City of spires or city of stars?
A review of Copenhagen’s celebrity architecture.
The city of Copenhagen has its fair share of historic architecture. Works like Sankt Petri Church, Rosenborg Castle, and Fredensborg Palace remind viewers that they are, in fact, in Europe. We can see that the city has been around for thousands of years, long enough to absorb many different urban forms, from the Medieval and Renaissance (in Denmark, “Christian IV style”) to the Baroque and Rococo.
But this classic architectural narrative, largely concentrated in the city center, has been thrown into stark contrast with an increasing number of bold, sleek, modern design projects. Indeed, on any physical or virtual stroll through Copenhagen, visitors would not be faulted for thinking they had stumbled into some sort of life-size architectural sandbox: an apartment building shaped like a mountain (“The Mountain”), a power plant topped by a ski hill (“Copenhill”), office towers that look like hair curlers (“Axel Towers”).
Who made these futuristic creations? Or, perhaps more importantly, who allowed them to be made?
Copenhagen is overrun with so-called “starchitecture.” Since the turn of the century, a group of celebrity architects has come to dominate and direct the city’s built vernacular. It is my aim here to briefly chronicle some of their works.
Bjarke Ingels
Copenhagen has been a testing ground for one of the fastest-rising architects in the world. At just 45 years old, Bjarke Ingels has already compiled a long, international list of completed projects. His work can be seen everywhere from Manhattan, New York, to Shenzhen, China. In notoriety and reach, his firm is the Amazon of architecture. Its name, BIG, is similarly brash, boastful, and self-fulfilling.
BIG’s website presents an interactive globe that viewers can spin to navigate through hundreds of finished, ongoing, and future projects. Following in line with Paul Knox’s description of starchitecture, BIG’s works are “heavily weighted toward world cities” like New York, Los Angeles, London, and Shanghai (2011, p. 279). Ingels has fought hard to design for these metropolises, thereby spreading his brand, and urban governance regimes have likewise embraced BIG with open, entrepreneurial arms.
For Ingels, this symbiosis has snowballed into celebrity. He has been the subject of numerous profiles, TED Talks, and documentaries, which often run as nicely shot puff pieces, including a widely viewed episode of Netflix’s “Abstract: The Art of Design.” Ingels has even made a cameo appearance on the hit show, “Game of Thrones.” For the cities that solicit his firm, public celebrity has added symbolic clout to monumental projects, such as the 2 World Trade Center in New York. In this way, Knox writes, “Stardom and city branding become mutually self-reinforcing” (2011, p. 281).
Ingels is not without critics, of course. Most recently, the Copenhagen native was condemned for meeting with Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro in January to discuss a potential “tourism masterplan.” To Knox’s point, however, “Such criticism only provides the controversy to sustain celebrity” (2011, p. 280).
Bjarke Ingels, then, is the prototypical starchitect. But he started small. His early work in Copenhagen, which he completed with Belgian partner Julien de Smedt (JDS), revolved around the city’s waterfront. The Copenhagen Harbour Baths and the Maritime Youth House opened in 2003 and 2004. Both were commissioned by public entities for recreational use — the baths by the city council and the youth house by Kvarterløft, an urban development fund.
In 2005 Ingels made his first step into Copenhagen’s housing scene. More specifically, BIG and JDS designed the first residential building in Ørestad, a narrow strip of land that runs directly south from Copenhagen’s city center. Back in the late 1990s Ørestad had become the focus of an urban development scheme. The city-owned Ørestad Development Company was tasked with stimulating demographic and economic growth in the previously empty and unused area. A railway and motorway were built, increasing potential rent values. After purchasing land from the city, a real estate developer and an oil company commissioned BIG and JDS to design an apartment complex, which became known as VM Houses. Though the apartments originally were intended for middle-class families, they sold at luxury rates, “triggering a local boom.”
Ørestad’s public managers would try to ride the wave Ingels had created. After VM Houses won the 2006 Forum AID Award for “best building in Scandinavia,” city boosters recognized an opportunity to attract residents and businesses to Ørestad by leaning on the architect’s emerging fame. Ingels completed two other housing projects nearby over the next five years: The Mountain in 2008 and 8 House in 2010, both commissioned by the same private entities and an additional investment firm. Units in these buildings sold for upwards of one million dollars. Both projects were reviewed and accepted by the public development organization, By & Havn, which took over Ørestad’s management in 2007. The accolades continued: The Mountain won the 2008 Forum AID, and 8 House was named Housing Building of the Year at the 2011 World Architecture Festival.
This success would help Bjarke Ingels move beyond Copenhagen in the 2010s, propelling him to international competitions, awards, and the global architecture stage. But, perhaps surprisingly, he would face some difficulty finding work in his hometown. In the years following The Mountain’s completion, BIG would lose five major local commissions, a financial hit ranging in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The 2008 economic recession certainly played a role, but as the architect Kent Martinussen explains, there is also a Danish trend to “distribute the luck.” Ingels had Ørestad, and that was enough — let other starchitects play.
Henning Larsen
If Ingels is the 21st century’s Danish starchitect, Henning Larsen was the Danish starchitect of the 20th century (alongside his mentor, Jørn Utzon). Early success with the Riyadh Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the 1980s set his firm on an international track, completing iconic projects across Scandinavia, Germany, Kenya, and the United Kingdom.
Larsen became known as the “Master of Light.” Seven years after Larsen’s death, his firm now has offices in Copenhagen, Munich, New York, Riyadh, Oslo, Hong Kong, and the Faroe Islands. Gehry has the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and Larsen has the Harpa Concert Hall in Reykjavík.
In Copenhagen, Larsen’s legacy endures most visibly through the Copenhagen Opera House. The opera house was commissioned by Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller, the Danish shipping tycoon. Møller demanded that the work be built on land he bought on the east bank of Copenhagen’s harbor, “directly opposite the residence of the Danish royal family.” Danish authorities did not like this domineering placement, but the state found it difficult to turn down the gift of what would become a $443-million-dollar opera house.
Since its completion in 2004, the work has been the subject of widespread debate and criticism. Some locals compare its steel ribbon façade, which Møller fought to include, with a “Pontiac grill” (Larsen claims he fought this design choice while Møller insisted on it). One newspaper called Larsen’s final major project “the biggest disaster of his professional career.”
Larsen himself said it looked like a “toaster.”
The Copenhagen Opera House stands as example of the limits of starchitecture and the so-called “Bilbao effect.” Like many other urban regimes that have drooled over Gehry and his Guggenheim, Copenhagen officials hoped a new concert hall would revitalize waterfront space. But in the process, they ceded control over the historic harbor’s sightlines, and even their starchitect Larsen could not salvage the project from its stubborn benefactor.
Jean Nouvel
Bjarke Ingels is not the only starchitect to build in Ørestad, and Henning Larsen is not the only starchitect to give Copenhagen a performing arts space. In 2002, the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) organized an international design competition for a new concert hall. The winning idea came from Jean Nouvel, the French architect who at the time had gained notoriety for his works in Lille (Euralille), Prague (Golden Angel), and Switzerland (Monolith).
Nouvel would win the Pritzer Prize, architecture’s highest award, in 2008. A few months later, his DR Koncerthuset opened in northern Ørestad, initially with positive reviews. “A beautifully resilient emotional sanctuary,” wrote Nicolai Ouroussoff of The New York Times, “a little corner of utopia in a world where walls are collapsing.”
Unfortunately, however, the building ran well over budget, coming in at around 4.8 billion Danish kroner, tripling original estimates and making it the most expensive concert hall ever built (the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie would break this record). As a result, DR had to cut its operating budget, greatly reducing the quality of its artistic output. For all this additional investment, musicians still criticized the acoustic experience inside, and visitors wondered why the projection features on the building’s exterior were “only rarely used” (Syse & Mueller, 2014, p. 191).
The story of the DR Koncerthuset therefore echoes that of the Copenhagen Opera House: stakeholders hoped to attract public support and interest by bringing in a starchitect, only to find that they had become subservient to the excesses of star power.
Zaha Hadid
One final (and slightly more satisfying) narrative can be found at Ordrupgaard. This museum, originally built in 1918 to contain a large collection of fin-de-siècle Danish and French art, was remodeled between 2001 and 2005 at the hands of Zaha Hadid.
Hadid, born in Iraq, began to pick up international acclaim during the 1990s with her work on the Vitra Fire Station in Germany, the Bergisel Ski Jump in Innsbruck, and the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati. In 2001, she won the Danish Ministry of Culture’s competition for the Ordrupgaard extension with a curved, fluid lava concrete design. Hadid’s work has made the museum an architectural destination, landing it on “iconic museum building” lists alongside both Guggenheims, the British Museum, and Musée d’Orsay.
Nestled in a park 30 minutes north of Copenhagen, the Ordrupgaard extension stands as a fitting legacy to the late Hadid, “Queen of the Curve,” the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize.
The City of Design
When thinking of Denmark, design is one of the first things that comes to mind: Arne Jacobsen, the Egg Chair, the PH Lamp, Lego. As Denmark’s capital, then, it is only natural that Copenhagen serve as a center of design thought. How does this role manifest architecturally? The city’s recent forms reveal an appetite for starchitects, celebrity builders that charm, shock, awe, and (sometimes) disappoint urbanites and their leaders.
This inclination should come as no surprise — the modern age of starchitecture began with a Dane, Jørn Utzon, whose Sydney Opera House plans laid the foundation for Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum and the Bilbao effect (Knox, 2011, p. 278).
As shown above, Copenhagen developers have relied increasingly on international design competitions to boost press and prestige for upcoming buildings. But the city’s love affair with starchitects can be rocky. In some cases the city has rejected the likes of Ingels to maintain a balanced rather than singular patronage, and in other cases it has suffered from the extortionate nature of starchitecture’s spectacle.
For better or worse, though, it is clear that starchitects will continue to make their mark on this Nordic palimpsest. And, at least for some city boosters, an embrace of starchitecture appears to be paying off. A few months ago, the city was named the second UNESCO World Capital of Architecture and future host of the 28th World Congress of Architects in 2023.
References
Knox, Paul. “Starchitects, Starchitecture and the Symbolic Capital of World Cities,” in International Handbook of Globalization and World Cities, edited by Ben Derudder et al., 275–283. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011.
Syse, Karen L., and Martin L. Mueller. Sustainable Consumption and the Good Life. Routledge, 2014.
