Tag Archive for: Danish Architecture

design-museum-copenhagen

The Design Museum Copenhagen

Copenhagen’s Design Museum offers a rich and varied guide around Danish design. From furniture, products, fashion and graphic design, the classic Scandinavian influences and the icons of Danish Design like Arne Jacobsen, Børge Mortensen and Verner Panton feature.

While the world renowned furniture, products and fashion design quite rightly feature strongly, the rich tradition of Danish poster design and logo design is also well represented. Web design is also featured which is great to see the world of the web entering into design history and gaining recognition.

The collection is stunning, with new exhibitions changing regularly. Highly recommended.

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Finding the Design Museum in Copenhagen

Bredgade is just off Kongens Nytorv, the square that contains Magasin and Nyhavn harbour. About ten minutes walk, just past Amalienborg, the Royal Family’s winter residence and the very beautiful Marmor Kirk. If you carry on past the design museum you will eventually come to the Little Mermaid. So no excuse for not visiting.

 

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The fast developing Copenhagen harbour district of Nordhavn

I was working on a web design project for a client in the Nordhavn region of Copenhagen. Nordhavn is the harbour area of Copenhagen and is undergoing an enormous amount of development, with new housing and businesses. It also contains the UN City building. The project required me to take some photos, so I got myself down to Nordhavn as soon as there was a bit of sunshine…

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Nørrebro architecture

The Copenhagen district of Nørrebro has an enormous variety of fantastic architecture. Residential and business. The cosmopolitan mix of the district plus the relatively young average age makes a wonderfully diverse, vibrant place to be.

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Nørrebro residential architecture

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Nørrebro buildings

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Hellerup

Hellerup is a lovely place to visit from Copenhagen. A cycle trip out on a beautiful day is a great way to spend an afternoon. Cycling from the centre of Copenhagen wouldn’t take more than a half hour.

North of Copenhagen, and adjoining the city, this is a beautiful coastal town, and one of the most expensive areas of Denmark to live. It is also known for being part of the ‘Whisky Belt’, which defines the area where the elite/wealthy live in Denmark. There is fantastic modern and classic architecture in this coastal beach resort. If you are in Copenhagen, hire yourself a bike, it’s the best way to experience the city, and build up an appetite and thirst!

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Beautiful back streets of Copenhagen

Copenhagen has lots of fantastic classic and modern architecture. However the beautiful back streets of Copenhagen have a charm of their own. The combination of mixed architectural styles, tight spaces and different colours and the Scandinavian light makes for a wonderful aesthetic experience, best described as ‘hyggeligt’.

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The Arne Jacobsen hotel Copenhagen design experience

If you are visiting Copenhagen a great experience for design enthusiasts is a cup of coffee and bit of cake in the cafe of The Radisson Blu Royal Hotel. The hotel, designed by the great Arne Jacobsen, is a wonderful piece of architecture adjacent to Tivoli Gardens and the main train station (Hovedbanegården) in the centre of Copenhagen.

As well as being the architect, Arne Jacobsen designed the interiors and used his famous Swan and Egg chairs.

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The cafe entrance is off of Vesterbrogade,  and feels like you are in a 1960’s Instagram filter. I always half expect to see a young Sean Connery in the corner, chain smoking and flirting with a beautiful, peroxide Russian spy, called, well something with a terrible double entendre. The service in the cafe is old fashioned classic style, it is criminally quiet in the afternoons, and getting a window seat is not generally a problem.

The view from the other side of the street is Hard Rock Cafe Copenhagen, which for  some unknown reason is always packed with tourists.

A quick trip through the lobby of the hotel ‘to visit the rest rooms/toilets’ lets you get a look at the Jacobsen Egg chairs and other Jacobsen designed details. There is also a bar in the hotel’s foyer area should you need a martini cocktail…

The most famous example of Jacobsen’s chairs – for anyone British at least – is from the photo with Christine Keeler who is best known from ‘The Scandal’ or ‘The Profumo Affair’. You can read a great article on it here at the V&A’s website. This is their picture.

Christine Keeler Jacobsen chair

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View from the cafe. The young Sean Connery and Svetlannalickalov, just out of picture, having a fag…

If you are looking to stay in the hotel, one bedroom remains in the original condition from 1960, and that is room 606 which you can book.

You can read a bit more here from Wikipedia on the hotel. And here on the great Arne Jacobsen.