The Vegas of Denmark

There's a city in the northern part of Denmark called Aalborg where the ladies are fly, the gents are all high-rollers and ballers, the clubs have class, and the hotels make you feel like royalty. It's the Vegas of Denmark.

There's even a famous rap about it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QW1ZFgmOpIM

Ok, so, "the Vegas of Denmark" may be a slight exaggeration my friend Thomas made up when we discovered we were going to Aalborg to help set up an exhibition being put on there by our firm. I had already been working on the exhibition (surprisingly, doing a lot of video production work... poorly, in my humble opinion. Give me a break. I'm no cinematographer. How I got put in charge of all that is beyond me...) for a couple of months, and there are plenty of stories to share about the management and prep for the exhibition, but none of it is very appropriate to share via the internet. Let's just say, I learned a lot about how a firm is run, and how to put on an exhibition via observing what not to do. The exhibition actually turned out surprisingly well, but the production side of things definitely could have gone more smoothly. Feel free to ask me to elaborate if curious. For example, what happened the day after the exhibition opened is a worthwhile story...

Anyway, we're trying to get contracts to build a few things up in Aalborg, so as a very smart PR move, we put together a massive exhibition of some of our more context-based projects (Henning Larsen is very big on being "contextual" rather than building signature architecture. I have my own opinions about that as well...). Most interns were married to the model shop for two months producing huge, new models for all of the projects, while myself and two others (project manager and another intern) found graphic material (info, drawings, renderings, photos, etc...) laid out how the material would be arranged on the walls, filmed video interviews about select projects, etc...

I really would love to go into more detail about my feelings on all of that, and what happened prior to flying to Aalborg, but let's just leave it at : there was enough about the exhibition prep that was hectic that lying to ourselves and saying that Aalborg is the Vegas of Denmark was a wait to sort of cheerlead ourselves out of having a nervous breakdown.

The rest of the saga I will illustrate through photos:

This is the project manager, Marie, looking like a celeb coming off of our posh private jet! Vegas!

This is the program from the Sigfried and Roy show we saw while there. Vegas! (No. It's not an insert found in the car door of our rental car! It's from Sigfried and Roy! Promise!)

The breathtaking lobby of the gorgeous 5 star hotel we stayed at! Top-quality service =waiting only a half hour for the concierge to check in the small group of people who got there ahead of us. Vegas!

World-class entertainment! Three different TV screens, one showing a bizarre soap opera, one showing a church choir, and the middle one showing... reality TV show that resembled Big Brother? Vegas!

The hotel had a color-scheme TO DIE FOR! After being in a city of such muted funerary refinement as Copenhagen, I hadn't seen this much color in ages. I'm thinking that they were perhaps going for a Watermelon theme. Vegas!

This is my posh room. Yes. Bunkbeds. And the bathroom smelled strongly of garlic (and sewage?), perpetually. Vegas!

The view from my room. You can see the Utzon center (which houses the exhibition) and some smoke stacks in the distance, if you look closely.

We took a road trip (the three of us) on the Sunday we first got there, unable to do work (no one works on Sunday!). We drove up to the top point of Denmark, stopping at...

Denmark's Biggest Moving KLIT! Clit? Vandreklit! It means a large grass-covered sand dune, but it's just more fun to use the Danish term. This giant sand dune moves 40? 50? meters a year, covering whatever is in its way. It has even covered a giant church, leaving only the steeple exposed.

This was the first nature I'd seen since being in Denmark.

ooooh! Dramatic! Vegas!

Drove on some roads paved poorly by Nazi German soldiers... what a bumpy ride!

Saw said sand-covered church. Check out this before and after! Before... (see the little illustration for reference)...

After! Incredible! Where did the rest of it disappear to?! It's just like magic! Vegas!

Drove to the most northern tip of Denmark, Skagen. Also the name of the company that made my watch. Fascinating! Now I can remember Skagen fondly (at dusk, and relatively deserted) whenever I check the time.

We set-up shop on Monday at the Utzon Centre. Here is Marie looking particularly stoked, probably due to the massive amount of healthful snacks I brought her from the nearby grocery (working on this exhibition caused me to gain about 10 lbs from chocolate consumption alone. fml.)

On Wednesday, the "boys" arrived. Thomas and Mark (two of my good friends) came to help touch up the models. However, they didn't actually get to touch the models until about an hour before the exhibition opened on Friday. oops! Instead, we all marked out (with tape?) where the different components of the layouts went up on the walls while we waited for the material to be delivered (last minute, of course) from the printer. We conducted a few photo shoots to keep morale up.

Mark thought he was posing for some sort of hip-construction worker's catalogue...

Thomas and me meticulously measuring and marking a wall...

And then turning it into a game of twister...

I looked worried for a little...

While Thomas took a creepy picture of Mark's mustache...

And then our first shipment of boards arrived! And Marie looked like a little kid on Christmas morning! (yes, Christmas morning. This Jew has been influenced by the Christmas town that is Copenhagen. It's getting out of control!)

I was particularly excited about the arrival of some maps I made.

Because the people who were supposed of have done it didn't (or they didn't on-time, at least), we all put on space suits and painted some walls.

Things inevitably digressed into a paint fight. Cue the action sequence...

Thomas struck first...

We grappled furiously for a bit

We laughed and looked silly for a bit

Then I got my revenge...

Thomas ran away because he's a pansy...

I laughed so hard I turned it into a dance...

And then Thomas returned, and meant business...

He struck again!

And then I was sad...

But then we agreed on a truce, and all was good!

We all got back to work... in our spacesuits of course!

Sure, it looks like all we did was have fun, but really we worked our booties off (we were quite literally wearing booties, at least while painting. I apologize for being so cheesy!). I would say that all of the time spent messing around was caught on camera. But despite working nonstop 14-19 hour days, the gallery still looked like this the night before the opening...

Did we finish? How did everything come together, if at all? Get these answers and more tomorrow in the second installment of "The Vegas of Denmark"!

-Intermission-