Statens Museum for Kunst - a new forecourt

A major remodelling of the forecourt of Statens Museum for Kunst, the National Gallery in Copenhagen, has just been completed with the new landscape designed by the Dutch partnership of Sylvia Karres and Bart Brands, based in Hilversum, but working with the Copenhagen architectural practice Polyform. 

Completed in 1896, the art gallery is set across the angle of its plot, at the intersection of Øster Voldgade and Sølvgade, so the forecourt is a large triangle. A formal arrangement of pathways radiating out from the entrance steps of the building has been removed completely with the aim to make the gallery much more part of the park behind - dense planting at each end of the front has been removed and the pathways and open space now encourage visitors to move around the sides of the building to the lake and trees beyond. 

Now, the triangle of the forecourt has a number of elliptical areas of grass and planting and a very large area, with a raised stone edge, below the steps which in Summer will be filled with water but it can be drained to form a podium for outdoor gallery events. Presumably, in the Winter it has to be drained to prevent frost damage. 

Edging of the different areas, particularly the edge of the pond in dark grey smooth-cut stone, with eccentric inner and outer outlines creating an elegant thinning of the edge on one side, is of the highest quality and of course provision for bikes and for sign posts has all been very carefully thought through. 

The end elevation of the gallery towards Sølvgade has benefitted enormously from the new work - by taking away the established larger planting the junction between the original gallery and the addition by C F Møller, completed in 1998, now seems more dramatic particularly at dusk when lighting in the long cross hall, the full height top-lit space between the old and the new gallery spaces, is much more obvious. There is also a vista through, below the narrow end of the modern galleries, to the gallery of Den Hirschsprungske Samling, across the park.

The new pond at the front or really, as it is so large, the new lake is dramatic - as visitors leave the gallery and move down the steps the water picks up a reflection of the city sky line. People seem to have taken already to this more-open public space particularly when they are waiting to meet up with friends. It will be interesting to see how much the space will be used in the Summer … I suspect very well used. My only reservation is that the removal of relatively thick planting along the road edges has opened out and exposed the area so the traffic seems much more intrusive and, curiously, the road junction appears to be even wider and even more tarmac but presumably new planting will grow up to soften that.

What will be interesting over the next fews years is to see how this area of Copenhagen evolves as it has just been announced that work starts soon on linking the Geology Museum. opposite the art gallery, to the buildings at the north corner of the Botanic Gardens to form a new national museum of natural history. With the opening of new metro stations at Østerport and Nørreport in 2018 the dynamics of the area will change and the plan is for this area to be promoted as the museum quarter of the city … the vindication and completion of plans by the city dating back to the 1860s when the city defences were removed and the parks and the first new public buildings on the line of the embankments were created.

the historic setting of the art gallery

note:
Jonas Sangberg and Thomas Kock,
the architects from Polyform, now run separate studios
SANGBERG and WERK
SANGBERG on the museum forecourt / WERK on the forecourt

Statens Museum for Kunst - the historic setting

Copenhagen and its environs; a guide for travellers

Until the 1860s Copenhagen was enclosed by high embankments, bastions and moats with only four points of access into the city through gateways. As the population increased in the early 19th century, some areas of the city became very overcrowded and when, in 1853, there was an outbreak of cholera and through that summer over 5,000 people died, it was clear that something had to be done and work started on removing the defences and building on the land between the embankments and the lakes. One of the first major buildings to be constructed on level ground beyond Rosenborg Castle and close to the lakes was a new city hospital designed by Christian Hansen and completed in 1863. 

Sølvgade and  Gothersgade, the streets on either side of Rosenborg and the King’s Garden were extended down to the lake and the section of the moat and embankments between Rosenborg and the new hospital became the new botanical gardens. The Observatory at the south corner of the gardens was completed in 1861 and the Greenhouse was built in 1874.

Initially, there were plans to lay out new roads and build across the next section of the defences - there are dotted lines on the map of 1887 - but following a fire at Christiansborg Palace in 1884 - which left the royal collection of paintings displaced - it was decided to build a new national gallery here and to leave this section of the moat and embankments as one of three new large parks around the city.

Statens Museum for Kunst, the national art gallery, designed by Vilhelm Dahlerup and Georg E W Møller, was completed and opened in 1896. The large brick and stone building is set across the angle of the plot, in part because it respects the alignment of the secion of moat that was retained as a lake in the park. As a consequence, the area of the forecourt is triangular. 

It was laid out as a formal garden with a long main pathway to the centre of the building from the corner, from the junction of Øster Voldgade and Sølvgade, and with curved paths out from the front to each side forming quadrants. These in turn were bisected by straight paths and the area in front of the steps and the area at the corner were also curved. 

Pathways were lined with low planting but the main areas were lawn but with a screen of higher planting separating the forecourt from the traffic of the street and taller planting at each end that, in effect, isolated the forecourt and the gallery itself from the informal park behind. 

The gravel quadrant across the corner of the road junction was echoed by the set back of the entrance gate to the King’s Garden diagonally opposite and a short length of diagonal path continued the axis of the main gallery path into the garden before running into the grid of avenues and trees in the main part of the garden itself. This created a visual and physical link between the garden and the gallery and suggests that the main line of approach to the gallery was intended to be through the garden. However, the traffic on these roads is now so heavy that it must be quite some time since anyone attempted to walk diagonally across the intersection.

The front of the former barracks at the south-east quarter of the crossroads is also curved so only the Geology Museum seems to have resolutely turned to face away and refused to play as part of the broken circle.

When first constructed, the railway from the north part of the island terminated at Østerport but in 1917 the line was extended on to the Central Station. The first section follows the south-east edge of the park but just before the national gallery it is taken down and through a tunnel that continues on to Nørreport Station before emerging again just before Vesterport Station.

a major remodelling of the museum forecourt has just been completed