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What happens when you choose reuse over demolition? In Østbirk, Denmark, a 30-year-old timber warehouse has been transformed into a 14,000-square-meter world-class innovation hub for nearly 500 VELUX employees. This article explores how the LKR Innovation House project challenges conventional building practices, preserves material legacy, and offers practical lessons for architects working with existing structures. A new book documents the process through essays, interviews, and photographs.

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Leisure spaces are often where different generations cross paths. Without formal programs or assigned roles, they allow people to move, pause, and remain together, each engaging space in their own way. In a built environment increasingly shaped by specialization and separation, these shared spatial grounds have become less common, giving leisure-oriented architecture a renewed relevance.

Discussions around public space have repeatedly pointed to the value of openness and flexibility in supporting collective life. As architect Herman Hertzberger has noted, "the more a space can be interpreted in different ways, the more people it can accommodate." Rather than attempting to create interaction, architecture shapes the conditions that make togetherness possible.

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In architecture, most practices revolve around delivering projects to clients. Offices are shaped by deadlines, budgets, and clear briefs. While this structure produces buildings, it rarely leaves space for architects to question broader issues — about how we live, how cities are changing, or what the future demands of design. But alongside this production-focused system, a quieter movement has emerged: studios, collectives, and foundations that prioritize research, experimentation, and reflection. These are the architecture think tanks — spaces designed not to build immediately, but to think first.

The idea of a think tank is not new. Traditionally found in politics, economics, or science, think tanks bring together experts to study complex problems and propose solutions. In architecture, their rise reveals a tension at the heart of the discipline. If architecture is to remain socially and environmentally relevant, can it continue to rely only on client-driven practice? Or must it carve out space for slower, deeper inquiry?

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Generative AI (Gemini / Google DeepMind). Concept: Eduardo Souza / ArchDaily

Once synonymous with monotony, “prefabricated” buildings often bring to mind the gray, repetitive housing blocks of the postwar era. But that image no longer fits today’s reality. Powered by digital design, robotics, and advanced materials, prefabrication has evolved into a language of innovation and precision. Far from uniform, it now enables flexible, efficient, and sustainable spaces that reflect the individuality of contemporary architecture.

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Lighthouses have stood along the margins of continents and islands for centuries as points of light in vast maritime territories. Rising in solitude from rocky cliffs, reefs, and headlands, these towers were tools for navigation and instruments of spatial clarity, shaping coastlines and marking the boundary between land and sea. Built to guide, warn, and locate, they constituted a global network of visibility long before the advent of digital mapping. Yet as maritime technologies evolved, many of these structures lost their original purpose. The typology, once essential, now stands at the edge of obsolescence. What remains is not merely an architectural relic, but a powerful spatial form — resilient, symbolic, and increasingly open to reinterpretation.

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Videos

What can our existing buildings teach us about building for the future? In a time of dwindling resources, architects are increasingly called to engage in dialogue—with the site, its history, and the untapped potential of what already stands. Rather than defaulting to demolition and new construction, the future of architecture may rest in uncovering the possibilities for innovation within buildings that have already stood the test of time.

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It's been four years since the VELUX Group, together with partners EFFEKT architects and Artelia engineers, first embarked on Living Places. The experimental housing project demonstrated that building more sustainable homes using readily available products, materials and technologies is possible. Putting the ultra-low carbon housing concept to the test, VELUX conducted a study with 98 live-in guests to evaluate whether sustainable homes can also provide indoor comfort. Using a combination of environmental sensors and guest questionnaires, the findings reveal that the homes maintain a comfortable indoor climate in line with European Standards and had a positive effect on the well-being of guests, showing that building for planet can also greatly benefit people.

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For most people, modern living requires spending most of the day in interior spaces - in fact, according to a report by the Environmental Protection Agency, the average person spends around 90% of their life indoors. As a result, this implies missing out on health benefits associated with sunlight exposure, such as vitamin D absorption, regulation of circadian rhythms, higher energy levels and even improved mood. Thus, one option is to increase the amount of time we spend outdoors. But because most daily functions are carried out inside buildings, it is crucial to incorporate and prioritize natural lighting in interiors.