money made available to restore the Soup Tureen

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The city has just now announced that a block of money has been made available for a number of restoration projects and for work to improve a number of streets or public areas.

One of the projects will be the restoration of the pavilion on the major road interchange north of the lakes at Trianglen.

Dating from 1907, the building was designed by PV Jensen-Klint and was waiting rooms and public toilets where several major tram routes terminated or crossed.

The copper roof, with it’s distinct and striking shape, soon earned the building the nickname of Super Terrin or Terrinen although it was also known as Bien … the bee …. from the name of a kiosk here at one time.

Bien at Trianglen
Trianglen

Blegdamsvej - new public space - new sculptures

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Museums and art galleries in Copenhagen have had to close through this stage of the Coronavirus pandemic but it is still possible to see good art in the city and get your lockdown exercise at the same time by going out to look at the sculptures installed on streets and in squares and parks

Blegdamsvej is a main road that runs parallel to the lakes on the outer side. Here there are major hospitals and medical research institutes and two of the most recent buildings - the Panum Institute in the Mærsk Tower designed by CF Møller and the new north wing of the Rigshopitalet by the Danish architects 3XN - now have newly-installed statues on public areas of paving at the front. These are major works but could hardly be more different.

If you are a visitor, and do not know the city well, than it might be easiest to start from Trianglen metro station and from there it is 500 metres along Blegdamsvej to the work by Kirsten Ortwed and then from there a further 550 metres to the Panum Institute - on the far side of the main road with Fredens Park - for the installation by Alicia Kwade.

Or, cross over the lakes, over Fredensbro, at the centre of Sørtedams Sø, and, at Blegdamsvej, the work by Alicia Kwade is to the west and the work by Kirsten Ortwed is to the east.

PARS PRO TOTO
Alicja Kwade

Panum Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences,
Mærsk Tårnet / Maersk Tower,
Blegdamsvej 3b, 2200 København

Alicia Kwade is a Polish artist who is now based in Copenhagen.
Her work was shown at Charlottenborg in 2018 under the title Out of Ousia and Pars Pro Toto was shown at Louisiana

There is an interview with the artist on the Louisiana Chanel

The new forecourt is itself interesting as the surface is not level but has a great hollow with the grid of the paving creating an interesting visual effect - like the drawings you sometime see of a head or a body as a wire-frame profile - and here the artist uses that hollow to imply that the huge marble sphere has rolled here across the square only to be stopped by the posts there to stop cars driving in.

REFLEXTION
Kirsten Ortwed

Rigshospitalet,
Nordfløjen / North Wing
Blegdamsvej 80, 2100 København

Kirsten Ortwed is a Danish artist who is now based in Cologne.
Another of her works for a public space can be seen at Havnegade in Copenhagen - near the Nyhavn end of the kissing bridge.

Here the new building has been set back from the road but that area has been paved and kept open to the public with no barrier or fence so the life-size figure, without a plinth, stands in our space and the public has gained that space to move up to the building or to cut the corner to enter Fælledparken beyond. Too often, new buildings ignore an existing street line or street alignment and undermine or destroy the visual continuity of the street and any sense of urban containment and enclosure but here the new space and the sculpture together enhance and add to the interest and to the value of the public space of the street.

Monuments in Copenhagen.jpeg

Monumenter in København / Monuments in Copenhagen

The Kommune - the city council in Copenhagen - has an excellent online site with a catalogue of statues and decorative sculpture on the streets and in the squares and parks of the city.

There is a search option to enter the name of the artist or the subject of the sculpture but the easiest way to enter the database is through the clear map that is dynamic so you can zoom and drag, if you are searching later, and can remember the area but not the street name.

The map is tiled and, again, this is dynamic so numbers on the map in orange circles refer to the number of statues in that area and these split up and redistribute to the right location as you zoom in and if you click on a number that is greater than one - so for instance at the corner of the city hall towards the Vartov that has six - so then they open or fan out and each one links to a slide that pops up so you can then go to the right information and images for the right statue.

The site is in Danish or in English and there are some good comments rather than simply the basic facts so, The Lur Blowers by Siegfried Wagner and Anton Rosen, close to the city hall, was designed with a single figure for the top of the column until someone pointed out that Lurs are played in pairs …. now come on who didn't know that … so two lur players now stand on the top of the column. It means that it's a bit crowded up there and local wits began to describe them as the two bags of flour.

 
 

a new metro station at Trianglen

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gravel area at the entrance to Fælled Park ... hoardings have been taken down but there is now a wire fence around the excavations and remaining equipment of the engineers for work to complete the new metro station here ... the park is to the left and Trianglen immediately to the right ... the post office building to the left was designed by Thorvald Jørgensen and completed in 1922 and Østre Power Station, on the far side of Øster Allé, was designed by Ludvig Fenger and Ludvig Clausen and built in 1902

 
 

 

The main engineering works for the new metro station at Trianglen are finished and the high hoardings around the site have been taken down so once more it’s possible to appreciate the size of the open space here at the south-east corner of Fælledparken / Fælled Park.

A local plan for this major work was adopted in 2011 and published in 2012 … one of 14 local plans drafted for the 14 new metro stations that are to be built in the city with the construction of the new metro line.

In the introduction to the report it was stressed that the "layout of the station space must be in interaction with neighbouring areas around Øster Allé and Fælledparken."

This was an important policy because the space, in front of the main entrance into the park, acts as an area of transition from the busy area of Trianglen itself to the open green space and the trees of the park but this area of gravel has also been used in the past as an open space for various events such as markets so no new buildings were proposed apart from the concrete steps down into the station and necessary vents and roof lights and these, along with spaces for parking for bikes, have been kept to the two outer sides along Blegdamsvej and Øster Allé and will be screened by being set within double lines of trees. 

The steps down into the metro station fit rationally with the main directions from which people will approach the station or their main destinations as they leave … so steps at the corner, on the axis of the entrance to the park, are angled towards Trianglen; steps just inset from Blegdamsvej will be used by passengers heading to or coming from the Red Cross building, the Masonic Hall or, further on, the hospital and the east steps will serve people going to the post office or heading up Øster Allé towards the football stadium. 

 

These outer edges of the space will have hard paving - traditional Copenhagen setts or cobbles - but the central area will be returned to a level gravel surface. The planting of trees reinforces the simple symmetry of the layout of the space but also acts as a visual barrier between the open gravel-covered space and the road traffic beyond.

Improvements are not restricted to the area immediately around the metro station for there will also be new planting of trees and changes to the hard landscaping at this south end of Øster Allé and along Blegdamsvej that, with planting and improved paving, is rapidly becoming one of the most attractive of the boulevards in the city.

photograph and drawing from Metroselskabet

Trianglen in Østerbro

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Trianglen is a busy triangle-shaped public space in the district of Østerbro - so north of the lakes and immediately to the east of the new metro station that will take the same name. 

This is where two main roads in the city cross at an angle rather than at 90 degrees and it illustrates well how a dynamic townscape evolves over what is often centuries through a combination of factors including, of course, topography but also military and strategic history, wider patterns of roads and transport - so where people are travelling to or from either away from the city or within the city - and inevitably ownership and property boundaries and, in many cases, the direct involvement of a monarch, a city council and - from the 20th century onwards - planning authorities and transport companies. 

Oh … and as much as anything it’s often about the way people use a space or even how they cut across corners that ends up fixed in the position and line of roads, pavements and buildings.

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Bien at Trianglen

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Trianglen Bien.jpg
 
 

 

This is one of the more extraordinary buildings in Copenhagen. 

It is at the east end of Trianglen in Østerbro, on the traffic island that was a tram car stop and it was a kiosk; a room for a traffic controller and public toilets and there were benches not only in the recessed spaces on the east and west sides but also around the outside where people could sit if they had to wait for trams at this busy interchange.

The architect was PV Jensen-Klint and it was commissioned in 1904 by the Østerbro Grundejerforening or Landowners Association to replace a wooden hut on the same site. A number of designs were presented before a final design was approved and the building was completed in 1907.

It has a sort of exuberance and delight in playing with variations of shape and form that is associated with Art Nouveau architecture but here the columns on each side with strong entasis - the bowing out in the middle - and the almost Baroque elements with curved shaped heads to windows and doors picked up in the line of glazing bars makes it more robust and strongly architectural than buildings you would find from the same period in Paris or Brussels.

The oval shape of the building and its copper roof meant that it was soon given the nickname of the Super Terrin or Terrinen - it looked like a large soup dish with a lid with the heraldic animals on the top like a knob or handle although they are actually flues for the stoves. The building is also known as Bien or The Bee from the name of the kiosk here at one stage.

 

 
 
 

Fælledparken - the entrance from Trianglen

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Entrance Faelled Park.jpeg
 

 

At the corner of Blegdamsvej and Øster Allé is a large area of gravel that is triangular in shape — the site of a major new metro station - and set back, beyond the triangle, is the entrance to Fælledparken.

Established in 1908, the main feature here, on the central axis of the entrance, is a memorial … a large figure group in bronze raised on a high stone base that was installed in 1930 to commemorate the return to Denmark, in an international settlements following the First World War, of land in South Jutland that had been lost to Germany in a war of 1864.

Lettering on the stone base reads:

TIL MINDE OM SONDERJYLLANDS GENFORENING MED MODERLANDET 1920

In memory of South Jutand's reunification with mother country 1920

 

The main figure is a woman who is looking down at an adolescent girl who holds or, rather, she clings to her side, looking up but not at the woman so up and away into the distance at the sky or to the heavens. It is a powerful depiction of a mother embracing or drawing in a child for their protection.

The woman is wearing a loose, finely-pleated costume, that is clearly classical in style, with an outer garment or stola that she is lifting to cover the girl who is naked … nakedness, at least here, implying both innocence and vulnerability.

The sculptor was Axel Poulsen who nearly twenty years later repeated the image of mother and child - a woman holding a dead youth slumped across her lap - for the incredibly powerful stone sculpture for the Mindelund Park in Copenhagen that is a memorial garden for the dead of the Second World War.

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Sansehaven - garden of the senses

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As you enter Fælled park from Trianglen, just beyond the monument, there is an area of woodland on the right but as you are drawn forward - towards the light and open space of the park ahead - it would be easy to miss the Sensory Garden in the trees.

In dappled light, in glades among beautiful mature trees, the garden was designed by the landscape architect Helle Nebelong and was created in 1996 when Copenhagen was City of Culture.

With wide, gently-curving, gravel paths and low but distinct boundaries it is laid out to be an easy and a safe place for children to explore even if they have sight impairments or have mobility problems or use a wheelchair. 

Plants are chosen for their distinct shapes and there are herbs for their smell or even their taste but the dense but low planting also shields the garden from the more noisy and boisterous park beyond to make the space feel somehow calm and protective. 

The main features are a gravel-filled canal that runs through the centre of the garden with low bridges over it or stepping stones along it, and gives a distinct Japanese look, and there is a large maze with low walls of wooden posts - some with numbers or letters set near the top so you trace 1 to 9 and then track the alphabet as you follow the posts of the undulating palisade.

In the line of the planting around these features there are small, semi-enclosed spaces where children can discover a giant nose carved in smooth marble or a wooden sculpture like a giant chess piece but with a carved fish and lemons on the top or there are wind chimes or a seat under an arch and several larger features including a hexagonal temple with ornate carved posts supporting a tiled roof. 

It's all very beautiful and the garden is a credit to a park and to a city when they can design and maintain a place that is so magical.

Helle Nebelong

 
 

translation of the park sign:

SANSEHAVEN

Sansehaven is a small garden for children and their adults - a corner of Fælledparken with space for exploring surroundings, feeling nature and discovering all the senses.

1 Hearing
2 Seeing

3 Taste
4 Smells

5 Feel
6 Sixth Sense

A sense garden can be a substitute for nature when the real thing is far away or difficult to get to. Sansehaven was originally made for multi-handicapped children and young people who can enjoy small gardens with many impressions and experiences.

For the sake of children who are visually impaired or use a wheelchair, Sansehaven is therefore arranged with wide paths and clear edges of, among other things, cobblestone, which makes it easy to get around.

Sansehaven in Fælledparken is shaped like a maze with winding paths, and if you are curious, you will discover a garden full of surprises.

Enjoy.

Fælledparken