Conditions: Context and Climate

We will work on how to make architecture relevant to a specific place and context.

Our site is a former industrial site in the harbor of Copenhagen. The former shipyard was once considered the world’s leading producer of containerships and diesel motors. After 153 years, the shipyard was closed in 1996 due to bankruptcy, leaving 8,000 workers unemployed. Located on the last of several islands comprised largely of landfill, the site is connected to Copenhagen by a series of bridges. This limited access has made large scale development difficult, allowing for an alternative community of artists, galleries, restaurants, and startups to lease short term abandoned buildings of all scales. The municipality of Copenhagen recently decided to connect the island to the mainland via a Metro and a development plan is expected soon, allowing for potential architectural intervention.

We will understand our site by collecting and analyzing historic, climatic, cultural, social, and typological data. Using this collected knowledge as a shared point of departure, we will consider the project within the urgent global context of climate change. We are racing towards multiple global tipping points, one being temperature rising far beyond expected due to carbon emissions. Forty percent of global carbon emissions derive from the construction industry and, as architects, we have the opportunity to make a difference. We must radically reassess how to build with the goal of proactively minimizing carbon emissions. To do so, we are forced to develop new tools, a new library of references, without losing our aesthetic ambition.

Our focus will be on small-medium scale transformations, interventions, and additions to existing structures to create public or semi-public space that relate to the specificity of the site and utilize low carbon materials and processes.

Through individual exercises, we will explore tectonics and texture, understand the essential technical prerequisites of specific materials, investigate their aesthetic potential, and gain knowledge of the architectural use of up-cycled, waste based and, to some extent, bio-generic material.  Students will develop essential knowledge and be introduced to initial tools, allowing them to understand the general principles of assessing embedded carbon in both construction and operations.

The course is divided into 3 chapters.  

In the first chapter of the course, we will analyze the unique character of Refshaleøen, delving into its historical significance and the layered conditions of the site today. Through mapping and research, students will develop a comprehensive understanding of its physical, cultural, historical, and ecological contexts.
The second chapter introduces transformative architecture, the concept of upcycling and waste-based materials. Students will explore the intersection of material innovation and sustainability, examining the potential of unconventional and waste materials and their aesthetical value. A hands-on exercise will connect material properties and tectonics directly to the site, mapping available resources to inspire creative reuse.

In the final chapter, students will develop site-specific projects. Working with one of six provided water-connected programs. The students will identify a focus area, a site–whether an empty plot, urban void, or existing structure–during a study trip to the site, engaging deeply with its transformative potential.

Each chapter will be concluded with a formal crit. The result will be a series of interconnected architectural responses.