Interview with head of institute Peter Thule Kristensen of Architecture and Culture

Starting the school year 2014 KADK is organized in a new structure consisting of 7 new institutes. We have interviewed the 7 new heads of institute of the School of Architecture, School of Design and the School of Conservation as well as rector. Peter Thule Kristensen is head of the institute Architecture and Culture.

1. What is special about your institute?
We work with the relation between architecture and the weird hotchpotch
that culture is. Our interest in the historical is key and forward-looking. For
instance, we study how existing architecture can be transformed to meet new
needs.

2. What characterises the students at your institute?
They are inquisitive and interested in understanding the mindsets of other
subject areas. They see architecture as something that grabs hold of our
common memory and plays across the entire scale of our sensory system.
They want to both read, write, draw and build.

3. Which role does your institute play in Danish art and culture?
We demonstrate that architecture means something – that a work is not
merely a result of a specifi c programme or period technology. In our perspektive
architecture is about communication and ideology and therefore able to
change our outlook.

4. Which work/product or place do you associate with the institute?
Thorvaldsen's Museum from 1848 is a good example. In its own way, it is a mishmash of all kinds of styles and it has multiple meanings, which the architect has managed to weave into a whole. It reaches way back into history and is at the
same time a pioneering work. A paradoxical work – wise and imaginative.