clapping for Lynetteholm stops

/

Work on dredging in the entrance to the harbour, for the construction of the man-made island of Lynetteholm, has been stopped because further reports are now required on the environmental impact of dredging polluted sludge from the site and taking it down the coast to the bay at Køge to dump.

There is growing criticism of the new island and it has become a contentious issue in both parliament and in the press because criticisms or, at the very least least concern, from the Swedish government about the construction work and the island itself was not revealed when a construction act for the work was debated and passed in the Danish parliament.

work to start on dredging for the construction of Lynetteholm January 2022

note:
When I wrote about Lynetteholm in the New Year, I had to confess then that I was not sure what the Danish term klapning meant or rather what it means specifically in this context when clearing the sea bed of sludge by dredging.

The word used in all newspaper articles was klapning but dictionaries and Google always gave me clapping as the English translation but neither word was used in general articles on dredging.

Finally I tracked down the answer.

When sludge is dredged up to clear a channel or, as here, to form a stable base for constructing a man-made island, the sand and mud can be loaded onto large open barges or ships and they sail down the coast where, over a designated site, they open large flaps on the underside of the hull to release the sludge. Those flaps can be opened and closed several times to dislodge everything .... hence clapping. Obvious now I know.

looking out from Nordhavn to the Sound
at the centre of the view is Trekroner Fortet - the Three Crowns Fortress - built in the 1780s to guard the entrance to the harbour

the new island will fill the whole horizon beyond the fort with just a narrow channel for boats to enter and leave the inner harbour

by 2070, when building work on the island is set to be completed, this view will be filled by the skyline of new housing for 35,000 people

 

an introduction to Kalvebod Brygge

/

Planning is about the future. That's in the very word itself. We plan to do something ... planning is not retrospective. But it really is important to understand how we got here - why a street or group of buildings is as it is - to understand how and why what we have is good or bad and to use that to inform what happens next.

The history of Kalvebod Brygge is fascinating and complicated but, in terms of history, all relatively recent and all recorded on the maps produced over the last 100 years or so.

Primarily, the development of the south harbour is a lesson in how economic and political events often move faster than the best-laid plans for our streets and squares and, too often, a complicated scheme of renewal or development can take so long to realise that it is redundant or inappropriate by the time it is completed.

 

1912

1945

1967

Until the late 19th century, the harbour south of what is now Langebro was a wide bay.

In the middle of the 19th century a new railway from Copenhagen to Roskilde was laid out along the north beach of the bay, along what is now Sønder Boulevard. In commercial terms, the close proximity of water and railways is catnip for development … as much back then in the 19th century as it is now.

First a meat market and gas works were built out into the bay with wharves for the delivery of coal for both the gas works and then for a new electricity works built immediately south of Tivoli. That was superseded in 1932, when the coal-fired power station of HC Ørstedværket opened.

There were wood yards between the harbour and Ny Glyptotek when it was built in the 1890s but these were rapidly replaced with new streets and apartment buildings.

A new central railway station was built in 1911 and the railway was taken out on a wider curve on yet more land claimed from the bay and, for the first time, Bernstorffsgade, between the new station and Tivoli, became a main road though, initially, it did not continue much further than the south-west corner of Tivoli and certainly not as far as the harbour.

At about the same time, so from about 1890, the line of the shore of Amager, opposite, was also being pushed further and further out into the bay and both sides of the approach to Langebro became docks.

If you use the word port it usually conjurers up the image of ocean-going liners but this was docks .... vital, hard working but fairly grubby commercial quays for coal, grain, sand and building materials and soy beans and sugar. The sort of goods carried in freighters.

On the city side, these  commercial docks continued all the way up to Knipplesbro so across where the National Library and BLOX are now.

Rail tracks came off the outside curve of the main railway and ran all the way up the city side as far as Nyhavn and at Langebro the railway crossed over to Amager and ran down quays on the Islands Brygge side … all for goods and not for passengers.

The area where Kalvebod Brygge is now was mainly rail sidings and marshalling yards and, although it might seem incredible now, this was where, around 1969,  the city built the first container port. The main area for transferring containers from ships to railway trucks - then a very new system for shipping goods - was on new yards where the service depot of the metro is now.

There were soon huge new cranes along the quay for transferring containers but it was early days for this new form of shipping and there are accounts of early attempts to pick up and move containers with a fork-lift truck on each side in, what sounds like, a dangerous balancing act or containers were lifted up from the end which blocked the driver’s view of where he was going and it can’t have been that good for the cargo to have the container tipped up at an angle.

There was still a large building of circa 1910 that had been a pig market on the quayside although it had been used as a garage for some time. It was demolished in 1966 and work started on extending Bernstorffsgade down across the site of the market as far as the quay and then a main road, a dual carriageway, was constructed along the quay - and that is what is now Kalvebod Brygge - to be the main fast route into and out of the city.

This was part of wider plans to modernise radically the road system of the old city with wide and fast new roads. It was the period when there were even plans to build a motorway down the lakes as an inner ring road and the period when large blocks of old buildings in the north corner of the old city were demolished and the first glass and steel office buildings were constructed within the old defences.

But events and world economics and technology were moving faster than the plans and the dock was in decline. Not least, the problem was that the docks had to deal with larger and larger ships and these would all have meant the raising of Knipplesbro and Langebro and the opening of the rail bridge at Langebro to let them through. The docks in the south harbour went into decline and the focus turned to large new facilities at Nordhavn and on the expansion of other ports in Denmark

If the office buildings along Kalvebod Brygge can be criticised, it is because they are uninspiring and waste an amazing location but, by the late 1980s and into the 1990s, the city was facing bankruptcy and a new business area and any way to revitalise the harbour was better than any alternative. Award-winning architecture was not a priority.

on the city side, the commercial quays continued as far as Knippelsbro

the pig market that was demolished in 1966 for the extension of Bernstorffsgade as far as Kalvebode Brygge - Copenhagen Archive 42126

construction work for Kalvebod Brygge - Copenhagen Archive 91920
the building immediately below the end of the crane is what is now KB32

Bernstorffsage and Kalvebod Brygge in 1989 - the tower block is now a hotel and the car park to its right is the site of the new Scandic Spectrum hotel
the area of grass to the left is where the SEB offices are now
note the commercial/industrial building north of the police station - the building with a circular courtyard
that site too is now a hotel

 

work to start on dredging for the construction of Lynetteholm

/

At the end of 2021, the Danish Parliament passed a Construction Act for Lynetteholm and work on the new, man-made island across the entrance to the harbour will start later this month with extensive dredging that will remove sludge across the sea bed to form a stable base for the next stage when landfill will be brought in to create the island.

That sediment - estimated to be around 2.5 million tonnes across the sea bed - is described as "slightly polluted" so, presumably, that means that there is contamination from the harbour, contamination from shipping entering and leaving the harbour and pollution from the old ship yards on Refshaleøen.

‘Sludge’ will be taken south by barge to be dumped in the bay off the town of Køge. The Danish word used in the local press for this is 'klapning' or clapping but I'm not sure if that is the process or the term for the sludge. A recent article talked about the 'clapping area'.

When plans for Lynetteholm were first revealed in 2018, strong objections meant that the position for the new island was moved out further into the Sound so that there will be more open water around the Trekroner Fortet but not only will the man-made island now be further out into the deeper water of the Sound but it will be much bigger …. enlarged from 190 hectares in the last plans to 282 hectares in this, the most-recent proposal.

If you find hectares difficult to visualise, then the area of what is sometimes called the medieval city of Copenhagen - from the city hall to Kongens Nytorv and from Nørreport to Gammel Strand - is about 126 hectares so the new island will be over twice that area.

from Langelinie looking east - out to the Sound

at the centre is Trekroner Fortet - the Three Crowns Fortress - built in the 1780s to guard the entrance to the harbour
to the far left is the massive warehouse of UNICEF out at Nordhavn and the three white buildings are the cruise ship terminal
to the right the buildings are at the north end of Refshaleøen

the new island will fill the whole horizon with just a narrow channel in front of the cruise ship terminals for boats entering and leaving the inner harbour

Arguments for going ahead with the construction of the island have been well rehersed by By&Havn - the port authority and here the development company - and by politicians - both city politicians and ministers of the government.

The man-made island is needed to ensure that the city has somewhere to dump building waste from the city well into the future; the island will provide a dumping place for earth excavated in an extension to the metro system; the island is a crucial part of flood protection to prevent storm surges coming into the inner harbour and the island is an effective way to build an east bypass of the city - as a car tunnel can be laid across the sea bed, with the island built on top - and the island will create new land for housing as the city expands over the next 50 years ..... the island is set to be finished by 2070 with housing for 35,000.

What changed my view from vaguely for the island to uncertain and then increasingly against was a comment from a politician or a planner who was asked if the island would be car free from the outset. He said, to quote rather loosely, that the houses would be so expensive that you could not expect those people to live without a car. *

The real problem is that once you begin to look at the arguments for the island, they begin to seem circular and self supporting. The island is needed as a place to dump earth and rock from the construction of a new metro line but the next extension for the metro line is to go out to the island to serve all those new houses.

The housing will be so expensive because this is a city-financed development so they are obliged by law to get the maximum price for the new land and there also has to be additional profit from the land to pay for the metro that they have to build to serve the new houses because they would not be as attractive to new buyers or make as much profit if they did not have the metro and so on.

If there is actually a single coherent policy behind the construction of the island it's the generation of wealth through growth.

That's the shark theory of economic success. I'm not calling the developers sharks .... it's simply that it is said that if a shark stops swimming it drowns and, in the same way, the only criteria for judging the economic success of a city or a country is if they continue growing. Isn't there something to be said for some form of consolidation economics? .... a period of sorting out what you have to make it better rather than bigger? God forbid any one should mention not for profit sustainability.

Copenhagen, Amager and Saltholmen in the middle of the 19th century showing shallow marshes and mud flats in the bay south of the harbour and the map has the depth of the main channels in the Sound

 

looking out to Trekroner Fortet and the Sound beyond from the yacht marina at Langelinie ….
the new island of Lynetteholm will fill the whole of the horizon behind the fort …. from the cruise ship terminal on the far left to Refshaleøen on the right

 

There are obvious problems about proceeding with Lynetteholm that have not been addressed.

For a start, the new island will be hard up against the city sewage works and almost-certainly that will have to be moved but there is no agreement about who will pay for a new sewage works or any indication of a possible new site.

And there are increasing concerns about the impact the island will have on the ecology of the wider area or any certainty that it will not change tidal patterns now that it is to be larger and to be set further out into the Sound.

If the city is producing an almost-limitless amount of construction waste to be dumped out at sea, that implies planners anticipate an endless cycle of demolition and rebuilding. What happened to building sustainably? Surely a sustainable building is, by definition, one you don't demolish? Has the long-term policy of the city to build sustainably changed?

I have three specific concerns about the new island and I'm not sure they have been addressed.

First, as a historian, I can see only too clearly that Copenhagen is where it is and grew to be the financial and trading centre of the country and the region because it was an amazing harbour.

It was and is sheltered and protected by the island of Amager but was, never-the-less, open to the waters of the Sound. Surely the open and still obvious connection between the city and the Baltic is important .... maybe not physically but emotionally and that will be taken away.

On the trip here when I actually decided I wanted to move to Copenhagen was when I stayed in the Admiral Hotel and looked out of the window to watch the Oslo ferry docking and unloading at what is now Ofelia Plads. Will Copenhagen, cut off more and more from the Sound and the sea, be as vital?

Even now, without the island, I overhear tourists talking about crossing the ‘river’ to get from the centre to Christianshavn.

Second, and to be practical, it is very clear when you look at maps from the 18th and 19th centuries, that, as more and more land was built out into the south approach to the harbour, tidal water flowing through, between the city and Amager, was restricted and the bay slowly but surely silted up. It was a slow process - starting with the construction of Christianshavn on man-made islands in the early 17th century - but there is no longer a wide and open bay south of Langebro.

If Lynetteholm blocks the open entrance to the north harbour - with only a narrow channel left between the cruise ship terminal and the new island - then how quickly will the inner harbour and the canals silt up and will the water become stagnant and develop algae blooms?

Inevitably - even in Copenhagen - dirt and water and pollution runs off the streets and into the harbour and, when there is a bad storm, sewage overflows into the harbour. What will happen if less water is flowing in from the Sound to keep the harbour aerated?

 

are these stunning visualisations for the coastline of the new island feasible?
where are the 35,000 people who will live here and where are the people who will work here?

can there really be wide sandy beaches in shallow bays when the edge of the artificial island has been moved out into deeper water?

climate-change planning suggests that high and solid defences will have to be built across the south and east sides of Amager - just down the coast - to cope with the predicted rise in sea level and with high water from storm surges coming in across the Sound

 

My third concern about going ahead with Lynetteholm is probably more contentious and more difficult to argue.

Why is it inevitable that Copenhagen will continue to grow between now and 2070 and if it does grow then is that actually a positive thing? Why does the city need housing for 35,000 people on a new island?

It is often repeated that, month on month, a thousand new people move to Copenhagen but during the pandemic families actually moved away to the suburbs and the population of Copenhagen dropped for the first time as people wanted to be locked down with a garden and not locked down and trapped with their children in an inner-city apartment.

It's not to propose deliberate stagnation or decline for the city and certainly not to suggest there should be a city-full sign but when Copenhagen is selected year after year as one of the most pleasant and happiest cities in the World, that is, to a considerable extent, because it's a compact city.

The government already understands this as they try to move government departments out but Odense and Aarhus and Esbjerg and Aalborg all have the potential to be great but compact and sustainable cities.

A larger and larger percentage of the population of the World is now urban rather than rural but surely it is the rapidly-growing mega cities that have the real problems? Denmark is in a position to set the model for small cities as regional centres that bring back manufacturing and food production, whenever possible, and keep locally the ways they generate power and deal with waste.

* I can't find the article but, when I track it down, the reference will be added to the post

Lynetteholmen - a new island across the harbour February 2019
will Lynetteholm be constructed further out into the sound? 4 April 2020

on-line information from Copenhagen Kommune

 
 

the Dragon Fountain is on the move again

/

Dragesprinvandet - The Dragon Fountain - the ornate bronze fountain on Rådhuspladsen - is on the move.

Today, work starts on dismantling the large sculpture of a bull fighting a dragon and it will be taken to the workshop of Skulptur Støberiet for restoration and repair. Then, on Friday, the bronze basin supporting the sculpture will be removed from the square and it too will be taken to the workshops.

The fountain has had a complicated history.

In 1889, there was a competition for a new fountain on Amagertorv - the public square about a kilometre to the east of the city hall - and Joakim Skovgaard submitted a design. That design was then modified by the artist Thorvald Bindesbøll but the competition was won by a design for a fountain by Edvard Petersen and Vilhelm Bissen.

Then, in 1901, as part of the Town Hall Exhibition of Danish Art, the Dragon Fountain design by Skovgaard was resurrected, in a simpler form, cast in bronze in the foundry of Lauritz Rasmussen and installed in front of the city hall but with just a basin and the dragons around its rim.

A large outer basin was added in 1908 and then, in 1915, a central group for the top of the fountain with a bull and a dragon in combat was shown to the public as a plaster version but it was not until June 1923 that the bull and dragon were finally cast in bronze and installed.

In 1954, when H C Andersens Boulevard was widened, the fountain was moved further into the square by 25 metres and at that stage the outer basin was removed.

Once the bronze work of the fountain has been restored - with the work planned to take about two years - the fountain will be reinstalled in a more central position in the square, on the axis of the main entrance into the city hall, and set further out from the city hall, on the cross axis of the Walking Street.

A stone outer basin will also be reinstated to make the fountain a much more prominent feature of the public space.

Skulptur Støberiet

the fountain with its outer basin in the earlier position, about 25 metres further west, before H C Andersens Boulevard, the main street running across the west side the city hall, was widened

the fountain earlier in the summer in its present location in front of the city hall
when restoration work has been completed the fountain will be returned to Rådhuspladsen but will be in a new position on the axis of the main entrance to city hall and with the outer basin reinstated

photographed yesterday, Sunday 1 November, with boarding in place ready for work to start today

Amagertorv with the Stork Fountain by Edvard Petersen and Vilhelm Bissen …. the Dragon Fountain was designed for this square but did not win that competition in 1889 but was installed on Rådhuspladsen - the square in front of the city hall - twelve years later

 

Nyhavn

/

above - east end of Nyhavn where ships from the sound come into the New Harbour
the photograph was taken around 1900


right - detail of a map drawn in the middle of the 18th century that shows the large irregular public space of Kongens Nytorv with the palace of Charlottenborg - the large building around an enclosed courtyard on the east side of the square - and the harbour and quays of Nyhavn running from the square eastwards to the main harbour

the octagonal public space and the palaces of Amalienborg with the streets of Frederiksstaden to the north of Nyhavn and the large courtyard palace of Christiansborg to the south are obvious and the main difference between the mid 18th century and now is in the area south of the gardens of Charlottenborg that was then the site of naval dockyards … the very long and narrow range running down diagonally from Kongens Nytorv to the harbour was the rope walk.


history:

Nyhavn was constructed between 1670 and 1675 by, it is said, Swedish prisoners from the war between Denmark and Sweden.

This new harbour, with long wharves on both sides, replaced the old city wharf at Gammel Strand that was constricted by the expansion of the castle of Christiansborg although Gammel Strand appears to have continued in popular use as the fish market. The wharf at Børsen - The Exchange - immediately east of the royal castle was built in the 1620s but must still have been important and there were also wharves on the canals of Christianshavn but the new wharves at Nyhavn had the advantage of connecting directly with a large new market place - Kongens Nytorv - laid out at when the harbour was constructed.

The medieval defences around the east side of the old city had started at the harbour close to Holmens Kirke and the east gate was close to where the east end of the Walking Street now enters Kongens Nytorv …. the foundations of the gate were uncovered by archaeologists in 2010.

There must always have been some trade outside the east gate but when the line of the wall that continued from the east gate along what is now Gothersgade was removed and the area protected within the defences extended northwards to Kastellet - a new citadel - and the east gate moved to a point in the defences close to what is now Østerport Station, the area of Kongens Nytorv - The Kings New Square - was enlarged. Grand new houses were built around the edge of the new square so both Nyhavn and Kongens Nytorv were part of this major expansion of the city northwards in the 17th century.

The first bridge over Nyhavn was a timber foot bridge constructed in 1874 and the present stone bridge was built in 1912 to replace that foot bridge.

Nyhavn now

Nyhavn is now one of the most visited tourist attractions in the city but again this illustrates a complicated sequence of significant planning decisions and shows how a series of changes over years and sometimes over decades can alter the character of an area of a city in dramatic ways.

Presumably, few tourists appreciate that in the 1950s this area was still very much part of the working docks with hostels for sailors; a large number of tattoo parlours and what sounds like a thriving sex trade. When I tell people that I live on Nyhavn, younger Danes ask if I live on the Sun Side - it faces south and I do - but older Danes who remember the tattoo parlours and the sex workers will ask if I live on the Sin Side. The Royal Academy of Art, in Charlottenborg, I hasten to add, is not on the Sin Side but in the shade - if you want to read anything into that.

In the 1960s there were proposals to demolish everything with one scheme to fill in the harbour for a wide roadway down from Kongens Nytorv to a new road bridge over to Amager. Was this the same group of developers and ‘forward looking’ planners who at about the same period saw the lakes on the west side of the city as the ideal route for a new six-lane inner ring road?

 

detail of map from 1658
the blue line marks the site of Nyhavn constructed in the 1670s

A - the site of the east gate
B - Kongens Nytorv
C - Charlottenborg
D - Kastellet
E - Rosenborg

F - Nørreport / North Gate
G - Vesterport / West Gate
H - Gammel Strand
I - Christiansborg
J - Christianshavn

 

cars parked along the quay in 1963

cars and delivery lorries on Nyhavn in 1976

Nyhavn survived but by the 1970s it was little more than a long thin car park and more than a little run down.

But then there came a decision to ban vehicles from the street on the side of the harbour facing south and that certainly changed the way the area was used. The last stage was to resurface the section of quay from the bridge to the theatre in 2015 and now high-quality stone setts extend the full length of the harbour and mark out well-defined bands of the quay with an inner pathway immediately in front of the buildings; an area for umbrellas and outside seating - the umbrellas are square and a standard design but each restaurant has its own chairs and tables -  and then there is a broad strip defined as the promenade and an outer strip against the water where there are the waste bins and where there are bollards and iron rings for ships to tie up.

Many of the ships moored on the north or sun side of the harbour and most of the ships on the inner quay between the bridge and the square are historic masted sailing ships and Nyhavn has been designated as a veteran ship harbour or museum harbour since 1977.

This was all part of a planning policy, to bring Nyhavn and the open harbour beyond into the polite life of the city when, presumably, many in the city saw the harbour as not so much as a recreational amenity but simply as commercial and naval docks with all that meant in terms of dirt, noise and pollution.

My only quibble now is that the conversion of the quayside into one long outdoor restaurant has probably gone too far. Millions of visitors walk along here and it is crowded year round. Most certainly seem to appreciate their visit - even if they see it mostly through staring at their cameras as they take selfies - but with many of the buildings dating from the 1680s, this is an important groups of historic mercantile houses.

Copenhagen is here and Copenhagen has prospered because of trade and there are topographic paintings and historic photographs that show Nyhavn crowded with sailing ships loading or unloading.

There was no heavy industry in Copenhagen - at least not on any large scale apart from ship building - so there was none of the rapid and extensive growth in the late 19th century that was seen in many other European capitals - and no destructive re-development on any large scale in the post-war period so in the historic centre, merchants houses along Gammel Strand; buildings around Højbro Plads and Ved Stranden - opposite Christiansborg - and the houses and warehouse of Strandgade on Christianshavn, along with these mercantile properties of Nyhavn have all survived.

I'm not saying that the restaurants should go - in order to survive historic buildings have to have a financially viable use - but the buildings and the interiors and the back buildings that survive are a crucial part of why Copenhagen is here and many of the houses are exceptionally good architecture and most have a fascinating back story. They not only have to be kept but they do deserve some respect and some recognition otherwise it really will become more and more like a run of fake fronts from a Disney-World back lot.

illustration from the planning report that shows how the width of the wharf from the front of the buildings to the edge of the water is divided into distinct zones that are marked in the way that the setts are laid out with shallow rain-water gullies and lines of smooth stones

the quieter outer end of the harbour below the bridge where it is easier to appreciate the quality and importance of the merchants’ houses and warehouse

 

Lynetteholmen - a new island across the harbour

/

Earlier in the year, initial drawings were published for a large new island that could be constructed across the entrance to Copenhagen harbour. It could be be called Lynetteholm after a small fort at the north end of the Christianshavn defences although more recently it has been the name of the sewage works off Refshaleøen.

There has been a lot of criticism … generally about the scale of the scheme and because the island will close off the views out from the harbour to the sea of the open sound. Specifically it was considered to be too close to the Trekroner Fort - a triangular outer defence that was built in 1713 … itself on an artificial island that was formed around three scuppered ships of which one was the Trekroner so hence the name of the fort.

That fort was rebuilt in the 1780s, in a slightly different position, but new building on a densely-developed new island will completely swamp the attractive and well-known silhouette of the ramparts and historic buildings of the fort.

The most recent plans show the new island further out in the sound to give the fortress more breathing space but, in the process of rethinking the development, the island has grown and where there had been wide channels on each side - between the new island and Nordhavn and between the new island and Amager - these may now be much narrower. The excuse is that this makes new storm-surge defences - to stop exceptional tidal water flooding into the inner harbour - cheaper to build and more effective.

The construction of the island will incorporate major engineering work for what is now considered to be crucial infrastructure for the city so work will include a major new road tunnel to bring traffic from the north under the harbour from Nordhavn to the east side of Amager and on down - to the airport and the bridge to Sweden - and the Metro could be extended from Nordhavn and the new terminal for cruise ships to, again, go under the entrance to the harbour and run down to connect to the existing line - presumably at the present metro station at Øresund - and run on again to the airport.

An early proposal suggested that the island would be primarily office buildings for new technologies - a Danish Silicon Valley - but more recent schemes seem to be for housing. 

In theory, the idea should not be controversial as the city has been building large new islands out into the sea since Christianshavn was laid out in the first decades of the 17th century. One criticism has been that the cost of constructing the island would mean that all the housing would have to be expensive - so exclusive - and that does not go down well in what is still a left-of-centre city politically although of course the main houses built along Strandgade in Christianshavn in the 17th century were large and impressive and occupied by some of the wealthiest merchants in the city who were, presumably, anxious to escape the tightly-packed and narrow houses where they had lived along what is now Gammel Strand.

The pressure on planners and the developers for the new island will, and quite rightly, come from ecological pressure groups. The open water of the sound is an important resource that should not be squandered but this could also be an opportunity to provide large new parks and foreshore with a careful balance between providing a resource for people in the city and providing new habitat to bring bring nature into the city through well planned and well planted green corridors.

the post on Lynetteholm in February

the most recent proposal

 

earlier drawings

the harbour and the future of Nyholm

/

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

land from the sea

With the ongoing development of Nordhavn - the north harbour - and plans for a large, man-made island to, in effect, link Nordhavn with Refshaleøen, it is too easy to think that claiming large areas of new land from the sea for building is a modern phenomenon that is possible only now with modern engineering and modern technology but, in reality, of course, the city has been building out into the sea for over 400 years.

If you stand on Gammel Strand now, then you are right in the centre of the built-up city but if you had stood there at the end of the 16th century you would have looked across a wide area of open water to the low-lying island of Amager about 2 kilometres away and with just a few islands between including the island of the royal castle standing just off the shore.

Even then, Gammel Strand could not be described as being on rock-solid ground as wharves and warehouses had been built out from the shore as the importance of the port meant more and ever bigger ships were trading here but it was Christian IV who deliberately, and with foresight, developed the naval dock and boat yards below the castle and used Dutch engineers to set out and construct a series of canals and islands for a new town for merchants in the water between the castle and the island of Amager that is still at the heart of Christianshavn.

Initially, naval docks were developed on either side of the castle with a new arsenal and warehousing for supplies and shipyards including rope works and sail-making workshops.

Christianshavn was protected across its east and south sides by high banks and with a defended gate to get to and from Amager - in case armies landed on the island and attack the city from the south - but the main development of the harbour came in the middle and the late 17th century when these defences were extended in a great arc eastwards and north to provided sheltered and defended moorings for the naval fleet … a segment shaped area that is over 1.5 kilometres from, Christianshavn to the entrance to the harbour at Nyholm, and, at the widest point, almost a kilometre across. Work was given permission to proceed in 1682 and by 1692 the defences and new ship-building yards at Nyholm were far enough advanced for the first ships to be completed and launched.

Through the 18th and 19th centuries, more and more islands were constructed within this area leaving canals and areas of open water so that naval stores, shipyards, barracks and so on could be moved out from the area around the castle.

With all this major work, commercial merchant shipping also moved out from the centre both north, first to Nyhavn constructed between 1670 and 1675 and then along new quays between Nyhavn and Kastellet, close to the royal palace, and eventually as far out as the Free Harbour opened in 1904. There was also enlargement of the harbour to the south with coal and timber yards along the city side of Kalvebod and new wharves built out from Islands Brygge that remained busy until the 1960s. The last stage of the development, in terms of claiming land from the sea, was as recent as the 1950s with the development of Refshaleøen and its ship yards beyond the naval area and later again, at the north edge of Amager, oil facilities and waste and sewage and water treatment works.

If you are looking for the source of the wealth and the political and economic strength of the city, and therefore, by extension, the wealth of the country, then the greatest single resource, over half a millennium, has been relatively shallow and relatively sheltered coastal waters where it has been possible to construct artificial islands so the city can expand and prosper.

That is precisely why any future development out into the sea has to be debated and considered and questioned because it is an exceptionally important resource and like so much else it is running out … or at least the areas close to the city has been exploited. New islands will be more of a challenge, will demand more infrastructure - as they are further from the centre - and will have at least some impact on the character of the city as it is now.

future development on Nyholm

In Danmarks hovedstad Initiativer til styrkelse af hovestadsrådet / Denmark's capital city Initiatives to strengthen the metropolitan area - a government report published in January 2019 - it was suggested that there could be housing on Nyholm but surely the island is too important to be relegated to an expensive development plot unless perhaps new buildings are linked back to the navy so, for instance, for a naval hospital or naval retirement home.

Intensive development on Amager and at the South Harbour was justified because releasing land there for dense housing developments was lucrative for the port and city authority and money raised was used directly to finance the construction of the Metro. There is no such financial imperative for Nyholm and very expensive and, presumably, very exclusive apartment buildings should surely not be the immediate go-to solution for any and every planning scheme in the city.

 
 
 

1624

1685

1692

detail of map from 1860
this shows the Nye Dok - the first stage of what is now the island of the Opera House - and ‘Toldbod Bom’ which restricted access to the moorings of the inner harbour but was also a foot bridge from the city side of the harbour to Nyholm … at the beginning of each working day men would wait at Toldbod and if selected would cross to the dockyard but If not selected there was a possibility of work in the afternoon although only if they waited
What is now Reshaleøen was then open water so from the Kastellet there was a clear view out to the sound and guns could be fired across the entrance to the harbour if the city and the harbour were attacked

 
 

1  Rigets flag og batteriet Sixtus / Kingdom Flag and Battery of Christian VI
2  Elefanten / the Elephant - the quay or mole 1728
3  Hovedvagten / Main Guard House “Under the Crown” by Philip de Lange 1744
4  Masterkranen / Mast Crane by Philp de Lange 1749
5  Planbygningen / The Plan or Drawing Building 1764
6  Marinekaserne / Marine Barracks of 1910 by Valdemar Birkmand
7  Arresten / Judgement? 1891
8  Spanteloftsbygningenby 1742
9  Østre Takkeladshus  / East Wareouse store for rigging 1723-1729
10  Vestre  Takkeladshus / West Warehouse 1729
11  Søminevæsntes værksted / Sailmakers' workshops 1878

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

Spanteloftsbygningen looking across the canal from the south east

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

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

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

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

 

Lynetteholmen - a new island across the harbour

/

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

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

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

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

note:

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

Nordhaleøen

/

the new island - as proposed by Urban Power

air view of the entrance to the harbour and map from Google ... reorientated with north to the right to make it easier to relate the island proposed by Urban Power to the existing entrance to the harbour

 

A dramatic reminder of the problems caused by changes in the pattern of weather in and around Copenhagen came at the end of the celebrations for the 850th anniversary when, on the last day, last Sunday, the Copenhagen half marathon, a major annual event, had to be abandoned just as it was finishing because there was a sudden and massive storm. 

There are photographs on the internet that show just how dramatic that was … two runners were struck by lightning and, on the long straight run to the finish line, along a very wide and well-surfaced road, competitors found themselves running against fast-flowing water, coming in the opposite direction, when it had been completely dry just an hour before. 

The city is developing important and innovative ideas to tackle the problems from sudden and heavy rain storms by constructing deep holding tanks to control the release of water into the harbour - to protect sewers - and by developing new absorbent road and pavement surfaces that along with natural areas of greenery can deal with temporary inundation to help to protect property. One good example of a recently-completed scheme was the installation of drainage down Sankt Annæ Plads and the construction of a substantial holding tank for flood water but this was also seen as an opportunity to improve the street to create a more prominent and more attractive public gardens down the centre of the street and to construct a new public area over the holding tank that is next to a new public square on the harbour. 

C-vuRsIWsAEKNB4.jpg-large.jpeg

Sankt Annæ Plads - the long wide street running back from the harbour with new drainage to take rain water away from the area of Bredgade to holding tanks on the quay so release of flood water into the harbour can be controlled.
The large new public square - Ofelia Plads - is the former quay where ferries from Oslo docked until a new ferry terminal was built. In building the square the old quay was excavated and there are now three floors of car parking below the quay.

 
 
 

Initial studies of climate change indicated that flooding from rising sea levels was not an imminent problem but recent research has indicated that changes in sea levels, when combined with changes in weather patterns, could cause tidal surges that would drive storm water into the funnel shape of the inner harbour with devastating consequences. 

Amager Maps.jpg

 

Map of the city and the Island of Amager. The position for proposed tidal defences that was published in the Danish newspaper Politiken.

The main works marked in green, to protect the south-west coast of Amager, have been planned; the red section extending the line of the defence into Amger is in the design stage and the tidal barriers marked in yellow are proposed to protect the harbour from storm surges.

 

Again the city is being proactive so there are now plans in hand to construct tidal defences across the the south end of the island of Amager - to protect the south end of the inner harbour and the land on either side that is barely above sea level - and there are initial plans for defences in the form of a tidal barrier across the north entrance to the harbour to protect the centre of the city.

Urban Power - a young architectural partnership in the city - have appreciated the possibilities there could be with the construction of a new harbour barrier and they have taken the idea forward to suggest that these barriers could be the starting point for a new man-made island across the harbour between Nordhavn and Refshaleøen. 

Housing and businesses on this new land could be an extension of the development now well under way on the reclaimed land of Nordhavn and it would make a more coherent long-term plan for the redevelopment of former ship yards and industrial areas on Refshaleøen. 

The scheme could also resolves some potential problems with a proposed tunnel under the harbour at this point. Not only would a road tunnel be expensive but many in the city have expressed concern that it would pull substantial road traffic in to the city - particularly to Amager and along the coast to the airport - and local roads and the local community could not cope. 

At this point the entrance to the harbour is about 1.3 kilometres across. In the proposal from Urban Power the framework of the island would be two transport arcs. The inner line, towards the city, would be a cycle and walking route - linking Nordhavn and Refshaleøen - and the outer arc a road for traffic and, crucially, a line for the metro to complete a new outer loop by extending the Nordhavn spur - now under construction to serve the new area of housing and the cruise ship terminal - and taking that across the new island to link in with the existing metro line running up from the airport to the city centre. 

The area between these two traffic arcs, now open sea, would be reclaimed for extensive new development and at both the Nordhavn and at the Refshaleøen ends of the new island there would be wide entrance channels to the inner harbour but with flood barriers that could be raised to provide the protection from tidal surges … the primary reason for the work. They suggest that the ferry terminal for boats to and from Oslo - now at the dock between the old Free Port and Marble Quay - could be moved to the outer side of the new island, on the side towards the Sound so it would not be disrupted if the barriers had to be raised.

At this stage it is simply a proposal but, as so often in the city, this seems like rational, proactive and grown-up thinking. 

Urban Power

 

Nordhavn - Copenhagen

/
 

part of the container port is still operating and shows the general character of the area before the extensive redevelopment of the docks started

 

The first area of apartments in the Århusgade neighbourhood of Nordhavn are nearing completion with many of the blocks now occupied. 

There are apartments by Vilhelm Lauritzen Architects on both sides of the Nordhavn basin - on Marmormolen (the Marble Pier) immediately to the west of the new UN building and along Sandkaj - on the north side of the basin - looking across to the UN building. There are also new blocks of apartments close to completion around The Silo and around Göteborg Plads - a new square around Portland Towers. These two tall cylinders were built in 1979 as silos for concrete for Aalborg Portland but are now the dramatic offices of Dansk Standard with that development designed by Design Group Architects.

 

All these new buildings are close to Nordhavn suburban railway station but in 2019 an extension of the Metro will open with a new station at Nordhavn Plads.

Work is about to start along Gdanskgade - on the island beyond Sankt Petersborg Plads and the P-Hus Lünders car park - and work is progressing fast on the other side of the next basin around Sundkaj and Orientkaj.

This recent series of posts has looked at facing materials or cladding. From walking around this new area, it is clear that the blocks are quite closely packed - although many of the apartments do look across water or face onto canals - and the streets are relatively narrow compared with earlier developments along the south part of the harbour and courtyards are generally small. 

This higher density is a clear and deliberate policy by the city and its planners as one obvious way to avoid the alternative - extensive suburban sprawl around Copenhagen - as the population of the city is set to increase significantly by the middle of this century.

But this higher density means that the colour and the tone of the exteriors of the buildings becomes much more important. Sunlight in Copenhagen in the summer is strong and clear but through the winter, although days can be very bright, the sun is low in the sky so does not penetrate tighter courtyards or get to windows on lower floors that look into the street. This is not a new problem … the blocks of apartments in Islands Brygge date from around 1900 and, generally, are built in very dark brick that makes the area seem more gloomy than other parts of the city in the winter.

The curious thing about new apartments is that although some of the blocks are more traditional, with fairly restrained use of brick with plain architectural features such as banding or panels in darker or lighter brick, some architects seem to try hard to stand out by using more unusual materials for the exterior - one of the new blocks on Århusgade seems to be covered with wire fencing - but that raises a problem when trying to decide if you want to live in a striking or novel building or one that is more traditional. Or if - in fact - what your own building looks like does not actually matter that much once you are inside but what is much more important is the appearance of the building opposite as you look out of your windows.

Portland Towers by Design Group Architects

 
 

In 2008 the Copenhagen architectural and planning studio COBE under Dan Stubbergaard won a competition for drawing up the strategic plan for Nordhavn. Their work is shown in the current exhibition Our Urban Living Room at the Danish Architecture Centre in Copenhagen that continues until 8 January 2017.

It is worth spending time on the COBE web site looking at their maps and graphics that show clearly how Nordhavn will be developed to become a significant and new district of the city. There will be a complex layout of streets, squares, canals - it is described as an ‘urban archipelago’ - with homes for 40,000 people, jobs for 40,000, easy access to the water, cycle routes and green ways for routes into the city and a new metro line. 

 

 

Nordhavn - information on line published by By & Havn including a post about Portland Tower

In November 2014 there was a long post on this site on Nordhavn … the redevelopment of the north harbour

Marmormolen apartments by Vilhelm Lauritzen Arkitekter

Sandkaj apartments by Vilhelm Lauritzen Arkitekter

Maps of Nordhavn from the exhibition Our Urban Living Room at the Danish Architecture Centre. The detail of the Århusgade area shows the new P-Hus car park in red and The Silo in green

 
 
 

Ofelia Plads

/

Work on Ofelia Plads - a large, new public space in Copenhagen - has just been completed. 

To the north of the Skuespilhuset (Royal Danish Theatre or Playhouse) there was a 19th-century staithe or pier that was constructed parallel to the shore with a basin, Kvæsthusbassinet, and a wharf with a large brick warehouse, now the Admiral Hotel, on the west side and the main channel of the harbour to its east. Most recently it has been used as the dock for ferries to and from Oslo and to and from the Baltic islands and ports.

In an ambitious and extensive engineering project that has just been completed, the pier was excavated or hollowed out to create a large car park that has three levels below ground - or, perhaps it’s more important to point out, there are three levels below water level in the harbour - and the surface then reinstated with a number of simple, small, low, new, metal-clad structures for staircase entrances to the parking levels and ventilation systems.

This hardly sounds devastating or dramatic in terms of city architecture but it actually shows Danish engineering design and urban planning at its very best - very, very well thought through; carefully and efficiently executed and with no attempt or need to show, in any flashy way, just how much money was spent. In fact the project was a gift to the city through a collaboration between the Ministry of Culture and Realdania.

a photograph from about 1900 showing just how busy the pier was when ships docked on both sides were loaded and unloaded

 

The design for this major project was by the Copenhagen architects Lundgaard & Tranberg who completed the theatre itself in 2008 with a board-walk or promenade around the water side of that building so this work on the pier should be seen as the final stage of that project.

About 50 metres wide and over 300 metres long, the pier runs out from the north side of the theatre, and, as rebuilt, it now forms a much more appropriate setting for the theatre in the simplest possible way: it creates a base line or subtle plinth for the theatre when it is seen from the north and it completes and links together an increasingly popular area immediately around the theatre, where citizens meet to sit in the sun or walk to look over the harbour. 

Kvæsthusbassinet, a large basin to the west of the pier, between the pier and a massive historic brick warehouse that is now the Admiral hotel, is 8 metres deep and the refurbishment of the pier has been designed so that large ships can still dock here.

On one of my first visits to the city I stayed in the hotel and was given a room on the harbour side. Arriving in the late afternoon, the first thing I did was unpack a few things but suddenly the room became dark and looking up I realised that a huge ferry was coming into the berth. I watched as the pier came alive with people and goods being unloaded, and was amazed at the speed with which the whole area was transformed with noise and people. The harbour area in Copenhagen is amazing now with buildings like the Opera House and the theatre itself and new apartment buildings and new bridges allowing people to get around the area to the masses of events held on or near the water. It is one of the great planning and rejuvenation projects in the World … but … but although two massive cranes survive near the opera house and some of the old dock buildings have been retained, there is less and less sense of the working dock in all its noisy and scruffy and dirty glory and, after all, the harbour and its trade was and is the reason that Copenhagen is here and was the source of the city’s wealth and power. Perhaps many do understand the historical and cultural significance of the harbour but also I do wonder just how many assume that the warehouses were built as expensive apartments and cannot imagine them full of goods from all over the World.

The pier is near the start or, if you are going in the other direction, at the final stage of a wide and pleasant harbour-side walk that now runs from the the major tourist attraction of Nyhavn, around the theatre, past the historic warehouses and the royal palace and on to the Kastellet - part of the 17h-century fortification of the city - on to public gardens on the harbour side used as a setting for sculpture, including the Little Mermaid, and then around a yacht basin to the quay of the Langelinie where many of the cruise ships arrive and berth, and ending, for now, with a view across to the new building for the United Nations - a distance walking of almost 3 kilometres. Curiously this too is part of the long established social history of the city and not simply the result of recent and enlightened planning … although obviously that helps. Citizens have promenaded along the harbour front for centuries, particularly around the ramparts of Kastellet. In part, this must have been because, with the city defences restricting growth outwards, the city became densely packed with houses and then as now public space was valued as a place to exercise and relax.

 

there has been an open-air exhibition on the pier with a lot of background history and information about the recent work ... these illustrations were part of the display

 
 

the view across looking from the harbour side with the basin, the north end of the Admiral Hotel and the dome of the Marble Church and part of the royal palace

from the pier looking across the basin towards Sankt Annæ Plads

from in front of the Admiral Hotel looking across the basin to the rebuilt pier with the main harbour and the Opera House beyond

 

One key feature of the pier is that it has been kept uncluttered so that it can be the venue for a very wide range of events.

An important feature of the new arrangement of the pier is that in the angle at the inner end of the basin there are broad shallow steps so people can get down to the water and at the far outer end of the pier the surface slopes gently down to the water across the full width to form a beach … again to let people get right down to the water.

It gives a sense of the harbour being open to the sea and tides as the water rises and drops back or floods with the wash from a passing boat. 

 Realdania Kvæsthusprojektet
Lundgaard & Tranberg Arkitekter

 
 
 
 

* Maybe this sounds more dramatic than it is in reality ... the harbour is tidal but the normal tidal range is about 30cm which explains why this type of project is possible although ongoing research on the effects of global warming and changes to patterns of severe weather has suggested that, in certain conditions in the future, there could be tidal surges from the Sound that would have an impact on the city and on property along the water front.

 

 

the Caritas Well

/

In 1608, the Caritasbrønden or Caritas Well on Gammel Torv was constructed for Christian IV as his gift to the citizens of Copenhagen when a new city hall was built across the south side of this open space to replace a medieval city hall that had been on the east side of the square.

Just over a century later, that 17th-century building was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1728 and a new city hall was built on the same site. When that building was, in turn, destroyed in the fire of 1795, a new city hall was built on the west side of Nytorv and the two squares were joined into a single open space.

An outline of the 17th-century hall is marked with stones set into the cobbles of the square.

The group of figures in the centre of the basin of the fountain - representing the virtue of love or charity - was first carved in wood by the German artist Statius Otto but later was cast in bronze.

The fountain was not just ornamental but was part of a system supplying fresh drinking water to the city.

This photograph was taken on the 16th April - on the Queen’s birthday - just after the royal carriage had progressed along Strøget to take the Queen from the palace to a reception at the city hall.

18th-century map that shows Gammeltorv - the Old Market - with its fountain and Nytorv or New Market with the old city hall in the centre between the two public spaces

 

Caritas Well and the city hall from the upper end of the square in the 18th century

 

the Copenhagen lakes

/
 

Looking at maps of the city, or at an aerial view, one of the most striking features is the long line of narrow lakes that run in a gentle arc around the west side of the inner city and form a distinct break between the inner historic centre and the later areas of Østerbro, Nørrebro and Frederiksberg.

There are three lakes - from the north end first Sortedams Sø, the longest lake divided into two parts by a road, then Peblinge Sø, the two lakes separated by the Dronning Louises Bro, and, at the south end, Sankt Jørgens Sø, again divided into two parts by a road. From the top end at Østerbrogade to Gammel Kongevej, below the level of the south lake, is just over three kilometres and the lakes, although they vary in width, are around 200 metres wide, from the inner edge to the outer shore, so this is a very large area of water.

The lakes, initially spreading over a larger area and flanked by marshy ground, provided an outer defence to the city that was a physical barrier that any attacking army would have to cross and the water here also maintained the level in the outer moat of the defences. The lakes provided the city with a store of fresh water and water for irrigation.

The earliest settlement appears to have been on a gentle slope running down to the shore and looking across to the large low island of Amager. With the density of building in the city now, it is difficult to appreciate the natural topography but clearly the lakes are in a slight hollow beyond the slope and the early town and are barely above sea level. Østerbrogade is at the highest point and then each lake is at a lower level until you reach Gammel Kongevej where the road itself is actually around a metre below the level of the surface of Sankt Jørgens Sø.

Looking at the map there appears to be four bridges crossing the lakes although only the road at Dronning Louises Bro between Sortedams Sø and Peblinge Sø with its three central arches is actually a bridge with the water level the same on both sides. The other roads, Solvgade running across to Fredensgade, Gyldenløvesgade and Kampmannsgade are on dams. In fact Kampmannsgade has embankments on either side and the sloping road is actually well below the water level of the lakes on either side.

The upper lakes have low stone retaining walls and gravel pathways forming an edge to the water but at Sankt Jørgens Sø there are natural grass banks with willows and reed beds but again these are man-made embankments and particularly on the outer shore the gardens and houses and apartments along Vodroffsvej are well below lake level.

Historic maps show how the lakes have changed over the last four centuries and in the late 17th century and through into the 18th century the lower lakes had a much more irregular outline and covered a much wider area indicating the natural contours of the underlying topography. In fact the map of 1674 shows a lake north of Østerbrogade and a simple dyke between that lake and the sea and, at the south end, lakes or marsh continuing round to Køge bay so at that time the city was surrounded by water.

By 1705 the moats and embankments of the defences encircled the city and there were regulations to restrict buildings beyond although there were outer defences beyond the lakes. By the late 18th century there were roads beyond the lakes with some houses with gardens running down to the far shore of the lakes. By 1860, shortly before most of the moats and defensive embankments were removed, the lakes were close to their present extent and shape. 

Now the lakes are an important resource. They provide a strong sense of clearly-protected open space, with wild life - Fugleøen, the island on the outer edge of the northern lake, has a breeding colony of cormorants and there are nesting swans on the lower lake. Thousands of people live in the apartments and houses overlooking the lakes and the lakes are a major resource used for leisure and for people walking and running.