Architecture, Sustainability, and Transformation
Type: Housing, Community
Area: 1.500 m2
Year: 2025
Location: Helsingør, Danmark
Collaborator: Brøn Studio, Over Byen Arkitekter, Det Blå, ABC
Renders: ZUMO
With the foundation of city’s oldest institutions, the former hospital, this project insists that sustainability begins with respect. Respect for what is already there, for the site’s energy and character. We do not begin from scratch, but within something that already contains social and cultural significance. Through transformation, not demolition, the building’s inherent potential is activated. The architecture works with what is given, without becoming subservient to it. On the contrary, the transformation becomes a creative force, where old and new meet in a tactile, contemporary narrative.
The school home should feel domestic, but not static. Safe, but not closed. It should be a place where young people feel seen and connected, to each other, to their craft, and to the world they are preparing to enter. Through open outdoor spaces and interplay with the city’s paths and squares, the school home becomes a gathering point, not only for the young residents, but for all of Helsingør.
The project is both an architectural and a social response to a national challenge. In line with the ambition to strengthen the reputation and appeal of vocational education, the school home offers not only physical spaces, but a new narrative about what it means to be young and vocationally engaged in Denmark today. A school for the Sustainable Development Goals, rooted in place, open to the future.