Designed To Stand Out

This year, Copenhagen was named UNESCO's World Capital of Architecture. Though I have been to Copenhagen several times, I couldn't resist taking yet another trip to the city to witness the architecture of this warm and welcoming city with fresh eyes.

What's the best way a city can welcome a visitor? By offering some delicious bread. While I had plans to walk around, I started my day at Juno, a bakery opened by an ex-Noma chef. When I reached there, I found a long queue outside waiting to get their hands on Juno's famed croissants. When my turn came, I settled for a seeded sourdough roll and a small slice of cake paired with coffee from another popular coffee shop, Prolog, nearby.

Appropriately caffeinated and satiated after a delicious breakfast, I was ready to explore more. When walking around Copenhagen, especially in summer, one of the most noticeable sights is the city's outdoor spaces, which seem to have multiplied since Covid-19. The relaxed atmosphere of these open cafés are very much part of the architectural fabric of the city. I walked along the harbour and came across several seaside spots where locals sipped wine and took off in between for cold water dips in the sea.

I walked through the seaside pathway and inner labyrinthine lanes to reach the Danish Design Museum, which reopened last year after a two-year renovation.

The museum is housed in a beautiful building from 1757 in Copenhagen's historic Frederiksstaden district. The museum was designed in the 1920s by the great Danish designer Kaare Klint and now houses a wide-ranging exhibition, including works by another Danish great, Arne Jacobson.

Take, for example, the Opera House, the home of the Royal Danish Opera. The limestone building, situated prominently at the harbourside, was supposed to serve as a legacy for Arnold Møller, the former CEO of Maersk, who sponsored the project.

Given the urgency from Møller's end, it was constructed over only four years. The cost of that haste was significant. Not only were there cost overruns, but also the acoustics were terrible. Not to forget the design of the building itself, which is compared sometimes to a toaster and sometimes to an alien mother ship.

Møller was so appalled that, eventually, he wrote a book to wipe his hands off the whole disaster of the Opera House's confused structure. Even today, the decade-old Opera House dots the cityscape and is still regarded as controversial.

My walk through the city was reaching an end. The sun was still out, and I sat at an outdoor café with a drink. To my far right, I saw the Maersk headquarters, while in front, the historic Amalienborg Palace punctuated the horizon. Copenhagen once again didn't fail to surprise me with its ingenuity.