The Circle Bridge

Copenhagen has a new wonderful pedestrian bridge, 'Cirkelbroen' - or the Circle Bridge. It opened last week and has been on it's way for years, but it was certainly worth the wait. 

It was designed by Olafur Eliasson, mentioned before on this blog in several contexts. He explains how he, when asked to design a pedestrian bridge, immediately dismissed the 'straight line from A to B' style, but made it an exploration of meandering, walking slowly. He made it a pleasant room in it self, a place to stop and take in the view.

I think the result is just beautiful. I love the tall ship references and the red railing, and it looks stunning from all angles. I sailed under it a few days before the official opening, and it even looks great from underneath!

The Bridge connects two points in the busy Copenhagen harbour, and needs to be able to let ships through, and does so in a most unusual manner: it pivots! 

You can see a short time lapse here, that shows the final construction work, and in the end of it, you see how the bridge actually works. 

See map for location. 

And lots of more info here.

(all images here are by Anders Sune Berg, copyright Studio Olafur Eliasson)

Visiting ARoS part three - Your Rainbow Panorama

As I mentioned the other day, I had to cover Your Rainbow Panorama in a separate post, mainly because it looks so gorgeous that you take a thousand pictures, and then a few just doesn't do it. It is a surprisingly elegant and minimalist structure, and a quite vertiginous experience to walk around in the dizzying, psychedelic color cloud, where the fantastic view of the city gets this eerie and unreal quality, because of the intense color filter you see it through. 

The roof terrace under the panorama walkway is a great place to hang out as well, and the whole thing is basically a do-not-miss must, if you go to Aarhus. I will not attempt to interpret Olafur Eliasson's artistic intention here, but the whole building is said to be a paraphrase of Dante's Divine Comedy, and the panorama is supposed to be the Paradiso. I think?

Here we are, perhaps in Paradise. The weather was great, that's for sure.

Olafur Eliassons Riverbed at Louisiana

When you sign up for a huge Olafur Eliasson show you have to be willing to go that extra mile - you know, perhaps turn the building upside down on its head or install wall to wall waterworks / fog machines / deepfreeze elements, or something of that nature. And wow, did they out-install themselves up at Louisiana this time. To such a degree, that you hardly recognize the part of the museum where his massive Riverbed installation is - well, installed.

Tons and tons of Icelandic stone is forming a naturalistic and sloping landscape, intersected by a small bubbling brook (hardly a river, but that's fair enough). To anyone with prior knowledge of these particular rooms, the whole setting is wonderfully confusing, and the place is almost irrecognizable. You see Louisianas delicate white brick walls and blonde wood - but otherwise the place is transformed. The experience is big, dirty, noisy, it smells of dust and wet cement, but the sound of the streaming water is underneath it all, as a little cheerful tune.  

We saw it in natural daylight - but I really wonder how it looks in the evening. Maybe I have to go check? Anyway, the filtered, dull light works well with the scenario. And it is anything but monochrome.

It's a fun exhibition to visit with children - and I recommend you put on old jeans and worn trainers. It's seriously dusty! You are forced to walk in really wobbly terrain, and bend and sometimes almost crawl in the dirt. As I have written before, I like it a lot when art and architecture relate. This is definitely one relation you can feel, hear and smell. Architecture is a very sophisticated art form, if you ask me (and yes, it is art) - but sometimes it takes a visual, conceptual artist to show us the energy of architectural space. Olafur Eliasson is so great at that.

As usual, there have been critics saying that the show isn't edgy or contemporary enough - but I don't think they realize just how discussion-provoking it is - to most people - to fill an elegant modern art temple, such as this, with filthy rubble, basically. And in such amounts! There is something there, that's for sure. Go climb it yourself, if you have the chance.

You can watch films about his work, as well - they look interesting, but we didn't see them - and you can see a room full of his conceptual / experimental models of this and that. They are great fun to study for an origami / papercrafting nut like me, but, for some unexplained reason, bathed in this sick yellow light. I wonder why?

In the end, you get to see my son and myself - and see the two very different modes in which we experienced the Rivedbed. Thanks for the gif-pics, Anne-Marie!

Welcome back sun, and welcome to a little girl

It is winter solstice today, and which day could be better to have as your first day in the world?

My little niece was born last night (so no more waiting - and an explanation for yesterdays slightly cryptic post), and I welcome both her and the sun, who will be making a comeback of sorts, every day from now on, and until midsummer! And she was not even supposed to be born now, she was a little handful of days early, but maybe she was impatient or maybe she just insisted on becoming a saggitarius!

Winter solstice is, in many ways, the real christmas day to me - a tiny glimpse of perfect balance between darkness and light, before the sun takes over again (correction: I just knew something was wrong, when I wrote this: and of course it is - I got the equinox and the solstice mixed up in my head, so not balance, of course - but just the darkest it gets!)

I want to celebrate the winter solstice with Little Sun - this wonderful piece of gadgetry, symbolism, art and innovative, charitable thinking in one yellow starburst.

The Little Sun was invented by world famous artist Olafur Eliasson and engineer Frederik Ottesen, and it is a small solar powered high quality LED-lamp, sold as a fund raising (and quite practical - 'a work of art that works in life') objet d'art in our corner of the world, and sold for a very reasonable price by local Little Sun businesses in those areas of the world where electricity is not the self evident service it is around here.

Having access to dependable, cheap (in this case practically free) lighting makes a major difference in life. It enables you to lengthen the productive hours of the day - for homework, for thinking, for socializing. It is hard for most of us to imagine the impact it has on daily routines, if you cannot even depend on a bit of light.

I spent some time in Addis Abeba myself, where power blackouts are an annoying daily phenomenon, and where cheap solar power and LED technology has meant a truly great difference to the millions of inhabitants in this vast city. 

I am neither a sociologist nor a politician, but I have no doubt that this is an example of the many little ways that simple, low tech technology can and will change the world, long term.

I love how happy, simple and optimistically appealing this little lamp looks. You should buy one - now!

Buy it directly from the Little Sun webshop, or find lists of local retailers.

Danes can shop and support a special Little Sun Uganda charity project here

This blog has a number of american readers, and should you by chance be anywhere near Venice, Los Angeles, I have this special recommendation; buy it from the supercool Danish art gallery / design pop up shop HURRA! They also have a webshop, that carry Little Sun (and a lot of other lovely things), and I think today is their last chance for US holiday shipping. Go shop!

Last, I will link to a beautiful video, from the Sustania Award show in Copenhagen, earlier this year.
See the video here!