Visualizing Sustainability

A Platform for demonstrating new approaches to and research in data visualization in design and architecture at the Royal Danish Academy. 

The Royal Danish Academy received kr. 2 million  from the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science. The amount was dedicated to pilot projects exploring innovative approaches and producing concrete results in research within sustainability. A committee was formed with Gustavo Ribero and Alessandro Canossa as project leads and  Martin Sønderlev Christensen and Katrine Lotz as steering committee.

The committee identified 12 projects to fund. These projects investigated approaches to data visualization in the fields of architecture, design and conservation with a particular focus on sustainability and the green transition (including the investigation of broader issues concerning processes of urbanization, behavioral dynamics in the built environment and the implementation of the United Nations SDGs, amongst others).

All projects explored new possibilities of data visualization in a context in which increasingly complex and rich data sets are becoming available for public use.

Data visualization is not a new field to design or architecture – and it has a rich body of work both in practice and research. Considering the urgent need to respond to environmental and climate challenges and to understand and work with sustainability, recent developments in the field of digital technologies present a huge potential for dealing with complex issues emerging from such challenges and open up new avenues for design, architecture, conservation and design to work with data.

Through the contribution of these projects we created a platform across the institutes at the Royal Danish Academy for discussions and development. We organized three workshops in 2020, and are working at the creation of a web platform. Additionally we plan an exhibition in 2021, where projects will be presented to the public. Alongside this we are aiming to arrange talks and seminars that will showcase the work developed in this platform and that aim to generate critical discussions amongst professionals in our fields and amongst a broader group of stakeholders.