As one of the leading Danish architecture, landscape and urban design offices Henning Larsen challenges conventional ways of working to co-create, innovate and cultivate desirable futures through design. The office is well known for their iconic international projects such as Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Center in Reykjavik, Moesgaard Museum in Aarhus, Siemens Global Headquarters in Munich, Eystur Town Hall in Eystur, Malmö City Library and Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Riyadh. The exhibition will give visitors a peek into Henning Larsen’s working methods, where decarbonization and outstanding architecture go hand in hand to inspire future generations of clients, manufactures, builders, and architects to shape a more responsible building industry and culture. It aims to initiate a discussion about new aesthetic expressions of the built environment and to explore how to avoid material waste and how to build sustainably.
Queensland University of Technology © Christopher Frederick Jones | Green façade © Raket Film
Architecture today is not limited to designing and building – it encompasses a far extended scope, in which creativity, research, and knowledge are fundamental. By actively co-creating with all parties involved at the early phases of the design process, Henning Larsen continually advance the quality of their projects, from the start through to completion. The goal is to create generous spaces in which the unexpected can occur. The landscape department focusses on natural and urban spaces in a resilient context to increase biodiversity and create nature experiences. Incorporating nature into the fabric of our communities creates lasting socioeconomic and environmental impacts. These are the places where people enjoy living, working, and spending their time. The design approach focuses on the physical and cultural context of a site to adapt to naturally occurring cycles. Natural regeneration and restoration, as well as urban and in-building planting is addressed by transforming the existing landscape and context. Biophilic design, ecosystems, water management, and re-wilding all play a part. As cities and populations grow, designing for healthy living and resiliency at an urban scale is more important than ever. Henning Larsen works to create communities from the ground up, to regenerate urban spaces that formerly served different functions and to revitalize polluted areas. The ambition lies not in creating isolated destinations, but in crafting journeys of sensory experience across the urban grain. The potential of spaces is maximized through intelligent, data-driven, scenario planning to create a buffer against the consequences of climate change. By analyzing the large-scale factors that affect urban districts from infrastructure to investigating microbial impacts, holistic insights are gathered to create high-impact solutions for cities and communities around the world.
3D printed rowhouse © Henning Larsen | NEOMA Business School © Sora
Exhibition
The exhibition at Aedes presents an inspiring journey of how to change our footprint – in small but scalable steps – through built projects, ongoing research, testing, learning from mistakes, and inviting to a dialogue. The goal is not to provide the final solution, but rather a response to the questions that arise at this moment in time – while new answers are developed as new approaches are tested continuously. Topics like transformation, design for disassembly, 3D printing, engineering, acoustics and indoor climate will be explained and invite visitors to make new discoveries and learn about forward-looking ideas. SHARE is the theme of the first exhibition space, dedicated to carbon. A long table offers visitors the possibility to explore various materials used in the industry. On a podium, some of these materials can be rediscovered as floor, wall and ceiling materials ranging from good to less good. Events, lectures and panel discussions will take place there during the exhibition period, inviting stakeholders within and around the building industry to debate and frame the challenges Henning Larsen face and the ways in which they work to solve and innovate around them. The purpose of SHARE is to exchange information and develop new innovative ideas. The second space titled EXPLORE is dedicated to different bio-based materials such as wood, straw, eelgrass, mycelium, reused bricks, low-carbon concrete and clay, which are explored on the example of selected projects. The presentation is based on the idea of literally spreading out the sketch paper to provide insight into Henning Larsen's processes and current situation, and to invite the audience to engage in a dialogue about where they stand as architects and planners, and as an industry.
Unboxing Carbon © Henning Larsen
Among the presented projects are:
Feldballe School, 2022
In the small rural town of Rønde, located in the heart of Denmark, lies Feldballe School that is totally redefining the standards for sustainable construction.
Fritz Hansen Pavilion, 2022
Designing the Fritz Hansen Pavilion demanded that we embrace the temporality of the pavilion typology, and mindfully ensure that each component could be repurposed, leaving no traces in its previous site.
Ørestad Church, 2022
With timber as the primary material in the design of Ørestad Church and the façade shingles made entirely of scrap ash tree, a planet-minded material choice is harnessed to embody both familiarity and warmth in a sensory experience.
World of Volvo, 2022
Designed around the Swedish concept of “Allemansrätten”, denoting a fundamental right to nature or ‘the freedom to roam’, World of Volvo, a 20,500 m2 experience center in Gothenburg, will offer an open invitation to the public. The building uses a timber structure to embody the regional landscape in both form and materiality.
To continue the discussion beyond the exhibition, Henning Larsen provides their knowledge and thoughts in a Plant a Seed Book, which can be downloaded for free. As well as the Unboxing Carbon Catalogue, which collects architectural materials and presents complex data from Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) in a visually accessible and easy-to-understand way.
Feldballe School 2022 © Rasmus Hjortshøj – COAST | Fritz Hansen Pavilion 2022 © Laura Stamer
Henning Larsen
Henning Larsen is an international, award-winning architecture, landscape and urban design studio headquartered in Copenhagen with 19 offices worldwide. Founded in 1959 by Danish architect Henning Larsen, whose name it proudly carries today, the firm joined forces with Ramboll Group in 2019 to pioneer tomorrow's sustainable design solutions.
Already in the 1980ies the architect Henning Larsen enabled a discourse with Berlin. With the founding of SKALA in 1985 – an architectural magazine and gallery also funded by him – he offered a new and independent place in Copenhagen, Aedes was in regular exchange with from the very beginning. For almost a decade, SKALA was a leading medium and platform of discussions on Scandinavian architecture, art and design reflecting and amplifying the different voices and directions of the time.
The studio works at the nexus of creativity and experimentation, always looking to the lasting impact on communities and their environments. The team of architects, urban designers, landscape designers, engineers and specialists is at the forefront of new technologies to produce world-class design, creating places and spaces shaping the conditions for a thriving life. Awarded European Architect of the Year Award in 2019, Henning Larsen is recognized globally for pioneering sustainable design and projects that become living elements of their natural contexts; settings for human connection, sources of joy, and places to grow.
