BIG architects: finger plan to loop city at venice architecture biennale

‘1947-2047: from finger plan to loop city’ by BIG architects at the 2010 venice architecture biennale danish pavilion image © designboom

as part of this year’s venice architecture biennale, bjarke ingels group has developed a film illustrating their proposal for a new metro loop in the industrial, cross-border region of copenhagen’s suburbs. under the question,‘how do we tie two countries together in one metropolitan loop?’, ‘1947-2047: from finger plan to loop city’ looks at the famous urban planning strategy from 1947 and aims to maximize connectivity in the metropolitan region by stringing together a number of highly differentiated urban nodes.

presented at the official danish pavilion, the film was projected on a two-wall corner of the room, utilizing the three-dimensional space to fully present the scheme; a white, bridge-like structure on the floor acted as a volumetric surface to project on, resulting in a series of diagrams that seemed to be constructed and solid for the audience.

the new development model will connect the area around the øresund strait in a sustainable spine of public transport, energy exchange and electric car infrastructure. situated at the base of the original finger plan like a bracelet on the hand, the loop will combine new programs with the metro stations, becoming a vein of true urbanity running through the suburbs.

projection of the film at the danish pavilion image © designboom

(when the designboom team was down in venice for the event, we had a chance to see the film. the following clip is a snippet of the project in low quality–the speech bubbles are unreadable–as it was originally taken for note-taking purposes. we will be posting the full, original clip when BIG architects hopefully releases it soon!)

a part of ‘1947-2047: from finger plan to loop city’

diagrammatic overview of the plan courtesy danish architecture centre

diagrams showing the planned light rail proposal courtesy danish architecture centre new plan linking the urban nodes courtesy danish architecture centrethe videos below cover the history of the finger plan as well as the aims and changes that the new metro loop will bring to the area.

part 1 of ‘loop city’ courtesy danish architecture centre

part 2 of ‘loop city’ courtesy danish architecture centre

showing the rendering of the upgraded light rail image © designboom image © designboom image © designboom bjarke ingels at the danish pavilion portrait © designboom

presentation movie credits: movie: BIG, kollision, CAVI collaborators: teis draiby, glessner group model: arkitekturministeriet

loop city project credits: architect: BIG partners-in-charge: bjarke ingels, andreas klok pedersen project leader: søren martinussen team: daniel kidd, kuba snopek, daniel selensky, armor gutierrez rivas, riccardo mariano collaborators: red associates, tom nielsen, arup

danish pavilion credits:

commissioner: kent martinussen curators: jan d. geipel and tine vindfeld sponspored by: the danish ministry of culture, realdania, the danish arts foundation, CPH city & port development, carlsberg, copenhagen x exhibition design: ali tabatabai, WEM3 production: ulrik bliss graphic design: naja tolsing editor copenhagen x: eva ørum coordination in venice: troels bruun and daniela murgia