As I read the profile of architect Bjarke Ingels of BIG in last week’s New Yorker, I pictured the envy it would generate as a substance, like clouds of steam rolling off the page. Ingels is thirty-seven (alarmingly young in architect-years), leads a staff of over 100 in New York and Copenhagen, manages a slate of significant international building projects, and wears hoodies and sneakers convincingly at public appearances. The article focuses on Ingels’ ability to sell projects – to communicate complex spatial and structural ideas in pithy, sexy ways to clients and the media – and the traditional architectural skills (discipline, detail and materiality) he seems to lack.

While Ingel’s outrageous success and preternaturally relaxed style really are enviable, I read the piece cheering him on. He won me over with his bright, bold monograph Yes is More, where he depicts himself as a superhero flying around the world building buildings, which is basically what he does. That book gave a pragmatic, blow-by-blow account of how major buildings get built, not as ideas crystallizing into form, but as earthbound constructions continually battered and reshaped by budgets, schedules, client preferences, public opinion, site conditions, accident and whimsy. There are some less than hagiographic details in the New Yorker piece. (Ingels moves around Manhattan in a black Porsche, and has a comical reputation as a womanizer.) But he’s as clear-eyed about what he wants to do (build buildings) and what he thinks architecture is (building buildings) as a sage. If he succeeds, that is, if he keeps going, which I think he will, he’ll have established a new model for the starchitect – one that’s entirely unshackled from theory and pretension.

September 12, 2012 by Nalina Moses

On my last morning in Copenhagen I saw a young woman with long blond hair, in denim shorts and a fisherman’s sweater, bike slowly and serenely past stalled lanes of morning traffic. It was a perfect image, one that I’ll associate forever with the city and the country. But what image is there of the architecture?

In the same way that I think of red brick for Boston and limestone for Paris, I will think of glazed black ceramic roof tile for Denmark, where it’s used on many small residential buildings. On steep gable roofs the rows interlocking curved tiles, shaped like soda cans sliced in half, make a cool, enigmatic surface. Unlike similar Spanish-style terracotta tiles, the black ones don’t cast intricate shadows – they’re seamless. Against the simple, whitewashed volumes of the homes, both new and old, it’s a strikingly modern look. And when a such a building sits on a flat green lawn, with sunlight glinting off its roof, it’s an image of impossible refinement.

June 22, 2012 by Nalina Moses

Because of the reserves of time and skill invested in them, tapestries are inherently valuable. I’m told that in the Middle Ages they served as an important form of portable wealth. So that if a burgher’s house were on fire, he could take down his tapestries, roll them up, and make a run for it. But why make tapestries now, when we can print large-format images with hallucinogenic clarity?

To honor the Queen Margrethe’s 50th birthday in 1990, some Danes commissioned tapestries to wrap the walls of the Great Hall at Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen, where she receives heads of state. Based on drawings by artist Bjørn Nørgaard, who’s best-known for conceptual pieces and site sculpture, and executed by centuries-old guilds in France, they were woven by a team of thirty craftspeople over ten years and installed in 2001. In stark graphics reminiscent of woodblock prints, these seventeen panels tell the history of Denmark and the world. This panel depicts Margrethe, her consort, and their dogs. (While the Scandinavian countries are committed to socialist policy, they also care a great deal about their monarchs.) The panels have a fine, dense needlepoint-like finish and are rendered in eye-popping colors. While it’s possible to identify each character and scenario within the tapestries, what overwhelms is their dramatic and spatial intensity. Not one square inch of tapestry is left unoccupied; entire worlds are stuffed inside. It’s astounding that a tapestry project this ambitious was undertaken so recently, and that it achieves this level of virtuosity.

June 21, 2012 by Nalina Moses

I’ve visited musuems that are brilliantly constructed and curated, but none whose artworks are as perfectly choreographed – that is, perfectly laid out for display – as the Glyptoteket in Copenhagen. This museum, which specializes in ancient and modern sculpture, is housed in a stately nineteenth-century building organized around a high, planted atrium. (The museum’s collection of modern paintings is housed in a contemporary addition whose entrance is slipped so discretely inside that it’s difficult to find and navigate, all especially frustrating since that collection is so impressive.)

In the main building, each long, high gallery is painted a different strong, sober color, and lit from unobtrusive clerestories. The smaller sculptures are gathered together on tables, and the larger sculptures are grouped together in vignettes, and all seem absolutely correct in their disposition. Each sculpture is placed in just the right spot, facing just the right way, with just the right amount of free space around it. This makes the museum virtually hypnotic to move through. Most memorable is the installation of Rodin’s The Burghers of Calais at the end of one ground floor gallery. Raised a few steps and set off with steely blue walls, the piece is exquisitely framed. The figures, like most of Rodin’s, are scaled just a bit larger than life, so that they’re imposing without being monstrous. The museum serves them magnificently; their power shines through.

June 20, 2012 by Nalina Moses