Under the title Urban Nature,
The Museum of Copenhagen zooms in on the role of nature in Copenhagen’s
past and present through two brand new exhibitions and two new museum
gardens. With an entire programme of events, free city walks, guided
tours and educational activities, the museum aims to make an active
contribution to debates on how we can use nature in the city.
“Today
more than ever, we need to learn how to use nature without destroying
it, something that can’t happen as long as we keep thinking of nature
and culture as opposites. With Urban Nature, The Museum of
Copenhagen wants to contribute to the understanding of the city as a
large ecosystem, and to our shared respect for the diversity,
vulnerability and power of nature. With its new exhibitions and gardens,
the museum explores the significance of strengthening, protecting and
integrating nature in city development, life and identity, and
emphasises the importance of each individual city dweller’s personal and
pleasurable interaction with urban nature,” says museum director Jette
Sandahl.
Urban nature exhibitions, gardens and events Copenhagen
is full of parks, green backyards and city gardens that we all use in
different ways to relax and grow things, or as building blocks in city
infrastructure. All of this is in focus in the exhibition Urban Nature,
which takes visitors through the past and present of the city. The
exhibition gathers exhibits from the museum’s collections, and presents
images and stories from Copenhagen alongside examples from other cities
in the world.
The
exhibition explores urban nature from three perspectives, all of which
emphasise the value nature adds to city life in different ways. The
first section of the exhibition focuses on allotments and urban gardens
in Copenhagen, and the supply of fresh produce to the city. Culture,
recreation and an active outdoor life form the core of the second
perspective, which also explores the influence of nature on health and
quality of city life. The last part of the exhibition zooms in on the
social and environmental challenges city development has faced, and how
nature can be used as a solution and source of inspiration.
The
exhibition has been developed in dialogue with Kasper Guldager (GXN),
Jonas Maria Schul (Schul Landscape Architects) and the urban farmer
Signe Voltelen. The exhibition is designed by GXN and produced by Kuubo.
The Dream of a CityThe Dream of a City is
an exhibition created by the Danish TV presenter Shane Brox, who
invites children and adults to shape the city of the future using their
dreams and imagination. In the exhibition, visitors can build the houses
of the future, environmentally friendly skyscrapers, city kitchen
gardens, and much more using thousands of pieces of Lego. Buildings from
the museum’s model city, archaeological finds and toys from the
museum’s collections connect the past and the present in Shane Brox’s
unique universe.
Two New Museum GardensNew
gardens are now growing in front of and behind the museum. The garden
in the museum forecourt is made up of classical elements of Copenhagen,
with pedestrian crossings and granite paving combined with trees, lawns
and raised garden beds. The garden is being planted and grown by pupils
from several local schools, and has been designed by Schul Landscape
Architects.
The
museum garden continues further up the street, where a telephone box
from 1896 on Absalonsgade has been transformed into a greenhouse full of
plants. The greenhouse has been developed by the urban farmer Signe
Voltelen, and during the summer will be looked after by local schools
and day-care centres.
The
back garden of the museum is the creation of the Chicago artist Barbara
Cooper. She designed the garden after spending two months in
Copenhagen, during which she studied the city’s gardens, archaeological
finds at the museum, and the cultivated landscape surrounding it – from
farming land, to recreational areas and military complexes. The garden,
which she has called Intersections, is a sculpture representing
the meeting between nature and culture and negotiations between the
two. All the gardening has been done by the landscape gardener Anders
Matthiessen Aps.
EventsTo
accompany the exhibition and new gardens, the museum is hosting guided
tours, city walks and a whole programme of events throughout 2014.
Keeping a strong Museum of Copenhagen tradition alive, there are free
summer city walks, and every weekend there are free guided tours of the
museum’s exhibitions and gardens. You can also follow the special
children’s urban nature trail through the exhibitions.
Urban Nature is part of Sharing Copenhagen, Copenhagen Green Capital 2014.