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.
