Every nook and cranny

In a city like Copenhagen the people seem very adapt at using every nook and cranny to find a place to relax, to reflect, to read a book or just to get some sun. This place under the Metropolis building in the South Harbour District is perfect for all of that.

Time for a dip

As summer seems to hit Copenhagen this weekend with temperatures of up to 30C, this might be one of the more popular places. It's one of the harbour baths in Copenhagen Harbour that have sprung up during the last 5 years or so. Not too many years ago it would have been impossible to swim in the harbour unless you really wanted to catch more than a cold, but recently the water quality has improved so much that it's now perfectly OK to take a dip. This one is placed at Sluseholmen in the South Harbour district with the Metropolis building in the background.

Going Retro III

The third of my retro photos made by the Hipstamatic app on my iPhone is of the Metropolis building in the newly developed area of Sluseholmen in Copenhagen.

A U-boat on dry land

Walking on Teglholmen to take photos of my modern building theme I did a double take; suddenly I saw what looked a lot like a miniature WWII German submarine standing on pallets on dry land. The submarine is called Kraka and was build in 2005 by inventors Peter Madsen and Claus Nørregård, and it's 12 m long and weighs 5300kg. Price: 30.000Euro. They have later designed a larger submarine called Nautilus. At this tip of Teglholmen there is yet room to develop, so it's used as a junkyard and a place to leave half sunken ships and houseboats.



In the background of the second photo you might notice the Metropolis building I've shown in an earlier post.

Isn't Metropolis in USA?

To answer the question in the headline, it might be a city in Illinois, but Copenhagen has a building called Metropolis. This one is named, not after the city of Superman, but the movie Metropolis from 1927 by Fritz Lang. A very futuristic looking building this 40 m high block of apartments is located on its own little peninsula in the old harbour area of Sluseholmen in the South of Copenhagen.

This blue fantasy houses 81 apartments with the penthouse apartments being the largest with 214 sq. meters. Originally it was planned to be 60 m high but a nearby power plant got in the way of this plan. The designers were afraid that smoke from the chimneys would be a problem for the penthouses and the roof gardens if the wind was "right", so they cut 20 m off the plans, but readied the building so it can be enlarged when the power plant closes down in a few years. it was finished in 2008 and cost a total of 15 million Euros.

The designers, Future Systems from UK, have also designed the Selfridges in Birmingham.

In my eyes this is a building that rise above the rest. Pleasing for the eye, but hard on the bank account!