Living With Other Species: Microbial Architecture (3/3)

Urban infrastructure does merely mean roads, pipes, and buildings. Soil, water flows, trees, and fungi are infrastructure too. This episode moves away from the idea that gardens belong at the edges of development or appear afterward as cosmetic additions. Instead, it asks whether the city itself can be understood as a form of cultivation: something living, maintained, and ecologically embedded rather than engineered into independence.  For what if the city is not separate from the landscape around it, but continuous with it, dependent on living systems that modern planning often treats as background or decoration? And how might we question the belief that sustainability will come mainly through smarter technologies and greater efficiency, rather than through practices of ecological reciprocity?   On the episode you will meet: Anna Aslaug Lund: architect and landscape architect MAA, Ph.D. at Schønherr, and author of The City as a Garden. Skye Jin: artist, educator, permaculture designer, and cultural sustainability advisor. Studio Coquille: Marion de Lingua de St Blanquat and Frederik Mads Svendsen, the architects behind The Habitable Skin, together with TERROIR, in collaboration with Lasse Carlsen and MYCO.

Today at Halmtorvet 27, we're hosting an event exploring how other species can become part of the political community. So what better time to dive into the podcast archive for an episode on how to create cities where insects can actually thrive? Among many other fascinating insights, you'll learn how Copenhagen's biggest electronic music festival - and its guests - help create ideal living conditions for the city's insect populations.   On the episode you can meet:   Studio Coquille: Marion de Lingua de St Blanquat and Frederik Mads Svendsen. The architects behind The Habitable Skin, along with TERROIR, in collaboration with Lasse Carlsen and MYCO   Hjalte Calberg Ro-Poulsen: Biologist/entomologist/melittologist who conducts research, provides consultancy, and teaches about land and urban management based on the needs of wild bees and other insects at Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen.

In this first episode on the policy proposal of Material Ownership, drafted by architect and founder of Lendager, Anders Lendager, we sit down with Anders alongside Co-Founder of both Home. Earth & Transformer.Build Kasper Guldage Jensen, Vice President of Global Sales at Fritz Hansen, Martin Scharff and Senior Adviser at construction company DI Byggeri, Jakob Thaysen Rørbech to discuss the proposal for the extended producer responsibility for construction products. Read the law proposal at this link.   This podcast was produced by KoozArch in collaboration with Copenhagen Architecture Biennial.

This week we are revisiting an episode from last year, to celebrate our newly announced fellowship with HouseEurope! Instead of demolishing and rebuilding, HouseEurope! calls for sustainable renovation and adaptive reuse, pushing for new EU laws that protect and prioritize existing spaces. Our joint fellowship invites talented young professionals from the fields of law and architecture to join forces for a week in Copenhagen, to question existing laws and take steps to create a more sustainable building sector and world. Last year, using the European Citizens' Initiative (ECI), HouseEurope! mobilized people across Europe to demand policies that favor preservation over demolition, with the goal of collecting one million signatures from at least seven countries. The podcast was made on the day the initiative kicked off. The live conversation features leading voices from architecture, urbanism, and activism. On the podcast you will meet:   • Søren Pihlmann (Founder, Pihlmann Architects / Danish Architecture Pavilion - Venice Biennale 2025) • Lars Autrup (CEO, Arkitektforeningen) • Jacob Blak Henriksen (Head of Sustainability Architect, Cobe) • Tamara Kalantajevska (Head of Urbanism, Schmidt Hammer Lassen / KADK) • Kasper Benjamin Reimer Bjørkskov (Founder, No Objectives) • Erik Valdemar Eriksen (Activist, Den Grønne Studenterbevægelses Klimaaktivistisk Tegnestue) • Dominique Hauderowicz (Founder, Studio Dominique Serena / Danish Architecture Pavilion – Venice Biennale 2027) • Esben Thorlacius (Partner, Over Byen Arkitekter) The discussion is moderated by Enlai Hooi, Head of Innovation at Schmidt Hammer Lassen.

As debates about rural life resurface across Denmark, including in Altinget's highly recommended podcast Aftryk, the countryside is once again being cast as a political battleground. The debate is not new, but it is encouraging to see it begin to move beyond a long-standing assumption: that the countryside mainly matters insofar as it serves the urban environement or the agricultural industry.  It led us to revisit this episode from the archives with the Danish architecture studio Rural Agency, which enters that shift. Are we operating within an underlying urban bias? And what would it mean to take the rural seriously as a place of life, ecology, and practice in its own right?

Many still assume that buildings must excite. They must capture attention, produce images, and offer experiences. Boredom is treated as failure. But this reveals a hidden intuition that human beings need constant stimulation to remain engaged. What if this intuition is wrong? This episode explores that question. It suggests that architecture has become entangled in a psychological economy of attention, reflected in approaches such as hedonistic sustainability. Here, the "good" solution is often the one that is also pleasurable, fun, and instantly rewarding. But this carries a risk. What if what produces short-term value for the touristic gaze undercuts long-term trust for citizens? What if the constant appeal to excitement leaves less room for quieter qualities such as rest, awe, and integrity? Over the past five years, several institutions have pointed to the emergence of a new paradigm in Danish architecture, described as a new subtlety or as an ecological turn. In this episode, Kristoffer Lindhardt Weiss (a renowned Danish architecture critic, writer, and CEO of Danish Architectural Press) and Anne Beim (Head of Centre for Industrial Architecture at the Danish School of Architecture) reflect on how to understand this shift and what it leaves behind.

Modern life is built on a simple promise: the more comfortable, stable, and controlled our surroundings become, the better our lives will be. We insulate ourselves from weather, reduce friction in daily routines, and design spaces that are predictable and easy to navigate. Progress, in this view, means minimizing effort and exposure. But this logic may carry an unintended cost. This week, we return to our podcast archive. As the exhibition Tales of a Nomadic City at Halmtorvet 27 enters its final days, we revisit a conversation on nomadic life and forms of knowledge, asking what such ways of living might reveal about our own attachment to comfort. For If making life easier also reduces our engagement, then the pursuit of constant comfort risks becoming a trap; not because it feels bad, but because, over time, we begin to feel less at all. On the episode you will meet: Jeanette Lykkegård: A postdoctoral researcher in anthropology at Aarhus University. Her work explores how communities understand life, death, and transformation in Arctic and circumpolar contexts. Pavels Hedström: An award-winning Swedish architect based in Copenhagen and Tokyo. With a background in architecture and extreme environments, he investigates how design can reconnect humans with non-human life and broader planetary systems.

Listen to the second podcast series Slow Down. A conversation between David Garcia and Kristoffer Weiss on the architecture of extreme environments. An important conversation on the future of architecture in a world of increasingly extreme conditions.   In this second and last episode of Slow Down we delve into the architecture of extreme environments with a true expert: David A. Garcia. Since 2013 he has been the director of the Master Program "Architecture and Extreme Environments" at the Royal Danish Academy – Architecture, Design, Conservation.   And last year Garcia published the book Extreme Environments - Architectural Possibilities for a Challenged World. From the cold expanses of the Arctic to the desert regions of the Gobi and pollution-heavy industrial territories, the book investigates how architects can integrate site-specific presence, fieldwork and investigations, local knowledge and contemporary technological advancements to create resilient alternatives both at home and abroad.   On the episode you will meet:   David A. Garcia: Associate Professor at the Royal Danish Art Academy School of Architecture and director of the Master program "Architecture and Extreme Environments" since 2013. His work focuses on exploring site-specific actions in extreme environments, merging arts and sciences and challenging standard approaches to architecture.   Kristoffer Lindhardt Weiss: Director of Danish Architectural Press. He has a background in philosophy from the University of Copenhagen and the Paris-Sorbonne University, Paris IV.    

We are back with a new podcast series! Listen to the first episode of Slow Down, a series investigating ways to slow down overheated sites, cities, and societies. In this episode, we follow a deep dive into the Køge Bay and explore the violent praxis of marine sand extraction. As part of her PhD, Emma Rishøj Holm descends to the seabed to experience firsthand the hidden consequences of marine sand extraction — a practice that is accelerating as land-based resources disappear, yet remains largely invisible. Together with Tideland Studio and marine biologist Stiig Markager, the conversation unfolds across ecology, infrastructure, and architecture, tracing a slow violence that reshapes the seabed — and exploring how architecture might play a role in bringing attention to it.   In the episode you will meet: Emma Rishøj Holm: PhD Fellow at Arkitektskolen Aarhus. Focusing on sand extraction in the Køge Bay and sand-related proposals for material solutions in the construction industry. Tideland Studio: A research-based design studio merging architecture with artistic expression, technological innovation and holistic sustainability. Through a profound understanding of both our natural and built environments, we design solutions, stories and experiences that resonate, transform and enrich.  Stiig Markager: Professor in marine ecology and biogeochemistry at the Department of Ecoscience at Aarhus University. A prominent voice in the Danish discussion about agriculture's impact on the marine environment.  

Today we conclude Living With Other Species. A series exploring how to plan and live alongside other species in the cities of the future.  The last episode is a talk on how microbes and human well-being is connected through soil ecologies, building materials, and urban planning—and how acknowledging processes of decay can inform healthier, more resilient cities. What happens when we begin to think of the city as a living microbial ecology? On the podcast you will meet: Marie Sainabou Jeng: Is the founder and program director of Madland. A food policy hub and community by and for the micro-level. Together, they rethink and transform food systems with social responsibility Adam Bencard: Researcher and curator at the The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research and at the Medical Museion Lasse Antoni Carlsen: Is an urban farming expert and food system innovator, dedicated to advancing modular, sustainable farming that bring specialty ingredients like mushrooms closer to consumers - improving the accessibility to sustainable quality food.
 Founder of BYGAARD. Gerd Laura Juul Dahl is moderating the conversation.