Kunsthal Charlottenborg opens redesigned foyer for reading, meetings and events

Kunsthal Charlottenborg opened a redesigned foyer to the public on 25 September 2026 at its art centre on Kongens Nytorv in Copenhagen. Announced four days later, the project by atelier axo gives visitors places to sit, read and meet, with furniture the venue says can also be moved for events. The change makes the entrance a space to spend time in as well as a route to the galleries.

What visitors can use in the new foyer

The bookshop now opens more towards the foyer, according to the art centre. A long bench, small tables and Arne Jacobsen’s Charlottenborg Chairs provide seating for reading, working or meeting other people. Freestanding pieces are modular and movable. The venue describes the space as an entrance, bookshop, social area and potential event setting.

Helene Nyborg Bay, the art centre’s director, said the aim was to give people reasons to drop by beyond seeing an exhibition. “Kunsthal Charlottenborg should be a place you can drop by, meet others, read, take part and spend time,” she said in the opening announcement. The foyer is part of the venue’s wider effort to create more opportunities for visitors to use its spaces before and beyond exhibitions.

The art centre says the movable furniture can accommodate talks, performances and other events. Its announcement describes those as intended uses; it does not name an event already held in the redesigned foyer or one scheduled there. Visitors can therefore see the seating and bookshop as part of the current offer, while the event use remains a plan described by the venue.

How atelier axo used Charlottenborg’s history

The building’s arches appear again in new furniture. Two rounded book podiums take their cue from plinths used by the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts’ School of Sculpture in the early twentieth century, the venue says. Shelving refers to Charlottenborg’s art library in the 1960s, while tables along the bench were inspired by an Academy painter’s chest. A painter’s palette knife informed the poster display.

The project also draws on materials already available. According to the art centre, discontinued textiles from Kvadrat became screens and upholstery, and recovered wood from Dinesen’s production was incorporated into furniture. The dimensions of that wood helped determine the new pieces’ design. These are the venue’s descriptions of the materials used, rather than a measured account of the project’s environmental impact.

Some furnishings have a direct connection to earlier design at Charlottenborg. The venue says Jacobsen’s Charlottenborg Chair was exhibited at the Charlottenborg Spring Exhibition in 1937; examples now stand in the foyer seating area. Its Charlottenborg Pendant lighting follows a system adapted for the exhibition building in 1979. Together with atelier axo’s furniture, those pieces link the refurbished entrance to the site’s design history.

A public meeting place alongside the galleries

Charlottenborg had served as a gathering place for cultural events before this refurbishment. For its March 2026 festival, CPH:DOX described using the building as a temporary headquarters with a cinema, lounge and bar for conversation and socialising. That festival arrangement preceded the new foyer and was designed for a particular event. It shows one earlier way the venue was used, while the foyer is a continuing part of the art centre’s interior.

The venue’s website currently lists three exhibitions running from 26 September 2026 to 21 February 2027: Amalie Smith’s ‘Levende’, Jochen Lempert’s ‘Flora Incognita’ and Som Supaparinya’s ‘Reroute:’. It also lists a bookshop carrying publications on art, architecture, design and philosophy, and a pop-up café serving drinks and food. Those offerings give visitors other reasons to use the building around an exhibition visit.

The art centre’s visitor information places the cloakroom next to the shop in the foyer and says visitors can enter from Kongens Nytorv or Nyhavn. It describes wheelchair access through the main entrance and an elevator serving the building’s three floors. The published visitor information reviewed for this article does not establish whether someone entering only the foyer needs an exhibition ticket, so visitors seeking that detail should check directly with the venue.