Strategy / Proposal for the reuse of Gethsemane Church and Litauens Plads square in Copenhagen.

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With Gottlieb Paludan Architects and Kragh & Berglund Landscape Architects and Urban Designers, and Emil Krøyer. Won a purchase.

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Trends in globalised cities around the world

Urban planners have identified a number of trends in the world's globalised cities. As part of the ‘individual project’, the liberalisation of markets and the overall force of globalisation, cities are becoming more and more similar. Fear and security are becoming more and more important, just as the internet and technology are when we plan and shape cities.
We increasingly see cities that, for better or worse, by necessity or desire, are characterised by surveillance, hyperreality, master plans, market concentrations and international connections such as shops and laws.

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Around Lithuanian Square, it's no different. But still. Because Vesterbro, like so many small pockets in the world's big cities, is a neighbourhood where proximity and ‘the local’ play a major role in its cohesion and attractiveness. This is where differences live side by side in respect and harmony. And it is symptomatic of Vesterbro that the district does not have the same focus on other cultures' behaviour as problems. Sidegaden/Settlement with Erik Clausen and his son's facade painting, the health food, Hva' Så and Café Sonja and all the other good things that are different, testify to a neighbourhood that is moving in a more “present” direction. Vesterbro is largely characterised by non-chain stores where we can meet the initiator behind the counter.

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When we look at and feel Vesterbro, we see a desire and work to preserve or ‘water’ ideas such as community, openness, tolerance, love, presence, physical presence and good neighbourliness.

It is against this background that we have created our programme for Gethsemane Church and Litauens Plads.

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How does the city church become ‘every man's house’?

Gethsemane Church is a Christian house and our cultural heritage and values are basically Christian. However, Vesterbro has a mixed population with all kinds of approaches to life. It's a big challenge to make a Christian church space relevant to them all.

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We believe that Vesterbro itself holds the answer. The common ground we propose is Community - Openness - Tolerance - Love.

These values are Christian, but are present to a large extent in the citizens of Gethsemane parish. With these values as the common ground for the new city church, it can become a public space as a community space.

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The intention

Based on the common values that are the foundation of the project, we include the following content in the city church - 3 inside and 1 outside:
Inside: The Meal Room, the Workshop and the Studio.
Outside: Interaction and movement in the open air.

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The meal room

Today we will cook for 23 of our neighbours. Together with the Hansson family. Our Lise is 4 years old, just like their Telma. And then they cooked in the play kitchen while we made ‘Arnes Bergslagstorsk’ in Swedish. The rest of the month they cook for us 3 times a week. Who can say no to that!

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The meal, and the togetherness around it, embodies all sorts of aspects of community, openness, tolerance and love. Our idea is to unfold all possible aspects of the meal with togetherness:

- Eat-together scheme
- Ethnic dinners - food made by your neighbour
- New trends - Core healthy food, children's nutrition, etc. Learn to make it with your neighbour
- Food experiences - blind restaurant, for company in total darkness, the senses and body take over

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The main activity is an eat-together scheme, which already exists in different ways in the city. The principle is that people sign up to cook for a larger group e.g. once a month in exchange for being served food e.g. 3 times a week. In other words, you get significantly more than you give, that's the attraction. It is based on the need for relief in daily life combined with socialising and community. You eat with your neighbour and expand your network. This is something that families with children especially want, so of course there are facilities for the children to have a good and cosy play with the neighbouring children.

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The workshop

I need my dining table repaired. There's the guy from number 3 making a doll's house with his daughter. It takes several afternoons. And then we start talking. His name is Hans and his daughter Louise, and I borrowed their jigsaw to round the corners. Almin had done that on his coffee table and it looked great.
Here are basic facilities for a little bit of everything that a home and a life requires. This is where we take our projects and use each other to get the job done.

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The studio

The kindergarten has paint-your-circumference on mega large paper. Arne is making his first sculpture. Alhassane is tinkering with something, I ask him what it is. It's the first time I talk to a Muslim. He can mix all colours with great precision. The children need skin-coloured paint and Alhassane asks me to help him make a big batch.

The children's centres can easily use satellite rooms, square metres and space for alternative activities. The neighbourhood's creatives can unfold here and get inspiration from others who are trying their hand at art.

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Conclusion

The idea is to extend the home into the public space, but in the unique form that the city church can offer. The meal, the workshop and the studio can be a catalyst for meeting people from the neighbourhood. The good conversations with those from No. 3 and the children's games with the ‘dangerous boys’ from the red lanes are actually more important than being served new, exciting food three times a week. The neighbour's knowledge of the jigsaw is more important than what I need it for. And it's more important that the inspiration for the sculpture comes from a ‘white’ rather than the book about the world's most important sculptures.

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The needs of the locals - the views of the locals

We've poked our little finger into the local area and talked to different people and institutions - we've mentioned a few of the quotes here. But this should be done in more depth. The Square Guild is an obvious starting point - the many institutions and of course the residents.
The locals should be involved in the specific facilities, functions and activities to ensure ownership. Activities should be built on needs and not trends.

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The ecclesiastical unity in the Vesterbro neighbourhood

The nine different church buildings in Vesterbro are simply connected by a new common denominator: the meal. The aim is that the church space, regardless of location in the city, reinterprets the contact between people and church - and between church and urban space. So the meeting and community around the food becomes both symbolically and concretely the new long-term community church structure in the neighbourhood.​

 

In addition, a new and important architectural layer is added: the local layer. The idea is for this layer to function as a link to the local neighbourhood. In this way, it establishes an original sense of belonging for the neighbourhood's citizens and users to the simple church. As we have illustrated with the solution for Gethsemane Church and the square, it would require a more detailed knowledge of the simple area and its needs before one or more specific activities could be identified that could take place in other urban churches. But 7 preliminary suggestions could be, for example:

1. movement and health, Gethsemane Church
2. Workshop, studio and gallery
3. Urban garden, conservatory and nursery
4. Shop and market
5. Music and Theatre
6. Library, teaching and learning
7. Aquatic centre and spa

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So the goal is ‘both-and churches’, where the church is used for worship and church services and for very localised activities and purposes. In this way, the old church space and its historic community will come into its own in a changing and dynamic neighbourhood without losing its value.​

 

The black square - The local layer

Our focus on the square is relatively simple: to create a unifying asphalt surface where the connection to local experiences for the neighbourhood's residents is cultivated right up to the facade to ensure a daily flow of life and diversity. An open and transparent flow on the square, in the church and its surroundings will support community, closeness and synergy between people.

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A new cultural hub that can contain a unique diversity of experiences, activities, people, learning and growth layers where presence, health and movement are at the centre. As a classic urban space, it is well-defined and appears as a large, horizontal surface for multifunctional use.

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Through a combination of paving and lighting, a simple, horizontal backdrop is created for countless activities and multiple uses, from daily life between diagonal traffic, marketplace, outdoor dining and fruit stalls to special events, Christmas market, food tasting or for example the starting area for the Copenhagen Marathon.

Our goal is to create an inspiring and varied outdoor and indoor environment that can stimulate the individual user's needs in both active, passive and recreational contexts.

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The green islands _ The Pause

Like a budding green plant breaking through an asphalt surface, a hilly landscape rises carefree from the black tarmac as an independent topographical layer. The Green Islands are family-friendly and relaxed in their design, where existing and new trees and hills create the framework for toddlers' play and informal communication in a wavy green idiom.

The green islands are intended as breaks in the game, places where you can sit in the grass with your picnic basket while the children play or sit on the edge and follow life on the street and the square. An exciting and different social space that stimulates both diversity and variation of vegetation and terrain and provides a sensory and personal experience.
The islands are intended to contribute with new thinking and reflections on how new green communication landscapes and spaces can contribute with formations that result in active local dialogues to vitalise the places.​

 

The white edge - The transition

The different functionalities must be harmonised in such a way that activities support each other and create a coherent community in the square as well as in the church and its surrounding outdoor areas. This is where the chalk-white concrete edges and the transition between the spaces play a crucial role.

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It's on the edge that you sit with the green behind you and enjoy the sun, and it's at the white edge that you experience the space between the ‘hard’ activity surface and the ‘soft’ landscape. The edge is illuminated from below with indirect light and will thus stand out clearly in darker times.

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The network _ multifunction

A grid of possibilities for ‘plug-in nails’ of different functions is laid out across the entire square. This is partly to minimise visual noise in the urban space and partly to give the square's users maximum flexibility. Market stalls, functional lighting columns, playground equipment, etc. can be added to the grid. The only limit is your imagination.

The idea behind the grid is to offer varied play and recreational opportunities for all age groups and both sexes. Both for quiet, relaxing activities and for wild, energetic activities that stimulate daily development both motorically, physically and locally.
The central keywords are learning, imagination, changeability, dynamics, movement, process and user dialogue - all components that can create a completely original sense of belonging to the church, the square and its new functions.

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Car parking

The idea is 2-hour parking during the day with loading and unloading. And in the evening there is full parking for residents at the square. Parking is on the road as today, but is limited to parallel parking facing the square. To future-proof the square, it is proposed to establish an underground car park under the square in the future.

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The church

The Bible contains several stories about meals. Jesus fed the crowd with a single loaf of bread and a single fish. Jesus' last evening with the disciples was a meal that is symbolically repeated at high mass when the congregation shares wine and wafers.

Almost all church services in the Church of Denmark are followed by meals in one form or another: from the Sunday service's church coffee to the church's actual feeding of churchgoers, to celebrations such as baptisms, weddings, confirmations and funerals, where large meals are inevitable.

Finding a different use for a church that can unconventionally yet respectfully complement the usual one, and that can delight, benefit and bring people together, is therefore not as difficult as one might think.

 

 

The idea

In the future, Gethsemane Church will become an eatery and a place of food, where the meal, the cooking and the community that both create are a daily offer to the congregation and all the residents of the neighbourhood. Cooking and eating in any form are activities that naturally lead to community.

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Building description

The facade of the church facing the square is changed by removing the stairs and front door. The square is excavated so that it slopes down towards the crypt. Under the existing red brick façade, the entrance to the crypt will appear as one long glass façade. The old church door will be replaced by a large glass section. From Litauens Plads there is access to the narrow, south-facing courtyard. Here, a wide staircase leads up to the southern nave and new glass doors provide access to the church space.

 

The traditional axis of the church is broken, extending from the square up the main staircase, through the porch and nave to the altar. The entrance to the nave is now through the south façade. To the east, the chancel will continue to be the sacred centre. To the west, the old porch disappears and the main door is replaced by a large window that ensures a strong visual contact with the square.

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The north aisle is used for kitchens, both on the ground floor and on the pulpit, and is screened with glass and light-coloured panels of oak veneer so that cooking can be viewed without noise and disturbance.

Dining takes place in the nave at long tables, under the organ console where the porch used to be and in the south aisle at smaller tables that benefit from the light from the south. On the steps towards the courtyard you can sit with your coffee cup when the weather permits.

 

On the pulpit there are small kitchens with north, except that the choir organ is retained in its current location. The organ at the west end, however, will be removed and a large kitchen will be created in its place. Here, neighbouring schools and institutions can experiment with cooking and there is space for guest chefs or professional tutors to gather a larger group. In the food lab, equipment can be set up for brewing, pressing must, smoking, cooking over a fire, etc.

 

The lower floor of the tower is used for food deliveries, which are fed directly into the kitchen in the north aisle. The next two floors of the tower will be converted into a library with shelving along all walls in a double-height space. The culinary library is accessed from the pulpit floor, where the kitchens are used for teaching and interaction between professional chefs and ordinary users.

 

The crypt will be remodelled so that the toilets are placed under the new staircase on the south facade. The narrow courtyard along the north side of the crypt is excavated and the windows are increased in height to allow as much light as possible into the space. Well-chosen planting and a shimmering water mirror send green light and reflections into the space. The crypt has many uses: workshop, studio, gathering place for rhythm and movement.

Under the chancel, the basement is remodelled to accommodate showers, changing rooms and a staff room for the kitchen staff, with daylight coming in from the inner courtyard.

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The church contains two functions in the same space - a truly sacred and a secular one, living side by side. The sacred is concentrated in the chancel, which will remain four steps above the nave. The pulpit and choir balustrade will be removed and the staircase up from the nave will be replaced. In the chancel, the painting, altar and kneelers will be removed so that the chancel follows the changes in the rest of the church. New church furniture will be designed so that it is still possible to hold a baptismal font, kneel at weddings and communion, and apply earth.

 

Come inside and join us!

Litauens Plads is a lovely mix of city and countryside. There is tarmac and playing fields, but sometimes also green islands with large trees. Someone sits on the white, luminous edge and chats while their friends ride their bikes around and around the island. During the day, the children play that the tarmac is water and the islands are land. The cars that sneak across the square must be pirate ships.

 

As the islands rise, there is also a gorge that leads down. This is in front of the Church of Gethsemane, where the square becomes a winding staircase, a kind of amphitheatre that folds down towards the glass doors of the church crypt. Down in the crypt, the lights are on - tonight, you can see, they are teaching - and behind the large window on the west facade of the church, people are seated in the tall, white room.

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Green plants grow on the gable of the neighbouring house - herbs, fragrant in the semi-darkness - and in the courtyard the leaves of the trees rustle in the evening breeze. There are lights on the steps, and at the far end, some people are sitting and chatting in the light emanating from the church hall.

 

When the glass doors open, the sound of chatter, laughter and clinking cutlery greets you. The room is high and golden lit, people are sitting at tables or picking up food at the counter. Out in the kitchen there is activity. Tonight there's a guest chef who's cooking the dish of the day, a children's menu and an unusual speciality that it turns out everyone wants to try. It smells good in here - it must be lamb tonight!

 

Up on the pulpit, a group of people from a neighbouring residents' association were cooking together before their annual meeting. On the notice board is a printout from Gethsemane's website which says that the large kitchen on the pulpit is used all day Saturday to show how to boil stock and make sauce - it takes forever and that's what makes it fascinating.

 

Out in the tower, the culinary library is quiet, with a few people sitting quietly studying cookery books. From the small tower windows, you can look down over Lithuania Square, where the large trees on the green islands look like giant parasols. Someone is crossing the square. They're probably going in for a bite to eat. ....

 

Accessibility

The existing lift will be rebuilt to also serve the choir and pulpit, providing wheelchair access to all parts of the church except the upper floors of the tower. A toilet for people with reduced mobility is located in the crypt directly adjacent to the lift.

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Parish churches in Vesterbro

The principle of letting the crypt merge with the square while breaking the axis of the church space can be applied in many Danish city churches. The combined use as church and eatery also has general validity. However, there is no need to apply the same principle in more than one place in each of Copenhagen's neighbourhoods - at most. Thus, the linking of the church buildings in Vesterbro City Church is not physically realised through the new use of Gethsemane Church.

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However, Gethsemane Church will be able to play a role for all of Vesterbro's congregations by acting as a gathering place on many of the occasions when a meal follows a church service or when parishioners find that the church space - rather than the other facilities in the neighbourhood - is the right setting for a meal. In the other churches, there are functions that do not need to be prioritised so highly, freeing up time and resources for other tasks, while at the same time making use of a much more targeted offer.

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Materials and colours

The nave is currently dominated by whitewashed walls and vaults as well as dark wooden fixtures and fittings. In this proposal, the white space is retained as a strong and characteristic feature, further enhanced by the transparent glass railings on the pulpits, while the dark wood is replaced by oak in the form of floorboards, oak fixtures and finer surfaces.

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The grey limestone floor of the choir is retained, and the stones in the nave are reused in the rebuilt porch. The staircase in the courtyard is made with wooden steps in the same direction as the church floorboards. This connects inside and outside.

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Acoustics and lighting

The current acoustics of the church room are recognised as very good. The composite space with nave and aisles, vaults and detailed furnishings provides good sound dispersion and a long reverberation time. The characteristic church acoustics are not sought to be changed significantly in this competition proposal, but all structural changes must be assessed in collaboration with an acoustician.

 

The lighting in the church should be able to vary from daylight, of which there is plenty, to a brightly lit, high and pompous space, to dim, golden lighting that emphasises special corners and recesses under the pulpits. The choir lighting should be varied to suit the use, so that, for example, a church service with a blog with a handful of people is experienced as unified and intimate. The lighting principles are determined and planned in collaboration with a professional lighting consultant.

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Technology

The new kitchen function in the north nave requires fairly significant technical installations in the form of electricity, water and ventilation. However, the ceiling heights, the volume of the attic space and the physical conditions in general provide good opportunities for practical and aesthetic installations. The project is characterised by large new openings in the masonry: the doors from the south aisle to the courtyard, the large window that replaces the main door in the west gable and the new entrance to the crypt. In all three cases, however, these are normal interventions without technical difficulties.

 

The economy

Gardening and landscaping work within the church grounds - approx. 2 million
Facade changes - approx. 2 million
Structural changes in the church space - approx. 4 million
Building changes in the crypt - approx. 4 million
Structural changes in the tower - approx. 1 million
Building and furnishing work in choir - approx. 1 million
Changed lift incl. building works - approx. 2 million
Kitchens - approx. 3 million
Fixtures and fittings - approx. 2 million
Consultancy fees - approx. 6 million

In total - 30 million

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