van
Current Location:
nashville, Tennessee
Western Denmark Road Trip-Core course week
February 7-9, 2019
Overview:
Food was good and the hostels were nice!
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MalMö~Helsingør~Louisiana:
Core Course week started off with some shorter day trips on Monday and Tuesday. Then we had Wednesday to pack for our Western Denmark from Thursday-Saturday. Monday my studio class went to Malmö to visit and sketch Sigurd Lewerentz's Flower Shop, Malmö Eastern Cemetery, and Malmö Opera House. We also saw Henning Larsen's extension to the city library. The library was probably my favorite building we visited, because it was so bright and open, and I could see myself studying in one of the many study spaces. I also bought some flowers from Lewerentz's Flower Shop to add some color to my very plain white room back in Copenhagen.
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On Tuesday, we traveled 40 minutes north on the train to Helsingør. I visited this town last week on my Urban Economics field study, so I had some familiarity with the economic transformations of the city from industrial shipping hub to its present day conditions. We first stopped by Kronborg Castle Elsinore, also known as the castle where Shakespeare's Hamlet took place. Sadly, we arrived 40 minutes before the castle opened so we were encouraged to sketch outside in the freezing wind and rain. The inside was incredibly detailed and it is crazy to think that this massive castle could be built in 1420. I am still terrified from walking into the cold, dark dungeons that sit under the castle. After Kronborg, we stopped by the Maritime Museum constructed by famous Danish architects BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group. Helsingør is a fitting location for a Maritime museum due to its extensive shipping history. The building is shaped like an enormous ship and was designed beautifully. Personally, the inside was not as exciting as the architecture outside. The exhibitions had interesting topics from Danish trade and shipping, but the designs bordered on looking too tacky and taken from a sea themed party catalog. We ended the day at the Louisiana Modern Museum of Art in Humlebæk. Even though it was was my second time in the museum, I still wasn't able to spend as much time as I could've in this place. The building settles into the outdoor surroundings and blurs the distinction between the outdoors and indoors with massive floor to ceiling windows and the sculpture garden exhibitions. My only complaint is that I was incredibly confused trying to navigate the rooms and find certain exhibits in the museum. But, my favorite exhibition was the So Far... Elemental | Alejandro Aravena exhibit that was designed by the Chilean architect studio Elemental themselves. The exhibit gives visitors an insight to the entirety of the architect's working process and I thought it was designed very well. From the materiality of the walls and tables to the innovative sound presentations for the videos on the firm's past projects, I enjoyed walking through this space.
Opening video of So Far...
Cardboard exhibition table detail
Kolding:
Starting at 7:30 AM, we arrived at the bus and headed for Kolding. Honestly, I wasn't super enthusiastic about going on a long trip with people I had never met before and being forced to do something that I'm terrible at - sketching. Everyone from different studios are mixed together for travel trips, so I ended up meeting people that weren't in my own studio. I actually had such a fun time on this trip. I loved the museums we visited and did learn to get better at sketching. Our first stop was the Trapholt Musuem, and this might be my favorite museum so far. The most interesting room that stood out to me was the 'Design your own Exhibition' room that allowed visitors to pick out their own pieces of art and make digital exhibit of their own. As someone interested in curation, I thought this was a super cool idea. The exhibitions themselves were also great. They were distinctly Danish, and I had a good experience all around at the Trapholt. There was the Nanna Ditzel Danish Modern furniture design and the Kay Bojesen The Joy in Danish Design exhibitions. Kay Bojesen is the creator of the iconic wooden toy monkeys that are easily recognizable. Another memorable experience from the Trapholt was Arne Jacobsen's Summer House that the museum acquired a few years ago. It was cool to see a house designed from top to bottom by such a famous Danish architect. His egg and swan chairs sat in the living area and the kitchen was filled with his own funky silverware designs that looked pretty but lacked functionality.
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We also visited the Koldinghus Castle that combines new and old with the restoration by Johannes and Inger Exner. Then we ended the day at Henning Larsen's Learning Center for the University of Southern Denmark.
Kay Bojesen Exhibit
Arne Jacobsen egg chair in the Summer House
Koldinghus
Aarhus:
We drove 1 1/2 hours to Aarhus on Friday and started at Henning Larsen's Crematorium Chapel and Arne Jacobsen and Erik Møller's Aarhus City Hall. The Chapel was a great building to practice sketching light and materiality, and had a serene atmosphere. For lunch a lot of students went to the Aarhus Street Food building where there were infinite food options to choose from. I ended up running into my roommate and some people from different classes who also traveled to Aarhus. Afterwards we went to the ARos Kunstmuseum, the building with the rainbow room on the very top. This museum has become another one of my favorites. The spiral staircases resemble the New York Guggenheim, but the ARos is intended to reflect Dante's 9 levels of hell. The exhibitions inside pushed traditional conventions of art exhibition. Level 0 began with 3D installation rooms that immersed the senses of viewers completely within a work art, rather than being a outside observer that paintings and sculptures call for. MOVE! is another exhibit that brought a new way of interpreting a gallery space. This 400 meter interactive art installation uses the architectural framework from a previous exhibition that featured Agnes Slott-Møller and remakes the space into something different. MOVE! is a statement of ARos's exhibition practices which strives to emphasize the architectural framework embracing the art and to create spaces that bring visitors to a new place. I was also excited to see Do Ho Suh's colorful, translucent Korridor , because I remember viewing a his works in an exhibit at the Frist Museum in Nashville that one of my classmates actually helped curate. Finally, I had to see the rainbow room at the top of the museum and it was a also great view of the city.
ARos Staircase
ARos
Do Ho Suh Korridor
Skanderborg:
We stayed Friday night in the coziest hostel in Skanderborg. All of the rooms were tiny cabins that sat near the water where people could kayak on better weather days. Our room had a lofted area with 2 beds and a view of the water. I decided against staying on the lofted area, since I had the traumatizing experience of falling from a loft and breaking my leg when I was 5 years old. At night we had a bonfire and roasted traditional Danish Snobrød (bread on a stick) instead of s'mores. The next morning we started the day at the Skanderup Kirke then drove 40 minutes to the Henning Larsen Wave Building and Olafur Eliasson and Sebastian Behmann's Fjordenhus. The Wave apartment building sits on the edge of the water and can be clearly viewed from the cars passing the bridge. The Fjordenhus' incorporation of circular design in space, furniture, and structure was a cool building to end our Western Denmark Tour with.
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Fjordenhus
Henning Larsen Wave Building