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The new Playhouse - Skuespilhuset. Copenhagen. Denmark. The impressive new Playhouse  - in Danish: Skuespilhuset -  at the Copenhagen old harbor front, opened February 16 2008. The Playhouse holds about 1000 seats, parted between 3 stages, where the biggest one - the Main Stage - have 650 seats. The building was designed by the architects Boje Lundgaard and Lene Tranbjerg.

The design of the building underlines its proximity to the water and the harbor by the fact that 40% of the building is placed out in the water. This impression is further enhanced by the broad promenade in front of the building, which is constructed in oak planks and big “Venezian” pillars so it is hanging out over the water. With the new Playhouse the Royal Theater now consist of 3 big performing art houses: The Old Royal Theater in the inner city, which will be the playground for the Royal Ballet, the Opera House, for the Opera and the Playhouse as the stage for play-acting. All of these performing arts were before concentrated at the old Royal Theater building.

The new Playhouse (left) and in the background the Opera on the other side of the canal (right). The seperation in 3 house was a product of a 7 years long rather heated discussion and a drama by itself: Either to continoue uniting capabilities and competencies in an improved Royal Theater building at Kongens Nytorv, or to split the arts up in so many buildings. But the debaters where surprisingly by-passed from another side when Mr Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller in year 2000 decided to give the nation a rather expensive gift: A new Opera House. Now the splitting was inevitable - and is today generally considered positive. The price for the 20.000 M2 new Playhouse was around 120 mio Euro's. Big Brother on the other side of harbor canal, the stunning 41.000 M2 square meter Opera House, opened 3 year before in January 2005 and the cost was about 330 mio Euro's.

Venezian poles carries about 40% of the building and the huge gangway, which is a popular promenade for locals and tourists.

Night shot.

Night shot - taken from across the canal.

Interior. On the ground floor is a small cafe.

Interior. In the canal a public water bus is passing. Its station is just a few meters behind the Playhouse and next stop is the 2 minutes ride to the Opera.

Interior. The interior is dominated by dark and grey colors, most prominent is the special handmade bricks, which covers the house both inside and outside.

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One of the most striking things with the new Playhouse is its brickwork, which both in terms of colors and size departs from the traditional. The bricks are specially designed for this particular building.  They are longer and issued in two sizes: 35 and 53 cm, but only 3,5 cm thick. The horizontal joints between the bricks are pulled back, compared to the vertical joints. This and the long, narrow brick size enhange the horizontal impression of the building. The overall grey dark-brown breaks with a wealth of moss-like extracts in grey-yellow and green tones, which plays together with the 3 types of green colors of the upper glass façade and the soon to come verdigris of the copper tower above the scene. This color play is the result of the baking process. The bricks – which are made of English clay - have been baked in a very high temperature of 1100 C. However, this also have a very practical advantage: It means that they practically does not absorb water. This is an obvious advantage as the lower part of the brickwork stands deep in the salty canal water. However, this meant that a new type of mortar necessarely had to be developed in order for the bricks to bind together. 240.000 bricks went into the building – all hand-crafted.

The gangway is made of heavy oak planks where the fastening holes are precisely corcked.