Roskilde Festival Folk High School: Atmosphere, colors and old concrete

Roskilde Festival Højskole is Denmark’s first newly built folk high school in 50 years. The building combines a gray industrial past with a creative explosion of colors.

Af Jakob Fälling

In the heart of Roskilde’s creative neighborhood Musicon, you will find Denmark’s newest folk high school, Roskilde Festival Højskole. Visitors are greeted by a blue glass entryway, which alludes to the folk high school song book, a pillar of Danish folk high school culture and tradition. Continuing through the building, vibrant colors such as clear green, lavender and fiery orange capture the eye. 

The building was completed in January 2019, at which time the folk high school welcomed the first members of its student body. The students reside on the folk high school’s campus, immersed in creative surroundings for stays of three to ten months. The site was originally home to a production hall, and the former rafters from the industrial hall now comprise the skeleton of the colorful school. The classrooms, like a collection of varying boxes, hover among the gray concrete rafters on two levels. Each box boasts its own color and materiality, making a walk through the folk high school an experience for the eye and all the senses. 

The school’s most striking box and the hub of student activity at the school is the orange lecture hall, whose color is a direct reference to the renowned Orange Stage at Roskilde Festival. 

Facts

• Roskilde Festival Højskole is Denmark’s first newly built folk high school in 50 years. Construction of the school was completed in January 2019.
• The school has room and board capacity for 120 students enrolled in programs lasting from three to ten months.
• The school’s classrooms are custom designed and built for the different lines of study: Music, Maker, Leadership, Media, Art and Politics.

Surroundings

The folk high school’s student residences, housed in shipping containers stacked four-stories high, are located right next door. The residences were designed by the same team of architects and are rife with allusions to the interior of the school itself.
The Musicon neighborhood is also home to a blacksmith’s workshop, a skate park, and a number of very new buildings, including the Ragnarock Museum. Most of these locations welcome visitors to drop by and discover some of what the neighborhood has to offer. The container strip is home to small stores, a coffee shop and workshops.
Roskilde Court, designed by JJW Arkitekter, is located just a few hundred meters from the folk high school.