Understanding

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A large new sculpture has been set up on Ofelia Plads - the long wide concrete pier or mole that runs out from the north side of Skuespilhuset - The Royal Danish Playhouse.

Work No. 2630 Understanding by the British artist Martin Creed was planned to be part of the celebrations in Roskilde for the 50th anniversary of the festival in 2020 where there were to be three giant words with peace and love alongside understanding but, with the pandemic, the festival was cancelled. The plan now is that the sculpture will be moved to Roskilde if the festival can be held in 2021.

The huge letters, outlined in red neon, form a work that is 8 metres high and 15 metres wide and it rotates so at night the reflection of the lettering pans across the water of the harbour.

 

Sankt Hans Aften

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Sankt Hans Aften is the celebrations on the evening before the Feast Day of St John the Baptist and, close to the summer solstice and the longest day, is also linked with more ancient legends and beliefs for this is the evening when witches fly to the Broken or Bloksberg in the Harz Mountains - a story that inspired the music known as Night on a Bare Mountain that was composed by Mussirgsky with a later orchestral version by Rimsky-Korsakov.

In Denmark the celebrations open with traditional songs before the bonfire are lit.

Not much to do with architecture and planning …….. or rather this is a brilliant example that shows where city planning has to create public spaces that can be a venue and can cope with events like this that attract huge crowds.

Ofelia Plads - the relatively new public space immediately north of the National Theatre and across the harbour from the Opera House - can accommodate surprisingly large crowds and with plenty of room for food stalls and with good access …. there is plenty of parking spaces for cars below the wharf and for public transport, the quayside is at the end of a bus route that terminates at the end of Sankt Annæ Plads and there is a stop for the harbour ferry just the other side of the theatre …… oh and there is plenty of water if the bonfire should take on a life of its own.

The floating bonfires at the end of Nyhavn and at Ofelia Plads on the Eve of Sankt Hans.

journey to the pier’s end

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There is a light and sound installation on the recently completed public space of Ofelia Plads immediately north of the theatre and across the harbour from the opera house in Copenhagen. It is by the collective Obscura Vertigo with a soundtrack by the sound designer Peter Albrechtsen. Pulses of light respond to the movement of people as they walk along the pier through the line of forty triangles.

Continues until 5 March.

Ofelia Plads

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looking north across the new pier or plads from the theatre with the Admiral Hotel beyond a dock basin 

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 was 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 has been 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 was 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.

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