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Research and Artistic Research
Research at the Royal Danish Academy consists of academic research and artistic research.
At the Institute of Architecture and Design we apply both approaches. We continuously seek to establish collaborations and engagement across the disciplines and consistently implement the research into our daily educational activities.
The institute’s artistic and academic research is based on societal challenges and is often produced in strong partnerships with other institutions, including programmes and institutes across the Royal Danish Academy and other educational schools, public and private partners and companies from the industrial sector.
The institute’s research projects are based on the notion of centres and clusters that form the framework for the research activities. Currently, the focus within the centres and clusters is on the following themes: privacy and interiors, universal design, sustainability within fashion and textiles, the potentials of materials, light, tectonics, representation and virtual reality.
Opposite page: ‘Islands’, plaster models. Artistic research by Anne Romme and Jacob Sebastian Bang. From the exhibition ‘Artistic Explorations: Design and Architecture in the Making.’
Centre for Interior Studies explores the interior as a hybrid and multifaceted phenomenon. In addition to its obvious physical, spatial and design-related facets, the interior is shaped by social, cultural, aesthetic, political, economic, religious and virtual aspects — and the interior shapes us as well. The interior is the built environment that is in the closest proximity to the human body. Many of our habits and customs, our perceptions of the world, our relationships to one another and our understandings of architecture, design, objects and spaces are shaped by relating to the interior around us.
Head of Centre for Interior Studies Professor WSR Kirsten Marie Raahauge
Ornamentet Column. From the project ‘The Historicist and the Algorithm’ by Suzi Pain.
Centre for Privacy Studies
Centre for Privacy Studies examines how ideas about privacy formed the relationship between the individual and society in the period between 1500 and 1800. In architecture, privacy is a central concept, also in a contemporary context, where notions of surveillance, security and privatisation of public spaces are being debated. Privacy is not only a matter of physical separation. Many other aspects are important to take into consideration when designing and organising today’s space.
Centre for Privacy Studies is hosted by The Faculty of Theology at the University of Copenhagen in association with the Royal Danish Academy.
Head of Centre for Privacy Studies at the Royal Danish Academy Professor Peter Thule Kristensen
‘Will You Ever Be Truly Private’, student project.
The fashion and textiles sector is currently characterised by very short use spans, low level of product development, high levels of production waste and huge challenges when it comes to handling of textile waste. Thus, the ambition is to support more user empathy and longer product life in the sector, with a basis in a holistic understanding of sustainability that includes issues of identity and geopolitics such as age, gender, race, class and abilities. This is interlinked with the basic understanding that deep circularity requires longer use phases for both primary and secondary users, and for stimulating high value in the entire value chain from raw material acquisition- and processing to ‘new’ product, and in the many possible stages towards end of life. The centre works with research and artistic research projects anchored in ecology-based systems thinking where interconnections between planet, user, economy and design are investigated in different types of value chains. Examples of this are studies of connections between local fibres and material processes (spinning, knitting, weaving etc.) or how design can elevate textile waste to new and interesting services or products (mending, re-design or other).
Head of Klothing / Centre for Apparel, Textiles & Ecology Research Associate Professor Else Skjold
Design prototype for the project “Design for Circularity” conducted together with Danish fashion brand GANNI and funded by Lifestyle & Design Cluster. The project focus was body-inclusive fashion design. It was led by Else Skjold and carried out by research assistant Asta Veisig Baggesen.
The Centre for Material Studies is a research environment studying and developing material phenomena and performances across architecture and design scales. Our aim is to develop knowledge, methods and demonstrations that impact the ability of architecture and design disciplines to develop aesthetic and sustainable solutions which impact society generally and people directly through perceived experiences. Our strategy is to study materials in synergetic investigation trajectories of material making, material programming and material perception. The centre is structured to promote collaborative efforts with industry and academic partners, enabling unique cross-disciplinary and cross-sector research processes searching for new ideas, knowledge and methods that can address complex unique and systemic problems faced by the individual and by society.
Head of Centre for Material Studies Professor WSR Isak Worre Foged
The ‘Resonance’ project studies the varied densities of natural decay in poplar wood and how that influence acoustic properties and expressive visual characteristics of the biogenic material. The findings are developed into a new digital design method where both analysis and design proposition processes are included.
The research cluster Light in Architecture and Design focuses on promoting the understanding of the importance of daylight and artificial light in architecture and design, based on the rich Nordic tradition. The cluster aims to renew, challenge and further develop the humanistic, functional, sustainable and aesthetic aspects of this tradition. Members of the cluster cover different areas of light in architecture and design and contribute through collaboration with colleagues as well as with partners from industry, practice, and other research institutes. The ambition is to seek new questions, new knowledge and new didactics towards a poetic, sustainable and holistic agenda. Research and artistic research of the cluster evolve around four themes: Investigation and Communication of Light, Daylight and Habitation, Lighting in a Time Perspective, and Light and Material.
Head of Light in Architecture and Design Assistant Professor Louise Grønlund
Studies of daylight in the interior. Date: 5. Dec., Time: 09.44, Latitude: 56.
Architectural Representation / Research Cluster
Research project, representation AI collaboration. The research cluster Architectural Representation aims to bring together and visualise the diversity of work within the field of architectural representations. This field ranges from analogue drawing through photo, film, diagram and writing to digital modelling, all of which share the property of representing, mediating and examining architecture and its importance for the development of the built environment that surrounds us in the form of landscapes, cities, buildings and architectural design objects. The traditional forms of representation are gradually going hand in hand with digital simulations and visualisations. Communication and interdisciplinary research across technology, tradition and forms of representation play a significant role in the cluster’s desire to be able to use the widest possible palette of forms of representation. The cluster is aimed at both architecture and design.
Head of Architectural Representation Associate Professor Anders Hermund
Spatial Inclusion / Research Cluster
Design research project ‘Every Bodies Home: Søholm 1’ by Masashi Kajita. With the research cluster Spatial Inclusion, we wish to further design ideas and processes that promote inclusion in the built environment. We look at the spatial implication of contemporary challenges aspiring for equality in relation to the built environment, and we study spatial conditions for inclusion through the perspective of architecture and its related design elements and contexts. Our central aim is to develop research/design methods and tools that are empathic but also innovative through which we seek to gain a creative and alternative insight into the way differences, vulnerability and sensitivity in design lead to environments with more potential.
Head of Spatial Inclusion Associate Professor Masashi Kajita
