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It may not have palm trees or tiki torches, but – if you're in the market for a private island – you should probably check out Flakfortet, some 3.5 miles off the coast of lovely Copenhagen. An artificial island constructed in 1915 as a naval base to protect the city during World War I... View full entry
A pedestrian bridge designed by Olafur Eliasson has opened in Copenhagen, inspired by the Danish-Icelandic artist's childhood in Iceland.
Reminiscent of sailing boats, Cirkelbroen, or circle bridge, is made of five circular platforms in different sizes, each with its own "mast", according to Danish foundation Nordea-fonden [...].
Spanning the Danish capital's Christianshavn canal, the bridge, some 40 meters-long (131 feet), has a section that swings open to allow boats to pass through.
— reuters.com
Olafur Eliasson in the Archinect news:Olafur Eliasson Wants You to Design Utopia (Out of Legos)Olafur Eliasson turns Louisiana MoMA into a 'Riverbed'Olafur Eliasson receives 2014 McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT View full entry
Germany might still be a car-obsessed country, but it's starting to build an Autobahn for bikes. — Fast Company
From the U.S. to Germany, urban planners and major corporations are starting to purposefully design for bicycles instead of individually operated cars. In Munich, a proposed network of two-lane bike paths would radiate out from the city center to the surrounding suburbs, creating 400 miles of... View full entry
Hot young Spanish architects José Selgas and Lucía Cano of SelgasCano have designed a pop-up exhibition pavilion for the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art's latest exhibition, Africa: Architecture, Culture, Identity. Made of low-cost materials, such as scaffold poles and plastic sheets, which the architects have jazzed up inspired by traditional sub-Saharan settlements, the pavilion is due to travel to Kenya. The show in leafy Humlebaek near Copenhagen closes at the end of September. — theartnewspaper.com
SelgasCano's airy, bright and colorful pavilions are a sought-after commodity this summer: less than a month ago, the practice unveiled its completed design for the 2015 Serpentine Pavilion in London.To learn more about the Africa: Architecture, Culture, Identity exhibition, click here. View full entry
The bicycle makes sense in cities. With rising urbanization, our cities need modern mobility solutions, and moving around on two wheels proves time and again that it can offer results [...]
With each edition, the Copenhagenize Design Company’s Index of the most bike-friendly cities in the world evolves...This year, we considered cities with a regional population over 600,000 (with a few exceptions because of their political and regional importance, and to keep things interesting).
— Wired Magazine
Copenhagenize is a design consultancy based in Copenhagen, Zurich, Brussels and Amsterdam that advises cities on how to become more bike-friendly, often through implementing strategies developed in the Danish capital (which consistently tops the list). These strategies are both infrastructural... View full entry
In 2013, Copenhagen—a city of ebullient cyclists—launched the mother of all city bike schemes. Its white bikes were fitted with motors and GPS-enabled tablets—expensive, but designed for a place whose people and visitors truly believed cycling was the best way forward.
Now the city that pioneered its first shared bikes in 1995 is facing a stark possibility: no bike share scheme at all.
— qz.com
Muslims in Copenhagen can look forward to getting a new place of worship as Copenhagen Municipality has approved a planning application for a new, modern-looking mosque this week by the Muslim faith group Islamisk Trossamfund.
The new mosque, which will be designed by the renowned architect firm Henning Larsen Architects, will replace a current mosque located on the corner of Dortheavej and Tomsgårdsvej in the Nordvest district of the city.
— The Copenhagen Post
Should a storm, flood or rising sea levels hit the Danish capital again, the bucolic mini-parks will turn into water basins, the hills essentially functioning as the sides of a bowl. Thanks to a new pipe system, the squares will even be able to collect water from surrounding buildings’ roofs. Surrounding streets will, for their part, be turned into “cloudburst boulevards.” — Al Jazeera
Our Europan 12 featured entry for today is "Sprouting City Blocks" by KATOxVictoria, a Copenhagen-based design office founded in 2011 by architects Hiroshi Kato and Victoria Diemer Bennetzen.
Designed for the Vesterbro district in the competition's Copenhagen site, KATOxVictoria's entry won the runner-up award in the latest Europan Denmark.
— bustler.net
Here's a preview of "Sprouting City Blocks": Images courtesy of KATOxVictoria. Click the thumbnails below for more images. More project details on Bustler. View full entry
The "Trylletromler" pavilion by Dutch firm FABRIC has attracted plenty of public attention in King's Garden, Copenhagen since its public opening this past September. The installation was built after FABRIC won a temporary-pavilion design competition earlier this year. (Check out our previous... View full entry
”Recently we have witnessed the mounting of very large development projects in European and American cities. There is a striking physical similarity among the schemes and also a convergence embodied in private-sector involvement and market orientation.” — Failed Architecture
European urbanist Lea Olsson and Jan Loerakker gets to the bottom of recent urban development ventures in Europe and set up a pattern repeated in many other places in the World. "This essay doesn’t try to blame the public-private model for certain urban failures, but rather tries... View full entry
The harbor-front project "Kalvebod Waves" officially opened on Aug. 30 at the Kalvebod Pier [...] in Copenhagen. The design by Julien de Smedt Architects and KLAR with support from Sloth Møller and Niras Engineers won first prize in a competition from December 2008. Not far from the popular Islands Brygge Park in the city, Kalvebod Waves is the latest phase of a long-term plan that aims to revive a formerly desolate section of the pier into a welcoming hub for urban and water activities. — bustler.net
The new regional head office of the United Nations in Copenhagen, designed by 3XN, has just been inaugurated.
Check out the very impressive sculptural staircase in its core which, according to the architects, is designed to reflect the UN’s work to create global dialogue.
— bustler.net
The solution, or so the city’s traffic planners hope, is to encourage people to cycle for longer distances by creating the cycling equivalent of freeways, which will provide fast, direct routes of up to 22 kilometers into the center. A total of 28 highways are planned, providing 495 kilometers of dedicated bike tracks... Nine routes are under construction and should be completed by 2015 at a cost of 208 million krone, or $36 million, divided equally between central and local government. — nytimes.com
Danish firms JAJA Architects and ONV Architects, in collaboration with Bascon and Scandi Byg, have won the fourth delivery of the affordable housing concept AlmenBolig+. The order comprises 300-400 housing units on sites in the greater Copenhagen area. — bustler.net
