I am standing in the Absolut Icebar Copenhagen, wearing a hooded parka that management assures me is dry-cleaned thrice weekly, contemplating the walls, bar, and furnishings, all of which are made from ice mined in Lapland. My confreres and I—–we resemble the cast of Nanook of the North—–are sipping guess what from oversize hollow ice cubes and questioning the bartender about whether or not his eight-hour shifts give
him colds. (“Not so much anymore,” he replies grimly.) Peeling my lips from my glass, I wonder: Could this be Copenhagen?
Nej! In reality, the 800-year-old port is one of the world’s least pretentious, least trendy capitals. And thanks to its manageable size and pedestrian- and bicycle-friendliness, it’s among the easiest to explore. Most of Copenhagen’s medieval structures were lost to fires in the 18th century, but its historic center, which until the 1850s was segregated from its surroundings by ramparts, remains an exceptionally rich mix of architectural epochs. These include the Dutch Renaissance style promoted by the city’s great builder, Christian IV, which produced the remarkable “dragon tail” spire atop the Børsen; Frederik V’s rococo legacy, personified by Amalienborg Palace; and the classicism that arose following the English Navy’s 1807 bombardment, displayed notably in C. F. Hansen’s courthouse—–all unified by Strøget, the pedestrian street that runs from Radhuspladsen at the quarter’s western edge to Kongens Nytorv in the east.
There are also abundant touristic pleasures: important museums (though the region’s finest, the Louis-iana Museum of Modern Art, is up the coast in Humlebæk); a new opera house, designed by old master Henning Larsen, to be joined shortly by a new Royal Theater, from the leading-edge firm Lundgaard & Tranberg; gastronomic delights ranging from the ubiquitous smorrebrod sandwich to ten Michelin-starred restaurants; and, as befits a nation that produced Arne Jacobsen, Hans Wegner, and Poul Kjærholm, a great design center but a stone’s throw from Tivoli, the 164-year-old inspiration for Walt Disney’s Stateside theme park.
Yet Copenhagen’s character is intimate rather than monumental, and what ultimately impresses most are the vernacular buildings that give the multiple quarters variety and distinction: Christianshavn’s Dutch-inspired canal houses, the working-class apartment blocks of Vesterbro, and Holmen’s former naval structures.
Thus it’s no surprise that the architecture leading the capital’s postmillennial transformation is more about city-building than Bilbao-ization. And Copenhagen really is transforming. Consider Vesterbro: Fifteen years ago, Istedgade, one of the quarter’s major thoroughfares, was awash in prostitutes and drugs. Now the tiny student apartments have been combined into co-ops, latterias and boutiques have supplanted the sex shops, and street life is unmistakably boho-chic. (Let history, rather than your correspondent, judge this outcome.)
To find out more, I visit the Danish Architecture Center at its harborside headquarters in Christianshavn. The center’s mission, explains DAC project manager Solveig Nielsen, “is to show architecture as a way of developing cities and society.” She walks me through Copenhagen Changing, an exhibition chronicling major development in six different districts—–a midpoint snapshot of Copenhagen curated by Copenhagen X, the DAC’s ten-year project that surveys and communicates the roughly 80 new projects influencing the city now.
One reason is that a lot of elderly people and students lived in Copen-hagen—–not people who paid a lot of taxes. Another reason was, the municipality was not conscious about how development should take place. To raise money, the city had to sell some of the good land along the harborside, and they were not in a position to demand quality architecture.
In the 1990s. The Metro was planned—–it has connected the different parts of the city, and this has helped increase development, especially in outer districts like Ørestad. And Denmark and Sweden decided to build the Oresund bridge between Copenhagen and Malmö. Before, Denmark had been in the corner of Europe, and Sweden was not physically connected at all. When the bridge made the connection between [mainland] Europe and Sweden in 2000, it put Copenhagen in the middle of things. And it made Ørestad, which is near to where the bridge meets the city, a very attractive place for development, whereas before, it was a nature preserve and an area for military exercises.
We needed housing for families in Copenhagen. That’s why we set out to make the northern and southern parts of the harbor places where it would be attractive to invest in family housing. In 2002, the municipality invited two Dutch architecture firms, West 8 and Sjoerd Soeters, who had experience in Amsterdam developing new waterside areas, to come to Copenhagen, and they helped to develop new family living areas. In Sluseholmen, for example, every apartment has contact with the water and the green inner courtyard. That’s attractive to people.
Yes. But what makes the difference is the good living city, where you have easy access to work and can send your children to play in the garden. Not a lot of cities have that quality, and that’s why a lot of families want to live in Copenhagen.
A good city takes more than good architecture. It needs a policy for city life. So the new urban areas are being developed in dialogue with those who will use them, and people other than architects and planners. Almost every competition about Copenhagen now has a panel including anthropologists, sociologists, communication and cultural people—–that’s very typical. We have a quite new policy—–Copenhagen Urban Space Action Plan—–inspired by one they have in Lyon, France, to make it easier to use all the existing city spaces for the city life, and also to develop the possibilities in the small leftover spaces that every city has. And we encourage bicycling—–Copenhagen is the most bicycling [friendly] city in the world.
In Scandinavia we’ve never had a tradition for building new buildings that look like old ones. The functionalist tradition of Scandinavian modern architecture is to read the place, read the function, and to use or be inspired by local materials. This has rescued us from a lot of copying. At the same time, because so many new buildings are being built, when the developers want quality, they hire good architects. There is an increasing awareness of the fact that architectural quality is important. It gives a lot of space for playing with forms and materials that we haven’t seen for a long time, but [are] still in the Scandinavian tradition.
The Tietgenkollegiet, the dormitory by Lundgaard & Tranberg, in Ørestad. It’s a very fine example of three things: building in the human scale—–each student has his or her room, but you can also really socialize. The use of copper refers to the material you see in all our spires. And the third is reading the place (the context)—–this round build-ing connects the square buildings around it in a special way and creates
a dynamic space.
The VM Houses, by PLOT, in Ørestad. They expose a new way of living:
“My house is my brand.” In Holmblads-gade, the neighborhood center, by Dorte Mandrup, who is one of the more interesting young Danish architects. I would say also Amager Strandpark, an artificial island which has renewed the whole coastline—–it has created a beach park two minutes away from the city center. Not to mention the new playhouse by Lundgaard & Tranberg, or the new bicycling bridge across the harbor, which has meant a whole new way of getting around in the harbor—–and therefore opened new areas for the people living there in the former industrial quarter named Islands Brygge.
Quite a few. For example, the old seed silos in Havnestad that MVRDV converted into apartments—–that’s a very expressive building. We have Norman Foster, who is making a new elephant house in the zoo in Frederiksberg. And a new DR concert hall, by Jean Nouvel, is under construction.
Of course. Also the SAS Royal Hotel by Arne Jacobsen, and the Bellavista, a living area north of Copenhagen, also by Jacobsen. It’s a bit older than the hotel, from the 1930s. There is a restaurant there, called Jacobsen. With a Jacobsen interior. You get a lot of Jacobsen there.
You would start at the city hall [a historic building by Martin Nyrop], which is a mixture of several different styles. Then you will follow Strøget past the squares Nytorv, where you see the old courthouse, and Gammeltorv. And then you will walk down to Gammel Strand, where there are several art galleries along the canal, and cross over to see Christiansborg Palace and the Børsen.
Then if you continue up to Kongens Nytorv, a circular city space in front of the Royal Theater, you end up at Nyhavn, the old port, where everyone goes to drink a beer. And then you go to Amalienborg, the queen’s residence, where at noon you see the changing of the guard, and from there to Amaliehaven, where you have a view across the harbor to the opera house. From there, if you have more energy, you walk up past Kastellet, which is a former defensive place, to Langelinie in the north part of the harbor, where you see the Little Mermaid. And then you have an ice cream.
Of course, you should also see Tivoli, and take a canal boat tour.
Noma, in Christianshavn. They call themselves a Scandinavian kitchen, with inspiration from all over—–they have interesting things from Iceland and special birds from Norway and dried fish from parts of Denmark that even Danes haven’t heard of. It’s great.
I think so. Because we aim to be a metropolis, but another kind of metropolis. Copenhagen is probably not a place where you find the most interesting theater, compared [with] London. If you’re an artist, maybe Berlin is a more interesting place to operate. But I think the reason to go to Copenhagen, as I said before, is that it’s a good living city. Like Amsterdam, it’s very cozy and relaxed to be in. That’s one of our best quali-ties, and something London, Berlin, or Paris don’t have in the same way.
