roskilde cohousing

On Saturday I had my first Danish co-housing experience! Peder, a good friend of Mikaels, invited me to his parents house in Roskilde. It was the 19th birthday party for their cohousing community "Kaphoj." There they live in a cozy little house clustered around a central building where they share meals together everyday! They are amazingly organized and treat each other like true family, which they nearly are after sharing every meal together for the last 19 years! There are 21 households living altogether, some have just 1 person, others have familys of 4 or five. In the shard facility, some of the older teenagers were occupying the guest bedrooms, so they could fell a little more independent although they aren´t quite ready to move awav from home. The common house had a wonderful basement with washers, dryers, industrial freezer and refridgerator, a pantry that was stocked like a small restaurant with all the best bulk organic foods, and finally a woodshop with a huge variety of tools and materials. On the ground floor was the kitchen and dining room. They fed approximately 40 people every night, so it was a pretty big place with all the cooking utensils you could imagine. They have it organized so that everyone is expected to help cook 2 times a month, and clean up after the meal 3 times a month. The rest of the month you can just show up and be served like you were in a restaurant with all of your best friends and family.

designer danes

When I used to work at the rogue as a waitress, you could always tell who was a designer, architect, or artist. It wasn´t really that hard in the Pearl District of Portland, since most of the people in the neighborhood are in the design industry, but still they stood out from the rest of the customers. Denmark is sort of like a big Pearl District to me. Everyone is so smartly put together: well dressed, witty screenprinted tshirts, bold eyeglasses. Is it possible that everyone is Copenhagen is, in fact, a designer of some sort. I do love my personal stereotype of the danish. Its like a Hans Christian Anderson fairytale world of artists and architects. Smart, creative, happy, and beautiful people who ride around on bikes all day thinking of new ways to light up a room or hang their crafty new kitchen utensils.

waiting for lunch...

Today I am going to eat a real danish lunch buffet. Its hard to find a real danish restaurant here, it seems like everyone just eats pizza. Thats all I have planned. Maybe a visit to christiania. I think tomorrow I will have the chance to visit Roskilde, where a good friend of Mikaels grew up in a co-housing community. I am finding it hard to "study architecture." It is difficult to find specific places, but it is everywhere at the same time. I find that it is not the buildings alone that make Copenhagen such a beautiful place, but the overall attention to detail. Every street has so many layers and textures. Buildings are old and new at the same time. No one can design this sort of diversity in a day, it is a standard of beauty and function that everybody here is born with, then learns to cultivate and support. It is the product of a culture, a public awareness, a unanimous understanding that ambience is never cheap, but worth every effort, and the effort has to be made every time at every step. Its not just a one time deal. I guess the question still remains: at home, can we teach our community to embrace good design? To expect it, pay for it, and to see far enough into the future to realize that we must demand it? Are we too thrifty? Too used to praising our disposable culture? Are we too far gone?

copenhagen museum marathon

Yesterday I began the museum marathon with the Danish Museum of Art and Design. It was quite inspiring. I foun myself most interested in furniture and lighting, especially from the 1950's. Today most of the museums are free of charge, so I tried to start the day with the other design museum, The Danish Design Center, but its only free from 5pm to 9pm (I discover alot of little catches in this "free wednesday" deal throughout the day). So I went the Runde Taarn, a big round tower aka tourist trap, with an excellent view of the city and a really small, but very nice, exhibition hall about halfway up. They had a show on art and industrial design using recycled materials, which was just the sort of thing I was looking for. Next I found the theater museum, which I was looking forward to because I had heard they were featuring a ballet exhibit on August Bournonville, founder of the royal ballet school. It was small, and not very well put together, but the building was a beautiful old small theater, complete with velvet chairs and box seats. There was a big group of 12 year olds that showed up and after 5 minutes of getting bored with the museum they began to put on a very energetic improv ballet show. The museum attendant apologized for all the ruckus as I was leaving, but I didn't have the heart to tell her the kids were the best part. Next I tried the Jewish Museum, it has some very interesting architecture, but it didn't open til 1 (foiled again!). I went back to where my bike was parked and realized there was a museum right there, one I hadn't even intended on visiting, The Thorvaldsen Museum. I just peeked in and found myself surrounded by 100's, maybe a 1000, marble sculptures of god's, goddesses, biblical scenes, and beasts. Not to mention the building had a certain antique charm to it with murals and reliefs lining nearly every surface, and the most exquisite natural lighting. It made for some nice photos. I stopped for a snack break, then pushed on to the National Museum. Of course the best exhibit (Danish WWII photography) was not available on the "free ticket", so I wondered around the historical exhibits, just sort of going through the motions, history has never really been my thing. Next I happened upon the National Art Museum, on accident while I was trying to find the Danske Grafikeres Hus. The building was one of those great big old royal structures, which they added a modern building of glass and white onto the back, leaving the facade of the original building exposed as an interior wall (I don't remember where I ve seen this before, but somewhere on the east coast is a very similar museum.) Anyhow, I loved it. I loved the sculptures, I loved the paintings, I loved the odd film art on the top floor (which I wasn't supposed to see because I had the "free ticket"). It was a very relaxing museum experience compared to the history and archeology. So after 7 museums I am feeling a little tired, but I have a cappucino here in the Danish Design Center cafe and I must see this last exhibit. I hope someone will put me to bed if I fall over.