Blegdamsvej - new public space - new sculptures

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Museums and art galleries in Copenhagen have had to close through this stage of the Coronavirus pandemic but it is still possible to see good art in the city and get your lockdown exercise at the same time by going out to look at the sculptures installed on streets and in squares and parks

Blegdamsvej is a main road that runs parallel to the lakes on the outer side. Here there are major hospitals and medical research institutes and two of the most recent buildings - the Panum Institute in the Mærsk Tower designed by CF Møller and the new north wing of the Rigshopitalet by the Danish architects 3XN - now have newly-installed statues on public areas of paving at the front. These are major works but could hardly be more different.

If you are a visitor, and do not know the city well, than it might be easiest to start from Trianglen metro station and from there it is 500 metres along Blegdamsvej to the work by Kirsten Ortwed and then from there a further 550 metres to the Panum Institute - on the far side of the main road with Fredens Park - for the installation by Alicia Kwade.

Or, cross over the lakes, over Fredensbro, at the centre of Sørtedams Sø, and, at Blegdamsvej, the work by Alicia Kwade is to the west and the work by Kirsten Ortwed is to the east.

PARS PRO TOTO
Alicja Kwade

Panum Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences,
Mærsk Tårnet / Maersk Tower,
Blegdamsvej 3b, 2200 København

Alicia Kwade is a Polish artist who is now based in Copenhagen.
Her work was shown at Charlottenborg in 2018 under the title Out of Ousia and Pars Pro Toto was shown at Louisiana

There is an interview with the artist on the Louisiana Chanel

The new forecourt is itself interesting as the surface is not level but has a great hollow with the grid of the paving creating an interesting visual effect - like the drawings you sometime see of a head or a body as a wire-frame profile - and here the artist uses that hollow to imply that the huge marble sphere has rolled here across the square only to be stopped by the posts there to stop cars driving in.

REFLEXTION
Kirsten Ortwed

Rigshospitalet,
Nordfløjen / North Wing
Blegdamsvej 80, 2100 København

Kirsten Ortwed is a Danish artist who is now based in Cologne.
Another of her works for a public space can be seen at Havnegade in Copenhagen - near the Nyhavn end of the kissing bridge.

Here the new building has been set back from the road but that area has been paved and kept open to the public with no barrier or fence so the life-size figure, without a plinth, stands in our space and the public has gained that space to move up to the building or to cut the corner to enter Fælledparken beyond. Too often, new buildings ignore an existing street line or street alignment and undermine or destroy the visual continuity of the street and any sense of urban containment and enclosure but here the new space and the sculpture together enhance and add to the interest and to the value of the public space of the street.

Monuments in Copenhagen.jpeg

Monumenter in København / Monuments in Copenhagen

The Kommune - the city council in Copenhagen - has an excellent online site with a catalogue of statues and decorative sculpture on the streets and in the squares and parks of the city.

There is a search option to enter the name of the artist or the subject of the sculpture but the easiest way to enter the database is through the clear map that is dynamic so you can zoom and drag, if you are searching later, and can remember the area but not the street name.

The map is tiled and, again, this is dynamic so numbers on the map in orange circles refer to the number of statues in that area and these split up and redistribute to the right location as you zoom in and if you click on a number that is greater than one - so for instance at the corner of the city hall towards the Vartov that has six - so then they open or fan out and each one links to a slide that pops up so you can then go to the right information and images for the right statue.

The site is in Danish or in English and there are some good comments rather than simply the basic facts so, The Lur Blowers by Siegfried Wagner and Anton Rosen, close to the city hall, was designed with a single figure for the top of the column until someone pointed out that Lurs are played in pairs …. now come on who didn't know that … so two lur players now stand on the top of the column. It means that it's a bit crowded up there and local wits began to describe them as the two bags of flour.

 
 

Nyhavn

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Recently, while doing research for a number of posts on buildings around Råshuspladsen, I’ve been using the vast collection of historic photographs from the city archive that are now available on line and, although not actually looking for it, I came across this photograph of Nyhavn … a photograph of the view from the ‘new’ harbour looking towards the more open water of the main harbour.

It was taken sometime after 1900 and probably before 1910 and for me it sums up what is so fantastic about Nyhavn and about the survival of so many major historic buildings along the quays on either side.

For over 200 years, this part of the city was at the heart of commercial trade with merchants living here and with warehouses and workshops that continued to thrive even when, from the end of the 18th century and through the 19th century, they were superseded by the larger warehouses of Christianshavn and Larsens Plads and the line of large brick warehouses between Amalienborg and the harbour.

In the book Historiske Huse in det gamle København, published by the National Museum in 1972, forty four buildings in Nyhavn are included with short summaries of their date; their builder (if recorded) and with details about important later owners. Despite alterations, most of the buildings on the north side, date back, at least in part, to the construction of the harbour in the 1680s. On the south side was the palace of Charlottenborg, that survives, and then further down the harbour buildings from the naval dockyard and the first botanical gardens. It was only in the middle of 19th century that the larger apartment buildings along the quay below the bridge on the south side were constructed.

The photograph shows that the ships moored here - designed and constructed for specific cargoes or different trading routes - were as beautiful and as amazing as the buildings. And, of course, it was the ships that generated the income that provided the money to build and then later to improve the houses as the wealth of the city merchants increased and as tastes and styles and fashions changed.

Some will argue that the harbour has been swamped by it’s own success and has been or will be destroyed by the ever-larger numbers of tourists and the restaurants that are here to serve them but, of course, some will argue that it is only the income from tourism that now means the buildings can be maintained and that they now have a valid role.

The important thing is that they do survive and that they are well maintained not just as exteriors, so simply as a backdrop, but rather as incredibly important historic buildings and interiors that contain the physical and tangible evidence for how people in the city lived and worked and traded and the evidence to show how and why they were successful.

 

Nyhavn - what a difference a year and a virus makes

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last summer ……

…… and this summer with the city in lockdown

and a slightly lighter note …. when it comes to important things in life, people don’t change much. Who can resist leaning on the railings or the parapet of a bridge to stare at the water?

The lads fishing from the north bridge over the moat at Kastellet is a detail of a painting by Christen Købke from 1834 and is now in the collection of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. The stance of the boy in pale trousers fishing and the pose of the girl in jeans and both with remarkably similar short jackets seems like a link through the decades between them.

 

I just don't understand

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Occasionally articles or letters in newspapers here complain that things have changed for the worse or that the city are failing to clear certain bins or sweep certain streets but Copenhagen is remarkably clean and free from litter … and particularly for a busy city where many people actually live in the centre.

OK … sometimes bins in certain popular areas fail to cope with rubbish but on the whole, when you see rubbish on the ground around a bin in the street, then it's actually that the bin was fairly full and then birds, particularly gulls, have been after food waste, or foxes have scavenged and pulled things out in the early hours of the morning and, even in Copenhagen, they have not managed to train them to put the paper back when they have found and eaten the scraps of food.

You do see the odd person dropping the odd wrapper but it is remarkably rare.

But what I really, really don't understand is the number of fag ends everywhere and the round blobs of flattened chewing gum on the pavement but particularly near pedestrian crossings. Odd … do people really take the few seconds of waiting for the green man to appear as the best time to gob out their gum?

But I didn't realise this was all such a really huge problem until the Museum of Copenhagen reopened in their new building. Not, he adds quickly, that they are in any way responsible or guilty. Just that I stood and watched the full half-hour sequence of information about the city that flows past as an electronic version of ticker tape on their new data wall on the top floor.

According to the data wall, 80% of the rubbish cleared from the streets by city street cleaners  is cigarette ends. That's 80% by weight. And remember they are plastic, or a certain sort of plastic, and now there must be health issues.

And the same with the gum … the problem with people spitting in the street is now rather more of a worry. Or don't people spit? I’ve never actually seen anyone at a pedestrian crossing spit but perhaps people are skilled and discreet and I've just not noticed. Do they rake out and drop? How does that fit with not putting your hands near your mouth now?

I'm not being holier than thou but I have never smoked and although I like the initial few seconds of the shot of peppermint from gum I hate that long chewing on a rubber band experience so go for mints … though I guess then that rots the tooth enamel but then the mints go down and not out onto the ground.

Unlike the fag butts, it's not the weight of the gum that is a problem but it gets on shoes and gets carried into buildings well at least when it's in the initial tacky stage - but then after it sets like concrete - or do I mean sets on concrete - then it costs the city, according to the data wall, 10 Danish kroner per blob to clean off the pavement.

Next time you walk along a Copenhagen pavement look at just how much it looks more like a dull mottled but blobby marble than like the granite or sandstone or limestone it is and think how much that will cost to remove.

not actually the worst splattering of gum blobs but an odd place …. this the pavement at the main doorway into the cathedral … so is it better to spit it out on the doorstep or or to chew while you walk around a cathedral?

 

shop signs - commerce over conservation

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This is the sign for a restaurant on Grønnegade on a building in a prominent position that closes the view up Ny Aldelgade from Kongens Nytorv.

On the whole, commercial signs in the city are good but I have definite reservations about this sign.

At first, it seems to have been designed with relative care, with the neon lettering on a clear background, and that must have been a condition for planning permission but this was an important shop for paint and pigments and the beautiful typography of the original sign, cut into stone, has survived on what is a good, high-quality, historic facade.

Look carefully and you see that the fixings for the new sign are drilled straight into the original stonework and when removed the drilled holes will have caused damage that will have to be repaired ….. and this seems to be completely unnecessary as the sign is not the main sign with the restaurant name - that is actually in the window below - but for a rather feeble joke.

Signs for shops - particularly when they are signs with symbols for a trade - developed when many people in a city were illiterate. For the same reason - to attract customers and to advertise what they were selling - street traders and vendors at markets and fairs, shouted out what they were selling. Some shops don't seem to have realised that most of us are not illiterate and not short sighted - distracted maybe but illiterate and short sighted no.

The banner style of sign, sticking out from the shop front so they can be seen as you walk along the street, are fine and in Copenhagen there are plenty of examples that are clever and funny and well designed.

It's the over-big and badly-designed signs I don't like and particularly when they are the one-style-for-everywhere signs of corporate branding. It's the visual equivalent of having shopkeepers shout at me as I walk along the street.

Curiously, most of us are not wandering the streets with no idea why we are there or where we are going until a large, badly designed sign, reminds us we are hungry and desperately need a cheap burger.

And with phone apps shouldn't large and bad signs be redundant? Most people, thanks to an app, know what they want and where to go to get it.

I'd be quite happy if Google came up with software that gave users a mildly severe shock every time they got near a burger place and shouted into their earbud

"oi - you feel hungry - you need chips"

…. a sort of revenge for me having to walk around and avoid all those people staring down at their phone rather than watching where they are walking.

end of grumpy rant

well and truly burgered

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Another building in another prominent position in the centre of the city - here Højbro Plads - where the business shows no respect for the street scape.

Why do so many franchises and shops for take-away food feel that any sign or logo can and should be used despite the location?

This is like being in a really good building where an occupant leaves rubbish in the entrance hall but, somehow, because it's 'public' street space it's acceptable. And no, again, I'm not saying this out of snobby prissiness. There is no reason why companies have to show they are selling good-value food by spending as little money on the fittings as possible. Good, designs for shop frontages and interiors take careful thought so more time and not necessarily more money.

The street food stalls at Refshaløen are fantastic for their use of good and imaginative design …. it looks like these guys can't be bothered.

another scheme for the cinema site

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Another scheme has been submitted for the site of the Palads Teatret in Copenhagen.

This design, from the Bjarke Ingels Group, has a series of massive blocks that are stacked up but offset to follow the curve of the railway and of Hammerichsgade that together mark the west side of the site.

At the lower south end is what looks like an open amphitheatre that would step back and up from street level but it would face what is now a very busy road and would look across to a less-than-attractive block at the back of the Axelborg building.

At the north end of the proposed complex, these blocks would be stacked so high as to be as tall or taller than the tower of the SAS Royal Hotel nearby so - like the other scheme for a series of tower blocks bridging the trench of the railway - it would throw a deep shadow over streets and buildings to the west and north and would certainly dominate and interrupt the skyline from many parts of the historic city centre. Is the design really that good to be that intrusive?

The design of the exterior appears to be a stripped-down, simple and open white framework - a relatively elegant variation on international modern - but it could be anywhere - so it hardly seems to be site specific, apart from the curve, and, if it could be anywhere, then why not anywhere but here?

And there could be 12 cinema spaces within the building although that is hardly obvious from the exterior but then that is hardly surprising because the cinemas will be in the basement to free up valuable rental space where tenants will pay for their views out.

There is that overworked phrase about form following function in good design but it is still useful when turned the other way round because, in many situations, buildings are better when their function is reflected in their form. Cinemas now, since the arrival of the multiplex, are smaller and, in any case, cinemas, from their very function, have little relationship to the world outside once you are inside - detachment from the real world, some would argue, is a crucial part of going to the cinema - but this looks like an office block paying little more than lip service to being an entertainment complex.

In some locations this would not matter but here, just west of the city hall, the commercial life of the city has always existed alongside major venues for popular entertainment so this is or should be downtown offices alongside Times Square night life where the city made its money and spent it.

National Scala, a complex of restaurants and tea rooms and concert halls - the building that was on the site of what is now Axel Torv - closed in the 1950s but the amazing Cirkus building from 1886 survives across the square from the cinema site and, of course, Tivoli is just a block away.

Redevelopment of this site should be a reason for trying to not only revitalise the area but also to pull it together in a coherent way but, in the design shown here, this building would completely dominate the view from the entrance gates of the Tivoli gardens.

Surely there has to be a comprehensive development plan for this important but now rather vulnerable part of the city, that should re-establish the links between the fragmented areas of public space and should set parameters for what new buildings can or should be allowed, because each of the recent developments have gone their own way and that has meant destruction by an unrelenting attrition from developers.

 

what would be the view of the development from the entrance of Tivoli

 

the dotted line is the building line of Hammerichsgade extended across the trench of the railway tracks …. the one advantage of the other scheme - the development that would construct blocks across the trench - had this line as the back edge of a new public square with the 1930s building of the Vesterport suburban station at the centre and with all the new tower blocks in the wedge between that line and the Vandværksviadukten but with one large building beyond the viaduct.

the scheme from BIG respects the curve of Hammerichsgade on the west side but leaves a series of odd triangular spaces against the pavement - so undermining the line of the curve - and makes the line of Ved Vesterport the alignment of the entrance

Holckenhus

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Holckenhus is a large and prominent apartment building on HC Andersens Boulevard that is two blocks south of the city hall and opposite Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek.

It occupies a complete city block that is not square but is actually a distinct trapezium with it's narrowest front to HC Andersens Boulevard; a long north front to the relatively narrow but busy Stormgade; a main frontage to Vester Voldgade and the most important and best-known frontage to the public space of Dantes Plads.

The building was designed by the architect Philip Smidth who also designed several of the major buildings around the city hall and it stands over the site of one of the major bastions of the old city defences called Holck's Bastion and that gave the building its name.

This part of the defences was the last major section around the city to be dismantled - late in the 1880s. Work on the the apartment building started in 1891 and was completed in 1893. Work on the Glyptotek began in 1892 and was completed in 1896 and there are early photographs that shows open ground beyond the gallery and the apartment buildings where the land there was being claimed from the sea.

The apartment building has upper floors in red brick with architectural features - including window architraves and quoins that form pilasters at the corners - in pale stone or cement and over a rusticated stone base but the most distinct feature is the steeply-pitched mansard roofs with dormer windows over what are marked out with quoins to be corner towers along with raised roofs over the sections or pavilions at the centre of each long frontage.

One source of inspiration for the design is clearly the architecture of chateaux and urban palaces in France from the 16th and 17th centuries so the style is generally described as French Renaissance although there is also a strong link to Danish architecture of the 17th century.

There were shops or commercial properties at street level with a lower-height mezzanine above and the most important apartments were on the second floor with balconies to the windows at that level with stone balustrades.

Inventories show that NA Scioldann, the builder of the apartments, lived in a large apartment in the building and he is credited with encouraging artists to move here to studios at the upper level.

A census of 1895, records that the prominent artist PS Kroyer had an apartment in Holckenhus, where he lived with is wife Marie Kroyer and three maids and a nurse for their new-born daughter, and the painters Agnes Slott-Møller and Emil Nolder are also known to have lived in the building.

Controversies over the future of Holckenshus aired in newspapers through last summer after the property was acquire by Blackstone - an American private equity fund - and there were reports that in their work to ‘upgrade’ the building, stained glass on staircases has been removed and high-quality and original woodwork on doors and staircases have been painted over but with details now picked out in gold.

However, the controversial and contentious proposal from Blackstone is to raise the roof between the towers to create eight luxury penthouse apartments. Clearly, the corner turrets and the central pavilions on each of the long facades is the key feature of the design of the exterior and a common roof line would undermine and change fundamentally the original concept.

The building is a major Danish cultural assets and not just the external appearance, in such a prominent position, should be preserved but features of the original interior have to be protected.

An article in Jyllands-Posten on 28 August 2019 Historisk bygning har huset Krøyer og andre store kunstnere: Renovering møder kritik by Ronja Melander has photographs of the interior and the web site of the Museum of Copenhagen has an article on the building and its occupants - Holckenhus - en beboelsesejendom med kunstneratelierer

Holckenhus has been added to the time line for apartment buildings on the site Copenhagen by design

 

the Boulevard in 1897 with the corner turrets of Holckenhus just visible (centre left) with the newly-completed Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek

 

the Hirschsprung cigar shop on Gammeltorv

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The building on the west side of Gammeltorv, at the corner of Frederiksberggade, is under scaffolding and there is clearly a major restoration in progress.

The building, designed by the architect Johan Schrøder, dates from 1899 and has frontages to the square itself and to Frederikdberggade - although the street is better known as Strøget or The Walking Street.

Gammeltorv is a strange irregular shape with the building line on this side cutting back to the north-west corner so, although the building is more-easily described as L-shaped around two sides of an internal courtyard but, when seen from the air, the two ranges form a broad V shape.

In part for this reason, so to mask or disguise the angle, but also, presumably, because Schrøder understood the importance of the corner site, the corner of the building is rounded. That round shape is cut back in to form what is almost two-thirds of a rounded turret and that is emphasised with an order of attached pillars in dark stone at an upper level and by a prominent and ornate copper dome.

The main frontage is to the square with an elaborate stone doorway at the centre, with balconies above, but there is also a good frontage to Frederiksberggade and again with a central doorway but with a simpler surround with a pediment. These doorways gave access to apartments above but, from the start, there appear to have been shops on the ground floor to both the square and to the street.

The most important of these shops was at the corner with its entrance on the corner at the base of the turret. This was a cigar and tobacco shop owned by Hirschsprung & Sons and had a significant interior that was designed by Povl Baumann and Kaare Klint that was installed in 1916-1917.

That interior won an important City Architecture award in 1918 but very little survives … even internal walls have been removed to incorporate the space into adjoining shop units.

Will DESIGNGROUP Architects, responsible for the design work for renovation of the building, create something more appropriate with their refurbishment? They were the design team responsible for restoration of the building immediately opposite, on the other side of Frederiksberggade, so together these buildings form the entrance to the west part of Strøget and this could mark the start of a significant and overdue improvement to this section of what is a major street.

earlier post on the cigar shop June 2018

DESIGNGROUP ARCHITECTS

the building from Gammeltorv

Frederiksberggade or Strøget - The Walking Street - cuts across east to west between Gammeltorv - with it’s ornate fountain - and Nytorv with the 18th-century city hall on the west (here left) side.

the Hirschsprung building is on the west (left) side of Gammeltorv and on the north side of Strøget forming a V-shaped building with an ornate green copper dome on the corner.

scaffolding around the building has heavy tarpaulins that are printed with interesting historic images from the collection of Copenhagen Museum … here a view of the building from Nytorv with Gammeltorv beyond and taken before the buildings on the south side of Frederiksberggade were rebuilt.

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

 

Kids’ City at the Danish Architecture Center

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Kids’ City is the big new exhibition at the Danish Architecture Center in Copenhagen.

This is essentially an exhibition in two parts. 

Around the walls are panels with photographs and assessments that look at recent buildings designed for children - so schools and the new hospitals for children - showing the best of Danish architecture and design and showing what has to be done to create the best possible space for children when they are learning or playing or when they are ill.

However, the main part - literally at the centre of the space - are a series of large structures for children that are a variation on the brilliant playgrounds found around Denmark in public spaces and the courtyards of apartment buildings and in schools where children are encouraged, in the best possible ways, to exercise and to learn through play.

Just watch children playing here and, yes, you begin to see that this is kids having a fantastic time but, much more than that, it is about a huge investment in our future.

This is where and how Danish children learn to take good design for granted but in that process learn that good architecture and the best possible design is a crucial part of their lives. That should establish expectations and nurture an understanding of the role of good design and trigger, we hope, the interest and then the enthusiasm and then the focus that will produce the next generation of great Danish architects and designers.

Kids’ City continues at Danish Architecture Center until 10 May 2020

 
 
 

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

the city at night

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above - the view across the harbour to the Opera House. I know hygge is about candles and food and and wine and warm comfortable interiors on a cold grey Winter evening but is it a step too far to see this - a quiet comfortable and safe urban area - as hygge scaled up?

right - the tower and the spire Christians Kirke

below right - the portico of the Danske Bank building at Kongens Nytorv

below - Islands Brygge walking along the old cobbled wharf towards Bryggerbroen and looking towards Fisketorvet on the other side of the harbour

 
 

Copenhagen is amazing during the day but is also a magical place to explore at night.

Obviously there are the bright lights of Tivoli and all the neon signs around Vesterbrogade and the large square in front of the city hall and Strøget - the Walking Street - is a good place for an evening promenade all the way from the city hall to Højbro Plads and on to Kongens Nytorv - but the quieter streets and squares and the quayside of the harbour have lower and much more subtle levels of lighting and important public buildings are well lit rather than spot lit.

Bridges and steps have thin lighting on or under the handrails and, in some of the pedestrian streets and squares, lights are set into the pavement to mark pathways.

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

 

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.

read more

20180503_Plan farve_0.jpg

waste collection on Nyhavn

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The photograph of rubbish piled around a street bin - posted with a quotation from Paul Mazur on Black Friday - was actually taken on the morning of Black Friday.

I had planned to post the quote because it seemed appropriate for this odd day that was contrived by marketing men in the States to make people spend. It’s the day after Thanksgiving - that public holiday when you spend time with families rather than spend money shopping - so presumably Black Friday is the bargain sale to hook you back into spending, just in case you forgot how spend having just had a day off. Is the message here that if you buy something you don't need then at least buy it at a knock-down price? Or maybe if you don't actually need it then by offering it at a sale price you might be persuaded to change your mind.

Anyway, I was heading out to take a photograph at the recycle centre on Amager - to go with the quote - but then there was this on the quay right outside my front door.

Everything had been abandoned - including a large and fairly new suitcase along with a good small metal case and various pictures in frames - so it looked as if someone is moving on from one of the apartments around here and what they were not taking with them had been dumped on the pavement sometime during the night. At least it gave me as good an image as any to represent our throw-away society.

In any case, the bin system here is of interest and I had been thinking about a post for some time. It might look like an ordinary street bin but it's one of a line of bins along the quay that are the above-ground part of a sophisticated waste system from ENVAC.

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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.

the old Museum of Copenhagen

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the forecourt and the main range of the 18th-century building from Vesterbrogade

The Museum of Copenhagen will reopen in February but in a different part of the city - in a refurbished building on Stormgade close to the city hall - and there is now a growing controversy about the future of the building that they occupied on Vesterbrogade that is now vacant.

In the 1950s, the museum of the history of the city moved to this very fine house that dates from 1782 and was built as a new home for the Royal Copenhagen Shooting Society … a society had been established back in the 15th century to train citizens to defend Copenhagen. 

In the late 18th century, in their new building, outside the west gate of the city, there were gardens and shooting ranges that ran back from the house as far as the beach. However, in the 19th century, after the construction of the Copenhagen to Roskilde railway, that ran across the end of the shooting range and with the subsequent and rapid development of the west suburb, including apartment buildings on the south end of the shooting range and along what is now Istedgade, a high brick wall had to be built in 1887 across the end of the ranges to protect pedestrians walking across on the new road along the beach.

After the war, the Shooting Society moved out of the city to Solyst, north of Klampenborg, and the land and buildings on Vesterbrogade were acquired by the city. Much of the old garden and the shooting range behind the 18th-century house became what is now a very popular inner-city park and Vesterbro Ungdomsgård - a club and sports facilities for young people in this district - was built in 1952-53 across almost the full width of the garden and close to the back of the house so, although there is still an impressive forecourt towards the road, there is surprisingly little land behind the house for such a large and important historic property.

Inside, the house there are large and distinctive rooms with fine interior fittings so the property is protected and any new owner would be restricted in what they could do to the building and that could, in turn, limit how it is used.

Initially the building was offered on the commercial market for sale but, after some discussion, there is now a possibility that the house will either be retained by the city or it could be restored for a social or public function so that some public access would still be possible.

The battle now would seem to be between sections of the city administration who see the building as an important asset owned by and for the city that has to be kept in public ownership and control for the citizens and political factions who see it as financially astute to realise an asset that will have serious upfront and ongoing costs to restore and maintain but for now the building is unused and looks more and more unloved.

the gardens of the Royal Shooting Gallery

the old museum building from the air … the distinct grey-tiled roof with hipped ends of the main building from 1782 is approximately at the centre of this view with the forecourt towards Vesterbrogade running across at an angle at the top or north side of the view.
The L-shaped buildings and the square area of grass immediately below the old building are Vesterbro Ungdomsgård

photograph of the house and forecourt and the service range across the west side of the forecourt
Københavns Stadsarkiv, reference 20087

 

Realdania UN seating moved to BLOX

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The Realdania circle of seats with the graphics of the UN 17 Goals for Sustainability has been moved from Jarmers Plads to the public square in front of BLOX.

 
 

Winter Sauna at Islands Brygge

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The seasons really have changed when the winter sauna returns to the harbour swimming area at Islands Brygge on the east side of the harbour just below Langebro.