Solutions at Royal Danish Academy

/

Architecture Design Conservation: graduate projects 2021

Shown here are 220 projects from the students in the schools of architecture, design and conservation who have graduated from the Royal Danish Academy in 2021.

This is an opportunity to see the work of the Academy schools, with their focus on the UN Sustainability goals, and these projects show clearly the ways in which teaching has taken onboard the challenge of climate change and the need to reassess our approach to materials for new developments and our approach to the increasing need to conserve or adapt existing buildings.

Here are the young architects and designers of the next generation whose designs for buildings and for furniture, industrial products, fashion and graphics will have to provide solutions to the new challenges.

As last year, the graduate projects can also be seen on line.

note:
after an initial opening in late June, the exhibition closed through July but then reopened on 2 August and can be seen daily from 10.00 to 17.00 through to 20 August 2021

Royal Danish Academy Architecture Design Conservation
Philip de Langes Allé 10
1435 Copenhagen K

Graduation 2021: SOLUTIONS
the exhibition on line

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

WORKS+WORDS BIENNALE 2019

/
 

WORKS+WORDS BIENNALE 2019 presents research within the field of architecture in Europe.

This - the second Biennale - is in the main exhibition space at KADK - Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademis Skoler for Arkitektur, Design og Konservering in their buildings close to the Opera House.

To paraphrase the open invitation from the academy to architecture schools to participate in the exhibition, the Biennale is about contemporary artistic research in Europe that aims to develop new ground in the field of architecture and is characterized by combining the making of works with reflections in words.

Artistic research is defined as the integrated part of an artistic process that leads to an accessible work and is accompanied by intellectual reflection on the process itself as well as the presentation of the finished work.

This means that the visitor is challenged and confronted - it is an exhibition that more than deserves time and effort - but the Biennale is not only about communicating stimulating and, in many cases, complicated ideas that show how architects reassess what we have built and how and why we build but it is also about how architects have to now take on and resolve complex new challenges.

KADK has emphasised that the United Nations sustainable development goals now form a framework to teaching and research at the academy and the invitation to participate in the Biennale asked that the goals should be considered and much of the work explores the impact on society that is a consequence of the research if it is implemented.

Ostensibly, this is an exhibition is about ideas - about theories and proposals and reassessments of accepted maxims and that exploration is expressed in words - but it is also about architects who, as creative people, inevitably express themselves and communicate their ideas visually so here there is a fascinating range of styles for visual presentations from photography to models - one has a paper and cardboard model of a theatre with a cut-out paper audience in the rank of seats but on the screen, in the model, is shown a stop-motion video of how the public moves through and round that space. There are fine prints and drawings here that show that many architects are fine draughtsmen and talented artists and many of the projects show a heightened sense of colour and texture that is too rarely carried over to finished buildings.

These research projects are also a reminder, of course, that architecture is about extraordinary imaginations and about communicating …. about initially getting unique ideas and innovative solutions across to a client or to a collaborator or an assistant or a senior partner or a planner or to the public before any scheme can move on to realisation.

There are 30 research projects presented here and they all redress the too easy perception that modern architecture is now commercially driven and is just an adjunct of engineering, a driving force behind the financial demands of predatory investors in speculative developments and subservient to large-scale and inhuman planning. Here is architecture still as an art and architecture as a discipline close to philosophy and social science and the research here is much more about ways of seeing our built environment …. much more about how we experience, appreciate and move though built space … than about mundane aspects of what we build and how.

written material that accompanies WORKS+WORDS can be downloaded as a pdf file

WORKS+WORDS at KADK,
Danneskiold-Samsøe Allé,
1435 Copenhagen K
28 November 2019 until 19 January 2020

Alvar Aalto Paimio Sanatorium

/

 This small exhibition - described by Designmuseum Danmark as a "pop-up exhibition" - is based around two chairs from the permanent collection - Armchair No 42 and the Paimio Chair - also known as The Ring Chair - designed by Alvar Aalto and both used in the Paimio Sanatorium. The hospital in south-west Finland designed by Aalto was built specifically for the treatment of patients with tuberculosis - and was completed in 1933.

The chairs are displayed with historic photographs and copies of drawings that have been selected to show how important the hospital was and to put those two chairs in context.

Aalto was born in February 1898 so he was four years older than Arne Jacobsen. The exhibition does not compare directly the work of the two architects but there are marked and very important similarities. They grew up and then studied as architects in a period of massive social, political and economic changes in Europe and in a period that saw rapid advances in technology and industrial production that had a huge impact on architecture and furniture design. Political changes were more dramatic for Aalto because Finland only emerged as a nation, independent from both Sweden and Russia, in 1918 after a revolution.

Both architects, through the 1920s and through their first commissions, absorbed and readily adapted their designs to building in the relatively new material of concrete and the new techniques of construction that went with that material … so generally buildings with piers in concrete that supported concrete floors and, as a consequence, with freedom to experiment with external and internal walls that were no longer load bearing and with few restrictions in terms of height in buildings that could be constructed quickly.

Crucially, both architects worked on all aspects of a project … so not just the plan and structure of a building but all details of windows, door handles, light fittings and, for both men, designs for furniture.

They each achieved a uniform aesthetic in their buildings, and that was important, but it was also driven by the need for efficiency and an attempt to rationalise construction and manage costs - to produce as much as possible off site and to reduce the number of variations and options for the same reasons … so what became important was how they put together the parts and that was determined by function and not a hierarchy of fittings as in so many public and domestic buildings before the 20th century.

 
 

Here, in this exhibition, the two chairs show how Aalto was at the forefront of technical developments in furniture manufacture. His grandfather was a forester and taught at the Evo Forest Institute south of Tampere and Aalto himself developed a specific technique of cutting down into a length of squared-off timber, interlayering with thin slips of wood inserted into the cuts and with glue and steam bending and formed the timber for the frame for chairs and tables and other furniture.

He was one of the first designers to exploit and develop the use of plywood which again was bent - rather than used as flat sheets - to create a continuous surface for the seat and back of a chair but he also extended the bend or curve of the plywood to form a rounded support for the head and a rounded support for the back of the legs.

It is important to look carefully to see how the plywood shell of the seat and back and the bent-wood frame are joined together - with lugs or tabs in strategic positions on the edge of the plywood that fit into slots in the frame - and how crossbars link the frame on each side but also support the plywood at critical points.

 

Because of its topography and climate, Finland does not have the variety of native timbers for furniture making and house building that are found in Sweden and Denmark so the form of the chairs is not an odd whim of aesthetics but was necessary to be able to use native rather than imported timber - to do what was possible with native birch - a relatively small tree.

And the design of the chairs - and the distinct features of the building - reflect the nature of the disease treated at the hospital.

Tuberculosis was a contagious disease that effected the lungs but could also infect bones and the nervous system. By the early 20th century it was the cause of death of 7,200 people a year in Finland or about 13% of mortality year on year in the country.

When the hospital opened, treatment was based around providing patients with good nutrition and bed rest in the early stages of the disease and then with sun and fresh air although bright light and noise effected many sufferers badly.

The chairs are relatively low and long so the sitting position is close to reclining and the bent-wood frame and plywood provide a level of flexibility for long periods sitting in the sun or fresh air. The construction in wood was lighter than anything comparable that used tubular steel, so the chairs could be turned easily to be angled towards the sun and they were not upholstered to reduce contamination. Note that the Paimio Chair has narrow horizontal slits cut through the head rest so that air could circulate around the face.

The first private Sanatorium in Finland was opened in 1895 and the first owned by a federation of municipalities opened in 1914 but after passing a Tuberculosis Act in 1929 eight large sanatoriums were constructed with total of 2,500 beds and Paimio was the last to be completed in 1933 for 296 beds for patients from 52 municipalities including the city of Turku with an allocation of 100 beds. Because tuberculosis was contagious, the hospitals were generally set in countryside away from towns … the Sanatorium at Paimio was 20 kilometres east of Turku set in an area of woodland.

With the discovery of anti biotics, it became possible to alleviate and then control the spread of the disease and in 1960 the sanatorium buildings were modified and converted for use as a general hospital.

 

the exhibition at Designmuseum Danmark in Copenhagen
continues until 21 January 2018

 

note:

comments on this post were received today (19 February 2018) and, because these were interesting and raised some important points, it was worth posting a longer reply that has been posted on Copenhagen architecture & design news as an update

RAMT AF BYEN / CITY STRUCK

/
 

 

This will be the last major exhibition from the Danish Architecture Centre in their present space in the large, historic, brick warehouse on the Amager side of the harbour because early next year they will move across to the other side of the harbour to BLOX … to new buildings designed by Rem Koolhaas and OMA and now close to completion

The exhibition has been curated by Marie Stender and is a selection of striking images by different photographers who explore the city as a place for people that is moulded and adapted by people for the way they really live day by day.

Divided into three areas - Boundaries, Meetings and Flows - this is the antidote to all those perfect images that are seen in so many architectural journals and glossy coffee-table books were perfect buildings are shown in the best light, from the most flattering angle and invariably devoid of people ... stripped of their reason and, metaphorically and literally, stripped of their humanity. 

When you watch people en masse in complex urban spaces you see quickly if the planning has failed -  so anything from a curiously empty and unused and unloved space to exactly the opposite where a street or a square or a building seems to be overwhelmed by the people passing through or trying to use the space. In these photographs, you see how people colonise public space and use it in ways no architect or planner had envisioned.

the exhibition continues at the
Danish Architecture Centre on Strandgade
until 28 February 2018

KADK Afgang Sommer’17

/
 

This weekend is the last opportunity to see the exhibition of the projects and work of this year's graduates from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation … a densely packed show of the talents and the phenomenal imaginations and skills of the students who have just completed their courses in Copenhagen.

There are profiles of the students and photographs and descriptions of their work on the KADK site.

the exhibition continues until 13th August
KADK, Danneskiold-Samsøe Alle, Copenhagen

Art of Many and the Right to Space

/
 

 

This is the exhibition that was the Danish contribution to the Venice Biennale of Architecture last year. The main section is an extensive display of architectural models from major architects and design partnerships in the country and the aim is to illustrate the importance of high-quality architecture in Denmark and, in a broader sense, the contribution of architecture to the community as a whole.

There is an important audio visual show by Jan Gehl about the work of their planning office in Copenhagen.

at the Danish Architecture Centre in Copenhagen until 1 October 2017

 

Det Byggede Danmark - The Built Denmark - Part of Our Lives

/

 

This exhibition, created in collaboration with the Home Economics Research Center, looks at the built environment in terms of quantities and statistics rather than architecture and engineering and aesthetics. So, this is the real information about the cost of what we do and how we live and this is the information that should inform how we plan for the future … what we can do but also what we should do and what we have to do to mitigate for how we have lived up to this point.

This is the hard and unforgiving but fascinating and crucial data about the built environment and about the infrastructure of everyday life - information that a country needs to make major planning decisions for the coming decades - but that data is presented clearly and well because there has to be a general level of understanding about what and why so that there can be broad consent about how and when.

The research has been published by Boligøkonomisk Videncenter and can be ordered or downloaded in pdf format from their site set out in three books that look at

  • extent structure and value

  • quality of life residential and workplace

  • environment energy and water

 

 

 

as text - or even as a table of numbers - the amount of water used by each person - 115 litres every day - is difficult to appreciate but set out in ranks of plastic bottles it is easier to understand and the message is clear .....

  • 8 litres incidentally

  • 10 litres cooking and drinking water

  • 14 litres laundry

  • 16 litres dishwashing and cleaning

  • 28 litres flushing toilet

  • 39 litres bath and personal hygiene

continues at Danish Architecture Centre until 2 July

 

HOMES | ENSEMBLES | CITY HOUSING WELFARE

/
 

 

Copenhagen now houses 30% of the population of Denmark and the city is growing rapidly with 1,000 people moving here every month. Obviously there is a huge pressure to build new housing and with that pressure there is a very clear understanding by politicians, planners and architects that they have to get the new developments right.

An introduction to this exhibition at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts puts the problems succinctly:

“The strain on the city leads to rising prices of land, and high construction costs lead to higher costs of accommodation, both in new build and renovated properties. This makes it difficult to build in general, and almost impossible to build cheaply ….. The city is being segregated into enclaves, with wealthy people in attractive, but expensive districts ….. while citizens with lower incomes have to settle in less attractive districts of the metropolis. This is a threat to social welfare and cohesion.”

But, as with the recent exhibition at the Danish Architecture Centre about the problems developing with climate change, The Rain is Coming, this is neither a reason for doom and gloom nor an excuse to do nothing but talk anxiously about how awful it all will be. Rather, work has already begun on a massive amount of new building in the city … this exhibition is about housing schemes well on in the stages of planning so either where building work has started or is imminent. The contrast with the UK could not be greater: although both countries have been through the same economic recession, politicians in England seem to talk endlessly about the lack of housing but do nothing while in Denmark there has been a massive investment in infrastructure and work is progressing to build homes all round the city. And this is not small-scale development. The new area of Nordhavn is in part on land that was industrial dockland and in part is claimed from the sea but this area alone will have homes for 40,000 people and places for jobs for 40,000 people. 

Planners and politicians in Copenhagen are no longer at the stage of prevaricating, umming and ahhing and trying to decide what they might do, if they ever were, but clearly, from this exhibition, work is well in hand and now they are making sure that they do it properly.

The drawings and plans also bring out clear themes. In Copenhagen the housing type with apartments around a courtyard is well established and clearly successful so for the future, particularly in the inner city areas, that building type predominates although some tower blocks are proposed in some developments to ensure necessary density.

Conversion of a grain silo in Nordhavn to apartments by COBE

A housing scheme with balconies and roof terraces at Sundbyøster Plads by Dorte Mandrup

Balconies, terraces and roof gardens are important for private outdoor living space but there is, in all the schemes, a focus on the importance of common space of a high quality and emphasis on appropriate vegetation and the importance of water not only as a leisure facility, but as an important visual foil to the hard landscape and as a major consideration when dealing with the increased amounts of rain predicted for the region.

There is also a clear emphasis on the use of high quality but appropriate facing materials so building with brick and timber but also using concrete to reflect the industrial heritage of many of the areas being developed. Large windows, light and good views out are priorities and there also seems to be a much more generous allowance for space in the individual housing units than anything seen in new housing in England.

The schemes also include housing in outer suburbs with, for instance, the plans for Vinge, a new town north of Copenhagen that will cover 350 hectares and will be the largest urban development in Denmark.

Arenakvarter in Ørestad South by JAJA

 

Many of the drawings for these proposals included children playing in meadows and gardens or families on bikes or in canoes. In most other countries that would be artistic licence but in Denmark gardens, public spaces and exercise are not optional extras. Honestly. Look at my photographs taken wandering around Nørrebro just two days ago and when I moved here last summer one apartment I considered renting was unfurnished except for a well equipped terrace and two canoes. As I said to friends … only in Denmark.

The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts,
Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation,
KADK, Danneskiold-Samsøes Allé 51, Copenhagen

continues until 14 May 2015

Fællesskab din by - Co-create your city

/
 

 

This is a significant and inspiring exhibition at the Danish Architecture Centre in Copenhagen that is primarily about the importance of community involvement at all levels in our cities - from making them really work day to day at the street or district level right through to being involved in major planning decisions.

The introduction panel sets this objective out very clearly … the “right to form our cities is something special. It is a product of a political development, but also the result of idealists all through history having challenged what and how a city could and should be - even when it was not formally possible. Citizens have come up with good ideas, gained support and fought for a better city. And not out of a sense of duty, but because they simply can not help themselves. They want to make something of their city, and they would like us to be part of that journey.”

This is very much an exhibition for the digital age in which we live: an exhibition about ideas - rather than a gallery exhibition about beautiful objects that you simply admire. There are no objects as such here but bold and, in some cases, provoking quotations from planners and politicians; information panels about specific community projects and plenty of audio visual screens where you can listen to interviews or commentaries about specific community projects. 

As someone trained in museum work it was interesting to see how all this material was deliberately presented in a way that might not work in a printed book or, particularly, how it might not work if it was simply out there in the data world on a web site reached through a url. Here visitors are encouraged to explore but there is never-the-less a clear sense of a route or progress through the material that you still cannot really control as people click and move around or quickly click on from an on-line site.

There are information panels about a wide range of community-led projects including Østergro - the community gardens of the Østerbro area - the community shared ownership scheme of Den 3 Revle - the Third Bar - in Nørrebro and the Restaurant Day project. There were also a number of international projects shown here including the amazing project to paint the houses of the Rio favelas, the success of the High Line in New York and the project to convert car parking spaces into community parks for a day with people moving in fake grass, plants in tubs and seating to reclaim a stretch of kerb.

There are significant planning projects here - for instance trying to involve as many people as possible as Odense grows rapidly from a small city into a major conurbation. 

Some information surprised me … I had not realised that community involvement in planning has been enshrined in Danish law since 1970.

All the main panels are in English as well as Danish so with no Danish I could follow everything well but where I missed out of course was my usual trick in a museum of listening in to the conversations of other visitors to work out just how they were responding to what they were looking at to find out if they were inspired or if they disagreed. 

The last section of the exhibition has information about Borgerlyst (Citizen's Wishes or Citizens Desires ?) set up by Nadja Pass and Andreas Lloyd to use their experience from various community schemes to encourage and nurture action groups and there is a long table with benches on either side that takes you through a question-and-answer sequence to see if you have an idea for a community project and to encourage you to take it forward.

There are a large number of events associated with the exhibition and the last wall has bright bold graphics setting these out with tear-off strips for contact telephone numbers.

Even in Denmark there must be rapacious developers whose primary aim is profit and there must be politicians or administrators reluctant to relinquish power or influence and of course there are citizens who don’t have the time or the energy to get involved or feel slightly in awe of officials and think that planning or decisions about architecture and redevelopment in their city should probably be left to the experts but my strong feeling is that, here in Denmark, that gap - between wealth and power and the majority of people who actually live and work in the cities - is actually smaller and more easily bridged than in most cities in the World.

My only real concern is just how wide an audience will Co-create reach? I can see that actually having the material there and visitors having made the effort to travel to the Centre they want to focus on the material. But the number of visitors seemed relatively small and were all the usual suspects - trendy middle class families, men who were clearly architects and designers and a good number of students presumably studying architecture or design. How do you reach a wider demographic with something as important as this? 

Having said that, special events held around the building and on the quay outside have clearly been well attended.

But overall it really is inspiring to see how many people have become involved over such a wide range of projects and have made a substantial and real difference to their urban environment.

 

the exhibition continues at the Danish Architecture Centre in Copenhagen until 7 June 2015

The Rain is Coming

/
 

The Rain is Coming - a major exhibition at the Danish Architecture Centre about climate change - shows how urban planning and the design of buildings and hard landscaping have to adapt now for changes in weather patterns in the future.

Looking up from my desk, as I’m writing this morning, it is raining but it’s really the sort of shower that anyone would expect at this time of year … late March so Spring in north-west Europe. This is not the sort of weather the exhibition is talking about but then back last summer, just a couple of weeks after I moved into this apartment, Copenhagen had one of the flash rain storms that are becoming more frequent here. There was torrential rain for several hours and the street drains could no longer cope and pools of water started to form across the road and pavements. Like many apartment buildings in the city, we have a basement where residents store boxes and bikes and so on. I had a phone call to say the basement was flooding, because the pump had failed, and was told that if I wanted to save or salvage my things down there I should do it right away. It was hardly a disaster for me - I lost a couple of cardboard boxes - but further along the street several businesses in semi basements, four or five steps down from the pavement, had much more serious problems. Industrial pumps were called in but most of those businesses had to shut for several months as floors and electrical systems were dried out or replaced. Six months on and at least one business has still not reopened.

For a city like Copenhagen, new developments with ever denser building with more and more ground covered with tarmac or hard surfaces, designed to drain quickly, it actually means there could be dramatic consequences if these sudden rain storms become more frequent as predicted.

And these storms are dramatic. On the 2nd July 2011 there was a rain storm in Copenhagen where a fifth of the normal annual rainfall fell in just three hours. Neighbours have told me that whereas this time I had to move my things out of less than 10cm of water, on that day the basement rooms filled right up to the ceiling. In the city underpasses and road tunnels were flooded and closed, utility services were lost and the extent of property damage was phenomenal.

 

Having said all that, the exhibition is not all about doom and gloom. In fact far from it as the real message is that we have to accept that these changes are coming and therefore we should start to adapt our construction methods and planning to make appropriate changes now. Simply planning for an emergency response, for if and when, is not a sensible approach. By starting now we can be in control and there will be gains because making changes in advance “presents us with a unique opportunity to improve our cities and create greener cities with more open spaces where rainwater can be handled and urban life can thrive.”

 

The first part of the exhibition shows with excellent graphics how much more of the city is now built over so the natural process of water soaking into the soil or running away along natural drainage channels is no longer possible. In the past rain water and dirty waste water … so everything from water on the roads contaminated with oil from traffic to sewage has been dealt with through the same system of drains or, where there are separate storm drains and household drains, these often back up and contaminate each other when the system is under pressure when there is a sudden storm.

There is also a stark lesson to be learnt from the past about what happens when you prevaricate. By the 19th century Copenhagen was densely built up with houses and businesses tightly packed around narrow streets and courtyards. Then the problem was not surface drainage but dealing with human waste. There was no sewage system in the city and in 1835 a cholera outbreak killed thousands of people and started a discussion about the need for drains. Political differences, problems with financing such extensive work and potential disputes dealing with individual land ownership stymied any progress until the 1850s when a second major outbreak of cholera killed 5,000 people in the city. Even though work then started on clearing slums and improving the drains it was not until the 1880s that Charles Ambt, the city engineer, began to draw up detailed plans for the necessary engineering works including a scheme to take sewage out through a tunnel under the harbour and out into the sound. The Nordic Exhibition in Copenhagen of 1888 showed the citizens all the wonders that were then available for modern plumbing and sanitation but even then the first street to have water closets was Stokholmsgade in 1893, nearly 60 years after that first cholera outbreak, and it was not until 1901 that Copenhagen completed a full sewage system and paved the streets in the city. To be blunt, the point here is that this time, facing climate change, we cannot afford to take sixty years to decide what to do and start the work.

The second part of the exhibition shows a number of completed or ongoing or planned projects that are designed to cope with the anticipated increase in the number of rain storms. These are presented as opportunities rather than enforced and expensive solutions that will be necessary if we wait until we have to do the work.

 

With adventurous and imaginative schemes the people who live in the cities and in the suburbs are getting new facilities and renewed urban areas at little or certainly reduced direct cost; the city councils are getting a renewed infrastructure at markedly less cost than by waiting until works are absolutely needed after a major and destructive storm and the utility companies, who have to provide solutions and have to deal with any failures in the system, can actually often introduce smaller local schemes on private or city land as long as the owners see a gain which is much much cheaper than the company having to buy land for the construction of mega solutions.

 

Simple schemes shown include designs for permeable pavements and surfacing to deal quickly with surface water but without overwhelming the drains. On a larger scale there are several proposals shown to build underground tanks to hold water from flash floods so it can be dealt with slowly over the following days and weeks. More natural-looking options - rather than hard engineering solutions - include schemes with planting or new ponds and drainage channels or well-planted temporary flood plains. New artificial surfaces can be installed for sports facilities that keep the surface dry but take rain water down to permeable sub structures.

 

So, at Gladsaxe new sports facilities for the Gymnasium have been built around and over ponds and canals for a new drainage system that holds back flood water so it can be dealt with locally by the system over a more reasonable period. For this project costings have been given to show how the different parties have benefitted financially. A traditional project with an underground storm basin would have cost 102 million DKK. The completed project with surface solutions cost 72 million DKK. The municipality has influenced the project and gained financially by providing advice and expertise that was financed from the project costs. The citizens of Gladsaxe saved 30 million DKK on supply expenses and they gained sports facilities, playgrounds, nature trails and new urban spaces.

At the headquarters of Nordisk a nature park of 31,000 square metres has been built with half laid out across the roof of car parks. Covered with grass and meadow plants, it absorbs rain water rather than having it run off the alternative of hard roofing into drains and provides a pleasant new facility for staff and visitors to the company.

In Middlefart management of water is seen as an opportunity to create a Climate City to turn 450,000 square metres into a greener and healthier neighbourhood. 

In Køge there is scheme to establish new green spaces and rain water from roofs will be cleaned and returned for washing clothes and flushing toilets.

In Viborg a large new park is being laid out with lakes that retain water that can be cleaned and returned to the water system. Again there is considerable gain from such careful management of storm water … the utility company gains access to a large space where it can manage and clean the water, the municipality can influence the design from the start and gets a new park and the citizens are protected from flooding caused by a sudden cloud burst and gain a new recreational space.

Not all the schemes are on such a large scale. Helenevej in Frederiksberg is the first climate street in Denmark with a permeable surface that absorbs large amounts of water when there is a cloudburst and at Vilhem Thomsens Allé in Valby, rainwater is handled within the courtyard of the housing scheme creating a recreational space and reducing water bills as retained water is now used rather than metered water for watering the planting. The utility company gains financially because it does not have to construct new pipes to take rainwater away from the area.

If people still need to be convinced about the need for such schemes, the exhibition has stark figures for the financial cost of wasting water. An average Danish family uses 40 litres of water per person each day for flushing toilets and for washing which is roughly the amount of rainwater that could be collected from a roof surface of 40 square metres so if water could be stored until it is needed then the roof on a house, on average 200 square metres, could provide all the water needed for washing clothes and flushing toilets rather than the family using drinking water … with a potential saving for a family of 5,000 DKK a year in water charges.

 

The Rain is Coming - how climate adaptation can create better cities

Danish Architecture Centre until 6 April 2015