The last day was a mixture of visits about accessibility and sensory experience. We also had the chance to have a meeting with force4 architect, the one who designed the DH headquarter seen on the first day.
A big insight that we always will remember from this meeting is that accessibility is just another layer like light, contrast, program, materiality and many others for making good architecture. Accessibility is not something that overrides all the settings of architecture design. It is just another setting that should work with the rest.
Israels plads by Cobe + Sweco architects
The Israels Plads Square is a central plaza designed by Sweco Architects + COBE in 2014. It is located in the area between Nørreport station and The Lakes. Ørstedsparken is a green oasis next to the neighbouring school. We can find generous lowered areas for ball games, and play is designed in rounded formations.
The accessibility for blind people has been criticised by the organisation of the blind. The tactile lines do not follow a logic pad that facilitates the mobilisation, in the case of the elements that substitute the tactile lines, they do not comply with the minimum height and are they difficult to be guided with the cane.
Blind people need to be trained by a guide to understand the space of the square and be able to move around it.
The square is on an underground parking lot, and to be able to plant the trees the ground has been raised, as a result of this, a series of entrances around the plaza was created, facilitating the access to wheelchairs users.
We have observed that the square has reasonably extensive use and with people of different ages, due to the two schools that are located near the square, the play areas are quite used by the students.
Not all the spaces in the square are accessible for wheelchairs users or people with reduced mobility because in some cases the slope of the elevations is quite steep.
THORVALDSENS MUSEUM
The Thorvaldsens Museum is located on the small island of Slotsholmen next to Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen, Denmark. It was designed by the architect Michael Gottlieb Bindesbøll and constructed from 1838-48. The museum is dedicated to the art of Danish neoclassicistic sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770–1844), who lived and worked in Rome for most of his life (1796–1838) until he returned in 1838 to his native CopenÂhagen as a world-famous artist.
The architect of the museum created a colourful setting for Thorvaldsen’s art, inspired by the patterns and the colours found in the excavations in the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in Italy among other places.
The museum has a construction of the last century where accesses are not designed for people with disabilities, and the protected buildings do not have the permission to modify the entrances and interiors, what make it difficult for wheelchair users or people with reduced mobility access.
When the light floods in from the museum’s high, studio-like windows, it creates a variety of moods for the sculptures and the many colours of the architecture, depending on the time of day or the season when you visit the museum. It's creates a different atmosphere and special feeling for each different visitors.
The benches in the small rooms serve to people to enjoy the atmosphere or take a rest. The same black colour used in benches make difficult for low visual impairs to find them.
The corridor to access the toilet has a long distance from the entrance until the end of the corridors, and there is not providing benches where people with reduced mobility can take a rest.
The building is strongly inspired by antique Greek architecture and built around an inner courtyard where the artist is buried.
THE JEWISH MUSEUM, by Liebeskind
The Danish Jewish Museum is located in one of the oldest parts of Copenhagen in an old boathouse. Designed by Libeskind studio, it was completed in 2003 two years after the Jewish Museum of Berlin by the same architect. This museum is inhabited by the intricated and complicated history of the Jewish community in the Danish country.
Libeskind came with a deconstructivist proposal that challenged our senses and our habits regarding Museum. He intended to tell the history of this community through space. He removed the traditional chronologic order that you can find in other museums, to eventually make you feel that this community has a history but most importantly there are still there.
The architect shifted the space to lose your sense in it and maybe to tell how this community has grown in Copenhagen. Humanity did not wait for Adolf Hitler to see antisemite act. The Jewish came in Denmark because the king encouraged Jewish immigration to hope for economic growth in the XVIIth century, but not everyone was happy about that.
Anyway, from an architecture point of view, this museum becomes first a spatial experience with some museum artefact in the background. You will be surprised how a small ramp and some sloped walls that surround you can disturb you. Depending on who you are you will react differently. Some are just disturbed for 2 min then it is alright to stay in it. To the other hand, some people get seasick very quickly.
A dialogue also appears when you look up when you see the wood structure intersecting the brick from the old building. It can also be interpreted to show the Jewish community living in a contemporary world with ancient traditions.
KILEN Copenhagen Business School
Kilen is an expansion of a Copenhagen Business School at Frederiksberg by Lundgaard & Tranberg Arkitekter. [4]
The building was built with a wooden facade which allows the possibility to adjust the condition of natural light in the rooms. The entrance is an automatic revolving door not accessible for the wheelchair user to use even though there is a side door it still inconvenient to use because of security reasons, and a wheelchair user needs to call security and wait before able to enter the building. The hallway on the ground level are quite dark, and lack of signage made it difficult where it leads to. This building has no blind guideline. The spiral staircase also has no landing in between except the level itself. Therefore, it made for a stronger user that able to take it to the top floor.
The atrium skylight gives gradient of light but not to the bottom. The stairs without landing. Blind or low vision person could bump their head from the staircase.
Dark corridor. Nice transition sitting landscape area for students.
CISTERNERNE
Cisternerne is currently a museum open to the public and offers contemporary art and installation from different artists. It was a long-forgotten subterranean reservoir build in 1856-1859. It is located in Soendermarken Park, Copenhagen.
The dripstone cave in the city appeared to be a small glass pyramid when seen from Soendermarken Park. The exhibition " It is not the end of the world" by SUPERFLEX is an exhibition to provocative global warming issue by displayed a possibility when humanity failed. The whole exhibition flooded with water including a submerged exact copy of the executive toilets of Bonn headquarters of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) portrait of human consumption and global struggle to deal with damaged humans inflicted.
Experienced when entering began with humidity, cold air, and the darkness until our eyes began to adjust. The exhibition also required us to changed shoes to rubber boots because of the water level (up to 25 cm.), which make it impossible for the wheelchair user to access. After the changing, we entered a darker hall filled with columns and dim light. The echo from steps and conversations could become disturbed for sounds impairment as well as the visual impairment to understand the spaces from the echos, music or become disturbing. Music background also gave a dystopian atmosphere like Vangelis' soundtrack. On the other hand for visitors without those issues could be an enjoyable unique experience.
The atmospheric vapor condenses inside.
Entrance to changing shoes to rubber boots. After passing this area our eyes need to adjust to the darkness.
Low light condition filled with water, echo and music background.
Citation:
[1] Plan retrieved from cobe.dk accessible on http://www.cobe.dk/project/israels-plads-0#3347
[2] Plan retrieved from multimediakontoret.dk accessible on https://www.multimediakontoret.dk/programmer/arkitektur/Empire/I1_002_bill03.htm
[3] Plan retrieved from inexhibit.com accessible https://www.inexhibit.com/mymuseum/danish-jewish-museum-copenhagen-daniel-libeskind/
[4] Plan and Section retrieved from ltarkitekter.dk accessible on http://www.ltarkitekter.dk/cbs-kilen