Scan Magazine, Issue 136, November 2021

Page 108

Scan Magazine  |  Special Theme  |  Nordic Architecture and Design – Denmark

Designed to make the most of a new building site, this new home in Ry provides shelter and privacy in an otherwise open and unsheltered space and combines cosy comforts such as an indoor fireplace with a practical and economic layout. Below: Designed in wood all the way through from interior to insulation and exterior, this recently finished holiday home fully utilises the many natural qualities of wood: its ability to create a healthy indoor climate, a negative carbon footprint, and a warm yet elegant aesthetic.

Building an arena for life We all need a roof over our head, but most of us want more than that. We want something that gives us safety and comfort, but we also want a home that captures and enhances the meaning of our everyday life. For Danish architecture firm Nordpil Arkitekter, enabling the fulfilment of that dream is at the heart of all projects. By Signe Hansen  |  Photos: Nordpil

Uncovering the core of people’s everyday life and creating an architectural framework to lift and enhance that has been the driving vision of Nordpil Arkitekter since the firm’s foundation. “Whether it is at work, in your home, or at your child’s nursery, the life you live is always the starting point for our designs,” explains architect Kim Pretzmann Olesen, who founded Nordpil Arkitekter together with construction architect Bashar Nasouri. “Our designs manifest people’s everyday life in all its facets, and we see it as our finest job to increase the quality of that. By bringing in elements that combine 108  |  Issue 136  |  November 2021

functionality and enhanced materiality, we can create spaces where people feel happy and relaxed, spaces with comfortable lighting, a healthy climate and a positive atmosphere for life to unfold in.”

Since merging their independent companies two years ago, Olesen, Nasouri, and their team of architects, renovations specialists and construction architects, have turned this approach into a string of new homes and holiday houses, renovations and extensions all over Denmark. More recently, the firm has also started designing for larger projects, such as nurseries and residential complexes for commercial developers. Turning necessity into art While Nordpil Arkitekter’s designs all take their starting point in the life of the people who live, work or play in them, that does not mean that any two projects are alike. On the contrary: whether it is a new holiday house, the extension of an old villa, or a nursery design, Nordpil Arkitekter applies what Olesen calls an “architectural opportunism”. This means


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