Den Grønne Kødby / The Green Meat City

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A new street kitchen has opened in Copenhagen in the Meat District west of the central railway station and just a few minutes walk from the metro station. It is in buildings at the far end of Slagtehusgade so beyond the Hvide Kødby or White Meat Market.

There are food stalls with a new micro brewery called Åben Bryg and, through the summer, other restaurants and food providers plan to open here. The market will have music in the evenings on every Thursday, Friday and Saturday with DJs and live performances.

Just to explain … the Meat Market - was built in the late 19th century and included market buildings along Halmtorvet; the large open space of Kvægtorvet - the cattle market - and Øksnehallen - a large covered hall completed in 1901 and now used for a wide variety of events.

When the markets were extended in the 1930s - with new buildings to the west across the site of what had been gas works - then the new buildings were in a distinct functionalist style in white with flat roofs and became known as the Hvide Kødby or White Meat City to distinguish it from the earlier brick buildings of what then became known as Den Brune Kødby or Brown Meat Market - so Brown, White and now Green has absolutely nothing to do with the colour of the meat.

Den Grønne Kødby, Slagtehusgade
will continue through to 29 August

 

Enghave Parken - restoration and climate-change mitigation

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Enghave Park was laid out in the 1920s on land that had been allotments. The overall design for the park was by the City Architect Poul Holsøe (1873-1966) who designed the brick apartment blocks around the large square and work was completed by 1929.

An original band stand and pavilions on either side, with shelters and toilets under a pitched roof covered with wood shingles, were restored in 2016 and the original pale-green colour on the pavilions reinstated along with trellis for climbing plants. Research for the restoration work was undertaken by Bente Lange and drawings in the city archive for these buildings have been attributed to Arne Jacobsen (1902-1971) who had just graduated and was then working in the office of Poul Halsøe before going on to establish his own architectural practice in 1929. These are therefore some of the architects first known works.

More important, in terms of the later architectural style of Jacobsen's work, are two small stone and glass pavilions that flanked the main entrance gate. They were demolished in the 1970s but have also been attributed to Jacobsen and reinstated or reconstructed as part of the most recent work on the park. These have stone side walls and shallow pitched roofs with the gable ends to the road and to the park but the front and back walls are glazed.

Extensive engineering work has just been completed for one of the largest climate change mitigation projects in the city and the park was formally reopened on 14 December 2019.

Engineering work has been by Cowi with landscape design work by the Copenhagen studio Tredje Natur.

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Søringen - a motorway along the lakes

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Not all major road schemes proposed for Copenhagen have been good but, fortunately, not all major road schemes get built.

Perhaps the most ambitious and most contentious and, if it had been built, the most destructive road scheme proposed was the lake motorway that was planned in 1958 and approved by parliament in 1964.

Two problems had been identified by planners. The first was how to get road traffic in to the centre of the city quickly and how and where to build a brave new metropolis to show Stockholm and Paris that anything they could do to be thoroughly modern, Copenhagen could do too.

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