Things about Danes before I forget

Danes wait for traffic signals always, if you j-walk you get some nasty scowls

Danes ride bikes in HighHeels

Danish food is the stuff i grew up with, meat and potatos

Christmas lunch=pork roast with carmalized stuff ontop, (my host mom loves that crunchy stuff) and sugary potatos aka brown potatoes

The danes will tolerate anything

No one is obnoxious on mass transit.

Danes do not talk to strangers.

Danes know english

Danish humor can be very dark

Danish humor is full of sarcasm

My host brother loves Euro vision,

My host brother sings in his room with the new Karaoke playstation game

Thank god my host brother Morten goes to bed at 10 every night

The danes like badminton, rowing and football

The danes are probably more closely related in bloodline to the slaves of the vikings

Danes are into functionalism and the modest details

The danes like to wear black

The danish youth wear every more colors than beton has ever seen

The danes ride bikes

Danish mass transit is amazing

The mint frog is danish, the neon sign outside the factory in nyhavn is a historic landmark

Nyhavn is the city of doom, i must get a picture before I leave

Denmark is mostly rainy and flat

Denmark is alot better than upstate new york because of the later

Jeg elsker Kobenhavn

ps. thats danish

An American brthday in Denmark

We made paper sombreros. Played pin the tail on the donkey. Ate tacos and cake. It was amazing, but I think a little confusing for the danes.

Better than a Projector

Jean Tinguely

A Tower

J-Day

The christmass brews have hit the shelf. This is a huge event in Denmark, and almost every company has special new brew. Tuborg one of the larger brewers in Denmark has helped make J-day (short for Jule day, the release date) a huge success. This year they created a mountain of snow in the main square (Rhadhus Plads) for a skiing event and sent a trailer handing out the new batch down stroget (the main pedestrian street of Copenhagen) to anybody around. As far as I can tell Jul mainly means the addition of apple in most beers, but there are some really great new flavors out there. Sure beats just egg nog.

Hillerod in the Fall

Results from my walk as described earlier.
This gorgeous little path actually leads to a gas station. . .

The Second Longest Escalator in the World

This is the second site we visited on our architecture trip through Germany and the Netherlands. The title of this post pretty much is how the trip felt. DIS faculty constantly pushing us forward up through the architecual wonders of the region, some going by too quickily, having us peering over the railing, looking back in vain to fully comprehend their design mysteries. Others of course, could not go by fast enough, like a fart from somewhere ahead when you are stuck on some jampacked holiday hell escaltor in the mall. But I am pretty sure I never felt like that on this trip, except maybe the all-night busride home.

Anyway back to the details, this grand marvel (the longest escalator located in Hong Kong) is located in Essen Germany on an old coal mine. The site, Zeche (http://www.zollverein.de/index.php?f_categoryId=3&f_menu1=3&lang=en ) Zollverein is being turned in to a culture center by the great OMA (http://www.oma.eu/) with components designed by various other architects. The starchitect Rem Koolhaas is responsible for the escalator and these orange glowing stairs that are the movment core in what is to become coal factory turned contemporary art musem. The original spaces of the factory are amazingly well suited for display art. They high cielings and large filmy factory windows create the perfect light. The textures of the factory rooms (I have probably 50 photos of this) are probably going to more interesting than much of the art displayed. Im not dissing contemporary art, its just these spaces have such strong character and history in them. I haven't yet tackled sorting through these texture pictures so you will just have to imagine them. Just combine coal with; rusted metal, bare concrete, glass, gears, you get the idea.

Our tour guide through this site was just as remarkable in himself. Classic designer, Black trench over black blazer over black turtleneck followed by black pants and boots, capped off with combed straight back neck length jet black hair and black top heay rimmed glasses. Part of me feels this dress is much to easy. He was pretty self centered and slightly dissed the design sense of our intro tourguide. I hope i took a picture of this guy, its probably lost in textures for now. Well this guy took us through the red dot museum which is a design award for everything design. Upon entrance you are blown away by this huge cathedral like hall with three story tall coal machines flanking either side. Dead end and center is a bmw or something suspended like a crucifix with its doors hanging open for additional effect. He then gives us a quick tour, tells us this vacuum inspired the macbook and then smokes a cigarette as we head off for lunch.

This is a view from the top of the Factory. That white cube in the distance is our next destination, but right now Morten needs to use the internet and im gonna take a walk to the castle on this brisk autumn day.

La Villette-"Norwegain" Hat-Katie Jones

My Address

Andy Depenbrock
DIS-Danish institute for study abroad
Vestergade 7
DK- 1456 Copenhagen K
Denmark

DEAD ON

Dead-Lines

My current studio project is turning out to look somewhat like this. The picture is a rendering of the Almaty Science Campus in Kazakhstan, and was designed this year by Rem Koolhaass. My prof just e-mailed me this link with the exclamation "Work Hard" after going over what I had drawn up on Tuesday:

http://www.oma.eu/index.php?option=com_projects&view=project&id=448&Itemid=10

I should have decent renderings like this by THIS Tuesday when the project is due. Our crits are scheduled from Wednesday to Friday and then we have a very welcome 3 week study break before we start up classes in November. This weekend is going to be interesting. . . .

Am I

I live about a 15 minute walk from here in an apartment with my host family, Gitte and Morton. Gitte is a type of pedagogue; she deals with learning impaired children and diagnosis there problems. Morton is a very tall and skinny 17 year old. He plays badminton, soccer, horseback ridding, swimming, and he is also a member of a leftist political youth club.
Thus far I have had the pleasure to go to badminton, and horseback riding practice, swim in the community center, and go rowing with Gitte in the morning 3 times before it got too cold.

Export

Today I saw import/export as part of the Copenhagen film festival. It was pretty depressing but very interesting. The movie was about a young (broke) Austrian man and a young (average?) Ukrainian woman who end up in opposite places. There is definitely way more to describe . . .
http://www.copenhagenfilmfestival.dk/Site/ProgramEngine/Programtitel.php?id=2988

The movie had a pretty substaintal impact on me and now I don't want to grow old. As soon as I go imobile someone please pull the plug on the machines that are keeping me alive. The happiest parts of he movie are when the guy, pauli is playing with this pit bull and when a group of cleaning ladies are chillin/luaghing together. There is some connection here that i really enjoy. Anyway crazy, i like it, and the architecture was just as depressing as the film.

Among the Willows

------Balance

Architecture or Bust

This past weekend we went on a study tour to familiarize us with danish design.
So the trip basically worked like this, we went to three major cities
throughout western denmark; Aarhus, Kolding, and Faaborg. Moving by bus we would stop at a place for an hour to an hour and a half,
sketching learning, and taking photos, and then move on to the next
stop which was usually around an hour away. We would do this from
breakfast until dinner getting to around 5 places a day, it was really
intense.
I tried to fill a page with in my moleskin with everyplace we visited,
but got way to worn out missing like 2 pages everyday. I did decent
all around though. (i'll tell you about one thing i did each day)
On the First day we visited this place called Fri og Fro (be free, be
happy) that is a new housing community formed in the 90's. The community allows people to build whatever they want using naturaul materials for the most part etc. Its pretty cool but very disorganized
and i didn't really see a house finished yet but many are in the works. These people are building thier homes with basically no
building experience which is cool. This one young woman got the idea
for her house from a conch shell, (photo's attached) it looks so cool
but i have no clue how she is going to divide up the rooms, which will
probably hurt the overall effect. The speckled stuff you see
sorounding the house are muscle shells which they use to help insulate
the floor, which is sweet. They also use hay for insulation and
seagrass for roofing.
The second day we visited this museum called Trapholt Kunst that had
all of these great chairs by danish designers for the most part. I
thought the museum would have more of a dailouge with the landscape
judging from what i heard from profs but it basicaly was one long
hallway that ran down a hill, a little disapointing.
The third day we went to the Faborg museum where this awesome artist
was exhibiting. His name is Jes Fomsgaard, his paintings are very
architectual and are basically what i wish my diagrams looked like. If
you google him you'll see a few decent images, i attached a pic i
took(probably on a second e-mail). The museum had really bright colored walls and was built right into a bunch of residential buildings. Apparantly the guy who payed for it wanted it around the
corner from his house(he has a huge statue of himself in the second
room, a little ostentacious). There is also a very cool sculpture
called "Yolk of the World" or maybe yoke, anyway i liked it very much.
Then before we went home we had a suprise stop at ancient viking ruins
where they smuggled in a few bottles of schnapps and candles for a
nice end of the trip celebration in one of the houses. This was a nice
cap off to an amazing trip i'll never forget.

A Free Oyster

Well I have been in Denmark for about two weeks now and I must say hannah's picture pretty much sums up my initial experience. It is very different and I have not really had the time to process it all. I guess I will just start with today and then touch upon earlier things when I have the chance.