TOPAZ

Alfred Hitchcock, 1969

DEN PERMANENTE BUILDING

OLE FALKENTORP AND POVL BAUMANN

1931

Vesterport on Vesterbrogade in Copenhagen, close to the central railway station, was designed by Ole Falkentorp and Povl Baumann and was completed in 1931. It is surely the first truly modern building in the city but if anyone notices it today then it is probably for the striking green colour of its copper cladding which, with patina, has turned a sharp but acid-pale tone. When new, before the copper changed colour, the building was known as the penny. 

It was the first steel-framed building in Copenhagen with reinforced concrete floors and was built as an office building. The principle tenant was an English insurance company but the open-floor construction meant that it could be subdivided with non-structural partition walls depending on the requirements of any tenants. It is not just the method of construction but the scale of the block with its flat roof line and the grid-like division of the facades with continuous lines of windows above panels of cladding that is distinctly modern.

Vesterport fills a complete city block - although there is a large service courtyard - and at street level there were shops so, again in a modern way, this was very much a commercial building and it was in what was then a new and growing commercial area of the city. 

The building has an important place in design history for another reason ... a significant and influential design gallery and furniture shop, Den Permanente, opened here in 1931 but closed in the 1980s

http://danishdesignreview.com/blog/2016/12/18/early-modern-vesterport-vesterbrogade-copenhagen

 EMBASSY OF THE UNITED STATES IN  COPENHAGEN

RALPH RAPSON AND JOHN VAN DER MEULEN

1954

Dag Hammarskjölds Allé 24 
København Ø, 2100

Designed by architects Ralph Rapson and John van der Meulen, the Embassy of the United States in Copenhagen was completed and opened in May 1954. Rapson, who was 37 when given the commission, had studied architecture during the 1930s at a time when the architectural ideals of the Bauhaus and Le Corbusier were potent. This influence can be seen in the embassy’s planar facades, glass and metal grid, and piloti. The most innovative piece of the Copenhagen embassy is in the way in which the architecture dealt with the separation of public and private spaces. Rapson was very careful to maintain a separation between private offices and public spaces without creating a stratified experience to visitors. This is executed by placing offices on the second and third floors as well as to the rear of the public spaces. Furthermore, the singular main entrance and human scale of the project help maintain a sense of accessibility.

http://www.docomomo-us.org/register/us-embassy-copenhagen-denmark