Prototype Models for Lasting Architecture

Institute for Architecture and Technology, The Royal Danish Academy | RØNNOW LETH & GORI | Tobias Hentzer Dausgaard

20.11.2024 - 20.12.2024. Weekdays from 9-17

“I can eat a sandwich in any kind of room.” ― J. Gowan, in: F. Scott (2008). On altering Architecture. Routledge. S.27

The next ten generations will be using the buildings we design today. However, they will change over time – a great deal, in fact. Replacements, renovations, and transformations are rarely on ones mind when designing a building, and escapes beautiful competition entries, building code requirements of life cycle assessments, even the research literature. Adaptability and flexibility strategies often promise a maximum of changeability to fit future generations’ needs, whereas design for disassembly and circular economy target the ‘afterlife’ of materials upon replacement and demolition. However, a focus on the materials consumed in a building’s use-stage is often overlooked. How may we as architects address resource responsibility when said strategies are not enough to tackle our culture of (over)consumption?

From longitudinal patterns of change across three case studies – J.C. Conradi’s Søkvæsthuset (1755), The School on Gasværksvej by J.H. Holm (1880), and H.C. Hansen’s addition to the school (1971) – nine large working models (1:20) investigate the question: How may new buildings and transformations be designed with lasting architectural qualities and a reduced consumption of materials in the building use-stage, for hundreds of years?

In Kant’s philosophy, “beautiful actions” are morally good actions done not out of duty alone but with a graceful view for other people’s well-being. A ‘natural inclination’ where duty and pleasure is aligned. How may buildings inspire generations of users to perform ‘beautiful actions’? Can a building make good decisions not just easy, legible and understandable but also something users are naturally drawn to, creating a sensuous, experienced richness and life quality?

How does long-lasting architecture talk, listen and appeal to changing users and conditions over the next 200 years? How do we understand form and use as part of the same topos? What kind of strangely resonant, profoundly imperfect, empathetically loud, earnestly playful, irresistibly stubborn, and slowly present architectures can advocate lasting architecture across time?

The exhibition is created through a workshop with 22 students from The Institute of Architecture and Technology at The Royal Danish Academy and Tobias Hentzer Dausgaard, industrial Ph.D. student at RØNNOW LETH & GORI as part of the Ph.D. project Lasting Architecture in Practice.

The exhibition opens 20 November, 16:00 in Værksted for Arkitektur, Strandgade 27B, 1401 København K. At the opening professors Marie Frier Hvejsel, Lotte Bjerregaard Jensen, and Mogens Morgen from Aarhus School of Architecture will contribute to an open discussion of the prototypes.

Students: Simone Tidemand Larsen, Laura Marie Thalund, Robin Larsson, Ida Marie Harbo Lippert, Malthe Wulsten Gronert, Henrik Søndergaard, Anders Dalsgaard Thøstesen, Jonathan Tofft Evald, Sigrid Gustafsson, Viktor Abkjer Steffensen, Stine Ingvardsen, Adam Frederik Haugaard, Marte Nås Kristiansen, Gustav Mørch, Annika Elizabeth Terp, Clara Ringgaard Poulsen, Amalie Roepstorff, Siri Gertrud Margareta Fredrikson, Daniel Sorin Stefirta, David Vaggen Sætre, Kevin Evensen, Katarina Brandt Nielsen

Teachers: Tobias Hentzer Dausgaard & Karsten Gori

Study Associate Professor, IBT: Emilie Henriksen