Thursday, October 20, 2016

Neighborhood profile: Nyhavn



Profile: NyhavnNyhavn!!
Nyhavn (“new harbor”) is a canal in Copenhagen lined with brightly colored buildings, lively waterfront restaurants and bars, historic boats and ships along the quays, and many tourists. It is also perhaps the most photographed place in Copenhagen and it’s image has become a widely recognized icon of the city.
The combination of factors that have lead to this place becoming so attractive for photographers and tourists is probably worthy of an in-depth study in itself. One reason its image functions so well as a symbol for Copenhagen may lie in the way this assemblage of buildings, public space, people, and water represent each of the key elements that define Copenhagen.

The buildings serve as the backdrop. What are they like? They stand tightly packed in a row, with similar dimensions, window design and roofing materials. However, their facade treatments vary brilliantly and the floors of each appear to be of different heights and configurations. They are narrow - generally less than 12 meters (40 feet) wide with a few as narrow as 5 meters (16 feet) meaning the eye, or pedestrian, does not have to travel to find a new element to add to the tableau.  
This row of townhouses dates mostly to the late 17th century and early 18th, in the decades following the excavation of the canal and the renaissance expansion of the old city. They were merchant houses, and likely each housed a large family, with servants, perhaps tenants, and ground floor shops and businesses. They each have access to narrow courtyards, hemmed in by wings and back buildings with passageways leading to yet more narrow courtyards and buildings. They combine with adjacent structures to make a seemingly endless number of formations of open and built space with overlapping layers of ownership and privacy contained within a membrane of a lively public face.
Nyhavn block structure - top photograph
shows the bottom edge of the block
T
hese elements: multiple households of different classes under a single roof, public frontage and semi-private courtyards, dense combinations of buildings creating complex block patterns, and the overlapping of residential space with commercial space defined urban housing in the late renaissance and are woven through the structure of the city in the many forms that urban housing has taken on since then.

This report attempts to describe that structure through a profile of different housing types which are common throughout the city. Particular attention will be paid to the density of population supported by each type and by the characteristics of these types which may contribute the urban livability - the idea of urban living with a high quality of life
The report will also feature profiles of neighborhoods or examples of housing types that demonstrate important dynamics that affected the development of housing in Copenhagen, although they themselves are not widespread enough to merit a typology.

Nyhavn is one such neighborhood. Due to multiple city-wide fires throughout the 18th century, it is one of a few surviving instances of the built fabric of late-renaissance Copenhagen. However, it provides us with a useful starting place to begin our analysis.

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