Royal Playhouse

Lundgaard & Tranberg Architects' stunning new theater steals the show along Copenhagen's developing waterfront.

By Victoria Newhouse and Alexander Gorlin, FAIA
This is an excerpt of an article from the February 2009 edition of Architectural Record.

Copenhagen’s new Royal Danish Theater should have played a secondary role to the city’s more prominent Opera House (2005), by Henning Larsen Tegnetsue (HLT), but it has stolen the show. Lundgaard & Tranberg Architects is less familiar internationally than the older Larsen office, and the theater’s program and budget less ambitious than the opera’s, but the playhouse’s monumental massing and its effective contrast between glass and rustic brickwork are showstoppers.

The playhouse is an abstract composition of the basic elements of theater, recombined in a striking and unexpected way. The massive cube of the fly tower floats above the horizontal glass plane of the rehearsal and dressing room level that in turn appears to levitate miraculously above the tall open foyer. These service rooms, often hidden away in airless spaces, are boldly cantilevered out above the water. Recalling in its limpid and etiolated massing Koolhaas’s Kunsthaal in Rotterdam (1992), as well as the ingenious integration of waterfront public spaces of Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s Boston ICA (2006), the dark, copper-clad cube is the Stadtkrone of Copenhagen.

Program

The theater is one of a series of cultural institutions projected for a mixed-use scheme by HLT to redevelop Copenhagen’s run-down harbor area and turn the focus of the city toward the water. A parking lot was to be placed underground and a public space made on the pier, with some smaller buildings on one side. Although the 2002 competition brief for the playhouse called for two stages, a third was added for more flexibility. In addition, there were to be the technical facilities related to these stages, a restaurant, and a café.

Solution

The architects responded with a tripartite composition. A broad oak-deck promenade wraps around three sides of the building and provides access to the glazed foyer with dining facilities. The three theaters — with 650, 250, and 100 seats, respectively — occupy the main masonry volume; and the projecting, upper-level glass box houses the services. The exterior promenade and airy, 492-foot-long, 26-foot-high interior foyer meld into one another with panoramic views of the waterfront — a broad channel extending to the Baltic Sound at the north — and of the historic skyline to the south. Lighting has been handled with special care. Outside, bands of glass-covered lights set in the platform illuminate the parking area below and serve as directional guides. Inside, a forest of long, thin fiber-optic lights hang from the ceiling, recalling the suspension devices (for stairs, for example) that were a favorite of Arne Jacobsen.

Passing from the light-filled public space of the foyer into the main stage, theatergoers plunge into what seems to be a darkened grotto, its staggered walls the same rough, deep brown brick as the exterior. Seating, arranged in a traditional horseshoe with two narrow balconies, provides an intimate environment for a classical and contemporary repertory.

The second, small stage, which can be reconfigured as needed, and the rehearsal rooms are separated from other functions by a long skylight that allows daylight to penetrate the center of the building. This slit in the roof also supplements the ample daylight of the service level, where dressing rooms, a recording studio, the costume workshop, offices, and a library are located. The final and smallest stage is a simple black box.

The glazed top level offers a transition from below equal in drama to the light/dark contrast of the ground level. Flooded in daylight, the largely open space is organized into different areas by exposed steel trusses. The architects take full advantage of views that are even more breathtaking from this elevated position, with inviting stepped nooks for informal meetings dropped from the floor’s peripheries.

The theater is a composite structure; bearing walls support the exterior walls and the large fly tower, with additional columnar supports for the cantilever above. Giant trusses, the full depth of the service floor, extend perpendicular to the waterfront and frame the main theater within. These steel trusses are exposed on the inside, creating dramatic corridor spaces between their diagonal braces. They are also visible on the exterior, as the glass curtain wall is pressed close to their chords.

Commentary

The siting of the Royal Danish Theater, while successful on the harbor side, is problematic in the approach to its entry. The theater essentially turns its back to the historic center of Copenhagen: It takes its bows toward the sweeping water views while ignoring the adjacent urban fabric. Although the intention is to inject the waterfront with a new cultural venue, when one arrives from the main Avenue of Sankt Annae Plads, the theater is virtually invisible. The axis of the street slides right by and into the water. One must turn hard right, up a fairly narrow ramp, to enter. So discreet is the elevated boardwalk that some exiting theatergoers have fallen into the water while looking to find their cars in the parking lot beyond. Guardrails have since been installed in these areas (which, contrary to U.S. standards, are not required along the waterfront in Denmark).

Even more problematic is the side of the theater facing what eventually will be a park but is now a parking lot. It is a blank brick wall with a large garage-type door and a few tiny windows that appear more like a service entry than a secondary entrance into the theater.

Clearly, the Royal Danish Theater is a building of the night, the time when theater comes alive. Then, it is a lantern, glowing from within the grand foyer and especially in the glittering glass slice of the actors’ floor above, the triangles of the truss like a tiara of diamonds hovering over the harbor. From the foyer, the twinkling lights of Copenhagen harbor open up like a great stage, continuing the performance within to the performance without.

As Shakespeare wrote, “All the world’s a stage.” Now, when Hamlet is performed in Denmark, it can appear in a proper modern setting worthy of its prince.

Formal name of project: Royal Playhouse

Location: Copenhagen, Denmark

Gross square footage: 226,000 sq.ft.

Total construction cost: Approximately $90 million

Completion Date: February 2008

Client: Ministry of Culture

Architect:
Lundgaard & Tranberg Architects

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