A
Associate Professor
Institute of Architecture and Space
David Garcia
David A. Garcia is a practising architect, educator, researcher and Associate Professor leading Master Program “Architecture and Extreme Environments”. His explorative artistic research is focused on extreme environments. Recipient of the three-year major grant from the Danish Arts Foundation and three time exhibitor at the Venice Biennale, among other international recognitions.
WORKS
SENSING SHELTER
Highlighting the need for a more considerate approach to site and context, especially the non-urbanised wilderness, this on-going work formalizes such a philosophy through exploratory artistic research in the wild. A slow and observant gaze is crucial for the considerate assessment of a territory and the body becomes the measuring instrument as it searches for shelter.
In place of “designing” a shelter, the works explore an alternative, that is, “finding” a shelter.
As a parallel discourse, it also hopes to convey the fragility of desolate environments, in constant threat from the urbanization of the wild.
This work was exhibited at the Copenhagen Architecture Biennial in 2025 with a selection of self-portraits from solo climbs and journeys in Greenland, Atacama, Jotunheimen and the Pyrenees.
TERMAL MASS PROJECT
Tested in the Atacama Desert at 3000 m. elevation in 2019, this project aimed to test the efficiency of slow heat release of materials to passively heat a shelter during night time. Testing soap stone as one of the most efficient thermal accumulators and slow heat release, the shelter, clad in mylar, achieved warmer temperatures than outside cold of the desert night.
Ranging from 35 degrees during the day and 5 degrees during the night, the soap stone is elevated by a self-activating wax piston when the sun rises, and automatically lowered into the tent when the temperature drops at sunset, ready to release the accumulated solar heat.
