Nørrebrogade

In 2012, architects BIG, Topotek1, and Superflex draped a patchwork of pink rubber across Superkilen’s Red Square, then did something audacious: they folded the color up the sides of existing buildings along Nørrebrogade. The facades became part of the park itself, what the designers called a three-dimensional experience, which is one way to describe the effect of hot pink climbing the walls of a Copenhagen apartment block at ten in the morning.

The elevated pink-wrapped space doubles as a tribune for afternoon sun-seekers, with views over a square that functions less like a park and more like a catalog. One hundred and eight urban objects, sourced from sixty countries, arranged across the asphalt: Iraqi swings, Brazilian benches, a Jamaican sound system, Japanese manhole covers, a Moroccan fountain. Each piece was selected to represent someone who actually lives in Nørrebro, one of Copenhagen’s most diverse neighborhoods, which means the collection is less curatorial conceit than it is a fairly literal portrait of the place.

The park runs across three color-coded zones. Red Square is the liveliest. The Black Market, to the east, handles the everyday. The Green Park, to the west, handles the grass. The system is orderly in the way that only something designed by three architecture firms working in concert could be, which is to say: extremely, and also somehow not at all. Three firms, sixty nations, one very specific shade of pink.