Henning Larsen · 2005 · Copenhagen
A floating roof on the Copenhagen harbour
Completed in 2005 on the island of Holmen, directly across the harbour from the Amalienborg Palace, the Copenhagen Opera House was designed by Henning Larsen as a gift to the Danish state from the Møller shipping foundation. Its defining feature is an immense flat roof — more than 30 metres deep — cantilevered over a fully glazed foyer, sheltering a lantern-like lobby that glows over the water at night.
Within the maple-and-glass foyer sits the main auditorium, a self-contained volume clad in warm oak and crowned with gold leaf. Precisely aligned on the historic axis between the palace and the Marble Church, the opera house is at once monumental and civic — a piece of royal-scaled urbanism that reshaped Copenhagen's harbourfront.