Refshaleøen's Identity

As you walk amongst the streets of this new city district you feel a unique atmosphere. This place has the urban feel of the Copenhagen you know but with a different identity, it is undoubtedly the Refshaleøen you love. 

You feel the shipbuilding history in the brick, concrete and steel facades of the transformed buildings. Their transformation feels modest and respectful; ports have been opened up and their windows now reveal different interiors, but the new life brought to them is a celebration of the buildings starting a new generation of their life. 

On the other side of the street you recognise that the new buildings are something you know from Copenhagen’s other districts, a courtyard apartment building or row houses with intimate streets, yet their architecture is different. Their design is a translation of the area’s historic buildings, using their rhythms, proportions and grids in a contemporary way. 

The scale of the new buildings are in harmony with their old neighbours and have a relationship in which they seem to  be in conversation with each other about the past and future of their island. At street level the openings at the ports in the older buildings are unique to themselves, creating moments of intrigue about the new life within. Opposite them the new buildings focus on a human scale interaction with enhanced ground floors that compensates for the shipbuilding’s breathtaking scale. 

In between, the streets are at a comfortable Copenhagen width but with changing surfaces that keep the old cobblestones, replace tarmac and reintroduce graphics of the old crane movements. Trees, plants and flowing drainage solutions create a soft street environment in contrast to the old hardness of its industrial past.

These characterful streets create the beginning of this new era of Refshaleøen, ready to host all the life that will take place within them over the next centuries.