Too Perfect

The Danish Architecture Centre distills and disseminates architecture that is absolutely future-focused. In other words, it’s a visionarium. All its challenges and solutions revolve around environment, economy, and the social and esthetic aspects of life, in Denmark and within the greater world.

It’s a place, a consortium, a mindset, where heirarchy is flattened. Everyone and everything is equal, and the DAC’s commitment to a multi-disciplinary approach keeps it all dynamic, equitable and co-operative.

Into this bliss we stepped, commissioned to work with an ardent team of young architects and designers — PLOT, Arkitema, Kontrapunkt, NORD and SRL Arkitekterconduct — to run an identity exercise.

The exercise’s ID? Rebrand Denmark.

A brand takes an aptitude, puts it into an existing setting, and translates it into a living, breathing thing.

Denmark. An aptitude for Isak Dinesen. Great pastry. Great Danes. Unpredictable weather. And, of course, Danish design.

To change Danish design would be to change the country’s image, both inside and outside its borders.

So what if we put Denmark in a business setting? What would that enterprise offer to the world?

The result was a multimedia exhibition entitled “Too Perfect: Seven New Denmarks,” envisioning a septet of pragmatic utopias, each resting on a triple bottom line of economic, social and ecological sustainability.

It appeared simultaneously at DAC in Copenhagen, Harbourfront Centre in Toronto as part of the SUPERDANISH fest, and the 9th International Architecture Biennale in Venice, where it was Denmark’s official contribution.

“Too Perfect” took architecture beyond the realm of buildings and constuction, and translated it into other areas of life that we have the capacity to design. Where it lives and breathes.