Østerport building appears to be in limbo

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Work on the shop and office complex adjoining Østerport station appears to be in limbo.

Very odd and inappropriate dark pink glass cladding was actually taken off the new building last summer but what is left is a strange anaemic shell … like telling someone their new trousers are completely wrong and inappropriate and making them take them off but then leaving them standing there in their Y-fronts. Everything just looks wrong.

Now Arkitekturoprøret / Architecture Rebellion - a lobby group with the motto Lad os bygge smukt igen / Lets build beautiful again - has voted this the ugliest building in Denmark from the last five years.

It's difficult to see how or why this development has gone so wrong but it does raise important issues.

One reason - though not an acceptable excuse - might be that this not a new building but is an extensive remodelling of existing buildings to the street frontages but with a new addition in what had been a back service area. Were the planners less critical of the scheme and did they apply different criteria than they would have done if it had been a new building on a new site?

There was a brutal concrete block of shops here that are still at the core of the main range facing Oslo Plads but with a new façade and new offices above and there were earlier buildings back along Folke Bernadottes Allé - the main road to Nordhavn and Hellerup - and there the new work is even stranger, sitting across the top of the old as if it was intended to be some sort of symbiotic relationship but it looks more like a science-fiction horror movie where the new is swallowing the old and is simply waiting for a bout of indigestion to pass before finishing the job. The new building is a squat tower block in the angle of the earlier buildings that manages to loom over and overshadow the station platforms but is slightly but only slightly less obvious from the road. 

Surely, with such a prominent location, controls should have been much tighter.

Even a good building that is well designed is not a good, well-designed building if it is in the wrong place or does not respect and enhance the street or the district in which it is built. And this building seems to have broken most of the conventions without knowing what to put in their place.

Too often, architects and/or a developers see their most important aim should be to produce a unique/novel/trend-setting building that ‘pushes the boundaries’ and establishes the name or the reputation or, worse, is to be used as bait to lure in a prestigious tenant but when ego projects go wrong then boy do they go wrong.

 

the new work from Folke Bernadottes Allé …. even with the raspberry pink glass cladding removed, this is a very weird building

Oslo Plads - the new development in a post from April 2019
curious - a post here in August 2019 when the cladding was removed
the restoration of the railway station at Østerport

 

another new hotel

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The former offices of Falck on Bernstorffsgade are being converted by new owners - the Arp-Hansen Group - into a hotel or rather into a luxury hostel with 1,650 beds that is to be called Next House.

All original cladding has been removed and work has started within the original concrete frame that will be retained.

With Cabinn City just 65 metres away on the opposite side of the square; a large Marriott hotel immediately to the south, just 140 metres away; a new hotel, The Spectrum, that will have 632 beds, being built a block away to the east and, 500 metres to the west, The Tivoli Hotel with 679 rooms next to the new Cabinn Hotel Dybbølsbro that will have 1,220 rooms when finished, then why have planners allowed yet another hotel here? Surely, this building would have been ideal for the student housing that is desperately needed in the city even if such a development had needed tax breaks or financial support from central or city government?

 

new planning and building regulations in Copenhagen

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At the end of last week, a new municipal plan for the city was adopted with some significant changes to building regulations.

The regulation for a minimum size of 95 square metres for new homes in Copenhagen will now apply to just 50% of the floor space provided in a development so that 50% of the area can be used for smaller homes.

Homes cannot be smaller than 40 square metres in floor area but the changes in the regulations are also looking at the need for housing for certain groups of single people and for students. The regulations will now allow for student housing with a gross area of 25 to 50 square metres but with an option to divide this between communal areas and private space as small as 13 square metres. The city has identified an urgent need for housing at an acceptable rent to provide new accommodation for 12,000 students in Copenhagen.

There are new recommendations about access to green space so, in future, there should be a minimum distance of 300 metres to walk from a new home to an open green area and that has been defined as a park, a pocket park, planted space or open water of a lake or the harbour. The emphasis appears to be on providing access to green space for some form of recreation and it has been proposed that the long-term ambition should be that no home should be more than 500 metres from a larger green space defined as an area over 2 hectares.

In a draft it was suggested that planning should encourage a one third division for transport so that a third of journeys in the city should be by bicycle, a third of journeys by public transport and no more than a third of journeys by car but this was amended and now reads that the aim should be that no more than 25% of journeys should be by car by 2025 and, in the debate before the vote, the regulations were also amended so there will now be fewer parking spaces in the city with a reduction by 30%.

There were also an interesting but not binding suggestions that developers must be encouraged to use sustainable materials such as timber in the construction and that the city should cut space for private cars on the roads if that releases space for recreation or for public transport or climate change adaptation.

climate change and rising sea levels

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If there is a sudden rain storm In Copenhagen and, within an hour, streets are flooded and businesses are closed and transport is disrupted, then the consequences from climate change seem obvious and imminent. Problems are here and are now so, for politicians, planners, voters and tax payers, the need to act and act now is easy to understand.

But rising sea levels are more difficult.

For a start, the time scale is longer. People still talk about dealing with once-in-a-hundred-year storms … perversely trying to persuade themselves that means it will not happen for a hundred years when a catastrophic storm tomorrow could still, strictly, be once in a hundred years if it's then 99 years until the next one.

Statistics and the data seem much less certain for the rise in sea levels but how can we expect scientists to be any more precise with predictions when these changes are on such an enormous scale and there are so many variables - not least when it comes to calculating a tipping point as sea ice or glaciers melt?

But for Denmark, these calculations and planning now for works for mitigation are crucial.

On one side of the weighing scales, for policy makers and planners, are some positives: Denmark is a relatively small and relatively prosperous country with a strong history of major and successful engineering projects and with a population that still appreciates and understands the role of the state in major interventions for general gains. But, on the other side of those scales, Denmark is a low-lying country with an astonishing number of islands and a coast line that, as a consequence, is said to be about 7,300 kilometres in length. Is it a case of too much to do and too little time?

 
 

Living now on Nyhavn I'm very aware of the levels of the water in the harbour as the tide rises and falls each day. It might not be as dramatic or by as much as on the west coast - where settlements face out to the North Sea and its weather - but still the level of the water in the harbour rises by as much as a metre from the lowest to the highest level through each day. There is a fixed measure on the bridge across the middle of the harbour that I can see from my desk … or, to be completely honest, there is a height marker I can see from my desk if I stand up …. and I can also hear when the tour boats stop just before the bridge to drop off and pick up passengers if the tide is too high for the boats to get under the bridge to reach the ticket office and landing stage at the top of the harbour.

The quayside here is just 1.5 metres above the level of the sea water at high tide …. so, to put it the other way round, the sea is just 1.5 metres below my front door.

The highest tidal surge out in the sound - sea water driven by winds or storms - was apparently three metres in 1872 although there seems to be no record of floods and damage in the city that year as a consequence. Complete official records date back only to 1890.

There was a surge of 1.57 metres in 1921 and the highest surge of sea water from a storm recently was on 19 January 2007 when the water level rose by 1.31 metres. I've looked at back copies of Politken for that weekend but, curiously, there seem to be no reports of flooding or damage in the city with just one report about the harbour that weekend that has a photograph of a huge number of bikes that had been hoiked out of the canal around Christiansborg as part of a clean-up campaign.

But then add the height of a possible storm surge to the higher level of the sea because of global warming and melting of polar and Greenland ice and you can see why the city has to make major decisions now about what has to be done.

Calculations have suggested that, between now and 2050, sea level in the sound will rise between 10 centimetres and 30 centimetres and by the end of the century - so only 80 years away - the rise in sea level here will be between 20 centimetres and 1.6 metres with a 5% chance the rise will be over 2 metres. The median figure for the rise in sea level for Copenhagen is 70 centimetres and that could mean water lapping over the quay at high tide.

The only thing that is certain, is that I won't be here eighty years from now but, in a worst-case scenario, the sea will be at the front door of this building and that is without worrying about storms.

The whole of Christianshavn was built up out of the sea in the 17th century and looking at historic maps it is clear that the outer part of Nyhavn was built out way beyond the line of the beach.

I have read somewhere that the crown sold off areas of the sea bed and it was up to new owners to drive in wooden piles and fill in and create a plot for their buildings. Whether or not that is true, I wonder how much rising water levels will effect foundations. There is remarkably little visual evidence for subsidence but what will happen as the water table rises? And, more important, whatever work is considered to protect the city from flooding, major engineering interventions will change, and change permanently, the character of the inner harbour and the beaches and low-lying land of Amager - the island immediately to the south of the city.

 

 

Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate.

Last year - in September 2019 - the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published their Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate.

Produced by more than 100 climate and marine scientists from 36 countries, this report assesses how global warming is having an impact on sea levels as sea ice melts and uses clear research data to calculate the potential extent of change and the rate of change.

Through the 20th century, sea levels rose by 15 centimetres (6 inches) but as global warming is causing ice in glaciers and in the Arctic and Antarctic sea to melt at twice that rate then calculations indicate that by the end of the century, so by 2100, sea levels will rise by an additional 10 centimetres so between 61 centimetres and 1.1 metres and if the Arctic ice sheets melt faster than current predictions suggest, then, by 2100, sea levels could rise by 2 metres.

Small glaciers are expected to lose more than 80% of current ice mass and that would have a severe impact on supplies of drinking water and consistent supplies of water to rivers for irrigation. With flooding of coastal areas and the impact on coastal cities and on densely populated delta areas then changes to sea level will dramatically reshape "all aspects of society."

The report can be read on line and the separate sections downloaded.

these are:

Summary for Policymakers
Technical Summary
Framing and Context of the report
High Mountain Areas
Polar Regions
Sea Level Rise and Implications for Low-Lying Islands, Coasts and Communities
Changing Ocean, Marine Ecosystems and Dependent Communities
Extreme, Abrupt Changes and Managing Risks
Integrative Cross-Chapter Box on Low-lying Islands and Coasts

 
 

Waterfront Design Catalogue

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More and more articles in newspapers and planning reports in Copenhagen are talking about green and blue planning policies …. so policies that look in a coherent way at green nature in the city but alongside policies for water quality and for making the harbour and lakes a more crucial part of life in Copenhagen.

Recently, I came across this publication from the Technical Department of the city council that was published in 2013. Drawn up by, among others, the architectural studio of COBE, the illustrations are good at showing just how many different ways there are to deal with the hard edge of the quay around the harbour that forms the link between the land and the water and there are many ideas about how to encourage more access to the water and more activities.

The cycle route around the harbour is now complete and at over 13 kilometres it draws in a large area of water of the inner harbour and, as work on the new district of Nordhavn moves forward, more and more facilities on the water have been provided. The new swimming area in Nordhavn opened last year.

City planners are now considering the possibility of designating the wooden decking and the inner part of the dock at Ofelia Plads, north of the National Theatre, as a new official swimming area.

download PDF

Sankt Kjelds Plads and Bryggervangen climate-change scheme - winner of the Arne Prize 2020

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On Friday, it was announced that the climate-change scheme for Sankt Kjelds Plads and Bryggervangen by SLA architects and the engineering company NIRAS has been awarded the Arne Prize for 2020 …. the major annual award from the Danish Association of Architects.

The selection of a climate-change project for the Arne Prize has, if anything, more significance because this year there was a short list of six projects that included very strong contenders for the prize with the extensive work on Karen Blixens Plads - a huge project by the architects COBE that is at the centre of the south campus of the university - and the stunning stations of the new line of the Metro that opened in September.

Sankt Kjelds Plads is at the centre of a densely-built residential area immediately north of Fælledparken so it is about 4 kilometres north of the centre of the city. Most of the apartment buildings here date from the first half of the last century with most buildings of five storeys around attractive but enclosed courtyards and with wide but slightly bare and bleak streets.

Storms with sudden and increasingly severe rain have meant severe threats from flooding both as drains block and streets flood but also as rain-water floods down from the roofs.

This extensive and essential scheme to control storm water in the area was designed in 2015 with construction work and then planting undertaken between 2016 and 2019 and had to include extensive and disruptive engineering works for new drains and for sunken holding areas for water so sewers are not overwhelmed with cloud bursts.

A crucial part of the scheme was to rationalise on-street parking for cars and to reduce and slow down through traffic so large areas of what had been tarmac could be replaced with pedestrian areas with seating and with dense planting more like urban woodland than simply shrubbery around newly excavated hollows that act as temporary water-holding tanks but are otherwise planted with vegetation that can withstand occasional flooding.

Shale has been used around water pipes to slow the water that cascades from down pipes in a storm and there are large domed sumps with wide vertical drops to deal quickly with water from street gulleys.

What is already clear is that there has been major social gain from the work with new cafes and new businesses attracted to the square and to the nearby and related climate-change scheme for Tåsinge Plads just 80 metres to the east of Sankt Kjelds Plads.

initial assessment posted to Danish Design Review in April 2019
Tåsinge Plads

 
 
 
 
 

note:

Each year, alongside the main Arne Prize, there is a second award - the Lille Arne or Little Arne Prize - that recognises excellence across a broader range of work associated with architecture. This year the Lille Arne was awarded to Sydhavnens Folkmøde that provides a platform for local residents to have a democratic involvement in the on-going development of the south harbour.

Sydhavnens Folkemøde

 

Slow down you move too fast ...... just kicking down the cobblestones

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Work on Gammel Strand is now almost finished.

This very long and narrow triangular space - over the canal from Christiansborg - was the location of the old fish market.  There are large old houses across the long north side - facing across towards Thorvaldsens Museum and the Christiansborg Castle Church - and the long south side is defined by the quay of the canal itself,

The space has been a building site for almost a decade with the construction of one of the new stations of the circle line of the metro here at the east end of the space. The entrance to the metro is close to the bridge over the canal to Christiansborg - Højbro or High Bridge with its ornate stone balustrade. The other key feature of the space is a magnificent tree at the west end in front of a large courtyard house that steps forward from the main line of facades, to enclose the space, although the quay continues on as the narrower Nybrogade.

The metro station opened in September and work then started on laying a new arrangement of cobbles.

Whereas before there was traffic cutting through the space with a relatively narrow pavement in front of the houses, this has now been restricted to access and bikes are encouraged to follow a long curve through the space marked by a relatively narrow strip of smoother cobbles or setts. There are no pavements, as such, but again changes in the arrangement of the cobbles and the line of shallow gullies for drainage mark in a subtle way a suggested line for people to follow. The new design allows much more space for restaurants here to move more tables and seating outside.

It is actually at night that you see the real gains from this new arrangement of the space. Lighting is kept relatively low and people seem to appreciate and respect the calm space. 

There are steps down to a lower level of walk along the canal itself where, because it faces south, people can sit in the sun so it is actually a complicated space, in terms of hw people move through or stop in and use the public space but it is all demarcated by subtle and careful differences in the hard landscaping and with street furniture and artificial lighting kept to a minimum. Copenhagen planning at its best.

looking along Gammel Strand from the east end with the canal to the left and the clock tower of the city hall in the distance

the fish market on Gammel Strand with the balustrade of Højbro and the houses of Ved Stranden beyond - painted by Paul Fischer a century ago

an earlier scheme for a new hotel in the Tivoli gardens

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Towards the end of 2006, the British firm of architects Foster + Partners won an international competition to design a hotel for Tivoli.

That design, like the more recent design by BIG, was to have a tall circular tower and was described by the architects as:

“driven by a careful urban strategy concerned with the preservation of Copenhagen's low skyline, the scheme comprises an elegant cluster of interconnecting cylinders that combine to form a generous podium corresponding to the heights of the surrounding rooflines. Elegantly rising from the podium, a slender sculptural tower acts as a marker for the scheme and relates in scale to the City Hall tower opposite, adding to the language of spires in Copenhagen. The landscaped roofs of the lower buildings extend the greenery of Tivoli and reinforce the buildings sustainable profile. In addition to allowing for rainwater collection, the buildings are oriented to maximise natural light and views while reducing unwanted solar gain in the summer, but capturing the suns rays in the cooler winter months.”

A photograph of a model of the proposed hotel shows just how high the tower would have been - tall enough to throw a shadow across the square in front of the city hall in the later part of the day and, visually, it would have competed with and from angles it would even have blocked views of the tower of the city hall.

If built as designed, the hotel would have had a frontage to HC Andersens Boulevard and that would have meant the demolition of Slottet -  or Tivoli Castle - the building designed by Vilhelm Klein that was completed in 1893. that would have been an unfortunate loss as not only is it a good building in itself and part of the extensive and important new building works across the west side of the city in the late 19th century but it was the first home of what was then called the Kunstindustrimuseet before it was moved to Bredgade. The museum is now known as Designmuseum Danmark.

the building designed by Vilhelm Klein that was completed in 1893 and was the first home of the Kunstindustrimusset before it was moved to Bredgade in the 1920s

update .... the opera house gardens

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Recently there have been articles in the press about the plans for a new underground car park on the island immediately to the south of the opera house.

The main concern now seems to be about the disruption from heavy lorries removing soil from the site and then traffic for the construction work and this would be at the same time as the work that has barely started on a major redevelopment of the nearby Papiroen/Paper Island site.

One suggestion has been that material from the excavation could be removed by barge but there is no obvious place to take this waste at this time.

The problem that is perhaps as much of a concern that should, perhaps, be more widely discussed is the form of the new planting for the new park once the underground car park has been constructed.

Natural, woodland-type planting, with informal groupings of trees is suggested in the drawings and the photograph taken in the botanic gardens in Copenhagen shows just how attractive the careful arrangement of specimen tress can be but this is a difficult site in that it is primarily urban and maritime. Would a ‘natural’ arrangement of large trees undermine the character of a site that is at the centre of the city and still very much at the heart of the harbour or does that not matter?

post on the Opera House park 6 September 2019

Supercykelstier - two new Super Cycle Paths in Copenhagen

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Zoom out from Dybbølsbro and its temporary problems and you can see how it fits in with a wider long-term plan to create long-distance bike routes through and round the city. The circuit of the harbour with a loop of 13 kilometres of bike paths is now complete and plans are well advanced for two major new dedicated bike routes down through Amager.

Much of the best planning in the city is now about linking more and more of the parts so about linking together the pedestrian streets, linking together, in an appropriate way, the green corridors and linking together the bike routes.

 

Proposed routes for two new Supercykelstier / Super Bike Paths 

① Dybbelsbro - new bridge October 2019
② Cykelslangen / Cycle Snake 2014
and Bryggebroen 2006
③ Inderhavnsbroen / Inner Harbour Bridge 2016
④ Cirkelbroen / Circle Bridge - Olafur Eliasson 2015
⑤ Lille Langebro 2019
⑥ Alfred Nobels Bro over Frederiksholmsløbet 2018
to link Fisketorvet to the housing of the south harbour

retrofitting balconies is a problem

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Walk around Copenhagen and you realise that this is the city of balconies … many of the buildings from the 18th and 19th centuries have elaborate balconies and, on modern buildings, balconies can come in almost any shape or size or form.

But there is a growing problem with retrofitting balconies on buildings that did not have them originally and particularly when basic, box-like, metal balconies are added across the street frontage of a building.

read more

 

yet another new hotel

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The turn of the year - particularly this January as we move into a new decade - is a time to check back on what has happened over the last year and think about what might happen next year.

In Copenhagen there are several major building projects where work is ongoing and several projects still at the planning stage but many of the big projects in the centre of the city could have massive consequences for the city and for the people who live here.

This historic building, dating from the late 19th century, is close to Trinity Church and work has just started on converting it into a large hotel with some shop units.

A few years ago there were articles in newspapers stating that Copenhagen lacked good hotels but that is hardly the case now.

And surely, all these hotels are changing the character of the city and the nature of work here. Yes, hotels can make use of large old buildings that might otherwise not have an obvious new use and yes there are jobs but how many of these are long-term and well-paid jobs?

The huge strength of the city is that so many people actually live in the centre. Too many historic cities empty of ordinary life at the end of the working day and Airbnb and swish hotels and everything that go with them make a city a great destination to visit but maybe not such an easy place to live.

 
 

with so many new hotels opening is this stacking up problems for the city in the future?

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Pressure from the number of tourists coming to Copenhagen is not as bad as it is in Amsterdam or Barcelona or Venice - or at least not yet - but parts of the historic centre do feel crowded with visitors and with the tourist season now extending through most of the year that can make the experience disappointing for visitors and frustrating and unpleasant for people who live in the city.

There are obvious concerns about Airbnb - particularly when there are problems with parties and noise at night but also because there is a general feeling that letting apartments short term removes those properties from the stock of good homes that would otherwise be rented long-term to local people.

A sudden flood of visitors that come into the city when a cruise ship docks can cause specific problems in part because most are bused into the city, causing traffic problems and in part because the ships are possibly polluting the air with their engines powering the ships while they are in the port.

But, curiously, there have been less concerns voiced about the number of new hotels that are being built or the number of large historic buildings in the city that are being converted into hotels.

The figures are amazing. In the summer of 2018 there were around 21,000 hotel bedrooms in the city but this figure will increase with the opening of 8,500 extra rooms by 2022.

In a city like New York or London, that number of new hotel rooms would seem almost inconsequential but Copenhagen has a population of just over a million people but that is over the wider area of the city and its suburbs. There are around 600,000 living in the inner city and, of course, most of the sights that visitors want to see are in that inner area. The irony is that more people live right in the centre of the historic city that in most capitals but for how much longer? More hotels and more tourists mean, presumably, that more and more commercial properties become coffee shops or gift shops catering to the tourists and drive out the shops that people who live in the city centre want and need.

Copenhagen airport is now seen as the gateway to the region so does that mean tourists visiting Scandinavia tend to add nights in Copenhagen at the start or end of their trip?

Certainly, occupancy rates for hotel rooms here now run at about 80% which is high when compared to hotels in other European cities … so you can see exactly why the construction of hotels is a go-to solution for developers and investors. Their simple conclusion would seem to be to feed the demand to reap the profit.

But how much will a rapid increase in the number of hotel rooms change the city and could it destroy or, at the very least, damage what visitors come to Copenhagen to see?

When a parcel of land changes ownership or when a large building is vacated will the first suggestion be for a hotel rather than anything else?

How much revenue is generated for the city by hotels - rather, that is, than revenue for the profit line of international investors? Jobs are created but how secure and how well-paid are those jobs? Do those jobs go to local people or migrant workers and where do hotel workers live?

Is there a tipping point between vibrant growth and the crowded exploitation of over-stretched facilities?

Tourism was seasonal but that has changed and, in any case, the aim now is about trying to attract major conferences and that would fill gaps between the end of the summer and the start of the Christmas Season and any quiet period, if there is such a thing now, between Christmas and Easter.

There has been an application from the owners of Tivoli to build a big hotel within the gardens … a tower designed by the Bjarke Ingels Group that would be 70 metres high with 18 floors of rooms. It might be round and it might have balconies covered with hanging plants but that does not disguise or hide a building of that height in that position just metres away from the city hall.

There are already something like 2,000 hotel bedrooms in the streets immediately around the Tivoli gardens so should that in itself suggest that some sort of limit or control would be sensible?

The Nobis Hotel on Niels Brocks Gade, to the south of Tivoli - just the other side of the Glyptotek, in what was the buildings of the Royal Danish Academy of Music - opened in September 2017 with 75 new rooms. At the south-west corner of Tivoli, in what was the headquarters of the Post Office, work is now moving fast to convert the buildings for the new Villa Hotel on Tietgensgade set to open in April 2020 with 390 rooms and just 700 metres away, down the railway tracks, is the building site of the Cabinn Hotel Dybbølsbro with 1,220 rooms that will make it the largest hotel and, from it's current appearance, contender for a prize as one of the ugliest hotels in Denmark.

When it opened in the 1960s, the height of the SAS Royal Hotel at the north-west corner of Tivoli, now with 261 rooms, must have shocked and upset some people in the city but the mega hotel seems to be the norm and they make the SAS seem small in comparison …. the new Comwell in Nordhavn designed by Arkitema will have 493 rooms and will open in January 2021.

Surely such a rapid expansion in the number of hotels should be discussed by citizens now rather than in four or five years time when they feel swamped by the number of tourists in their city. By then it could be too late or too difficult to control the problem.

 

the Nobis Hotel near the Glyptotek opened in September 2017

just 400 metres from the Nobis, the new Villa Hotel on Tietgensgade will open in April 2020 with 390 rooms

just 700 metres down the rail tracks from the Villa Hotel is the Cabinn Hotel Dybbølsbro and, with 1,220 rooms, once it opens, it will be the largest hotel and possibly the ugliest hotel in Denmark

it’s across the road from the Tivoli Hotel with 679 rooms: along the street from the Copenhagen Marriott with 401 rooms and within sight of the tower of the Dan Hotel with 192 rooms

Ørkenfortet / Desert Fort, Christianshavn

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Work is moving forward fast on Ørkenfortet, the Desert Fort - the large office building that is at the centre of the harbour at the Christianshavn end of Knipplesbro - the central bridge that crosses the harbour between the centre of the city and Christianshavn.

The interior at all levels has been gutted and all original windows and all external cladding have been removed. Work has started on cutting down new internal courtyards or light wells within the concrete structure of the block and on removing hefty concrete retaining walls along both the street frontage towards Torvegade and at the level of the quay on the end of the building towards the harbour that formed a base for the building.

Ørkenfortet was designed by Palle Suenson (1904-1987) and was completed in 1962 as offices for Burmeister & Wain who were a well-established and major engineering and ship-building company in the city. However, the engineering works closed in the 1990s and many of the buildings were demolished and replaced with office blocks along the harbour and large apartment buildings along the canal to the south.

The building by Suenson was taken over by Nordea Bank in the 1990s but, in 2017, they moved to a new office close to the metro station at DR Byen further south on Amager and the harbour building is now being converted into a hotel with almost 400 rooms for the Hilton Group.

read more

Planning Statement - appendix to the Local Plan
updated news on the development from atp ejendomme

notes:

In Danmarks Kunstbilbliotek / the Danish Art Library in Copenhagen there is a drawing of the building by Palle Suenson Inv. nr. 53296 - a perspective from Knippelsbro

While tracking down information on the building I came across a web site that revealed that the building was given a nickname by locals who called it Røven or The Arse. Initially, I assumed that was because the building was thought to be butt ugly but actually it was because at lunchtime workers in the office came out onto the forecourt and sat along the parapet of the wall along Torvegade and, for people walking along the pavement below, the only thing that could be seen from the street was a line of backsides.

 

photograph from 1965 showing Knippelsbro and Torvegade with the office building designed by Palle Suenson in the foreground and the engineering works of Burmeister & Wain beyond along the harbour as far as the canal and around the south and east side of Christians Church

 

climate change and sustainability in Denmark? - information on line

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Many of the major reports on new policies to tackle climate change and directives on sustainability from the Danish government and by city councils and by organisations such as Realdania or Danish Industry are published on line and often published in English although it is now relatively easy to translate even pdf files from Danish using Google.

read more

Here the images of the report cover are links to the on-line site where the report can be read and, in most cases, downloaded as a pdf file.

 
 
 

Lokalplanner i København

For the city of Copenhagen, plans for proposed developments - including extensive schemes to deal with flooding from rain storms - are published on line as part of the public consultation process and, for planners and architects from other countries, these readily-available reports provide a useful introduction to developments in planning and major engineering projects for climate change mitigation in the city.

The front page has a map where the reader can zoom in to find a specific report for a district or city block or square or specific building and the map is live or active so take you to the on-line pdf reports.

More recent reports have extensive research on historic context and function so they are as much an impact assessment as a public consultation document

 
 

Langelands Plads - a new underground car park with climate landscape

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aerial view from Google Earth shows Langelands Plads while the new underground car park was exposed.
The south end of Axsel Møllers Have is to the right with the roof of public swimming pool and public baths bottom right. The baths were designed by AAK Lauritzen and opened in 1934. Apartments around the squares would have had toilets but would have used the public baths.

Langelands Plads in Frederiksberg is about 400 metres north of the main shopping centre and Frederiksberg metro station.

Work on a extensive scheme to remodel and develop Langelands Plads began in the Spring of 2017 and was completed and the square was reopened at the end of May 2019.

A new underground car park was excavated across the east side with three levels below ground that has parking for 200 cars. Access is down a ramp at the south-east corner of the square but with separate access points for pedestrians leaving or retrieving their cars.

Mature trees were kept on the west side of the space and the area was resurfaced and paved and is now tightly packed with features with raised steps for seating across the north-east corner; a large, shallow pool; seating, including picnic tables and, of course, play equipment including a slide; a sand pit and an area for ball games enclosed by high fencing.

The square is also part of storm water planning for the district so the paving tiles are actually a permeable surface and there are holding tanks for water below the square.

The design was by the architectural consultants RUM

additional photographs and read more

RUM

 

climate change - Scandiagade

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Rain storm works at Scandiagade were completed and formally opened in June 2019 and I visited a few days later to take some photographs and explore the area but have only just got around to writing the post.

I'm not sure why it has taken so long and it now feels like a serious oversight because this is a brilliant piece of landscape planning and the designers - the architectural studio 1:1 Landskab - have created a beautiful and really quite amazing new public space.

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20180503_Plan farve_0.jpg

Sankt Jørgens Sø - planning for climate change

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Planning for one of the most dramatic and extensive climate-change schemes in Copenhagen has been put on hold for more detailed consideration.

This is a proposal to change Sankt Jørgens Sø - the southernmost of the three lakes that form an arc around the west side of the historic city - so that it can hold back flood water when (not if) there is a major rain storm.

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new electric buses in Copenhagen

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one of the new electric buses on its route out to Refshaleøen in front of Christiansborg - The Danish parliament

 

On Sunday 8 December, following a trial period of two years with electric buses on the 3A cross-city route, 48 new electric buses were rolled out on the routes of the 2A bus between Tingbjerg and Refshaleøen and the 18 bus that runs between Legravsparken, to Ørestad Station and on out to Emdrup Torv.

Buses on the 2A route are from the Dutch manufacturer VDL with nickel-manganese-cobalt batteries that weigh 3 tonnes. Charging is generally at the end stations at Tingbjerg and Refshaleøen and for 6 hours at night in the garage.

The buses on route 18 were made in China by BYD and have lithium iron-phosphate batteries that are charged only at the garage which takes three-and-a-half hours.

These electric buses are three to four times as energy efficient as diesel buses and are much quieter particularly when they pull away from any stop.

It has been calculated that 11 million annual passenger journeys are made on these two routes and the electronic buses will reduce CO2 emissions in the city by 4,300 tonnes annually.

In Copenhagen, politicians have decided that all diesel buses will be replaced with green electric buses by 2025.

Movia

 

the maps of the two bus routes from Movia are highly stylised but they emphasise the important intersections of bus routes or the interchanges at stations for the Metro and suburban train services for a joined-up public transport system

the new Climate Act

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On Friday evening 6 December 2019 Folketinget - the Danish Parliament - passed an ambitious new Climate Act that commits the country to reduce emissions by 2030 to 70% of the levels recorded in 1990 and is set to make Denmark a pioneer for green political action.

This act will have a major impact on planning and on architecture and construction and on design for manufacturing and will influence the way people live day to day.

In the future the Climate Act may well be considered as far reaching in its effect on Danish life as the social reforms of 1933 and the EC referendum of 1972.

At the core of the act is a commitment to reduce emissions of climate-changing pollutants to 70% of levels in 1990 by 2030 and this is now entrenched in law and aspects of the legislation prevent Danish companies from exporting pollution by moving production out of the country. The importance of collaboration with other countries and global commitments are recognised in the legislation.

To prevent problems being kicked down the road, a new climate plan will have to be produced every five years with updated assessments and commitments for the reduction of greenhouses gases for the following ten years and at the beginning of each year there will be an assessment to ensure that the government's climate policy is on track and meeting climate targets. Ministers will be accountable to a Climate Council and the Parliamentary Climate, Energy and Utilities Committee.

Politicians understand that people will feel the consequences in terms of both taxes and controls on behaviour particularly in agriculture and in the major Danish sectors of transport and energy.

The Act will be followed by a Climate Action Plan in the Spring.

the entrance to Folketinget / The Danish Parliament

Measures to reduce the carbon footprint covers four strategic categories:
Food:  Plant-based and animal-based food production and food processing
Transport:  Production of vehicles and other transport equipment, fuel, and transport services and this covers land and air travel
Manufacturing:  Manufactured products and services covering appliances, clothing, furniture, financial services, education, health services, and retail
Building:  Construction, waste treatment, real estate services, household fuel