Skip to main content

Backstage

Exhibition

Apr 21 - Oct 3, 2021

You encounter architecture every single day. But did you realize that architecture creates the framework for how you live your life – and live life together with others? We often know the facade, but not the story behind it.

The Danes have an innate belief that they can always do things a little better, and that rubs off on Danish architecture. What’s at stake when we build the walls we all live within? What forces drive the development, what mistakes do we make along the way, and how do we rectify them?

This exhibition brings you “behind the facade” of some of the architecture that surrounds us in Denmark. It touches upon issues that occupy us, but that also divide us.

Discover the tools that Danish architects, designers and urban planners use to shape the world around us. Learn more about the process of creating architecture, and what thoughts go into the facades that we end up looking at.

Explore the exhibition

  • Explore the set pieces

    The exhibition takes the form of a fascinating theatrical stage, with different sets, scenes and stories that can be viewed independently, but which together tell a full story. Through numerous cases, photographs, 1:1 installations, architectural models, films and interactive elements, Backstage depicts what it is that makes Danish architecture stand out, and what it means to you and me.

    Photo: Rasmus Hjortshøj
  • Light, light and light

    Danish architects have a proud tradition of incorporating daylight and inflow of light into the construction of homes, schools, and public buildings, but also into the way we live. How does daylight affect our well-being? Is daylight a human right? And is function and aesthetic equally important?

    Photo: Rasmus Hjortshøj
  • Try out our VR​

    Get inspired by Bjarke Ingels’ creative universe and draw your own 3D architecture in our VR installation.

    Photo: Rasmus Hjortshøj

This is why you need to know Jan Gehl

Photo: Sandra Henningsson

Jan Gehl’s study

Meet the Danish architect and urban planner Jan Gehl, whose work has garnered international recognition and left a huge imprint on the way we think about urban planning – also abroad, where his book “Life between buildings” has been translated into 40 languages.

In the exhibition, you can explore his study, look in private notebooks, hear Jan talk and see what underlies the exciting studies that have, for example, provided bike paths in Moscow and car-free zone in Times Square in New York.

​Conversation starters

You will find small conversation starters in the exhibition that encourage us all to stop and talk to each other about the architecture that surrounds us.

This exhibition is developed by Danish Architecture Center

Thank you to Tinker Imagineers for the collaboration on the concept development.

Special thanks to Jan Gehl and Ingrid Gehl.

Supported by
Thanks to