Into the Danish mountains

  

Getting off the metro the mountains cannot be missed. Like proper mountains do, the building offers a clear landmark. Nice if you live there and never have to explain to your friends which of a series of anonymous building block they need to go. 

When you get close and no longer experience the mountain image, the holes with which it is created change the reflection of the face of the building. On a sunny day the building then seems to be covered by patches of clouds. 

And even on the inside it works great, maintaining the connection with the outside. On a sunny day you get a wonderful negative of the image you see on the outside. And for Adolf Loos adepts, the wall is not just decoration. Through the holes it provides natural ventilation for the car park.

Once inside the car park you can easily find your way to the apartments. The color coding of the floors shows right away where the car park stops and the housing starts. And the colors will help visitors with a lack of number-memory (like me) to find the right floor.

 

Walking around and through the building it changes face. There is the very present mountain walls, on the inside balanced by the colorful levels of the housing parts. When you walk around to the lower part the slope of penthouses with wood sides suddenly opens up. Each apartment has a large sun-facing terrace and it looked like in summer the whole slope will be green. 

Must be a great experience coming home from the city, see your mountain from far away, pass through the color-blasting corridors and enter your apartment with an unobstructed view past a terrace of wooden panels and plants.

 

All in all I found the mountain dwellings better than in the polished pictures. The whole building felt balanced and with a lot of attention for detail. The image at the entry of the car park of the deer on a stack of cars summarizes the building for me: cars provide the basis for a place to live in sync with our natural needs.

Architect: BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group)  |  Completion: June 2008  |  Location: Copenhagen.

Architectural alchemy

An important reason for taking the opportunity to head to Copenhagen is a 2009 TED talk by Bjarke Ingels. When watching this talk for the first time I had made all practical arrangements to switch career and was in the middle of one of those  “what the “#$^&*@ have I done – this will never work out” episodes. 

Bjarke Ingels: 3 warp-speed architecture tales | Video on TED.com

This TED talk showed me there were people with similar ideas out there already walking the walk. The bit on the Mountain dwellings really resonated with me: a building designed to optimize the living experience of all its inhabitants (and the views from the neighboring building where Ingels lived himself at the time), considering environmental issue, economically feasible and architecturally interesting. Inspiring and motivating me to keep going down my new career path.

 

Image: Installation of Steen Hoyer, DAC, Copenhagen April 2011

The proof is in the use

Like pudding, which needs to be eaten to see whether it is any good, architecture needs to be used to see whether it works. After all, architecture is designed for use of some sort which is underscored by the existence of “folly” to denote buildings not intended for any use at all.  No idea what the etymological roots of this word are, but it sounds a lot like foolish. So how do you find out as an architecture-newbie whether or not a building is foolish or functions?

Architecture magazines and websites are full of amazing pictures of buildings making you ready to move in straight away. Next to it you can often find a short text on the motivation and inspiration of the architect which further increases the appeal of the building. But before packing your stuff you better take a look yourself. Anyone who has tried to photograph a building, or worse an interior, will find that architectural photography is a true art. At least my pictures never seem to come close to those I see in the magazines, and I got a lot better at photoshop recently.

With serious doubts about the realism of architecture pictures, it seems that visiting is a better way of experiencing architecture and finding out how it lives in the real world. Without perfect positioning, lighting and the motivation of the architect to frame your perception, the building has to stand up to its users and surroundings.

Spending some time in Copenhagen I visited several new buildings with the theme of this blog in mind: where does it come from and where does it go?

 

 

How does an economist end up with an architecture blog? Well, it took me a while to figure out what makes me tick. With some help I figured out I’m at my best if I can combine science and design to try make the world a better place to be. Studying interior architecture next to my job as an economist has me loving all parts of my week again. 

 

A new field means finding your place again. This blog consists of posts along my exploration of architecture, trying to figure out where it came from and where it is heading. A search for design giants on whose shoulders I can stand.