing off views out to the sound and would restrict the routes of access into the harbour for large and small vessels.

Although the new cruise ship terminal at Nordhavn is outside the proposed island, the drawing shows further quays for large ships on the seaward side of the new island so it is not clear if these would replace the present berths for cruise ships along Langelinie Kaj.

note:

Politiken published an article on the 3 March with comments from a workshops with architects and engineers and planners where it was suggested that the island, as shown in the drawing first presented by the Prime Minister in October, is too close to the Trekroner fortress and is too large with several critics suggesting that it should be broken down into a series of smaller islands. No further decisions can be made until tests of the sea bed are completed and until related projects are confirmed including the plan for a major road link across the east side of the city that would have to cross the harbour and the proposal for an extension of the metro through a tunnel between Refshaleøen and Nordhavn.

Lille Langebro

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L1320924.jpg
 

Apparently the main sections for the new cycle and pedestrian bridge across the harbour will arrive in April. These have been manufactured in The Netherlands but delivery was delayed when a section was damaged beyond simple repair in an accident last summer as it was being loaded onto a barge to move it to Copenhagen.

The new bridge - Lille Langebro or Little Langebro Bridge - will cross from Langebrogadegade on the Christianshavn side of the harbour to Christians Brygge, immediately south of BLOX on the city side.

It makes every sense in terms of planning and will provide an important and safe new route for cyclists riding between Amager and the city which means that they will not, as now, have to go up and across the main bridge. On the city side there are traffic lights for crossing Christians Brygge and the bridge lines up with Vester Voldgade which runs up to the square in front of city hall and the new metro station there and should keep thousands of cyclists each day clear of HC Andersens Boulevard which is probably the road in the city with the heaviest road traffic so this is all good joined up planning.

But …..

But there is a part of me that regrets or do I mean mourns a further bit of chopping up the harbour … taming it …. domesticating it … making it look more and more like a river and less and less like one of the great and possibly the greatest ports of the Baltic.

This photograph was taken a few weeks ago and soon this view will be lost … or maybe I just mean different and maybe it’s simply indicating that I’ve lived in the city for long enough to be rattled by change.

earlier post on Lille Langebro

new metro station at Orientkaj

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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.