Changing our footprint

The construction industry is accountable for 40% of global emissions; a painful truth that fuels our drive and responsibility to change. With the theme of ‘rolling out the sketching paper’ our 2023 exhibition ‘Changing Our Footprint’ illustrates this journey through questions, concepts, projects, and materials, that present optimistic alternatives found along the way.

Project details

Typology

Culture

Status

Completed

Discipline

Graphic design, Interior architecture, Architecture

Previously on view in Berlin and Hamburg before coming to Copenhagen, ‘Changing our Footprint' is an unconventional architecture exhibition. An effort to address the construction industry’s outsized environmental footprint, the exhibition embraces the responsibility for change by presenting a hopeful and optimistic path forward. Sharing some of our explorative journeys of learning and curiosity, ‘Changing our Footprint’ sheds light on the meaningful concepts, possibilities, and potentials ahead.

"As a studio we are rather experienced, but we are always on a continuous journey to develop, and this exhibition is an acceleration of this development, a readiness to change. We still have much to learn, and unlearn, as we reshape our industry’s outsized environmental impact and just facing up to this footprint can be anxiety-provoking. But it also holds a wealth of opportunities, leading us to embark upon the explorative and collaborative journey of changing our footprint,” says Louis Becker, Global Design Principal of Henning Larsen.

Danish Architecture Center, Copenhagen, 2023-2024 Rasmus Hjortshøj, 2023

01/03

“We still have much to learn, and unlearn, as we reshape our industry’s outsized environmental impact and just facing up to this footprint can be anxiety-provoking. But it also holds a wealth of opportunities, leading us to embark upon the explorative and collaborative journey of changing our footprint.”

Louis Becker

Global Design Principal

The projects, materials and exhibits represent our small but scalable steps as we progress towards a desirable future through research, testing and continuous learning. Rasmus Hjortshøj, 2023

The concepts, projects, models, and materials exhibited represent our scalable steps, as we progress towards a desirable future through research, testing and continuous learning. Celebrating the use of biogenic resources, including wood, straw, eelgrass, and mycelium as well as reused and upcycled materials, the exhibition looks broadly at alternatives to conventional practice. Ranging from decarbonization and 3D printing, to transformations and design for disassembly, the topics presented showcase our efforts within innovation and our steadfast commitment to push the boundaries of design.

With the theme of ‘rolling out the sketch paper’, the nature of the work presented does not necessarily offer final and definitive answers but rather, boldly asks the difficult questions required to better our ways and create significant positive change.

Through 2023, the exhibition was first shown at Aedes Architecture Forum in Berlin, then making its way to AIT Arkitektur Salon in Hamburg. More recently, it was curated for the Gallery Stairs in the Danish Architecture Center in Copenhagen.