Fælledby will demolish two newly built residential blocks containing 172 homes on Amager Fælled in Copenhagen after serious structural defects were found. A construction expert says he has never seen a Danish project fail on this scale.
DR reported on September 10 that senior adviser Jørgen Munch-Andersen has reviewed the report listing the defects in the two buildings. He works at Aalborg University’s Institute of the Built Environment, known as BUILD. According to DR, he concluded there must have been failures at every stage of the project.
Munch-Andersen said he had never seen anything like it. He described the decision to demolish as wholly exceptional, taken only when repairs would cost more than tearing the buildings down. Both tenants and buyers of the 172 apartments have lost their future homes.
The report describes perforated load-bearing floor beams and prefabricated module boxes set in place crookedly. Munch-Andersen called these serious defects. He said the investigation clearly took a long time before concluding that repair was too complicated.
The senior adviser also pointed to weaknesses in both design and execution, with little control during the work. He named the contractors involved, first Scandi Byg, which went bankrupt during construction, and later Nordic Tree Industries. He said Fælledby, as the client, must also have failed on ongoing supervision.
According to Munch-Andersen, a client normally uses its own adviser to check work as it progresses. He said there could not have been much of that here, or the problems would have surfaced earlier.
Client rejects criticism
DR put the assessment to Fælledby. Board chairman Henrik Steenstrup rejected the claim that supervision was insufficient, writing that the company carried out the required inspections and more. He said Fælledby intervened as soon as defects appeared and launched a thorough investigation.
Steenstrup said the investigation revealed very serious defects hidden inside the structures. He wrote that Fælledby takes full responsibility for its residents and that nobody should live in the buildings. He also stressed that the main contractor on the two blocks has not worked on other buildings in the development.
Remaining construction at Fælledby on Amager Fælled continues as planned, according to Steenstrup, but with tightened supervision. Politiken reported that the demolition decision was announced on September 9, 2026, after a technical investigation by the consultancy Sweco.
Politiken added that the review was commissioned after Scandi Byg’s bankruptcy in 2025, and that the two blocks were assessed as a total loss. The newspaper also reported that Fælledby has contacted affected owners and tenants with compensation offers.
TV 2 reported that the affected blocks hold 172 homes and that residents and buyers were informed on September 9, 2026. Nordic Tree Industries has also been presented with the criticism, DR noted.
