It is only three hours until the KEA WORKS VINGE deadline, and the atmosphere is quiet and concentrated in Prinsesse Charlottes Gade. Among the students at the International BA in Architectural Technology and Construction Management, five students are busily working on creating a house for the future city of Vinge. A house which is naturally eco-friendly and which meets the changing demands of different families’ life cycles.

We talked to the students - who come from all over the world on Erasmus programs - about their project – designing an entire new house for the future generations of Vinge inhabitants: 

Vera Goesmann from Münster School of Architecture tells: “We are working on the Vinge project and at the moment, we are working on our presentation. It’s like a house for one family - a ‘single family house.’ We separate the work and everybody has their own tasks. Today we want to finish the poster and have a little presentation before we have this presentation tomorrow morning."

Are you working within a specific neighbourhood?

Vera: “I think we have a specific neighbourhood, but it can be placed in every part in Vinge. We are creating it as a single house in Vinge, but you can also use it as a row-house - and so it can be adapted to every part and every kind of plot.”

Are you making one or several houses?

Dominika Anna Bednarz – a student in Architecture at Politechnika Krakowska im. Tadeusza Kościuszki in Poland - tells: “We made one house, but we also showed how it can be adapted to different plots, and we made a small urban plan to show how we see it and how we can we connect to more houses or more plots to make some kind of row-houses or semi-detached houses.”

What are your thoughts behind it – incorporating nature or making it environmental friendly?

Alina Narwojsz, also a student from Poland tells: “Actually, Denmark at all is really eco-friendly, so if we design some buildings, it is the main principle always that the building should be really eco-friendly and really sustainable, so this is always the main principle - not only in this project, but in every project.”

Vera Goesmann complements by saying that “The most important thing was to that show this house can last a long time, because it is adaptable for the whole life of a family and for a family that can change, because the kids are growing up - the kids are growing older, and maybe the parents are able to live at the ground floor - and to figure out what you can do with the rest of the house, when maybe the children will move out. Or the kids can live there with their own family or maybe they can rent it, says Vera, and continues:

”We want to look at different parts of sustainability, and flexibility to not only systems like solar power. Furthermore, we want to show that a house can be sustainable in the way we are creating it - that it can last a really long time and you don’t have to change the house and do a lot of renovations like this.”

What are your inspirations behind the house?

Vera: “I think, because we are all Erasmus students and come from other universities so everybody has their own inspiration.”

Wiktoria Magdalena Stepien from Poland share her thought on their inspiration: “We have a lot of lectures about architects and design at our home universities, so I think we have all our inspiration in our heads - and all of us have their own style, so we just connected it together, and we created the house we liked.” 

Regarding your presentation tomorrow – are there anything specific you are going to focus on? 

Vera responds: “I think we will talk about it when we are finishing our poster: That we have a framework, because we have a lot of stuff and now it’s at the point where we have to think about what is important to point out - or maybe to create more and be focused. So we have to talk about it.”

Dominika complements Vera and continues: ”We think we will focus on the flexibility and sustainability of our house to show that every house - when it is good design - can be used for many, many years in different ways, and it can be changed with the changes going on in a family so you can have one house for your whole life, and you can change it with your life and with the children. We can separate the houses or make changes inside, so we want to show that every house can be designed in a way that you don’t have to change it maybe every ten years with your life, because I think it is the future of our houses to have a house which can be flexible enough to adopt to the changes in your life.”