The fleet left in the 1990s and the city got back a set of islands it had not been allowed to walk on. The architects moved into the workshops.
At a glance
Holmen is a group of artificial islands in Copenhagen harbour that served as the principal base of the Danish navy for about three centuries. When the navy moved its main base to Korsør, most of the area was opened to the public in early 1996, and the former naval buildings were given to schools: the architecture school of the Royal Danish Academy has been there since 1996, alongside the Rhythmic Music Conservatory.
Key facts
- Naval base: for about three centuries; one account gives the navy’s period there as 1690 to 1993
- Opened to the public: most of the area in early 1996, after the navy moved its principal base to Korsør
- The architecture school: on Holmen in former naval buildings since 1996
- Also there: the Rhythmic Music Conservatory
- Oldest surviving buildings: the black powder magazines of 1688 and 1690, on the Carls and Wilhems bastions
- Other survivals: the old mast crane of 1748
- Nineteenth-century buildings: by Carl Thorvald Andersen, a carpenter who became the base’s structural engineer and architect
- GPS: 55.6816, 12.6035 · Open in Google Maps
History
Holmen is made ground: islands built in Copenhagen harbour to hold a navy. From about 1690 it was the Danish fleet’s principal base, and for three hundred years it was closed — a walled industrial quarter in the middle of a capital city, with its own magazines, ropewalks, dry docks and workshops, which nobody outside the service saw.
The navy moved its main base to Korsør, and in early 1996 most of Holmen was opened to the public. What was handed over was not empty land but a complete working landscape of three centuries, from powder magazines of the 1680s to twentieth-century sheds.
The buildings went to education. The architecture school of the Royal Danish Academy moved in in 1996, and the Rhythmic Music Conservatory came too. Among the structures now in school use are nineteenth-century buildings by Carl Thorvald Andersen, who had started as a carpenter at the base and became its structural engineer and architect.
What survives
The oldest buildings on Holmen are two black powder magazines of 1688 and 1690, standing on the Carls and Wilhems bastions, and the mast crane of 1748 is still on the quay. These are not the school’s buildings, but they are what makes the campus what it is: a school of architecture that takes its lessons by walking around outside.
What you see
Long low brick and timber ranges along water, laid out for moving timber and rope rather than for people, with wide doors and heavy floors. Converting such buildings for studios is the easiest conversion there is — a naval workshop and an architecture studio want the same thing, which is light and clear span.
This page has no photograph yet
We publish only images we are allowed to publish, and the freely licensed photographs we found of Holmen show ships and the old guard house rather than the school’s own buildings. Our sources do not say which of the naval buildings the architecture school occupies. If you are at the Royal Danish Academy and can tell us — or send a photograph — we will correct the page and credit you as you ask.
Sources & resources
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