all in the detail … Bispebjerg Bakke

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It would be difficult to find two more different buildings in Copenhagen than the Jepersen office block by Arne Jacobsen and the apartment buildings at Bispebjerg Bakke from the partnership of the Danish artist Bjørn Nørgaard with the architectural practice Boldsen & Holm but what they have in common is that both designs depend absolutely on their focus on every detail of the design … not simply plan and elevations but the profile of window frames, the careful choice of the right finish and exactly the right colour for materials on the facades, the details of unique, custom-made staircases and so on.

Although the apartment buildings were completed in 2007, the initial idea went back many years before that to a conversation between Nørgaard and the chairman of the Association of Craftsmen so, from the start, an important aspect of the scheme was to have a strong link between an artistic concept and its execution with a very high level of craftsmanship.

Nørgaard made an initial model in clay so the design was organic rather than a building, like the Jespersen block, that was primarily about, what was for its date, very advanced engineering. Bispebjerg Bakke is about fluid lines and the potential for architecture to take sculptural form while the Jespersen building is about bringing to reality the beauty of a mathematically precise design. How you view the two buildings; how you experience the two buildings and how you move around and through the two buildings could hardly be more different and yet both depend on understanding completely the building methods that they exploited and both, with huge confidence, play games with forms and with styles that can only be achieved with the support of a client, willing to go with designs that were far from conventional by the standards of contemporary buildings.

Høje Gladsaxe housing scheme

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The Spring sunlight was slightly grey and misty which made the tower blocks at Høje Gladsaxe look almost surreal, almost like CGI. Five large towers are set in line on a hillside in the northern suburbs of Copenhagen. Completed in 1968 they were designed by Hoff & Windinge; Jørgen Juul Møller and Kai Agertoft and Alex Poulsen.

 

Extensive renovation in 1991-1992 by A5 Tegnestuen included glazing in open balconies on the south sides of the blocks although the walkways across the north sides were left open.

 

Functional architecture in Denmark?

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farmstead from Eiderstedt now at Frilandsmuseet in Denmark

 

To talk about Functionalism in architecture in Denmark, usually refers to buildings designed in the middle of the 20th century and frequently cited as an example is the work at the university of Aarhus by C F Møller. The term implies an architecture where volumes and details have been pared back to what is considered to be essential and the architects take as their starting point the intended function. At a general level the term is linked with buildings that are often criticised by the public as being stark or even brutal and is usually associated with the use of concrete.

To take the word functional literally, as simply the general and practical starting point for the design of a building, then this building, the farmstead from Eiderstedt in Schleswig, now in the open-air museum, Frilandsmuseet north of Copenhagen, is perhaps the most beautiful and the most amazing Functionalist building in Denmark.

It was also possibly one of the most beautiful factories in Denmark. It is, to all intents and purposes a factory farm with a huge hay barn at the centre with a threshing floor across one side, entered through the large double doors in the end, and with stalls for cows, stalls for cows about to calve, stalls for horses and oxen, the working animals for the farm, and then across one end, under the same roof, the well fitted and comfortable home of the wealthy farmer with a diary and cheese store at the coolest corner of the building.

 

 

The plan and the division of spaces is determined completely by the structure with a massive wood frame supporting the weight of that great thatched roof. With everything under a single roof there was total control of the working process, security and of course sustainability with little natural heating wasted.

Above all, what is so striking about this vernacular architecture is its self confidence; the complete understanding of the building materials, exploited to the maximum, and the simplicity of the roof profile like an enormous sculpture. 

 

Below are a selection of photographs of vernacular and mainly rural buildings from Denmark that show just how confident these craftsmen were in their materials and in their own skills but they also had a clear appreciation of form and colour.

Frilandsmuseet, Denmark

Forge from Ørbæk, Funen

Farmstead from True, Eastern Jutland

Farm from Tågense, Lolland

Farmstead from Ostenfeld

are you living comfortably? … apartments and lifestyle in Copenhagen

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apartment buildings and shops on Jægersborggade

Architects and historians often discuss buildings in terms of types so, although there are certainly many general books on the historic and modern architecture of a city or a region or a country, it can often be more useful and more informative to look at, for example, all the churches or all the factories in a town or in a region or discuss the way that theatre buildings or petrol stations, for instance, develop and change over time.

For visitors to Copenhagen major buildings in the city like the royal palace or the Opera House or the old warehouses on the harbour are obvious and very good examples of important public and commercial architecture but how many people appreciate that the most common building type in the historic centre, with most examples dating from the middle of the 19th century onwards, is the purpose-built apartment building? And those apartment buildings form the backdrop to most of the major buildings so they contribute much to the visual attraction of the city. 

I don’t know the actual statistics and percentages but certainly most people in the inner city live in apartments, rather than in self-contained family houses, and the tradition of building good apartment buildings, both as private developments or, from the early 20th century onwards, for large-scale social housing, must be the most diverse and the most significant type of building in Copenhagen and therefore, in reality, the building type that most effects and influences how people live.

apartment buildings on Peblinge Sø

The city regularly comes out at the top or near the top of league tables for how content people are with their city and their way of life. Obviously there are many reasons for this, including the relative wealth of Copenhagen, efficient local transport, extensive facilities for culture and shopping, good restaurants, bars and coffee places and, of course, the very pleasant urban environment. 

But high on that list of reasons why people are happy has to be the availability of good housing. In fact I would go as far as to say that the stock of good, well-built and attractive apartment buildings has to be one of the major factors that makes Copenhagen such a successful and therefore such a popular place for its citizens. It is obvious that the availability of good housing has to be a major consideration in any assessment of what makes any city a pleasant or unpleasant place to live but in Copenhagen the quality of housing is significantly more important because of the priority most Danes place on living in a nice home over, for instance, owning an expensive car.

Along with the design of the individual apartment buildings, the setting of the buildings is important and the streetscapes of Copenhagen are varied and attractive with apartment buildings set along wide streets, set around squares, laid out overlooking public parks or set along the canals and quays of the harbour. 

Over a series of posts here I would like to look at the history of apartment buildings from the middle of the 19th century onwards: to look at them in terms of their design and plan and their setting in the urban landscape and try to discuss how the plans and arrangement of the apartments has reflected the way people’s lives in general have changed over the last century or so and also to look briefly at how the plan and arrangement of the individual apartments has influenced the furniture and the decorative fittings that people have chosen.

There is clearly a complex relationship between levels of wealth in a city, the style, the size, the cost and the availability of housing along with the individual expectations and ambitions of people and the skill and work of the design and manufacturing industries who supply furniture, light fittings, kitchens and bathrooms for all those homes.

8Tallet by Bjarke Ingels on Amager

 

introduction to apartment buildings in Copenhagen

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A proposal for enlarging the city that was drawn up in the late 1850s, after the outbreak of cholera. It shows in pale grey the area of the old city still, at that stage, surrounded by ramparts but here on the drawing the walls and gates and the Kastellet, which in the end was retained, have been removed and the plan shows the new squares and streets that were proposed in dark grey over the site of the defences and out to the lakes. All those blocks would have been apartment buildings. Many, including those around Israels Plads, were built although, as the development of the area progressed through the 1860s and 1870s, large areas of park - the Botanical Garden and the area around the National Gallery in particular - were left as open public space and the area around a new city hall was not completed until early in the 20th century and that area of the city is now very different to what was proposed in the 1850s and shown on the left part of this plan. Note also how few buildings there were beyond the lakes in what is now the densely built-up inner areas of Vesterbro, Nørrebro and Østerbro.

 

Most of the purpose-built apartments in the centre of Copenhagen date from the last decades of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century and their number are the tangible evidence that shows just how rapidly the city grew in that period - in 1870 there were about 180,000 people living in the city but by 1900 the population was 360,000. 

Some of those new citizens were fortunate and moved into new apartment buildings in the new districts of Vesterbro, Nørrebro and Østerbro … all outside the old city gates and ramparts. Curiously, that building work was not, at first, a response to a growing population and a demand for more housing but was just the opposite - a response to a very dramatic decline in population. The development of the areas outside the old city started because of an outbreak of cholera in 1853 when the deaths of over 5,000 people through a single summer was correctly attributed to overcrowding and poor sanitation and immediately after the outbreak, plans were drawn up to enlarge the city to provide more and better housing so people could move out of the centre.

 

Poor working families rented one or two rooms and there was little security either for work or housing. This painting by Erik Henningsen from 1892 shows a family being evicted and is now in Statens Museum for Kunst

In fact, the huge numbers of new people who began to arrive in Copenhagen, for different but mainly economic reasons, meant, of course, that the rate of new buildings could not keep up. Although many new apartment buildings were constructed, many families continued to live in the overcrowded older houses in the old part of the city and, simply to provide places for all those people arriving, the old practice of building in the courtyards started again, even in the new areas. The population of Vesterbro and Nørrebro grew rapidly and by 1910 houses around Blågårdsgade - poor-quality apartments, built cheaply and quickly only twenty or thirty years earlier and with even poorer quality buildings in the courtyards - was being described as slum housing with serious problems of overcrowding and poor health. 

It was only with the construction of large new social housing blocks in the 1920s and 1930s, in outer Nørrebro and on the edges of Vesterbro and Østerbro, that the problem with overcrowded worker’s housing was finally tackled. Those apartment buildings have huge open courtyards for air and light at the centre of the block and the only structures allowed in the courtyards were wash houses and so on that were usually only a single storey high so did not block light or fresh air.

As for architectural style, the development of apartment buildings in the city is easy to trace by just walking the streets. In the 17th and the 18th centuries large houses would have been subdivided and rented out with families renting one or two rooms and the more affluent would have a series of rooms or even a whole floor but there is rarely anything on the exterior to show how this division of the building worked on the inside.

The 18th-century houses are generally plain in form with painted plaster to the front with simple classical features such as pediments over the main doorway and moulded cornices. More elaborate treatment of the windows at the first or second floor will indicate where the better apartments could be found. The best apartments seem to be to the street with poorer and smaller apartments higher up or further back in the courts.

By the mid 19th century purpose-built apartment buildings appear with distinct features like a central doorway and symmetrical apartments on each side and an elaborate front staircase marked by more ornate windows, often at intermediate levels, where there were landings. In style this is generally described as the period of historicism so the exterior details became more and more elaborate even if the apartments behind the facade were relatively small. In the 1850s and 1860s many still had a classical restraint with pedimented doorways, pilasters and cornices taking motifs from Italian Renaissance buildings but slowly more and more ornate French-inspired facades appear with turrets and domes and some look to north Germany and to Danish architecture from the 17th century with the appearance of mullions, ornate brick work and shaped gables.

In the period around 1905 to 1910 there was an economic downturn and many of the new apartments were vacant and building work slowed down. Then, from 1920 and with the expansion of the docks and industry in the city, there was a severe shortage of housing for workers and that was when building large-scale social housing begins. In style there was a return to a stripped-back classicism with building in brick and the design relying on simple but good proportions which in the larger apartment buildings can look quite severe. Clearly the restraint was more to do with keeping down the cost than with aesthetics.

Through the 1930s and 1940s balconies become a common feature - across the street frontage as often as towards the courtyards so reflecting that well-established tradition of having the best rooms towards the street.

In the second half of the 20th century materials change to concrete and steel and windows are much larger but the communal courtyard; the through apartment, with windows to the front and rooms to the back, and a series of entrances and staircases along a block rather than a single entrance and internal corridors is still the common form and tower blocks are rare.

In the building boom from the 1990s and on, the plan of apartments changes little although penthouses have appeared and some exteriors have become much more extravagant and dramatic although, perhaps in reaction, some architects have returned to the restraint of the 1930s with plain white facades and balconies with rounded ends.

 

This series of posts (below) has been about the development of apartment buildings in Copenhagen … in part because I live here and can wander the city taking photographs but also because of the number and range of apartment buildings in the city. However, an assessment much like this could be undertaken in Stockholm or Helsinki where apartment buildings also dominate and are a major part of the housing stock and, for social housing in particular, many important modern or experimental ideas about planning appear first in Stockholm or Malmö.

 

plans of early apartment buildings

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There is no standard plan for an apartment in Copenhagen in terms of size or for the number and arrangement of rooms which depended on the size of the plot - both the width of the street frontage and the depth of the building space. For simple practical reasons, for natural lighting and for the depth of rooms that was sensible to build, ranges were rarely more than two rooms deep but a deeper plot might mean that it was possible to build lines of rooms running back from the street in a narrower range. And of course the size of the apartment, the number of rooms, the size of each room and the height of ceilings all depended on the apparent wealth of a street or area and the potential status of future occupants. There were some single room apartments but in some parts of the city apartments might have ten or twelve rooms with separate accommodation for servants.

However, there was a fall back arrangement of rooms … a sort of basic plan that appeared early, worked well, and continues to be used as a practical unit.

This was a front living room, looking down on the street, with a central lobby or small hall and a narrow kitchen and a bedroom at the back of the range with windows looking towards the courtyard. If the main entrance into the building and main staircase was to the front then a second service stair could be placed in line to the back and reached directly from the kitchen. Some buildings were just a single apartment wide but actually it was much more efficient for space if the staircase and back stair could be in the centre with an apartment on each side with their plans mirrored. If both kitchens were to the centre then both could get to the second stair. 

If the apartments were larger with a number of rooms down a range of the courtyard then the kitchen and the second or back stair could be further away from the ‘polite’ rooms.

If all this seems to be placing a huge amount of emphasis on the second staircase, it has to be remembered that the plan was repeated up through five floors and an attic; that many of the apartments could have large families living in them; many of the houses and certainly internal fittings were timber and this was a city where several catastrophic fires had destroyed large numbers of houses.

If you look at early plans of these buildings very few have fireplaces but if you look carefully there are diamond-shaped or square flues at the intersection of internal walls and these were flues to take the smoke from stoves. Again this could be a considerable fire risk as a narrow flue served rooms all the way down a building and wood, particularly pine, when burnt produces resin which builds up and blocks flues with a flammable, tar like deposit.

The very best apartments might have a series of rooms running across the street frontage but that was relatively rare. 

The basic unit worked well and could be scaled up for a better apartment or scaled down in size in poorer areas and where there were wide plots being developed by a single builder then it was common to repeat a number of separate doorways and staircases along the street, each with apartments on either side. Internally there would be no connection although a courtyard and toilets and wash houses, if they were outside, could be shared.

This basic plan - front room, back kitchen and back bedroom - became the basic unit for social housing in the 1920s, 1930s and through to the 1960s and on.

The problem then as now is that that plan leaves little space for indoor bathrooms. Apartments in early social housing might have their own toilet often close to and ventilated into the back staircase but rarely room for a shower, let alone a bath when the buildings are upgraded.

Plans for apartments have become more varied and of course follow trends so kitchens may be within a large open living area or bathrooms en suite might be the latest must have. The overall shape of the VM building in Ørestad was a way of giving apartments both light and views out from a relatively tight plot but I am curious that for 225 housing units there are more than 80 different plans which seems to me to be treating the design as an intellectual exercise be it a very clever one.

One interesting aspect of planning in 19th-century apartment buildings was a greater social mix than might be found in a modern development or in social housing. In many of the early apartments there were clearly better apartments on the first and second floor but less prestigious apartments higher up in the building or across the courtyard.

This is a pair of apartment buildings on Sankt Annæ Plads and date from 1856. The left-hand building has a single apartment towards the street with a series of inter-connected rooms across the front and continuing down a narrow range beside the courtyard and ending with a kitchen and a back staircase. The kitchen had a large hearth for a range. Across the courtyard was a separate apartment with its own main staircase, a small lobby and then four reasonable or good sized rooms plus a kitchen and sharing the second stair with the main apartment.

The house to the right has two apartments to the front each with separate doors from the landing of the main staircase but not symmetrically arranged at the front but each with a set of rooms running back to kitchens that are on either side of the courtyard and again each with back staircases. Across the back of the courtyard at each level there were two much smaller apartments and each with a small kitchen.

Note that all three large apartments across the street frontage have WCs tucked well away from the polite rooms.

Between the two buildings there were six apartments on each level and the plan would have been repeated on at least the first, second, third and fourth floors.

Dating from 1857, this is an interesting building in part because the paint scheme does not do it justice and the location in Nørrebrogade might suggest that it is not particularly prestigious apartments. In fact, the plan shows that above the ground floor there were large apartments on each side of the central staircase, each with a long corridor entered from the main staircase, here at the back of the building, and each with three large interconnecting rooms across the street frontage, a large room, presumably a bedroom at the back and a large square kitchen with smaller rooms and spaces looking over the courtyard and each side had it’s own back staircase rather than sharing a stair. Note that the main stair starts off centre on the ground floor because there is a central archway from the street to the courtyard. The elevation drawing suggests that from the start, the ground floor areas on each side of the arch were shops or commercial space. 

Social block in Tavsens Gade designed by Povl Baumann dating from the 1920s. This appears to have the standard unit plan with a front living room to the street and a bedroom and kitchen towards the courtyard but in fact the design has a clever asymmetry so although adjoining apartments are the same at the back, every other apartment is wider with a second narrow room to the front that interconnects with the living room by central double doors. The larger apartments are just over 53 square metres and the smaller apartments 43 square metres. Both apartments had a toilet off the entrance hall with windows venting out into the back staircase and both apartments have access to the back staircase from the kitchen.

At first glance, this plan looks as if the apartments had a standard arrangement with a front living room and a back bedroom and narrow kitchen and that there were a pair of apartment buildings together. However, there were no back or second staircases so although each apartment had it’s own front door off the landing the internal lobbies were actually interconnected so that in theory, if there was a fire that filled one staircase with flames and smoke, families could cut through an adjoining apartment to get to the staircase on the other side. For a start this gave little privacy. In some buildings the interconnecting openings were just covered with sacking or paper. In some buildings, families piled up furniture against the opening making it impossible to use as a fire escape. And even if these look like reasonable places for a single person, the reality was that they were occupied by large families and might even be occupied by extended families with lodgers. Each apartment was about 30 square metres in area. Note the toilets off the lobbies without ventilation. These buildings in Saxogade in Vesterbro were demolished in slum clearance.

the old courtyards of Copenhagen

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When I tell Danish friends that I love the courtyards of the city they tend to become serious, slightly dour, and suggest that if I did but know and then talk about ‘third courts’ and ‘fire courts’ … courtyards that were within courtyards that were within courtyards so courtyards three in from the street and dark and damp and a very real fire risk, hence presumably the name, and many remained like that through into the 1960s or 1970s.

 

Courtyards and gardens in the area around the royal palace and the Marble Church in the 18th century

Some of the courtyards, particularly in the 18th-century part of the city, were large and filled with gardens and others had the stables and carriage houses of the grand residences along the street frontage. Some courtyards, particularly in the older parts of the city, had store rooms and workshops but many were packed tightly with buildings that were crowded with people renting just one or two rooms and the alleys and courts could be dark, full of washing and stench, and with little light or air reaching the lower rooms. Photographs from the late 19th century show washing strung across from side to side, ladders and carts, timber piled up and channels in the cobbles to take away water and worse. Water must have been drawn from wells or come from fountains and pumps in the street. 

The east part of the city in the 18th century and the Google view from the air now showing how houses and courts were cleared for wider streets but in many courtyards open space has been lost to car parking or to infill to enlarge commercial buildings

One area of tightly-packed houses and alleys just west of the King’s Garden was notorious for not just its slum housing, “suspicious characters” and public houses but through the 19th century it was said to be the part of the city with the most blatant and open prostitution described in the newspaper Socialdemokraten in the 1880’s: 

”Lille Brøndstræde consists of a collection of shacks, 7 of which are brothels that however usually also house other residents than the tarts and their hosts. Anything more disgusting and miserable than these huts is hard to imagine …the shared characteristic of these buildings is decrepitude and limited conditions, which allows the sin and dirt the most excellent conditions for a fertile life ... The first thing, which stops the visitor is the darkness and the stench from the gutter or the filth in the yard. Light can only be mentioned once you have elevated a little and the air in these back building residences never gets sufficient renewal.”

If you are curious to seek out the street, the buildings there were demolished sometime after 1900 and if the ghosts of the women and their pimps are to be seen anywhere it will be in the Danish Film Institute built on the site.

So just how densely packed with people was Copenhagen?

In the 1840s - so shortly before the outbreak of cholera in the city - the population of Copenhagen has been calculated to have been about 120,000 people but of course then Copenhagen was much smaller than now - just the inner city, the new town around the royal palace and Christianshavn. Both the latter areas were relatively spacious with large houses and both Holmen and Gammelholm, south of Kongens Nytorv, were working docks and ship building yards so few lived in those parts. It is difficult to find the figures to compare like with like but the old city from the east gate, by what is now the Hotel Angleterre, to the west gate, close to the city hall - so the length of what is now Strøget or the walking street, is about a kilometre and from north to south, from Nørreport to Gammel Strand, the old quay, was only 750 metres and the irregular shape meant that the area was much less than a square kilometre although, even in the 19th century, there were some large squares, some broad streets and of course public buildings. There were probably getting on for 100,000 people living in that area.  

To give that some context, the most densely-packed area of modern Copenhagen is Inner Nørrebro where the most recent figures suggest that 31,000 people live in an area of 1.72 square kilometres … so in the centre of Copenhagen in the middle of the 19th century, at the time of the cholera epidemic, there were more than three times the people living in less than half the space. And that was at a time when there was no running water and no sewerage system.

If I have just alienated all my Danish friends by implying that their beautiful city was some sort of seething slum in the 19th century, then I would hasten to point out that parts of Paris, much of east London, large parts of Hamburg and Amsterdam were just as densely packed with people at that time. To placate Danish friends and alienate French friends I would also point out that in Paris the authorities feared revolution in their overcrowded city so, in the middle of the 19th century, demolished densely built-up areas and laid out wide new streets, the boulevards, in part so they were too wide for people to build barricades and so that troops could be moved quickly around the city to quell rebellion while at the same time the authorities in Copenhagen decided that one good way to stop a revolution was to keep Tivoli where the workers of the city would be entertained and distracted. To placate my working class friends and alienate my middle class friends I would suggest an interesting but impossible social experiment: 103,000 people live in Frederiksberg - now seen generally as the poshest part of the outer city - so just about the same number as lived in the centre of Copenhagen in the middle of the 19th century, although they have about 12 square kilometres of space. It would be fascinating to see how they would cope if they all had to move into the central area of the city with something like 8% of the space they have now.

To be rather more serious, Jan Gehl - who has done more than anyone else to analyse the plan of the city and its history and look at how it now functions - thought that because so many people live in the centre of Copenhagen - more than in most European capitals - it feels more friendly, more open and more secure at night. He calculated that in 1995 there were 6,800 people living in the centre and I can’t believe that figure has changed much in the last 20 years so less than 10% of the population 150 years earlier.

clearing the courtyards

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You can see why people had to build over the gardens and courtyards in the old part of the city. As the population increased but with the boundary of the city clearly defined and building beyond the defences impossible, taller and taller houses were built on the street frontage and other houses and workshops and so on built in the gardens and back plots behind the houses that fronted onto the street. All fairly obvious and certainly not unique to Copenhagen.

But what I like about the courtyards is not necessarily for what they were, although for a social historian they are fascinating, but, as they have been cleared, for what they have become. On many of the blocks buildings within the central area, behind the street frontages, have been cleared and property boundaries ignored to form large green spaces that are in most cases hidden from the pavement. They form a private outside space for all the families that live in apartments around the edge of the block.

In the best, there is a strong sense of community with picnic tables and chairs, barbeques and children’s play equipment common and well used and rarely abused. The model is so established and so successful for high density accommodation that new apartment buildings follow or imitate the form … so apartment buildings of five or six stories facing inwards to communal gardens can be seen in new developments around the harbour including Nordlyset in Amerika Plads and Sluseholmen. 

Perhaps the only real problem, in terms of townscape, is that in some parts of the city, particularly where the city blocks were long and narrow, apartment buildings along the street frontage itself have been demolished and the land left undeveloped to bring sunlight and air into the backs of the remaining buildings. It is obvious why this was done but in many cases it makes the courtyards too open - too exposed - and it can undermine the line and form of the street and certainly exposes the backs of buildings that were never meant to be seen. Most of the older buildings in the city have expensive fronts to be seen and very practical and simple or cheap and muddled but practical back elevations.

the Sørensen family apartment

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Reconstruction of the two-room apartment in Viborggade - a 'corridor' flat occupied by the Sørensen family before they moved two streets away to Gammel Kalkbrænderi Vej 

In Copenhagen at the beginning of the 20th century many working families were renting one or two rooms in overcrowded buildings that were crudely subdivided and had few or shared facilities for toilets or washing. Many of those families must have been amazed at the space and privacy they found in the new apartment buildings being constructed around the city or in social housing if they were lucky enough to be allocated a new apartment.

This process - ordinary working families moving from renting rooms to renting a complete apartment - and the improvement in living conditions of a fairly typical working-class Copenhagen family - is shown at the amazing Arbejdermuseet - the worker’s museum - in Rømersgade near Israels Plads in Copenhagen. A large section of the display shows the home and much about the life of the Sørensen family who lived in Copenhagen in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

Peter Martin Sørensen was a general labourer and he and his wife Karen Marie had eight children. Through the main part of their married life they lived in a number of small apartments moving fourteen times before moving to Viborggade in Østerbro where they had a single living room which was heated by a stove and was also the only bedroom and a small kitchen with a range and a sink. These rooms opened off the common staircase so there was no separate front door and little chance of escaping if there had been a fire.

In 1915, with five of their children still living at home, the family moved two streets south to an almost-new two-room apartment at 58 Gammel Kalkbrænderi Vej which survives. It is a purpose-built apartment just below Norhavn station and just the other side of the railway to the Nordhavn Basin which had opened as an extension of the port facilities in 1904. Many of the men in the street must have worked in the docks although most would have been employed on piece rate with irregular and very insecure work.

 

58 Gammel Kalkbrænderi Vej - one of a pair of matching apartment buildings at the east end of the street. Each front door gave into a lobby with the main staircase and at each level a separate apartment on each side so in this photo it shows the four large windows of the four front living rooms of four separate apartments at each level. Behind the front room was a bedroom and a narrow kitchen both with windows out to the courtyard and from the kitchen there doors out onto the back service or second staircase. 

Peter Sørensen worked at the Fortuna distillery, first as a delivery man although he was to rise to a much more responsible and important job tasting the herbs used in mixing the snaps.  His son Kristian, then 26 years old, worked at the Free Port, and his daughters Anna (21) Yrsa (19) and Olga (17) were in domestic services while their sister Karen, a year older than Kristian, did not work but helped run the home. It must have been these regular incomes that allowed the family to rent a much better and much more secure long-term home. 

In the new apartment they had a main living room to the street and towards the courtyard a single bedroom and a narrow kitchen with a range and a sink and there was a doorway out onto the back staircase … a typical Copenhagen arrangement. When they first moved to number 58, the toilet was in the yard but at some stage an indoor toilet was constructed off the back staircase. There was a wash stand in the bedroom and when anyone wanted a bath, they would have gone to the local public bath house.

It must have been crowded for seven people but better than any place they seem to have lived before. 

Three of the children never married and continued to live with their parents and they stayed on at number 58 after Peter and Karen died. In fact the family retained the apartment until December 1989 when Yrsa Sørensen, then in her 90s,  went into residential care.

The family rarely bought new furniture and only replaced something if it was beyond repair so in 1989 the flat was barely different from its appearance in 1915 and it was at that stage that the family gave the complete contents of the apartment to the museum … an incredible and unique bequest. The museum even acquired the doorways and the floor boards which over the years had been varnished but only around the main furniture.  For some museums their displays of furniture in a ‘typical’ worker’s house has to be pieced together from lots of different collections and purchases but here is the complete contents of a genuine and a very real Copenhagen apartment.

Arbejdermuseet, Rømersgade 22, 1362 Copenhagen K

introduction to Vesterbro

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In the second half of the 19th century this was one of the first major areas that developed outside the city ramparts with new houses, apartment buildings, shops and churches that were built on either side of the roads running out from the old west gate to the royal palace and gardens on the hill at Frederiksberg. Streets and small squares were laid out on either side of what is now Istedgade.  

The streets of Vesterbro seem relatively narrow, when compared with other districts of Copenhagen, and most of the buildings are five or six storeys high so it can seem to be darker and gloomier than other parts of the city.

It is fair to say that the area had earned a reputation for prostitution and drugs: it is close to the railway station - often the most likely place to find a red-light district in many large cities - and it was hemmed in by both the large area of Kødbyen, a wholesale food market, and by the railway lines.

Close to the centre of the city, and with a substantial number of slum dwellings, this might have been a potential area for large-scale demolition and massive redevelopment, particularly in the period of growth for the city in the 1950s and 1960s, but in fact the city’s planners made the decision to retain and restore the buildings of Vesterbro with demolition of the worst properties and with significant improvement to the streets and squares.

maps, more photographs and longer post

apartment buildings in Vesterbro

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Newly refurbished apartment building just a block from the main railway station

Only a few new apartment buildings have been constructed in Vesterbro where poor-quality slum housing was demolished - generally the older apartment buildings are being improved and updated. Courtyards have been cleared of buildings and made into communal gardens and several buildings have been given new balconies for private outdoor sitting areas - not just on the courtyard or garden side but in some buildings actually on the street frontage where the orientation of the building means that there is more sunlight on that side.

In some buildings small apartments have been combined to form larger family units and of course new bathrooms and new kitchens have been fitted and communal heating systems updated. As a result, many young families are moving into the area and younger people stay on even when they decide to start families. 

 

Traditional apartment buildings along Valdemarsgade

 

Balconies added to apartments on the street front on Flensborggade and on Sankelmarksgade - both facing west

 

Apartment buildings on Letlandsgade - part of an extensive housing scheme on the south side of Litauens Plads

Skydebanegade

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Completed in 1893, according to a plaque on a parapet, Skydebanegade is an ambitious and theatrical housing scheme with a complicated plan for apartments in buildings on both sides of a cross street that runs between Sønder Boulevard and Istedgade in Vesterbro. The development was presumably speculative, by a builder called Victor Jensen with the design from an architect called Oscar Kramp.

The street is only about 180 metres long but by pushing back deep narrow open courtyards running back from the street into the facade, with three set backs on each side, the entrance frontages are increased significantly in length- from 180 to 375 metres on the west side. This is not a unique arrangement in the city - deep open courtyards are used as a form of planning in several buildings in Jægersborggade - but nowhere else is it used in such a coherent and dramatic way.

If that was not complicated enough, the plot is not actually rectangular because the main streets in this area fan out at different angles, from the centre of the city and the street is aligned on the gate into the Shooting Gallery Park, rather than being set down the centre of the plot, so to maintain the appearance of symmetry from the street on the city, or east side, at the Sønder Boulevard end, there is a curious return frontage to a wider set back, that creates an oddly-shaped courtyard enclosed with fronts on three and a half sides. This is what might be described as a very clever bit of design fudging - not an official architectural term but a fairly common practice because in buildings on this scale, the human eye can rarely take in what is at an angle or what is exactly the same width on opposite sides of a street. What it does show is a clever design mind in the 1890s where apparent symmetry and apparent grandeur were overriding considerations for the final scheme. 

At both ends of the street, the facades return and run for a short distance along the main roads, along both Sønder Boulevard and along Istedgade, in both directions. Again each of these ranges is different in length - reflecting the skewed trapezoid shape of the plot. Fronts onto the main roads have the same architectural treatment as the facades facing the cross street.

The insets on the east side of the street are 23 metres deep while those on the west side are all different - the inset closest to Istedgade is about 27 metres deep, the central recess 33 metres deep and the south inset before Sønder Boulevard 36 metres - reflecting the different depths of the plot on each side of the street. As a consequence, the courtyards behind the apartments on each side of the street are very different. Those courtyards are entered through archways at the centre of each main element along the street frontage. 

Strong polychrome is used effectively in the grand design of the street facades with a dark grey ashlar for a ‘base’ on the ground floor; bricks laid to imitate ashlar on the first floor; a giant order of fluted pilasters through the second and third floors and the order continues, above an intermediate cornice, through the fourth floor. There are decorative terracotta panels, between the windows of the third and fourth floors, and throughout good decorative plasterwork.

External angles of the open courtyards and the ends of the ranges where they return along the main roads are angled, rather than square and at the centre of the street are treated like pavilions with faceted spires at the four corners to form a centre to the composition, creating what are read as pavilions externally but internally, in the arrangement and plans of the apartments, are no different. 

This is theatre-set architecture at its very best.

Such grand architecture implies grand apartments although, in fact, the apartments here are relatively small. There are doorways from the street and in the recessed courts, 48 separate entrances in all, including entrance doors on Istedgade and Sønder Boulevard, and each gives access to a lobby and staircase with apartments on each side and all the apartments have back service stairs down to the courtyard from the narrow back rooms, originally the kitchens. Apartments facing into the recessed bay elements are small with a single room to the front and two narrow rooms towards the courtyard, presumably a bedroom and a kitchen and there are larger apartments in the ranges directly along the street and in the angles. When first constructed the apartments would have had toilets and washhouses in the courtyards.

In line with Skydebanegade, on the far side of Istedgade, is a short street that ends in the high, brick, screen wall of the Shooting Gallery - the Skydebanen that gives the apartments their name and on whose land the apartments were built.

The buildings were restored and upgraded in the early 1990s with new heating and some apartments were amalgamated to form larger units. The large courtyards behind were cleared of buildings and new gardens planted. What should also be noted is the high quality of the hard landscaping of the street and the good lighting installed. This has ensured that a major architectural feature of the area has been retained in the housing stock in the most positive way. Small shop units along the street, including a launderette and very pleasant cafe, all contribute to give the street a very strong sense of community.

clearing the Skydebanegade courtyards

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The east courtyard looking north with apartment buildings along Absalonsgade to the right and at the far end the backs of buildings facing onto Istedgade

Demolition of buildings within the courtyards behind the Skydebanegade apartments is interesting because of the size and extent of the buildings removed and the dramatic effect that had but it should not be taken as typical for one rather curious reason: the Skydebanegade apartments benefitted enormously from the work even though the courtyards were not actually on land that they owned originally. The distinctive zig zag plan of the apartment blocks, with alternate open courtyards to the street and between them open courtyards to the back forming an outline that looks almost like a Greek key fret pattern, was built right up to the east and west boundaries of the land acquired from the shooting gallery. The courtyards actually belonged to the properties facing onto Absalonsgade to the east and Dannebrogsgade to the west.

Some of the large buildings in the courtyards may have been workshops and there were certainly stable buildings shown in the east courtyard that was accessed from Absalonsgade - two smaller stables with four stalls in one and 11 stalls in the other but there was also one long range which seems to have had a central passage way with 15 stalls on each side and a large yard to the front so there were, possibly, 45 horses in all kept in the courtyard with all the noise, smell, and manure that would imply. The stable with four stalls appears to have two carriage or cart sheds adjoining so may have been used by a carrier or delivery man. Riding horses and carriage horses might well have been kept in some courtyards. One advantage, though possibly on balance not a great advantage, was that there would have just been hay lofts above the stalls so the buildings would not have been that high so would not have cut out much light to the buildings around.

Long thin buildings shown in the narrow courtyards of the Skydebanegade buildings were presumably toilets - the plan here is at first-floor level or above as the archways from the street at ground level are not shown - so the narrow strips of building are drawn as if looking down on the roof. In the apartment buildings themselves, there are small square, unlit, internal rooms shown close to the secondary or back staircases and these might have been inside toilets and possibly shared between several apartments but given the date of the building, completed by 1893, inside toilets and toilets flushed by water are not likely to be an original feature if only because the very first flush toilets in the city are said to date from 1893 and were in apartments in the much much grander street of Stockholmsgade in Østerport.

When the buildings in the courtyards to either side of Skydebanegade were demolished, a range of smaller apartment buildings facing along Dannebrogsgade were also taken down and not rebuilt leaving the courtyard on that side open to the west.

It is difficult to calculate from just the plan but counting the staircases in the demolished buildings with apartments on both side of each landing, and assuming that there were almost-certainly five stories to each range, then around 300 apartments were demolished when the courtyards were cleared.

 

Air view from Google shows Istedgade at an angle down the centre with the distinctive zig zag outline of the Skydebanegade to the right and the wide line of Sønder Boulevard to the right with the construction work for the metro in progress

With the new open spaces of the large courtyards many of the apartments overlooking them were given new balconies. The gardens are laid out with different small areas of planting to enclose picnic tables, children’s play equipment and shelters for bikes. Planting, areas of raised ground and carefully planned and well laid paths and paved areas add considerably to the attraction of the space which, as with so many of these courtyards, provides an oasis of calm just off the busy and noisy streets.

Work on the courtyards and on the restoration and upgrading of the apartments started in 1989 and was completed by 1996.

 

The east courtyard - below showing the rebuilt end walls and narrow courtyards of the Skydebanegade apartments - many with new balconies

The west courtyard seen through the railings along Dannebrogsgade

rains and drains

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From January through to April this year there was a major exhibition at the Danish Architecture Centre under the title The Rain is Coming. It looked at climate change and the impact that will have on the architecture and planning of our cities. The conclusion was that climate change is happening already and that planning has to take that into account now but it can be seen as a way of making positive changes.

It is fairly clear that for Denmark the climate changes will mean more rain and more intense storms and that drains and roads will not be able to cope with the sudden inundation of water. I have actually experienced this … shortly after I moved to Copenhagen there was a massive rain storm; the street drains backed up and the road and pavements were flooded and water streamed down into cellars. Further along the street many of the buildings have semi basements so there is half a flight of steps up to the entrance and main floor but short flights of steps down to a semi basement that in many buildings are used for shops or workshops. Many of these businesses were severely disrupted by the flood … water had to be pumped out, property dried out and in many cases floors relaid and walls re-plastered. At least one of the businesses is still closed a year on.

There are straightforward solutions that are being implemented throughout the city and in new developments. Many streets are being dug up to install more robust drains to replace simple gutters. These have a large buried concrete channel covered by a continuous grill rather than a gutter that drops water down into a drain at intervals.

In some areas, permeable surfaces are now being installed so water will percolate down between cobbles or down through artificial playing surfaces on sports areas rather than sitting on the surface or flooding across to overloaded drains and well-planted ditches or hollows will be attractive green features for most of the year but will become streams or ponds when there is heavy rain.

Several major drainage and landscape schemes are now under way around the city. With so much land covered with buildings or roads there is less and less chance of water soaking away but if it is allowed to run straight into drains then they fail and can also compromise or damage the sewerage system with obvious consequences. The schemes are designed to hold back rainwater so that it can be released into the drains in a controlled way after a storm.

For the full article and photographs go to the Copenhagen site

overlooking new water

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looking across Peblinge Sø towards the city

 

Architects and planners in Copenhagen have appreciated the value of water in the urban landscape for centuries: the square in front of the old city hall, now Gammeltorv, was given an elaborate fountain in the early 17th century; in the first half of the 18th century royal gardens laid out on the site of what is now the Amalienborg palace ran parallel to the sea and had terraces and walks overlooking the water and were enclosed by a canal and of course the lakes to the west of the city, stretching for almost three Kilometres, in the 18th century much wider and more irregular and natural in shape, were given a regular outline in the 19th century with a promenade or walkway forming the edge and they are lined for almost the whole length and on both sides by apartment buildings - most dating from the late 19th century.

Some of the most recent developments around the city have been set against new stretches of water: just below the famous Gemini building on Islands Brygge new apartment buildings look down on a new basin; a long canal cuts down through the development of Ørestad on Amager is overlooked by apartments including The Mountain and at the south end, by the Vestamager station of the metro, drainage canals run into open water before the common land of Kalvebod Fælled - the Amager Nature Centre - but overlooked by large, new apartment buildings including the 8House and The Bow by Vilhelm Lauritzen Architects.

In the centre of the city new water channels and fountains have been added in the re-modelling of Israels Plads near Nørreport station and of Halmtorvet as part of the redevelopment of the Meat Market area in Vesterbro.

 

the basin and new apartment buildings just below the Gemini building on Islands Brygge

The Mountain apartment building on the canal down through Orestad with the raised track of the metro

The Bow by Vilhelm Lauritzen Architects looking over water towards Kalvebod Fælled

Israels Plads

the water and fountains of Halmtorvet