Team Trev on Tour: RE-THINK

Advertising for the exhibition, showing the superharbour and house express concepts.

As someone stuck overseas, looking at NZ from afar, it is interesting to see the way that the country changes as we slowly continue to figure out exactly who we are in the world: compared to even the australians, we seem to be lagging when it comes to our national identity. Even more to the point, any discussion of such a topic seems to be taking place quietly behind closed doors, lead by academics like the late Micheal King: it seems that this debate has some way to go before it breaks through into the general consciousness.

This little observation didn't just pop into my head as I was walking to the bakery the other day: it was drawn out by the stark contrast with the exhibition I went to yesterday at the Danish Architectural Centre with Dorthe and her brother, Morten, called "Too perfect: Seven New Denmarks". In contrast to what goes on only in academic circles in NZ, here was the debate taking place out in the open, in the form of a public exhibition.

The basic premise of the exhibition was that Denmark, and danish design in particular, has got stuck in the classic Scandanavian Modern architectural movement that is so prevalent here. It appears to be a fair criticism (based on my vast architectural knowledge) - most of the classic stuff in that style was done in the 50's and 60's, and it has slowly since then. The exhibition took seven groups of architects and allowed them to develop new ideas for where the country should go in the future in terms of economic, social and ecological development, and it was absolutely fascinating.

The idea that gripped me the most was the "superharbour" proposal: the starting point was the observation that in Denmark, as in most of the world, the most valuable land in a city is the waterfront, and the centre of town, yet so many of Denmarks ugly industrial harbours are on the waterfront (obviously) in the centre of town. And why does a country of 5 million people need more than one harbour? Why not replace all those ports with one large superharbour, equivalent in capacity to Rotterdam, and position it at the entrance to the baltic, the cross roads for goods from the new eastern european countries, and also for the north-south flow of goods from Scandanavia to central europe. You can then free up that land in the cities, which is worth a ridiculous amount of money (20x times the cost of the harbour). An interesting idea. There were many other similar ideas, ranging from retiring farmland and replacing it with wilderness and small scall greenhouses farming ultra-high-value GMOs for phamecuticals, to the mass production of housing with flying blimps (not as mad as it sounds), to building artifical islands off the coast and renting them as tourist holiday homes. Each idea was quite visionary in its scope, yet at the same time sufficiently realisable to somewhat feasible. I really enjoyed it, and found it fascinating to see such a series of ideas being presented publicly.

It was a beautiful day yesterday in Copenhagen, and we spent the rest of the day cruising around town. First we had lunch in the cafe in architecture centre, with a lovely view along copenhagen harbour - the tourist boats were full of people, and there were plenty of people puttering around in boats, ranging from kayaks to rowboats to large yachts (all with danish flags on them, of course!).

Copenhagen harbour on a sunny day from the Danish Architecture Centre cafe.

Then after that we walked back to Strøget, a large pedestrian area that is the cultural heart of Copenhagen, which was absolutely packed with people enjoying the last of the summer. We stopped at a traditional Konditorei (cake shop), for huge slices of cake and coffee, which both Morten and Dorthe (esp Dorthe!) were very excited about - I have to say the cake was very good, but it certainitly was not the most appropriate training food you could imagine!!!

The Larsens looking very excited about the prospect of cake.....