Our Architecture

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Press Officer Johanne Troelsgaard Toft
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New Exhibition Presents 100 Years of Danish Welfare Architecture

What makes a concert unforgettable? Or an airport a good experience? The new exhibition, Our Architecture, takes guests on a deep dive into a 100 years of fascinating welfare architecture in Denmark. Through the iconic buildings of Vilhelm Lauritzen Arkitekter, the exhibition tells the story of how architects designed the framework for the good life – and explores what it means to experience architecture with your own body. Our Architecture opens at Danish Architecture Center on November 18 and will run until April 9, 2023.

Danish architects are known for elevating the professional standard of our shared design, buildings, cities and landscapes. Using Vilhelm Lauritzen Arkitekter as a lens for 100 years of Danish architectural development, the Our Architecture exhibition presents architecture as the framework for life in the Danish welfare society of today.

Our Architecture starts a hundred years ago with the establishment of Vilhelm Lauritzen’s architectural firm. Lauritzen became one of the founders of Danish Modernism and one of Denmark’s most recognized architects. He was an uncompromising functionalist, embracing the tenet that form always follows function.He was also a humanist, insisting, despite his pragmatic approach, that good architecture should be for everyone – and never just for a privileged few.

The exhibition was created by Danish Architecture Center in collaboration with Vilhelm Lauritzen Arkitekter.

Experience Architecture with Your Whole Body

Our Architecture invites you to a sensory experience of the evolution of architecture, featuring more than 60 works with rich and fascinating stories, including public buildings, housing, institutions, hospitals, cultural institutions, offices and airports. Through concerts, interviews, models and interactive installations, guests can explore the building blocks of Denmark’s welfare architecture.

Join a concert at VEGA and discover how good architecture sounds. Feel the materials from our most iconic buildings, like the glazed black tiles from the facade of DR Byen. And experience how our travel patterns have changed through a video projection of air traffic at Copenhagen Airport – from the iconic Vilhelm Lauritzen Terminal from 1936 to today’s international airline hub, which serves 30 million travelers every year.

Guests can also experience a health care sector undergoing rapid change, and see how architects work with healing architecture. The exhibition features a giant model of Nyt Hospital Nordsjælland (New Northern Zealand Hospital) – set to open in 2024 – where nature and daylight are prescribed for patients, their relatives and hospital staff.

Our Architecture for Kids

This exhibition offers architectural experiences for all ages, including an interactive learning table that takes the youngest guests on a journey through the materials used in architecture, encouraging them to sense and explore the evolution from raw material to construction material. The logics and challenges of architecture are communicated in a kid-friendly way by presenting sea shells and eelgrass as the construction materials of the future, while giant models invite guests of all ages to experience architecture in new ways.

Vilhelm Lauritzen Arkitekter Today

Vilhelm Lauritzen Arkitekter is one of Denmark’s oldest architectural firms, and with their visionary and diverse production over 100 years, they have helped lay the foundations of and shape architectural traditions in Denmark and all of Scandinavia. In the process, they have helped cement Denmark’s international position as an architectural leader.

In conjunction with the anniversary celebration, the book Moderne i 100 år (Modern for 100 Years) has been published. It is available at DAC Design Shop. The exhibition also encourages guests to try for themselves new Vilhelm Lauritzen furniture from Radiohuset and Folkets Hus/VEGA – furniture that has never previously been in production.

Our Architecture runs from November 18, 2022 to April 9, 2023 at Danish ArchitectureCenter and is part of the UNESCO World Capital of Architecture 2023 festival program.

The exhibition is sponsored by Vilhelm Lauritzen Arkitekter, the philanthropic association Realdania, the Knud Højgaard Foundation, Hoffmann og Husmans Fond, Nordkranen A/S, the Dreyer Foundation, and Nyt Hospital Nordsjælland.