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the result very successful either. But he was even less delighted at the prospect of
a flower market or an ornamental lake in the Mussel Shell, and most of all he
was terribly annoyed with himself that he had not had a model made to illuminate
the proportion between the square, the surrounding pavements and the Mussel
Shell.
WATER IN THE MUSSEL SHELL
A letter to Martin Nyrop from Arnold Krog,
architect and head designer for
Royal Porcelain Factory, Copenhagen
Dear Martin Nyrop
It has been said frequently enough: Copenhagen City Hall is splendid in arrangement
and dignified and wonderful to look at. With inexhaustible
imagination you have sprinkled your wealth of ideas from vault to spire. Everywhere
inside, one is met with these brilliant ideas that you have drawn from your witty and
clever brain and dressed in the concise and unerring form of your own personal style,
giving great joy to everybody who frequents the building. On entering, one feels happy
and inspired to a festive mood by your pure and sound taste, whose constant rhythms
seem to wrap around the visitor, softening the mind and alleviating the ills of old age.
But on entering the terrace facing the square and looking straight ahead, it seems as
i f all the indoor harmony that has soothed the soul is disrupted. One is back in the
ugly, primitive and uncivilised world. The opposite neighbour, Helmershus, is shouting
at one from far too close, and right in front one is met with a multitude of dead grey
cobble stones. - By the way, do you know of anything as dull as cobble stones not
covered by traffic? They create a depression in the square called the Mussel Shell. To
what point, really? It is confusing for the traffic, both to and past the City Hall, and
strictly speaking - is it beautiful?
Fill it up with water! Then you have solved the problem to everyone’s greater
satisfaction and as simply as when Columbus made the egg stand on end. Can’t you
make Mayor Jensen, just like yonder divine, old Moses, pick up his staff and tap the
granite stone, causing water to spring and thereby filling the Mussel Shell with clear
water, drowning the entire pharaonic army of cobble stones? Just imagine the
shimmering reflection of skies and buildings, of people and pigeons, instead of those
dreadfully dtdl stones. How beautiful it would be in the evening with all the yellow and
green lights playing on the water in sparkling movements, how beautifid with the lit
windows of the City Hall sending their broad reddish gleam across the dark water, and
with the huge street lamps right in front of the building creating a radiant avenue
leading up to the main entrance. Father Absalon in his golden dignity and splendour
would rub his hands in pure joy.
(The magazine »Architekten«, issue 32, 1904)
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