KADK Youth Climate Summit

How do we as young architects, designers and conservators respond to the challenges of restoring the future balance of our climate?

How do we as young architects, designers and conservators respond to the challenges of restoring the future balance of our climate?

KADK calls for action by inviting you to the KADK Youth Climate Summit where talks, debates & workshops will address challenges, solutions and actions within climate change. 

Our professions are partly accountable for the problems faced within climate change, so we must also be part of the solution. There is a need to develop new strategies for a complex reality - and how we use resources in more climate friendly manners adapted to circular thinking and economies.  

The KADK Youth Climate Summit is organized in collaboration with UN City Copenhagen and in conjunction with the C40 Mayors Summit in Copenhagen and the host city festival Live Like Tomorrow.

10th of October

Session 1: BEAUTY ~ how can aesthetics contribute to sustainable design and living?

Time: 09:10-10:40

Lead Moderator: Clara Halvorsen (Verdens Bedste Nyheder)
Youth Moderator: Sofie Piil Grau (Fashion student at KADK)

Kristine Harper: Aesthetic Nourishment
Aesthetic nourishment is related to the experience of beauty. Aesthetic experiences are ‘stored up’ in our bodies and minds - they build us up and they linger, and can hence be described as nourishing. Designers can help rouse their recipients’ senses and minds and nourish them aesthetically by creating products that are sensorially stimulating and durable: products that have the potential of being experienced, continually, as thought provoking, beautiful, challenging, or comfortable. Aesthetically sustainable products are characterised by offering the recipient aesthetic nourishment time and again.

Rune Graulund (SDU): Aesthetics and the Apocalypse: Decay, Degrowth, Dark Ecology
The talk will examine visions of ruin porn and the postapocalyptic sublime as presented through fiction, film, television, photography and computer games in order to question the role beauty plays in aestheticizing collapse brought on by anthropogenic excess. What, if anything, can we learn about a sustainable life from real as well as imagined collapse of systems that have proven to be, of all things, unsustainable? 

Ida Bencke (Laboratory for Aesthetics & Ecology): Art, Ecology & Crisis
Within the last decade, contemporary art and cultural theory has seen a burgeoning interest in renegotiating relationships between humans and their surroundings. From deconstructing normative views on nature to proposing regenerative ways of living, the fields of ecology and aesthetics have joined forces in ways, that may offer us glimpses into alternative, less destructive practices of humanity.

Session 2: MATTER ~ how can we transform our understanding of materials to become more sustainable?  

Time: 11:00-12:30

Lead Moderator – Clara Halvorsen (Verdens Bedste Nyheder)
Youth Moderator – Sara Biscaia (Intern at UN City Copenhagen)

Suzi Christoffersen (Closed Loop)
Suzi Christoffersen works within sustainable fashion and is specialized in innovative materials and sustainability in the fashion supply chain. In 2015 she founded Closed Loop, a consultancy that serves as a collaborator for companies seeking guidance to incorporate social and environmental concerns into their businesses in a successful and lasting way.

Aleksander Guldager Kongshaug (GXN): Materials & Circular Principles
The presentation will be based on GXN’s approach to architecture and its workflow. Specific cases will be presented along with physical material samples that display new possibilities and strategies within circular-building principles. 

Harpa Birgisdottir (AAU): Embodied carbon in buildings - an important climate change issue
The building itself, with the use of materials and related activates, is responsible for 50-80% of the whole life carbon emissions of new Danish buildings. About two-thirds of the embodied impacts takes place with “the birth” of the building (construction phase) and the remaining one-third is emitted over the lifecycle of the building over the next 50-100 years. There is a great variation in the embodied carbon of buildings being built in Denmark today – the difference is up to 3 times. This also means that there is a great potential in looking further into the embodied impacts of buildings - and there is a reason to do so if we are to reach the Danish governmental goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 by 70% below the 1990 level and reaching zero carbon emission buildings by 2050. 

Session 3: Coffee, Conclusion & Workshop
Time: 13.30-15.30
Collection of material, development of product and discussion on the days sessions

11th of October

Session 4: PROTECTION ~ how can we design to shelter and cover our bodies in a climatically responsible way?

Time: 09:10-10:40

Lead Moderator – Sophie Jo Rytter (Verdens Bedste Nyheder)
Youth Moderator – TBC 

Tom Svilans (CITA): Strategies for the digital wood value chain
The wood value chain – from forestry and sawmilling to architectural fabrication and assembly – spans multiple knowledge domains, processes, and scales. Digital tools and ICT have opened up new possibilities for more integrative strategies across the value chain, which further extend the reach of design: material can be designed, not just found. This holds the potential for both pushing the limits of material capacity and durability, as well as a more thorough exploitation of growing timber stock. This approach is demonstrated in recent projects that delve into the idea of a computationally-augmented timber practice in architectural design and fabrication. 

Dana Thomas (Fashion Journalist): Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes
Thomas lays out the fashion industry’s destructive practices regarding both the planet and humanity, and, by celebrating slow fashion leaders and tech innovations, she points consumers down a path of hope.
 

Lars Keller (EcoCocon): Building for tomorrow is possible today
Building for tomorrow is possible today. Once we have accepted the reality behind FridaysForFuture and accepted the premise that we are but a pale blue dot in the universe, the solution becomes clear: We.Must.Build.With.Nature.The Sun is the ultimate source of energy. It turns windmills and powers photovoltaics. The Sun also powers the age-old process of photosynthesis and thus provides us with an abundance of biomass for us to build with, while at the same time storing carbon. EcoCocon is one of many ways that makes good use of this. You can call it old-school, or conservative. We call it Cradle-2-Cradle and Passive House certified. 
 

Session 5: THOUGHT ~ how can we change the habits of people & identify the actions necessary to exist in a more conscious way? 

Time: 11:00-12:30 

Lead Moderator – Sophie Jo Rytter (Verdens Bedste Nyheder)
Youth Moderator – Agnes Vizsuly (Intern at UN City Copenhagen)

Liselotte Lyngso (Future Navigator): Societal transformations and feedback crisis impacting cities and sustainability
Liselotte Lyngsø, world renowned futurist, will take us along on an exciting journey where she will share her 20 years of experience with spotting societal trends. It has never been so important to understand the future as it is now - our world is longing for a new sustainable approach - providing a viable and constructive alternative to the many aches and pains of modern city-life. Luckily, the distance from visualizing something to actually doing it has, thanks to digitalization and the globalization of talent, never been shorter than today. We are in some areas moving from science fiction to science fact. Digitalization and new insights will allow us to chase value and purpose seen from a people & planet perspective.
 

Mariko Takedomi (Lund University): Empowerment through green consumption: the paradox of feminism and sustainability in the fashion world
Many fashion companies claim through advertisements that buying their clothes can be the key to living consciously, both in terms of gender equality and environmental sustainability. But do their claims match up to the material reality of their operations? If we want to talk about how people should change their habits in order to live more consciously, we need to examine what is meant by ‘conscious living’, and understand that there will be different interpretations of the term. In this talk, I will discuss the ways in which fashion brands employ concepts like female empowerment and sustainability in order to sell products, and why there is such a big focus on individual consumer-based solutions to sustainability issues. 

Mikkel Bolt (KU): Repairing the World (and Ending Capitalism)
Climate change has been moving much faster than scientists predicted and we are faced with the prospect of a climate breakdown. Capitalist state powers and ruling elites will try and control the resulting social collapse. The Modernist Left is in ruins. ‘What is to be done?’

Session 6: Coffee, Conclusion & Workshop
Time: 13.30-15.00
Collection of material, development of product and discussion on the days sessions

Note: Program subject to modification

About KADK x Klima
KADK x KLIMA is an initiative led by students from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. The student-movement has been created to increase awareness on sustainable architecture and design. Our aim is to develop a collective platform where climate can be debated and its challenges taken seriously. We invite our fellow students to engage in the ‘climate discussion’ and together take part in the responsibility of educating ourselves towards becoming sustainable architects and designers.