Modern Copenhagen

On Wednesday my urban development class had a field study to check out the latest Copenhagen editions along the harbor area. I found out that although Copenhagen is one of the model cities for others around the world when it comes to planning (in that they are a bike city rather than a car one), it is now attempting to become a metropolis and even have a high apartment complex tower sketched up to go right inside or next to Tivoli...one of the oldest parts of Copenhagen! I hope it doesn't go through because I don't think Copenhagen needs to become a metropolis. The only reason is because they want to put themselves on the map and be a more well-known city that has a main landmark to recognize (like the Eiffel Tower is for Paris).

Anywho, in the harbor area they have been doing some major urban development on what used to be reserved land on the island of Amager including plans for modern housing complexs, a large shopping mall, and a financial district. Daniel Libeskind, the architect designer for the Freedom Towers in the States is designing a tower here that will be their equivalent to the World Trade Center. They don't know what they're going to call it yet since 'World Trade Center' has a sad connotation. I don't have a picture because construction has just started on it so the site was literally a big crane sitting in some dirt.

After checking out the new, huge mall they built and getting a chocolate croissant on DIS, we sought after these buildings below. They're called the V and M buildings because, go figure, they're shaped like a V and like and M. They are of a very modern design and encourage people to be social with their protruding, pie-shaped balconies allowing you to see basically anyone else who is out on theirs and as an added bonus if you stand at the tip of your balcony you can have the same 'King of the World' feeling as Kate and Leo in Titanic! ...or so the guide told us :)

This is inside the new IT school. They have these conference rooms that protrude out of the walls for students to reserve. There were these screens with dots all over them, which I thought were binomial clocks but nope...they're some sort of experiment.

You can just see the building with blue fabric wrapped around it. This is the philharmonics of Copenhagen and the new building/structure (which is basically a metal shell around the building that has that blue fabric wrapped around it. It is designed by French architect, Jean Nouvel, who also designed the new Guthrie Theater downtown Minneapolis. Construction has slowed down on it a bit because the project has ended up being waaayyy over budget.

This is a kollegium for students of the University of Copenhagen. The sides are done in copper and are just starting to patina, it looks pretty cool...I should have gotten a close up. It's a little nicer than my humble home at DIK haha

Here we are right on the harbor...they built a footbridge across the whole thing. And, an interesting tidbit I found out from an architecture major...While we're on the bridge it was a bit windy (like it is 359 days out of a year in Copenhagen) and you could feel the bridge moving with it a bit which is a good thing! If a bridge absorbs the shocks of wind or cars then it is more structurally sound than one that can't. You can see here the 4 smoke stacks in the distance...that's where the graffiti wall is that Jordan and I went to check to out. The white complexes are new housing complexes, built to be pretty affordable for the middle class.

These on the other hand are mostly for the rich. These used to be old soya cake factory silos (I have no idea what a soya cake is) that were evacuated at some point in the past 20 years and Copenhagen didn't know what to do with them because it cost so much to bulldoze them. It wasn't until an architecture firm suggested making them into condos did anything happen with the silos.

The funny thing though is that the inside of the silos are not used...they're just hollowed out and there are small balconies inside to get into the different condos but other than that, as you can see, there isn't anything else in there. Parking is underground. And just to give you some idea of how expensive these new condos along the harbor area are, a girl told me she knows someone who lives in one just a little ways down from this one that pays $500/month to park his car there. That doesn't even count toward rent! Haha, when coming over here I thought I would compare prices to what I paid in NYC, but no no...they are much more expensive here! New York is cheap compared to Scandinavia.

These are also old silos, but with these ones they actually cut into the cement and used the inside of the silos.

This was a walking/bus tour so on our way back to school we encountered a protest. A bike protest at that! The nurses here are striking because they want a 15% pay increase because downtown Copenhagen has gotten too expensive for them to live in. I guess the government offered them 12.6% or something close to that and they denied it. I don't know if I mentioned this before but it's quite hard to take a protest seriously here because the police lead the way. The police would have a cycle out in front of the Student House protests to make sure a path is cleared and nothing bad happens during the protest. Soooo different from the protests back home where the police break them up rather than administrate it.

And, finally...on the street right by our school a horse and carriage went by. I couldn't get my camera out quick enough so I just got their backs.

That was my last field study for the semester...I'm almost done! Just a few more project/paper/test to do and then it's home free--literally! Haha, I come home in 12 days!

There are a few other little tidbits I learned from one of the Danes who lives in my block. For all you Benson, Swenson, Olson or Christensen's out there I found out how to tell the origin of a name that ends in "s(e/o)n" since we all know they are Scandinavian. Well, if you are an -son, your name is of Swedish origin where as -sen is Danish! So next time, rather than asking -sen or -son when spelling a last name you can ask "Swedish" or "Danish." Hahaha, oh I crack myself up!

On Thursday it was a national holiday here called Acension Day and we had school off! There were festivities in one of the parks, and by "festivities" I mean 90% of the Danes living in Copenhagen went to the park and just drank all day long. The trains were packed. Unfortunately it was raining and even more unfortunate, I had a stupid group project to work on for my Producing Content for Mass Media class so by the time we finished our video/webpage/write-up for class the festivities were about over. Bummer. Other than that day, the rest of the week was pretty nice, nice enough to pull the frisbee out! It's about high 60's here now but still windy. I don't think it gets too much warmer than this here...maybe 10 more degrees during the summer but all I know is I'm hoping to get the flip flops out at least one day before I leave!