Wonderful Copenhagen is under immense pressure to expand and, to protect the fabric of the old city centre, the formerly almost deserted island of Amager is becoming a new and vital part of the city

Architectural Review, The, March, 2004 by Timothy Brittain-Catlin, Henriette Steiner

Visitors to Copenhagen over the last year will have noticed that the austere geometry of the city's new Metro system has been compromised somewhat by the addition of rough wooden blocks and gaudy plastic tapes which raise the height of the balustrades above each Piranesian abyss by about a further 100 millimetres; this ugly but practical measure has been taken following the death of two people who tried, while in a tired and emotional state, to find a quicker way down to the platforms during the summer of 2003. Following the ignoble tradition of London's Evening Standard, the local press has been quick to turn a few isolated incidents into an indictment of the entire project: a journalist from the Berlingske Tidende reported in October 2003 that he was able 'quite easily' to extract large stones from the gabions at the new Lindevang station, and indeed found several of these stones 'lying around' the station entrance. Other similar stories rumble on: there has been a great deal of gossip going around concerning the stability of the 'Black Diamond', the National Library. But when last seen it appeared to be resting happily at its familiar bizarre angle.

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The leading architectural chatter of the day, however, concerns the plan to relocate the National Archives, which are currently located alongside the Christiansborg, the parliament building. The elegant reading room, part of a complex built in 1603 as provision stores, is too small for its purpose, and the parliament wants to take it over for its own use. Some years ago an expensive piece of land was bought at Orestad, and a competition was held: the winners were Behnisch & Partner. A period of wrangling about the cost and scope of the project was followed by a government proposal of January 2002 to relocate the entire archive in Odense--for which, perhaps, read 'Swindon'--located at the centre of the country, but in practice greatly inconvenient for most users. The archives might indeed have gone the way of our own National Monuments Archive, but for the timely suggestion of a retired engineer from Danish Railways: the archives will now, it seems, be located on the site of a disused goods yard alongside the Kalvebod Brygge, just by the Central Station in Copenhagen itself. No final decision, as yet, as to whether there will be a new competition, a new architect, or for that matter, what exactly it is that the new building will contain; the cost of the new siting is, however, optimistically put at half that at Orestad.

Further east and opposite the Amaliehaven, the opera house is now taking on its final form. Henning Larsen's massive building sits directly opposite the royal residence of Amalienborg, making the latter resemble one of Disney's castles. The fuss about the prerogative of the private benefactor, Maersk Mc-Kinny Moller, who chose the architect and the location, has still not died down, as architect Peder Elgaard reinforced in an interview with Copenhagen's University Radio, and Akademiradet--the council of the academy of fine arts--has directly criticized the monumental north-west front. The saddest and most immediate change in the area will be for those who travel on the DFDS overnight ferry from Oslo. Currently one glides slowly in to the very centre of the city at one of its most beautiful points, just after enjoying an early breakfast sailing down the Sound: surely the most lovely entry to any European capital. Make the most of it now: this September the ferry terminal will be transferred to some characterless site between the Osterport and Nordhavn railway stations.

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Down at the Copenhagen University campus on Amager, students and academics alike have been tickled by the first stage of the new complex intended to replace the labyrinthine structure designed in the 1970s by Eva and Niels Koppel. The old building was, according to urban myth, intended to function eventually as a factory warehouse or even a military bunker. A competition for its replacement was held in 1997, and won by Sven Axelsson of KHRas; the results can now be seen on the ground. The Koppel building had a consciously democratic character: lecture rooms, administrative offices and corridors were all jumbled together around garden courtyards to create an environment in which one might bump into friends and colleagues at any time. With KHR as we are back to object-building with a panoptic flavour that some have seen as rivalling that of Vestre Faengsel, one of Denmark's largest prisons. The Koppel building is to be retained, probably with a remodelled facade. Passing students will thus enjoy a short lesson in the transient glories of architectural fashions: the colourful old social-democratic dialogue between in and out, and them and us, on the one hand, and the icy perfections of black, grey and white modern formalism on the other.

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