4/25 – 9/25, Copenhagen, DK
An exhibition at the Danish Architecture Centre calls for new ways of thinking about materials & the things we design, in an effort to promote better upcycling, re-use and recycling – in everything from kitchens to large-scale developments.
Can an exhibition change attitudes on how we consume and create, or even change the world? Recycle!, which opened 11th April and runs until September 2025, presents ideas, innovations and case studies which come together to inspire ‘positive cultural change’, both for society and amongst industry professionals.
Today it is impossible to separate conversations about architecture and the built environment from climate change – and the pressing need for new ways of building. Like many other venues, DAC is taking seriously the need to represent such values in their own operations (having signed up to the UN Global Compact in 2008, and more recently in 2023 becoming a certified Green Attraction).
This design of the exhibition strives to demonstrate good practice – much of it is made up from materials and structures from previous exhibitions, and documented right down to the screw fixings to ensure traceability and accountability to better facilitate future re-use.
Designing in this format does of course present new challenges, as explained by Exhibition Architect Maya Lahmy: This approach is slightly more difficult, rather than start with a blank canvas where you draw something and send it to a production firm that makes it, here you have to re-look at what we have already in store and what we could borrow from companies. So we did a lot of work to record and register all of this. The sculpture when you first enter the exhibition is made of materials from building strip-outs that we selected, but for this we needed to devise ways of assembling without screws, so they can be returned for another use.
The team at the Danish Architecture Centre (DAC) are well-placed to rise to this challenge. In October 2024 the venue in central Copenhagen presented ‘Water is Coming’ – a climate-focussed exhibition looking at the realities of rising sea levels, and wide-ranging solutions for how the built environment can adapt to these challenges. Running parallel to this, an adapted version of Henning Larsen’s ‘Changing Our Footprint’ exhibition (formerly hosted at AEDES in Berlin), presented best-case examples of sustainable materials and construction methods in practice.
The themes of the exhibition are as much focussed on the problem of waste production as much as opportunities of recycling and re-use. On the subject, it presents some clear statistics, such as the annual amount of waste in Denmark attributed to construction and infrastructure, which was 40% in 2020. (By contrast, UK Government reports show construction, demolition and excavation works (CD&E) accounted for 61% of waste generated the same year).
Recycle! contains a vast range of examples, from self-builds and research projects to 3D-printed prototypes and larger-scale developments. As a curatorial approach, including such a variety of material throughout the exhibition – differing in scale, impact and degree of finish – runs the risk of becoming overly-eclectic, too varied and without a coherent narrative. However, it is this lack of sameness which brings joy and interest to the exhibition, visibly different from that of a traditional exhibition reliant on text, images and encased objects.
As a centre for architecture, DAC plays host to visitors from around the world – from industry professionals to tourists, but also a full spectrum of ages. The assortment of content displayed in the exhibition is as varied as the visitors, and is eclectic, but also controlled – made logical by succinct texts and clean, informative graphics. Content is not strictly split into zones within the space, although as Senior Curator Victoria Diemer Bennetzen describes, there are some underlying themes which emerged during planning:
One thing that we thought a lot about was this idea of three types of recycling; the one where you could talk about the fun aspect – like where an entrepreneur, a developer or a couple re-use parts on a project and this is part of their storytelling. We also have what we call the alchemist or ‘alchemistic recycling’ where you take, for example, dust and you create something new or unexpected, and you can’t tell what it was or see where it came from. And then we have the building or demolition sites, where you’re hearing from the architects reporting live from the front – in the dust!
The differing scales and approaches can be appreciated when viewing works inside the exhibition, such as kitchen furniture by young practice ReCraft Design Studio, who have re-worked construction waste into robust, striking furniture pieces. By contrast, nearby, an ambitious adaptive re-use project by Pihlmann Architects (curators for the re-use-themed Danish Pavilion at this year’s Venice Bienalle) demonstrates an impressive approach to the former industrial development Thoravej 29. The site, adapted into creative workspaces, makes use of 95% of the existing fabric, highlighted by the showpiece staircases which are formed from the original concrete floor slabs (below image).
Examples like this make clear the additional work, time and cost involved with making re-use and recycling a priority. In changing mindsets and attitudes, this is one of the major challenges, says Bennetzen: Re-use will always be more difficult, expensive and take more time than simply making stuff from new. So then what is the argument for doing it? Well, it’s because you get so many more stories to tell and you get so much more materiality.
One of the more abstract displays is a collection of ceiling-hung material samples (Smuld, by architect Kim Lenschow and artist Bonnie Hvillum). The experimental pieces, based on waste from the timber industry, offer new ideas and possibilities with familiar materials – which are compostable at the end of life-cycle – but also unique and tactile in their appearance. Such displays leave room for viewers to imagine possible applications, rather than make obvious suggestions, not unlike the type of work seen at the Reset Materials exhibition at Copenhagen Contemporary in 2023.
Bennetzen mentions how DAC brought in Office Kim Lenschow and Natural Material Studio (founded by Bonnie Hvillum) as part of the planning and design process for Recycle!: when I returned to work after maternity, I was shocked by how much this topic (recycling, re-use) is taking up so much space in discussions and debates – it was amazing for me to see this change. So we invited Kim and Bonnie in for some discussions and just to talk to us about this. There are so many possible ways of looking at this subject, so they helped come up with some of the nuances and consider parts of the exhibition design itself.
Through these discussions the design team also made the decision to procure a new aluminium display system, which is widely employed throughout the exhibition for display wall structures – a choice that did not seem obvious at first, as noted by exhibition architect Lahmy: we were not considering buying a new system, not from aluminium, and did not expect Kim to suggest this, perhaps something more like a bio-material. But then we considered that it is modular, adaptable – and it is a raw material, unfinished, so we can use it endlessly for future exhibitions. Here we have overclad it with panel material from previous exhibitions.
The overriding tone of the exhibition is optimistic – presenting ideas, solutions and up-to-the-minute efforts to, ultimately, address how we use design to make the world a better place. As Bennetzen emphasises, this is largely about finding a new fondness and beauty in what would otherwise be overlooked. Next to this, as demonstrated by the design of the exhibition, working in more collaborative ways is also high on the agenda:
I think this exhibition puts a spotlight on the collaboration in the industry, that we need to work together in a new way. We see cases where the demolition companies are now becoming the new material producers… and the engineers are not just green-lighting a project but they are looking at what is already there and analysing it – because now we need to reuse materials, and we need the green light for that. This way of building needs us to distort or rethink the way we can operate. So we need each other more than in the classical way of making architecture.
In some cases, though, re-use has limitations – as is seen in the Old Copenhagen Stock Exchange, which suffered significant fire damage in 2024 – here conservation and renovation are key strategies. Projected to take 7 years, the rebuilding will employ both old materials, but also heritage skills and construction methods. The 1:1 scale section displayed in the space is in fact a test-piece which will allow the architects to observe performance of the mortar between the bricks.
As a physical subject, architecture has historically been presented in exhibitions via drawings, images and models, which remains the case here, however as increasingly is the becoming the case, we are presented with research-in-progress, more material samples and full-size sections of buildings. As with a number of recent architectural exhibitions, the building techniques represented cover a range from traditional/natural to cutting-edge/technological.
The hands-on and experiential side to architecture, as a subject, is honestly portrayed here, in ways which are more difficult to capture through printed medium and online/digital resources. Visiting Recycle! instils a positive outlook through a diverse display of projects and initiatives, which are tangible both to individuals and those with larger ambitions.
An exhibition cannot change the world, but it may succeed in changing the mindset of those who visit.
Bennetzen concludes: We hope that it’s a transformative exhibition… that people come here with preferences and ideas of new always being beautiful and better. And we hope that when they leave this exhibition thinking differently about that. You can’t unsee the logic. We hope people are eventually going to start complementing each other on not tearing out and replacing the kitchen or not tearing down a house to rebuild a new one.
Interview with Senior Curator, Victoria Diemer Bennetzen and Exhibition Architect, Maya Lahmy by Ben Couture at DAC, April 2025
Recycle! exhibition 11th April – 10th September 2025
Bryghuspladsen 10, 1473 København K, Danmark