Kajen is Fisketorvet’s new dining concept, spreading across three floors, designed to enhance the overall experience at Fisketorvet. The outdoor areas, offering views of the harbour, are brought to life and integrated with the shopping centre through the new, transparent and outward-facing ground floor. With over 30 diverse food stalls, there’s something to suit every taste. Visitors can either come solely to enjoy Kajen’s offerings, including a green roof terrace overlooking the city and the water, or enrich their shopping experience with a pleasant meal along the way.
Fisketorvet, Kajen
From Fish Market to Food Court
Fisketorvet ("The Fish Market") takes its name from Copenhagen's former fish trading site, which operated on the grounds between 1958 and 1999. In 2000, Fisketorvet – CPH Mall opened, a typical shopping centre designed with an inward focus on activities and retail, rather than an outward orientation towards the city. Once considered to be on the city's edge, Fisketorvet now enjoys a central and unique location, surrounded by urban development and infrastructure, with the harbour just behind it.
With Copenhagen expanding around Fisketorvet – through developments to the south, the area around Dybbølsbro, and the upcoming Jernbaneby – Fisketorvet could no longer stand as a passive monument to the enclosed shopping centres of the past. Instead, it is undergoing a major transformation. Street-level facades are being activated, pedestrian access around the building is being enhanced, and the exceptional location by Copenhagen Harbour is being fully utilised.
Kajen marks the first step in realising a new vision for Fisketorvet, reimagining the shopping centre typology – from a passive block to an active catalyst for urban life and retail. The new food court spans three levels, including a rooftop terrace offering views over Copenhagen Harbour. The dining experience is being elevated, with a variety of food stalls, high architectural standards, and a welcoming openness to the outside, aiming to make Kajen a year-round destination. The design strikes a balance between the raw and the refined, resulting in a food court that features high-quality materials and spaces that are sensorially engaging and invite exploration. In transforming Fisketorvet’s formerly inward-facing dining corner into a culinary destination for the entire city, the building’s structural framework was preserved, while new, more open and airy spaces were created. The transparent façade maintains a constant dialogue with life outside, where newly introduced recreational zones have activated what was once the barren backside of a shopping centre, turning it into a vibrant and welcoming urban destination.
Related content
- Location:
- Copenhagen, Denmark
- Programme:
- Food court
- Size:
- 6,500 m²
- Status:
- Completed
- Developer:
- Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield
- Commission:
- 2016, invited competition
- Landscape architect:
- SLA
- Engineer:
- Artelia
- Visuals:
- Vismo
- Photos:
- Jack Dempster
Rethinking the Retail Experience
Built back in 2000 in a previously isolated and remote location of Copenhagen, Fisketorvet CPH Mall, has since become a central shopping destination in which the city has developed and expanded around.
By reimagining the traditional introverted shopping centre as a new urban destination that embraces its unique location and the citizens of Copenhagen, the design for a renewed Fisketorvet unfolds as a small urban plan. From transitional to intersectional, it incorporates liveability, mobility, and recreation, to help Fisketorvet become a distinct and prominent figure in Copenhagen’s growing landscape.
In 2024, "Kajen", a new food court facing the harbour, opened its doors to the public offering a varied and tasteful food universe with an active ground floor that embraces Fisketorvet's unique location by the waterfront, inviting the city to enjoy its offers inside and outside. Kajen is the first step toward reviving Fisketorvet as a catalyst for urban life and retail in the area it sits.
A new area around the existing main entrance activates the edge zones around the building and generates urban life.
Kajen also offers access to a public roof terrasse on top and connect to Kajen, offering one of Copenhagen's best views of the harbour.
Kajen marks the first phase of a larger transformation of Fisketorvet. Positioned uniquely between Copenhagen Harbour and a busy transport hub, the area will be developed as a key player in the city’s landscape, acting as a catalyst for a vibrant urban life for local residents and visitors alike.
In 2024, Copenhagen’s City Council approved a zoning local plan for Fisketorvet, which will see the shopping centre expanded by 42,000 m², encompassing offices, new retail spaces, and housing. Additionally, improved pathways will be created for pedestrians, who will be able to move easily along Fisketorvet via a dedicated colonnade. Three entrances and new green urban plazas will make the area around Fisketorvet an attractive destination for leisure, transit, and arrivals.
Reusing the existing structure of the building, the three floors are visually connected via a large atrium allowing for inflows of daylight, vertical sightlines and dynamic movement throughout the building.
The round ceiling lamps, the raw, "rusty" steel elements, a large clock, and small seating areas evoke a train station – in many ways, "Kajen" functions as a temporary resting and transit space, where you can set your own pace and choose your own dining experience depending on the day.
Curved slabs add a softer, organic and refined response to the raw industrial and patinated materials. The spatial experience is diverse due to the range of offerings yet remains cohesive through the consistent use of high-quality materials and design elements such as the round ceiling lights that also work as a key wayfinding principle. Here, the raw and refined come together as a coherent experience.
4 images
Prev
Next
