A nation that has produced architects from Arne Jacobsen to Bjarke Ingels deserves a museum to match, and the Danish Architecture Center, known to all as DAC, occupies the BLOX building on the Copenhagen harbour front. Designed by Rotterdam-based OMA and opened in 2018, the centre is itself a piece of contemporary architecture worth a visit in its own right. The centre core role is to present Danish architecture, urbanism and design to a broad public, both Danish and visiting, through changing exhibitions that explore topics from sustainable cities and housing to the careers of individual architects and the planning challenges facing growing capitals. Models, films, drawings and interactive displays carry the ideas across. Beyond the exhibitions, the building houses architectural offices, a fitness centre, a cafe and a children play area, knitting the centre into the everyday life of the harbour and demonstrating in practice the kind of mixed-use thinking that Danish architects have long championed. A bookshop is well stocked with titles for the curious. The BLOX building itself, with its stacked blocks of grey-green glass and a pedestrian bridge slung from its base, divided opinion when it opened, some loving its bold geometry and others mourning the loss of the older buildings on the site. Either way, it has become a recognisable part of the harbour profile. Visitors can climb to a roof terrace for a view back over the harbour, and walking tours led by DAC guides take small groups out into the city to look at significant new buildings and neighbourhoods, treating Copenhagen itself as an extended exhibit. For anyone with an interest in modern architecture, the centre offers a thoughtful, accessible introduction to a country that has had an outsized influence on the discipline, paired with the chance to see contemporary Danish design at work in the building all around them. Special exhibitions have ranged from a retrospective of the work of Bjarke Ingels Group to surveys of sustainable timber construction, social housing and the future of cycling infrastructure in cities. The centre also runs an active publishing arm, putting out books on Danish and Nordic architecture that find their way into design libraries around the world. School visits and workshops introduce younger Danes to architectural ideas, and the open layout of the BLOX building, with its mixed tenants, gives the place a busy, working-day feel that few traditional museums share, blurring the line between attraction and active part of the harbour cityscape.

Type: Tourist Attraction

Address: Bryghusgade 10, Copenhagen, Denmark

Website: https://dac.dk

Opening Date: 06/05/2018