Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Architecture and Culture-Taking Place, Copenhagen
Spring 2017
Anne Romme, Camilla Hornemann, Carolina Dayer, Robert Gassner, Peter Alexander Bullough 

The relationships between houses, conglomerates of buildings, open areas and other urban spaces and the thresholds between these have significant impact on the quality and character of habitation. With ‘The House in the City and the City in the House’, we were therefore looking closer at the mutual relationship and thresholds between the private, semi-private, and public spaces of a specific place in Copenhagen. Extents and margins of such spatial categories are difficult to appoint when merely considered physically and organizationally. Therefore, we must ask how social, cultural and political forces define and interact with the materially immanent, when closely observing our place in the city.

The observation of the city initiated the first view of the site in ‘Amager’ in the south of Copenhagen towards unused spaces. Introduced architectural interventions are adding social meaning to the street side and enable the activation of such areas. The idea is to differentiate from both, the physical as well as the programmatic appearance of the surrounding, to cause a point of attraction to the pedestrian. The network of this build interventions creates a walkable path spanning from courtyard to courtyard, enhancing the possibility of altering the living quality of the further surrounding. Nesting within volumes of potential, a high density, short term housing finds its place within a publicly accessible space for meetings, social gatherings, exhibitions, and events. Utilizing the vertical circulation from existing buildings in close proximity, it invites neighbors to visit and interact with each other in a new setting of semi-public living conditions within the city.