the untested city

On my last day in Copenhagen (and the first couple days back from holiday for most employed Danish designers) I have the opportunity to catch Serban Cornea, Partner and architect of up and coming Mutopia.  We talk about the firm’s user focused design approach, their philosophies regarding new urbanization, and the specific work they are doing in Ørestad, Denmark and abroad.  They are a firm thinking outside the box of traditional architecture and they have goals that address people as the primary users of design.

We chat about the economic climate of the world for a while and then Serban summarizes, “The accelerated train of urban development has stopped.  And if it is moving, it’s moving very, very slowly.”

Meeting Mutopia is instrumental for my understanding of the new city of Ørestad  and completely relevant for seeing it through the lens of public space.  Not only has Mutopia designed and built one of the major open space components of the master plan, they’ve devised a strategy for how it functions/changes over time.    They’ve worked with the public throughout the design process (usually via a software package they are developing with computer engineers), and, currently, they are working on expanding those capabilities.
Overall, the city is a plug-in piece.  It sits on the edge of Copenhagen in a 4×1km linear stretch.  It is a link to the airport and to neighboring Sweden.  First and foremost, it was built to finance the construction of the Copenhagen Metro.  A byproduct is the fact that it will provide more housing for the city.  It is a unique piece of property because of its location and density.  Walking around on the ground feels like being in a suburb, but the metro takes me into the center of Copenhagen in 5-10 minutes.  In that sense, it’s unlike any suburb I’ve grown up in.  Ørestad is a very green, park-like setting in which buildings are spaced out and the quality of air is very high.  This is one thing absent in the center of Copenhagen, or in many older, existing cities in general.  It seems like a real incentive to build new cities.  In this specific case, you get the best of both worlds.

“We need to create new possibilities for public space to emerge as a space of collective creativity, to promote public space as an intense, rich and plural collective space.” – From Changing Metropolis, Serban Cornea, 2007

“The park is more of a strategy than a project, for an urban condition that was completely unknown,” Serban explains.  Generally new open space in Europe is representational.  It is a green piece of land that falls between buildings and doesn’t get used.  These areas tend to create distance rather than unification.  Mutopia’s plan considered multiple publics (they compiled a list of resident types from the developers of each surrounding project) and set out to create a variety of “islands” or semi-private spaces in which residents could begin establishing different levels of ownership.  The diameters of the islands vary to accommodate, or absorb, different functions and to shelter people from the wind.  The plan is designed for the addition of new islands over time.  I was able to see Serban explain the project over a scaled-model in the office, ride the elevated metro past for a bird’s eye view, and finally, walk the park myself, hang out in an island, and observe residents rearranging and occupying different pieces of their semi-private spaces.  Testing this space all week has been fascinating.  I’m not sure if the designers realize how much use the park sees.  Serban did mention that the residents are taking care of the spaces.

Parks in Copenhagen are typically walled or fenced-in.  Barrier-free experiments are happening in Ørestad.

Mutopia promotes the need to rethink old typologies.  “I’m critical of the kind of density that is a product of its own modernity.”  New developments and new cities call for increased densities.  Using the same old building types (ie. courtyard housing blocks) with increased densities does not work.  The result is a taller building, a courtyard in permanent shadow, and “neighbors that stare into each other’s eyes in a context/country where people are interested in privacy.”  New typologies are needed for larger densities.  This was the premise for the firm’s proposal for a new residential building that literally tilts or twists an existing condition in order to reinvent the typology.  As of now, the project is on hold.   It’s the same story for larger chunks of Ørestad’s central and southern phases.  The issue of a paused urbanization leaves a lot of questions about this new city’s success, but I’m convinced the public and residential components of this project, if given the green light, would breathe a new life into the entire plug-in phenomenon.

Mutopia is working on several additional projects, including a vertical Hutong high-rise project in Beijing.  I’d love to see Mutopia on the next lecture series at the CED.  The ball is rolling….

A week of public space studies in Copenhagen is like a holiday for anyone, especially those people who have traveled here to participate in the World Outgames.  This is the largest public activity happening in the city this week.  The games need not be present to see the active public spaces, though.  And the temporary exhibits, when not the focus of my photography, are obstructing shots of some of the best new architecture on the inner harbor.  With the help of Danish architect, Stefan Brorsen, I encounter the newest public spaces and urban developments in Copenhagen.

Copenhagen is known for having the first true/official pedestrian street.  The Danish translation of these car-free areas is literally “walk streets.”  The enclosure you experience from the heights and proximity of European buildings in general is something that developments all over the world have tried to replicate – the duplication of the urban room.

We learn about the plans for the Carlsberg (Brewing Company) historic neighborhood redevelopment project.  The results from a  2007 design competition are determining the future of this previously industrial slice of the city.  Currently, artists are living and working in some of the buildings.  Many of the buildings are already works of art.

The redevelopment of an old transit corridor produces a mixed-use median where different activities are staged.  And unlike the often passive solutions we build in the U.S. (ie. Mandela Parkway) the scale and components of these Scandinavian designs seem to have more potential for success.  We walk along Sonder Boulevard and see sports cages nearly the width of the median strip.  Soccer and basketball games, platforms for lounging and eating, wildlife parks…  The tight knit surrounding fabric helps, of course too, and this section of Europe isn’t without it’s infamous outdoor cafes.

New inspiration for documentation: from ‘A Building is not a Building’ exhibit, Ola Kolehmainen, The Black Diamond, Copenhagen

New development areas in white

I am really looking forward to this time in Copenhagen.  When Jan Gehl came and spoke to Peter Bosselmann’s research methods course last year, he addressed California (especially Berkeley), New York, and Copenhagen as the main harbingers of urban design/public space practices, theories and writings.  To finally experience the European edition of the trio (on the ground and in the flesh)…is rewarding.  This trip has also been my effort to uncover ‘the other’, non-western sources of public space discussion going on mainly in different parts of Asia.

Again, I’m living insitu, or on site.  (This time with a fellow designer.)  This field office allows me to monitor the rate and progress of construction of Ørestad and Crossroads Copenhagen at very close range.  I spent today walking the sites of both projects (which is really just a single long strip of one outrageously bold architectural project after another).  The development websites call this area a “Testing ground for new ideas.”

The weather has created one fantastic dramatic backdrop for all the photography.  Walking around has been surreal.  I’m really making use of the new 18-200mm lens and hood.

Everyone bikes in Copenhagen, but the new metro line to the new cities is a must see for me.  The trains, running every five minutes, have no drivers.