Global Social Responsibility Report 2023

Corporate Social Responsibility Report 2023

Contact

Aarhus

AART architects A/S

Mariane Thomsens Gade 1c

DK - 8000 Aarhus C

+45 87 30 32 86

aart@aart.dk

København

AART architects A/S

Struenseegade 9

DK - 2200 København N

+45 87 30 32 86

aart@aart.dk

Roskilde

Mangor & Nagel

– en del af AART A/S

Knudrisvej 44

DK – 4400 Roskilde

+45 4731 3210

Frederikssund

Mangor & Nagel

– en del af AART A/S

A. C. Hansensvej 7

DK - 3600 Frederikssund

+45 4731 3210

Oslo

AART architects AS

St. Olavs Plass 5

NO - 0165 Oslo

+47 23 10 39 00

aart@aart.no

Stockholm

AART architects AB

Upplandsgatan 14

SE - 11123 Stockholm

+45 87 30 32 86

aart@aart.se

Credits

Photos

Kontraframe

Wilfred Gachau

Adam Mørk

Helene Høyer Mikkelsen

Jens Markus Lindhe

Kirstine Mengel

Thomas Mølvig

Niels Nygaard

Cover

Vrå Childrens- and Culture House

/ Hjørring, DK

Purpose

Roots and reach

UN Global Compact

People, planet and profit

Architecture for impact

Impact cases

Certified buildings

The SDGs

CEO

Torben Skovbjerg Larsen talks about

work

with redefining architecture

Torben Skovbjerg Larsen Partner and CEO of AART architects

For us, architecture is about impact. For more than 20 years, we have been driven by a deep commitment to design for positive change in organisations and communities.

Purpose

Cities and buildings are powerful catalysts. This is where the key to changing and improving the most fundamental environment of our lives lies – how we live, play, learn and work. Therefore, our purpose reaches far beyond the aestheticization of architecture. It is first and foremost about fulfilling the visions that we meet every day in our dialogue with clients and in the debate that characterizes societies on a local and global scale.

Our desire to create is, therefore, never without the will to follow up. As the first architecture firm in Scandinavia, we have thus established an impact team, where we re-visit our completed buildings and document how they contribute to developing organisations and communities – socially, economically and environmentally. Because this enables us to not only convey the impact of our architectural advise, but also to create buildings on an impact-based foundation of evidence and experience.

Roots and reach

We are an architecture firm with Scandinavian roots, local anchoring, and international reach. Working from offices in Aarhus, Copenhagen, Roskilde, Frederikssund, Oslo and Stockholm, we help clients all over Scandinavia –and beyond – develop organisations and communities with architecture as a catalyst.

We work across scale and sector

As a full-service architecture firm, we provide consulting across scale and sector. We do this based on a holistic approach, where we include the right skills at the right time in the process. We make a virtue of engaging in dialogue with our clients to understand their needs and visions. This enables us to challenge and optimize the framework for a given project – always with the aim of leaving as positive an impact as possible: Socially, environmentally and economically.

We are ambitious by nature – not only in relation to aesthetics, materials, and constructions, but also in exploring and challenging our client's visions. Over the years, it has led to a long list of award-winning projects with significant impact – among others the children and youth hospice ‘Strandbakkehuset’, which was awarded the best Danish healthcare building in 2021, and Musholm Holidayand Conference Centre, that was awarded one of the world’s most including buildings in 2016.

We are ambitious by nature

We are a cross-disciplinary team of more than 300 architects, constructing architects, urban planners, designers, engineers, and anthropologists working together to create architecture with a significant positive impact.

socially inclusive building at the IAUD Awards in Japan.

UN Global Compact

In our desire to convey the catalysing powers of architecture, we have joined the UN Global Compact, which is the largest voluntary corporate social responsibility initiative in the world.

As a member, we are proud to commit our strategies and operations with the UN principles in the areas of human rights, labour rights, environment and anticorruption. By doing this and promoting the principles within our sphere of influence, we take part in improving the quality of life and the health of the environment.

As part of the UN Global Compact initiative, we report on our continuing commitment to supporting advances in the building industry in ways that benefit everyday life, the economy and the environment. By doing so we give our stakeholders and the wider community an insight into how we promote and have implemented corporate social responsibility in our core business.

Communicating our commitment

As a part of the UN Global Compact initiative, we attach great importance to communicating our sustainable ambitions to all our stakeholders – employees, clients, business partners and the wider building industry.

Therefore, we continually report on our progress on the official UN Global Compact website.

Social commitment

We joined the UN Global Compact in 2008 to be part of the partnership between the UN with the objective of promoting transparency and social commitment in the global business community.

Thus, we commit ourselves to all four areas of the Global Compact initiative: Human Rights, Labour Rights, Environment and Anti-Corruption.

AART Office / Aarhus, Denmark

AART Office / Aarhus, Denmark

AART Office / Copenhagen , Denmark

How we operate

Labour rights and collective agreements

Attracting, retaining, developing, and ensuring the health and safety of all AART employees is the main focus in our organizational development. The Scandinavian countries are by definition attending to secure labour rights and conditions of any staff member through collective agreements and state-imposed regulations concerning employee safeguarding.

At AART we have free union representative elections without management intervention and there is employee representation on two important organisational boards: The Health & Safety Committee and The Collaboration Committee.

In alle three countries - Denmark, Sweden and Norwaya collective agreement is in place and applicable to the majority of the organisation’s staff members (architects, architectural technologists, urban planners, designers etc). Administrative staff holds individual contracts according to local labour and employment law.

The collective agreements provide the following benefits:

+ Individual salary negotiations plus fixed salary tiers regulated according to seniority

+ Pension scheme

+ Working hours regulation and overtime compensation

+ Favourable maternityand paternity leave

+ Holiday regulations

+ Continuing professional development funding

Additionally, AART offers a private health insurance, lunch scheme and monthly shared learning AART+ events to engage and develop a meaningful work life for all staff members. In addition, there is a Staff Association Club arranging social activities in all offices.

In place are also policies dealing with stress, harassment, continuing professional development, salary and hybrid work.

Meaningfulness at work

Annually AART administers a detailed organisational survey called the Meaningfulness Survey (MWQ). The MWQ is an organizational survey that asks employees several questions about meaningfulness at work centred around the four drivers of Purpose, Leadership, Belonging and Personal Growth.

Research shows that experiencing meaningfulness at work is what drives employees to be more engaged, productive, innovative, stay longer with the organization, and experience less stress. With success, AART has completed five MWQ-surveys with an excessive overall score for the entire company between 3.89-4.08 on a scale of 1-5.

The score on belonging is particularly worth highlighting, which during the period of Covid-19 has been strongly decreasing worldwide but in the same period has increased in AART to an impressive overall score of 4.35. The survey results are presented for alle employees and afterwards accessible at the organisation’s intranet.

From the gained MWQ insights, the management board, in collaboration with the Health & Safety Committee and the Collaboration Committee, holds the responsibility to initiate initiatives that can strengthen and develop the organisation. The MWQ survey is combined with questions on physical working conditions as well as psychological working environment when necessary, according to the local Working Environment Acts.

AART annual cycle

A shared annual cycle has been implemented throughout the organisation, which ensures that all colleagues have a yearly salary negotiation, a competence development session and a ‘walk & talk’-session with the immediate manager, along with the more informal daily contact between manager and employee. The annual cycle also contains five town hall information meetings, where the AART management and other organisational key persons inform about the company's market and financial situation, internal policies, MWQ score, the architectural development and other important topics.

Gender equality

The employees at AART is a diverse group. As of June 2023, the staff represents 15 different nationalities of which 57% are men and 43 % are woman. We work for equal career possibilities, and we are transparent towards equal rights and wages. Our 275 staff members are led by a Group Management consisting of 6 members with a gender split of 67 % men and 33 % women. The daily management teams across our six offices consist of 33 persons divided on partners, group partners, associated partners, c-profiles and team leaders, and the gender distribution is 61,3 % men and 38,7 % women.

Being a Scandinavian firm, we ask our employees to speak a Scandinavian language in order to meet our Scandinavian clients on their level. That in mind, we strategically work on being an attractive workplace. Attracting new talents into our work culture and having various nationalities and backgrounds, we see as an added value. Our staff members differ in age and job seniority which is important to us. Our average age is 39,1 years and our average job seniority is 5,13 years.

People, planet and profit

The first theme and point of focus includes human rights and labour rights and focuses on our socially responsible approach to developing cities, buildings and public spaces. The second (Planet) includes environment and focuses on our approach to environmental sustainability in the building industry, while the third (Profit) includes anti-corruption and focuses on our aim to lead the development of a more transparent and economically sustainable building industry.

Planet Profit People

Principle 1

Businesses should support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights.

Principle 2

Businesses should make sure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses.

Principle 3

Businesses should uphold the freedom of association and the effective rec-ognition of the right to collective bargaining.

Principle 4

Businesses should uphold the elimination of all forms of forced and compul-sory labour.

Principle 5

Businesses should uphold the effective abolition of child labour.

Principle 6

Businesses should uphold the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation.

Principle 7

Businesses should support a precautionary approach to environmental challenges.

Principle 8

Businesses should undertake initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility.

Principle 9

Businesses should encourage the development and diffusion of environ-mentally friendly technologies.

Principle 10

Businesses should work against corruption in all its forms, including extortion and bribery.

People

We believe that buildings and public spaces should empower people to live healthier, smarter and more connected lives. Therefore, we support the UN universal principles concerning human and labour rights.

Nicolinehus is a mixed-used project located in the new urban district of Aarhus named Aarhus Ø. The project is developed with clear vision of actively contributing to the quality of life for the resident of the building through the build environment, and furthermore to bring more urban life and quality to the new neighbourhood for the benefit of the local community and Aarhus in general.

Planet

We believe that buildings and public spaces should have a positive impact on the environment. The environment is the field where we as architects can make the greatest difference, since the energy consumptionof buildings is responsible for 40 percent of global energy consumption. Therefore, we support the UN universal principles concerning the environment.

NYE is a brand-new suburb near Aarhus, developed by Tækker, with high ambitions within both social and environmental sustainability. AART contributed to the first phase of the suburb with 46 residential units. In 2021 we made an evaluation of the project investigating the impact of our buildings – i.e., by focusing on the build environment’s ability to promote a more sustainable consumption and behaviour among the residents.

Profit

We take pride in sharing our knowledge on the social and economic potential of architecture, as we believe that the exchange of knowledge makes us stronger as a company, industry and society. We therefore frequently speak at conferences and regularly publish articles on the impact of architecture. Among many other networks, we are members of the world’s biggest for socially responsible companies, the UN Global Compact, which commits us to publish an annual report (Communication on Progress) on our impactful work with architecture.

South Harbour District, Aarhus, DK / The district’s current and future actors are involved from the start of the urban development process before a master development plan or a single building has been drawn up.

Architecture for impact

For us, architecture is not about form. It’s about impact. A deep commitment to make a positive difference for organisations and societies, which has driven our work in architecture for 20 years.

The value of sharing knowledge

We take pride in sharing our knowledge on the social and economic potential of architecture, as we believe that the exchange of knowledge makes us stronger as a company, industry and society. We therefore frequently speak at conferences and regularly publish articles on the impact of architecture. Among many other networks, we are members of the world’s biggest for socially responsible companies, the UN Global Compact, which commits us to publish an annual report (Communication on Progress) on our impactful work with architecture.

Dedicated documentation

We are the first architecture firm in Scandinavia to establish a dedicated documentation team, where we collect the latest knowledge about how architecture makes a difference in practice. We do so by revisiting our completed projects and studying their social and economic impact. Impactful studies that give us a robust foundation of knowledge to develop organisations and communities with architecture serving as a catalyst.

Partner and Head of Impact, Johanne Mose Entwistle,

revisits the student housing project, Bikuben Kollegiet,

in Copenhagen

We collaborate with universities and research institutes so that we can offer the latest knowledge and research.

Impact

As the first architecture firm in Scandinavia, we have established an impact team dedicated to documenting the impact of our completed buildings.

Meet our impact team

Our impact team works across disciplines to gain research-based insights into the impact of our work – and architecture in general. They share these insights with our project teams across Scandinavia, so we continue to deliver on our promise to create the greatest possible impact through our architecture – both socially, economically, and environmentally.

Johanne Mose Entwistle Head of Impact / Anthropologist

Mia Kruse Rasmussen PhD Researcher / Anthropologist

Stina Rask Jensen PhD Researcher / Architect

Nicolaj Thunbo Architect

Ylva Preutz Associated partner / Specialist in Social Sustainability

Signe Jul Kirkegaard-Larsen Sociologist / Design and architecture

Mette Riisgaard Hansen Senior advisor / Impact and evaluation

Impact cases

We make a virtue of revisiting our completed building and documenting their impact - socially, economically and environtmentally. On this page, we have gathered some of our many impact cases, and you can visit our website to learn more.

Boosting the quality of life

Counteracting loneliness

Proving the impact of sharing

one –regardless of their disability –to lead an active life.

Musholm has been designed as a place that motivates every -

Improving the quality of life

Impact case / Musholm

Musholm has been designed as a multifunctional powerhouse, where holiday homes and a variety of shared facilities give people with disabilities the opportunity to lead an active life. In that way, Musholm becomes a place that gets people moving, no matter their disabilities, and gives them the opportunity to play, have experiences and form new social bonds.

Impact case / NYE

Impact case / The Bikuben Student Residence

Impact case / Pakhusene

Shows the effect of behavior

Impact case / Home for Life

Transforming the reputation of a city

Impact case / Kulturværftet

A healthy and socially stimulating place to live and work

Impact case / Huset på Torvet

And now, as a wooden building with the environment and the individual in mind, the new office and community centre is created to give the district a sustainability boost that will turn it into a healthier and more socially stimulating place to live, work, and to live everyday life.

Putting Aarhus on the world map

Impact case / Pop-up trains carriages

Provides space for quality of life

Impact case / Children and youth hospice

Helping young people back into education

Impact case / VUC Syd

Promoting an active senior life

Impact case / Havtorn

Certifications

Certified consultancy

We offer certified sustainable consultancy in the design and development of buildings and urban spaces. Over the years, we have thus designed a wide range of sustainable projects based on our certifications in DGNB, BREEAM and WELL.

Pakhusene is a striking and innovative construction project in eastern Aarhus; striking by virtue of its stringent lines, tactile brick facades and 40,000 square metres, and innovative by virtue of its focus on harnessing the many possibilities of the sharing economy, making it a sustainable powerhouse focused on community. It is a powerhouse that is teeming with life from early morning to late into the evening, and it is also the first building of the new harbour district to be awarded DGNB Gold certification.

DGNB Gold certification

DGNB Gold certification

DGNB Gold certification. (In process)

Nicolinehus

Pakhusene

Pakhusene Huset på Torvet

benefiting businesses, locals and the city in general.

Vrå Children & Culture House

REGAN Vest

INCUBA Next

The School on Duevej

The School on Duevej is the first school in Denmark to receive not just DGNB Gold certification, but DGNB Diamond - a standard that honours architectural aesthetics and quality. The expansion of the school thus realises the vision of Frederiksberg Municipality to create a school that is an asset for its students as well as the local community.

The Paper House Amedia House

Ski Station

DGNB Gold certification (In process)

BREEAM (In process)

DGNB Gold certification

BREEAM (In process)

BREEAM

DGNB Gold certification

school

For a more sustainable future

UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals is a meaningful framework for working with a holistic approach to sustainability in the building sector – which is exactly what we do at AART.

For each project we design, we aim to create positive impact. Through our projects, it is in our sphere of influence to affect several of the SDGs in a positive direction, and a lot of our projects has left a documented positive impact – socially, environmentally, and economically. Nevertheless, as actors in the building industry and designers of our physical surroundings, we are able to leave a significant impact on four of the 17 goals.

The 17 SDGs is a meaningful framework for working with a holistic approach to sustainability – which is what we do at AART.

The new neurorehabilitation building in Glostrup near Copenhagen makes up part of a strong, functional whole with the existing Glostrup Hospital. The new building creates coherent patient treatment processes of a high organisational and specialist quality, thereby distinguishing itself decidedly as a place of rehabilitation that combines the latest knowledge in the field of healing architecture with a highly specialized physical environment.

3Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

The build environment is a powerful catalyst to promote health and well-being on many levels – physically and mentally. We design hospitals, senior housing communities, schools, and day care institutions as well as urban landscapes, workplaces, leisure facilities and residential buildings. Through the build environment, we are able to influence and promote well-being, healing and restitution, social communities, a healthy indoor environment, physical activity, immersion and safety – and much more; all important factors to reach goal number 3.

The Children and Youth Hospice, Strandbakkehuset, is designed to support the physical and mental health and well-being of the users. Through a design focusing on materials, light, a close connection to the surrounding nature and homeliness, the building seeks to impact the quality of life of the patients and their families in a positive direction – even in a vulnerable life situation.

According to The United Nations, 70 % of the world’s population will live in urban areas in 2050. As designers of these urban areas, it is crucial that we design our buildings and areas to meet future needs and challenges. We plan and design urban areas and buildings all over Scandinavia, and for more than 20 years our cross-disciplinary team has worked to implement solutions for a more sustainable future in our cities.

Among other things, we design innovative housing projects, educational institutions, workplaces, cultural institutions as well outdoor urban areas to leave a positive impact for both users of each building and the surrounding city, and our focus is always to design for longevity and to implement solutions focusing on i.e., climate, energy efficiency, biodiversity, circular economy and social sustainability in our projects. In our opinion a holistic approach to the design of our cities is the most effective and future-proof way of reaching goal number 11.

Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns

Goal 12 is about ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns, which is key to sustain the livelihoods of current and future generations. The building industry is responsible for almost 40 % of the world’s CO2-emissions and the use of a severe number of resources. This leaves us with a huge responsibility to create a more sustainable way of operating in the future, which is crucial to reach goal number 12.

This task requires new materials and technologies, new ways of building and not least an increased focus on circular economy and reuse of existing resources. In the building industry, one of the key tasks is to transform and reuse more. We advise clients all over Scandinavia on the use of responsibly produced materials in our projects, and how to optimise and reuse existing square-metres instead of building new. Furthermore, where is it possible and meaningful, we strive to reuse building materials in our projects or to construct in a way, where we make it possible to reuse the materials in other contexts in the future.

Universitetsbyen in Aarhus is a huge masterplan project transforming the city’s former hospital into a new urban campus. The development plan safeguards the location’s historical potential while simultaneously bringing about a forward-looking transformation of this significant place in the very heart of Aarhus.

Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable

Vrå Children and Culture House paves the way for new perspectives on educational development by incorporating innovative learning environments and active local life into one.

17 Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development

The Sustainable Development Goals can only be realized with a strong commitment to global partnership and cooperation. The 2030 agenda is universal - it calls for action by countries and organizations world-wide and requires partnerships between governments, the private sector and civil society.

Knowledge sharing and cross-disciplinary cooperation are key to create a more sustainable future – in the building industry and in the global community in general. As actors in the building industry, we contribute to cross-sectoral partnerships and development projects that aims at bringing our industry in to a more sustainable future. We share knowledge and new results and contribute to the public debate about the development of our industry and how it should look in the future.

Bricks in Common is a temporary pavillonen designed for the UIA World Congress of Architecture 2023 in Copenhagen. The design and concept is developed by a cross-disciplinary partnership and aims at sharing different perspectives on the use of bricks in building projects – historically and in the future.

Are bricks a part of a more sustainable building sector in the future – if so, how do we innovate the use and design of the building material?