this one is for you, wen, should you stop by. it is one of my all-time favourite buildings in copenhagen and shows c.f. hansen at his most radical.

the royal palace had burnt down in 1794 and hansen was commisioned to rebuild, reusing foundations, bricks and sometimes entire walls of the palace ruins.

apparently the kind of architect who thrives on limitations, he designed what appears to have been a masterpiece of pure geometry, large unbroken surfaces of grey walls and delicate, classical moldings.

I say "appears to have been" because that palace was lost to fire as well, in 1884. it could have been reconstructed, but hansen's architecture was so unpopular at the time that the idea was soon abandoned. in the end, a heavyhanded neo-baroque bad dream in turd coloured granite replaced it and only the palace church survives to tell us of the splendors that were lost.

...except that the church burnt too, of course, and as late as 1992 when the roof and dome were ignited by fireworks from a passing carnival procession...fires are a copenhagen tradition.

Thumbnail by seier+seier