Public (Summer) Housing

The project proposes a public summer housing village on the site of a disused sawmill in Gjorslev Forest, a coastal forest in Stevns Municipality, approximately 40km south of Copenhagen. Here, residents from Copenhagen’s social housing associations can enjoy affordable summer holidays, enabled by a collaboration between a range of actors, including local forestry and carpentry experts, and visiting technical school students.

This project explores how the historic typology of the Danish holiday village can be re-imagined in a contemporary context, in a way that considers current urban and rural social infrastructures. The project proposes a “village” containing its communal programs, which will inhabit the former sawmill, and accommodations in the form of timber cabins, built on-site and distributed in the surrounding forest. The timber used to build the cabins will be cultivated in Gjorslev forest, according to researched sustainable forestry practices.

This project began by exploring Danish summer houses in three categories:  the idyllic summerhouse, the holiday village, and the exclusive summerhouse.  The idyllic summerhouse research analyzes the historical contexts that have resulted in the present-day Danish holiday culture. This involved studying the architecture of leisure and escape, and the development of spatial typologies that continue to influence the idea of the holiday in the present cultural imagination. The holiday village research explores the architectural typology of the Danish holiday village, which was a popular typology in the 20th century largely due to the Danish welfare structure.

In the 20th century, social developments enabled by the welfare state allowed enterprises and municipalities to set up non-profit holiday organizations to support affordable holidays accessible to most of the population. This was helped by the founding of the labor market holiday foundation, a fund where unclaimed employment holiday pay is allocated to the investment of tourism infrastructure. This fund was commonly used to invest in holiday villages, where wage earners could access summer houses at little to no cost. However, in the late 20th century, due to various factors including competition from the private sector and the increased availability of low-cost foreign holiday packages, the labor market holiday foundation shifted its resource allocations and these holiday villages are much less common today.

This project explores how this typology can be re-introduced in a contemporary context, in a way that considers current urban and rural social infrastructures and environmental challenges. The Gjorslev Holiday Village is designed to bring affordable and accessible holiday opportunities to Copenhagen’s social housing residents, while engaging with the site’s long history as a center for the local forestry industry.