Lars Klæning

c.f.hansen, christiansborg palace church, copenhagen, 1810-1826

Tue, 26 Jan 2016 10:22:52 GMT

christiansborg palace church, copenhagen, 1810-1826.
architect: c.f. hansen, 1756-1845.

this one is for you, wen, should you stop by. it is one of my all-time favourite buildings in copenhagen and shows c.f. hansen at his most radical.

the royal palace had burnt down in 1794 and hansen was commisioned to rebuild, reusing foundations, bricks and sometimes entire walls of the palace ruins.

apparently the kind of architect who thrives on limitations, he designed what appears to have been a masterpiece of pure geometry, large unbroken surfaces of grey walls and delicate, classical moldings.

I say "appears to have been" because that palace was lost to fire as well, in 1884. it could have been reconstructed, but hansen's architecture was so unpopular at the time that the idea was soon abandoned. in the end, a heavyhanded neo-baroque bad dream in turd coloured granite replaced it and only the palace church survives to tell us of the splendors that were lost.

...except that the church burnt too, of course, and as late as 1992 when the roof and dome were ignited by fireworks from a passing carnival procession...fires are a copenhagen tradition.

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kay fisker, mødrehjælpen, copenhagen 1953-1955

Tue, 26 Jan 2016 10:22:05 GMT

mødrehjælpen, administration and accommodation, copenhagen, denmark 1953-1955.
architect: kay fisker, 1893-1965.

for hagen and boris. view from the west. stitch of two. autumn.

a late fisker work down the street from where I live and a fine example of modernism inserted into a pre-modern context. fisker always drew solitary old trees in his pencil renderings. I think this shows what he had in mind.

this photo was uploaded with a CC license and may be used free of charge and in any way you see fit.
if possible, please name photographer "SEIER+SEIER". if not, don't.

the fisker set

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c.f.hansen, christiansborg palace church, copenhagen, 1810-1826

Tue, 26 Jan 2016 10:17:00 GMT

christiansborg palace church, copenhagen, 1810-1826.
architect: c.f. hansen, 1756-1845.

final c.f.hansen interior for now.

the palace church gives a rather moving idea of just how much was lost when hansen's christiansborg palace burnt down.

as in the photos below, daylight is filtered through a layered construction, ultimately hiding the source of light from the visitor. a single oculus in the dome tells of the time of day.

this photo was uploaded with a CC license and may be used free of charge and in any way you see fit.
if possible, please name photographer "SEIER+SEIER". if not, don't.

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jean nouvel, danish radio concert hall, copenhagen 2002-2009

Tue, 26 Jan 2016 10:16:46 GMT

danish radio concert hall, copenhagen, denmark 2002-2009.
architect: jean nouvel (b.1945)

an almost non-existing facade based on scaffolding, placed in one of the most desolate corners of new copenhagen neighbourhood ørestad which in itself is largely a collection of desolate corners, there could hardly be a stranger introduction to one of the most expensive concert halls in recent times.

but nouvel's scoop is to hint at a rich inner world, to say that the true city is inside. I have aldo van eyck's essay on labyrinthian clarity from the situationist times, issue 4, here in front of me. it could be the programmatic subtext of nouvel's concert hall even if van eyck would have been stupefied to learn just how heterogenous a single building can become when based on his famous line,

for a house is a tiny city, a city a huge house.

nouvel avoids repeating a single detail from major space to major space and one of the questions posed by his house in ørestad is if such complexity can be held together simply by a perimeter of blue fabric. nouvel might have answered with one of the concluding lines from van eyck,

I have...found it expedient to define space simply as the appreciation of it, thus excluding all frozen properties attributed to it academically.

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