This Year's Finalists
Working tirelessly over the past week, our finalist teams have now erected five ambitious and innovative temporary pavilions in the Charlottenborg courtyards, each responding to this year's competition theme: Bio Architecture.
This year's finalist teams include:
- BIOSACK (Anders Lynderup, Michael Skov and Marie Louise Thorning)
- DUNE (Anders Fønss, Javi Barriuso Domingo, Victor Lacima Medina and Gonzalo Rivas Zinno)
- Elisa and the 11 Swans (Studio AX - Jack O’Hagan and Bex Browne)
- a music box (team softspace.digital - Tessira Crawford and Dilara Özlü)
- Inhabiting Ecologies (Nikolaj Emil Svenningsen, Sean Lyon, Søs Christine Hejselbæk)
Photo by Joakim Züger / BARSK Projects
Elisa and the 11 Swans
Elisa and the 11 swans sparks curiosity about the origins and stories of bio-materials, by exploring their entanglements within natural, cultural and economic landscapes.
As these stories are shared, we are able to value the presence and possibilities of natural materials.
This pavilion translates H.C Anderson's tale, The Wild Swans, into architecture that celebrates the regenerative and renewable bio-materials that originate in Denmark.
Elisa— the protagonist of the tale, who has to knit eleven jumpers to save her brothers—is represented by a spruce timber A-frame: a simple system designed for disassembly and reassembly.
This timber is cut from a forest near Aarhus, where responsible forestry methods are essential for the longevity of the land and the future of the building industry.
Eleven knitted hemp wings hang from the timber arms, and symbolise the eleven jumpers. The fast-growing and regenerative properties of the hemp plant—as well as its effect on soil—could potentially narrate a transformation of the Danish agricultural landscape, ensuring the production of both food and material.
The use of Danish bio-materials for this pavilion allows us to trace these narratives from seed to product, thereby questioning our material choices.
We invite you to interact with the materials here by pulling on the strings, and controlling the wings above your fellow guests across the bar.
Elisa and the 11 swans has been made possible with the kind support of Hemp Copenhagen.
Photo by Joakim Züger / BARSK Projects
BIOSACK
The BIOSACK pavilion is a reinterpretation of the traditional seaweed houses of Læsø Island. It playfully contrasts the voluminous aesthetic of seaweed to the structure of traditional wooden construction.
The pavilion responds to the need for sustainable architecture, using material that stores atmospheric carbon dioxide bonds, rather than emitting them.
The aim is to encourage visitors to sense the pavilion, urging them to reflect on and reconsider the use of biogenic architectural materials. Fast-growing seaweed is used for roofing, while oyster shells make up the floor on which a bar—made of seaweed plates—stands.
These materials provide a vibrant and tactile experience to the pavilion’s guests, who are given the opportunity to touch, smell and eventually eat the oysters that are served in the bar.
Carefully detailing and constructing the wooden connections, the pavilion is built to be dismantled, rebuilt, and reconfigured in a new context.
BIOSACK was made possible with the generous sponsorship from STARK Gentræ, STARK Group, Søuld, Vilsund Shells, Antidark and Melbjerggaard potatoes.
Befitting the use of marine materials, the pavilion partners with Rouge Oysters, who will be serving champagne and oysters to create a holistic experience.
Photo by Joakim Züger / BARSK Projects
Photo by Joakim Züger / BARSK Projects
Photo by Joakim Züger / BARSK Projects
DUNE
Rather than mimicking nature, bio-architecture — or simply architecture —should allow nature to develop freely, taking advantage of its intrinsic qualities and only in certain circumstances enhancing its performance.
By bringing a piece of the Danish dune landscape to CHART and aseptically encapsulating it in a greenhouse, what we usually do not see becomes visible.
Through the transparent facade the earth layers are revealed and the life that the earth contains—dynamic and constantly changing—is shown. The dune landscape is a piece of bio architecture in itself: the autochthonous plants stabilise the sand with their long roots, creating a dynamic ecosystem.
This stands in contrast to architecture as a static human construct. In DUNE, architecture serves to frame nature in the form of a white cubical structure, emphasising the difference between natural and artificial.
DUNE is a project by BARILA collective, an ongoing collaboration between BRØN STUDIO, GRZA & VLA.
The pavilion is realised with the support of Bjørns Træværk og Restaurering, Studio Soriano and Macoglass.
Photo by Joakim Züger / BARSK Projects
Photo by Joakim Züger / BARSK Projects
a music box
"a music box" began with a forest clearing – its soft shadows, the wind and birds – weaving several stories together – from East and Southeast Asia, Northern Europe, and North America – to form an architecture that is familiar yet unfamiliar.
“a music box” developed after re-visiting the door and its role in dividing the interior from the exterior — the private from the public — re-imagining the door into a series of twelve revolving doors that never close.
This developed into a continuously changing, flickering facade — reminiscent of interactions between people, the wind and its doors. “a music box” is made from biophilic- and bio-materials.
These various materials are applied during the fabrication of the pavilion’s structure, roofing and finishes as a result of traditional and digital techniques and tools.
“a music box” has been made possible with the support of the Danish Art Foundation, Danmarks Nationalbanks Jubilæumsfonden, the Royal Danish Academy, CITA, Maker, Quirky Moose, Lille Bakery, Il Buco & La Banchina.
Photo by Joakim Züger / BARSK Projects
Photo by Joakim Züger / BARSK Projects
Photo by Joakim Züger / BARSK Projects
Photo by Joakim Züger / BARSK Projects
Inhabiting Ecologies
“How might natural and man-made structures cohabitate and be in dialogue with one another?“
Inhabiting Ecologies investigates the properties of mycelium. In the building sphere, this root-like fungal structure—consisting of branching filaments—is being considered more and more as an alternative composite material.
Inhabiting Ecologies, conversely, delves deeper into the generative behavior of the organism. By making use of the productive attributes of this fungal network, we are inviting nature into the pavilion, surrendering the architectural agency to mycelium’s creative process.
The mycelium culture feeds off a substrate—in this case the sawdust created during production as well as waste coffee grounds sponsored by Apollo Bar & Canteen—and spreads its spores across a piece of woven organic textile, creating a collaborative environment and microcosm.
Inhabiting Ecologies investigates the boundaries between man-made and natural forms by working within the set parameters of a box—inspired by the neo-classicist architecture of Charlottenborg—which the fungal network can populate. The pavilion is brought to life through the organism, which it in turn continues to host in a live form.
Informed by the fungi’s structural intelligence and realised through parametric modelling - the mycelium’s behavioural pattern is treated as an algorithm.
The structural and textile materials sponsored by KVADRAT and SUPERWOOD are derived from surplus stock and will be repurposed, as the structure is designed for disassembly.
Moreover, the textile is fastened using a fully compostable and dissolvable bio-polymer made from algae — which won’t compromise the wood through the addition of harmful chemicals. Mycelium provides key advantages to traditional building materials - such as low cost, density and energy consumption.
In addition to this, their biodegradability ensures a low environmental impact and carbon footprint. Inhabiting Ecologies is inviting you to rethink current systems and ways of manufacturing, as well as proposing a symbiotic relationship with nature within the built environment.
Photo by Joakim Züger / BARSK Projects
Photo by Joakim Züger / BARSK Projects
Competition Jury
A huge thank you goes out to this year's competition jury: of architect and founder of Bjarke Ingels Group, Bjarke Ingels; founder of The Circular Way and author of Danish Design Heritage & Global Sustainability, Ditte Lysgaard Vind; speculative artist and designer, Pleun van Dijk; architect and co-founder of architecture and design studio Snøhetta; Kjetil Trædaal Thorsen; sculptor Johanne Hestvold and, gallerist and founder of Copenhagen-based gallery Etage Projects, Maria Foerlev.
This Sunday, the jury will make their official rounds of the pavilions before deciding on which team will be the recipient of the prestigious first prize award. Stay tuned for more information!
Photo by Niklas Adrian Vindelev