«Being in the world is messy and architecture holds a promise to make sense of it.»
«Being in the world is messy and architecture holds a promise to make sense of it.»
«Being in the world is messy and architecture holds a promise to make sense of it.»
Hi, we are Archival Studies a Copenhagen-based design practice that explores interior architecture for transformation and care of the existing. We actively engage with a network of partners, collaborating with private, public, and commercial clients, to apply regenerative concepts, flexible building systems, and sensory-rich environments.
Our potential lies in our unwavering focus on craftsmanship and production. Aiming to bridge the gap between craftsmanship and technology in order to redefine the role of architects as builders. We strive to inspire new standards for materials and shape a contemporary definition of architecture that addresses the numerous challenges our planet faces today.
As our name implies, we begin each process by understanding the already existing. We do this in order to ‘design as little as possible’, letting patterns of life frame and direct our work. We begin each project by first understanding the essential qualities of the client, space, or situation that we are working with. We work with these with the ambition to help places feel truly alive. This aliveness often grows out of patterns of history and culture, and these are our roots for transformation and care of the existing. We believe this aliveness is activated by bringing forth a universality in our work. Universality often suggests a level of fundamental truth or validity that transcends specific circumstances.
Due to growing wealth and technological advancements, the structures that shape our lives have evolved from simple frameworks into intricate webs, designed to demand constant attention. As a response we aspire for a universality in architecture that offers simple organized frameworks to make space for and hold this aliveness: A place where life can unfold organically.
In the studio we often talk about the quality without a name (a concept by Christopher Alexander). Architecture can have that magical element that usually can only be experienced in the flesh.
That might be a phenomenological quality, perfection of proportions, sensitive merging to the context, a beautiful decay, nostalgia, human traces for generations, a gravity point for human activity. We all know the feeling of quality without a name and all masterpieces have this indefinable quality. This quality is difficult to design or plan for, but the universality in architecture makes room for this sense of aliveness: The biotope where the quality without a name would naturally grow?
Going from the intellectual to the practical: We like to think that architects build. If that may be designing, drawing, planning and administration, it all eventually comes down to the act of building. We as architects should first and foremost think within this paradigm of building instead of merely planning. In contemporary building strategies, production is a central element of the building process, as most elements are far from raw materials. They are transformed from their natural state through a process into finished products or outcomes. That is production.
Production is a core pillar in our practice and is always introduced in the conceptual/schematic phase. For us, a successful production is the unity of raw material, technique, and tectonic quality. In the office we talk about the “opportunities in production” which means that we do not simply apply building products to a concept but try to understand each element looking for the opportunities in the production. This means, we focus our building systems with one combination at a time. Eventually exposing it to different scales and contexts to understand the real opportunities of that production. An example of a combination would be: Material = Plywood, Technique = Lamination, Tectonic = Post and Beam construction.
From here we are evaluating the opportunities through the following criterias:
All in all, the opportunities in production provide us with the tools to distill projects to their tectonic essentials and to work directly with these elements: The materials, the construction, and the visual form of the built, which converge to constitute a unified whole. As a result, the building then becomes exactly what we see and touch, exactly what we feel beneath our feet.
Sometimes you have to go a long way from home in order to discover your path. Before we – Yuan-Chieh Yang (TW), Qiang Qiang (CN), Emil Froege (DK), the partners – formed our partnership, each of us had a unique journey into the field of architecture. Whether driven by family tradition or propelled by personal passion, guided by curiosity and eager to dive deeper into the field, our paths converged at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, USA.
In the rich environment of the Saarinen-designed campus, the beginning for Archival Studies was established. Within the department’s warehouse, we had 24/7 access to large-format CNC machines, including a router and a laser. Thanks to the department’s non-curriculum approch and the guidance of Professor Bill Massie, a digital fabrication expert, we ended up training ourselves. Not with a focus on the level of research as found at ETH or MIT, our goal was to potentially rediscover the qualities of the architect as a builder, utilizing the CNC technology to transform our ideas into physical matter.
In retroperspective the context of studying at an art academy that was founded on traditional crafts had a significant effect on the topics that started our practice. At Cranbrook, we had, on one hand, the history of craft, and on the other, the technology that pointed towards the future. During this time, we observed many newly built buildings where technology seemed to respond to itself, so to speak. Algorithms were set up to react to digital math or construction, foregrounding big moments. In response, we introduced an early research topic that eventually led to Archival Studies as a practice. Specifically, aiming to bridge the gap between craftsmanship and technology to redefine the role of architects as builders.
From this vantage point, we found ourselves connected to a long-standing building tradition. Even before the concept of the architect emerged, skilled craftsmen in Japan constructed residential buildings. They engaged in space planning, construction, joinery, landscaping, construction administration, and even built-in inventory. Through hands-on building, we discovered immense joy and a deep connection to the materials and the act of construction itself. In this process, we felt that we had tapped into a holistic approach for architectural practice that considered both the past and the future.
After leaving school, we were actively seeking opportunities to expand upon the research that we felt had just begun. We searched for opportunities both in the US and Japan, but ultimately, we were granted two residency opportunities in Copenhagen, Denmark. Our second residency was at the National Workshops for Arts, where we were provided with a small atelier and access to their workshops. During this time, we laid the groundwork for Archival Studies and honed our focus on a building system that we could use to explore our ideas further. We initiated this building system by studying the modular approach and flexible grid of traditional Japanese houses. With the ambition of eventually applying this research across different scales, we opted for a local industry standard pine plywood. From this combination of plywood, grid, and CNC-milled parts, we commenced testing and began constructing a variety of projects using the insights derived from this foundational research.
So how did we find our way into architecture? With an awareness of our environment and mindfulness about our senses. Here the beauty of architecture presented itself to encompass these qualities. The endless web of the world’s complexity can be understood and formalized through architectural practice. Being in the world is messy and architecture holds a promise to make sense of it. This promise of a certain underlying logic behind it all pointing at a certain harmony brought us towards architecture to begin with.
However, as we began practicing architecture, the concepts of logic and quality of life became increasingly blurred when confronted with reality. This reality includes factors such as budget constraints, regulations, and short-sightedness. It has become clear to us that in order to contribute meaningfully to the built environment, it requires a high level of skill and experience across various fields. This awareness dawned on us early in our journey and led us to adopt the dogma that we needed to progress through different scales of architecture step by step. It is important to emphasize that this notion of “working our way up in scale” is not meant to discriminate against smaller-scale projects. Rather, it is a recognition that architecture is a complex discipline. Given our ambition to explore opportunities in production, actively engaging in the creation process, we find it necessary to approach it methodically.
For the next five years, our primary focus will be on interior architecture within urban environments. We see this scale as a fertile and vital arena for addressing the growing demand for transformation, with the ultimate goal of reducing the need for demolition and promoting adaptive reuse.
Conscious architects are looking towards producing a new definition of architecture in the light of living in a world with numerous vicious problems.
This is what we propose:
In December 2023 world leaders came to their senses. They convened a significant roundtable meeting and decided to set aside their differences in order to create a holistic plan to save the planet from ourselves. Recognizing that being at war with each other equated to warring against our own countries and humanity at large, they identified a major root cause of the world’s problems: The inequality of resources and knowledge, coupled with the profound challenges posed by the climate and biodiversity crises.
As countries began to share resources and knowledge, the difficulties arising from cultural, racial, and religious differences transformed into an appreciation for the diversity of humanity. By the year of 2050, the most potent force of all, the human capacity and natural instinct for love, became the binding factor that united the world as a whole (:
Books:
Buildings:
Architects and artists:
Building material:
Spatial Memory:
Music:
Try to think of finishing education not as a final conclusion but merely as a starting point for what you will be looking into for the many years to come.
Try to focus on regenerative and transformative design.
Try to give equal importance to drawing and building. Architects as builders.
Try to collaborate with your colleagues. Architecture is complex and not realized alone.
On the one hand the body, how we feel and read space, materials and the landscape with all our senses and the scale of our body. On the other hand, Computer Numerically Controlled (CNC). As it efficiently helps the architects bring their ideas to life. It works as a natural extension of the 3D models we produce daily for us.
Project 1
Project 2