Copenhagen Gets Its Own Corner Of Utopia

Copenhagen / Go See
en by Momondo, 30. Jan 2009


Photo: Niels Erik Lund

Author: David Rich

I have got a neighbor who is square, big and blue and has been the talk of the nation for years. As you probably already have figured out my neighbor is not a person, but a building and it is home to the new Copenhagen Concert Hall, which finally has opened its doors to the public.

The concert hall is designed be the French top-notch architect and winner of the 2008 Pritzker Prize, Jean Nouvel. It has a cobalt blue exterior and is in the evening transformed into a giant light box when montage of video images is projected on it (how cool is that!). Inside the main performance hall is shaped like a walnut and has series of cantilevered balconies stepping down towards the stage.


Photo: Bjarne Bergius Hermansen

Not only is Jean Nouvel’s concert hall a joy for the eye, but also for the ear. Mr. Yasuhisa Toyota, a Japanese expert on acoustics, was flown in several times during the construction of the concert hall to advice on how to achieve the best acoustics.

However it wasn’t the unique design and fantastic acoustics that caught the attention of the Danish public, but how the completion of the concert hall ran over budgets (don’t they always do?). With a price tag of around 215 million euro it became 3 times as expensive as budgeted.


Photo: Bjarne Bergius Hermansen

Anyway, now that the concert hall is up and running all the talking about budgets seems to have vanished especially after The New York Times critic on architecture, Nicolai Ouroussoff, recently wrote that the concert hall is”… one of the most gorgeous buildings I have recently seen” and that it “…is a beautifully resilient emotional sanctuary: a little corner of utopia in a world where walls are collapsing.”

Wauw, how proud am I to have this building as my neighbor. However, not everything in Mr. Ouroussoff's article made my day, as he writes that the concert hall has an ugly setting. According to The New York Times’ critic my neighborhood consists of boring glass and residential blocks with “…swaths of undeveloped land with tufts of grass and mounds of dirt”. How flattering is that!


Photo: HEiMO DCNTRL

If I ever get the chance (which is very unlikely) I would take Mr. Ouroussoff for a walk around the big nature resort Amager Faelled situated literary just across the street from the concert hall or I would take him for a swim in Copenhagen’s swimmable inner harbor at Islands Brygge to prove to him that he is wrong in his description of my neighborhood. I can easily live with what he wrote about the concert hall.

COPENHAGEN CONCERT HALL (KONCERTHUSET); Emil Holms Kanal 20, Copenhagen S

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