How do we create housing that addresses some of the greatest challenges of our time? This question forms the basis for Boliglaboratorium: A Danish Housing Lab. Six groundbreaking Danish architectural projects are exhibited to explore how housing can respond to the current climate crisis, future urban challenges, shifting family patterns and new ways of living. Common to all of them is that they will be realized as full-scale housing experiments in Denmark.
The exhibition is timely for the Pacific Northwest, where recent State-level policy changes mean that more communities will need to add housing and density. The Danish examples offer models that can help new housing better fit into our neighborhoods through design excellence and a wider set of residential typologies.
New ways of living: Mother, Father, and two kids – the nuclear family structure is still at the center when designing family homes. However, Danish architects have been experimenting with new ways of living – for patchwork families, single parents, seniors, or the more modern nuclear family. The models demonstrate a new way to utilize scarce space in cities, combat loneliness, and accommodate today’s diversity of families and households.
New forms of housing also enable new types of communities. This often means fewer square meters per person – but more space for community and a better use of resources. The building sector is responsible for more than a third of our CO2 emissions - new housing options are a necessary development for climate mitigation.
The Housing Lab was exhibited in Copenhagen in 2023 as part of the UIA World Congress of Architects. The Pacific Northwest tour of the exhibition is presented by Scan Design Foundation in partnership with the Danish Embassy in Washington, DC.