MAS Context Spring Talks 2025

Mia Baarup Tofte: Learnings from a Danish Housing Lab

August 6, 2025 at 12PM

RSVP

Lecture by Copenhagen-based architect Mia Baarup Tofte, partner at NORD Architects. The program will take place virtually.

The lecture is organized by MAS Context and the Chicago Architecture Biennial as part of the exhibition Boliglaboratorium: A Danish Housing Lab.

Contributors

Mas event 2025 learnings from a danish housing lab 01

Townhouse concept. Concept for repeatable townhouse. © NORD Architects.

Climate change, resource scarcity, new family patterns, demographic changes, loneliness on the rise, shrinking rural communities, big cities that can’t keep up with the influx of newcomers. These are some of the greatest challenges residential architecture is facing today.

In 2018 the Boliglaboratorium: A Danish Housing Lab initiative was launched to inspire new ways of creating housing that address some of these challenges through realized full-scale housing experiments in Denmark.

NORD Architects’ partner Mia Baarup Tofte will share learnings from leading the Housing Lab and the company’s years of experience with residential architecture as an important social component that helps us create welfare.

Mas event 2025 learnings from a danish housing lab 03

Furuset Hagebt Dementia Village, Oslo, Norway. Architecture by NORD Architects and 3RW arkitekter. Photograph by Adam Mørk.

Mas event 2025 learnings from a danish housing lab 02

Villa Wood. A home and an exploration for NORD Architects. The house became a 1:1 test of using CLT-elements in the construction, which it was also only the third in Denmark at the time to do. © NORD Architects. Photograph by Adam Mørk.

Mas event 2025 learnings from a danish housing lab 04

Villa Wood, interior. A home and an exploration for NORD Architects. The house became a 1:1 test of using CLT-elements in the construction, which it was also only the third in Denmark at the time to do. © NORD Architects. Photograph by Adam Mørk.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Boliglaboratorium: A Danish Housing Lab features six groundbreaking Danish architectural projects that explore how housing can respond to the current climate crisis, future urban challenges, shifting family patterns and new ways of living. . The exhibition in Chicago is organized by the Chicago Architecture Biennial and MAS Context and on view at the CAB Studio inside the Chicago Cultural Center (78 East Washington Street. Chicago, IL 60602).

Boliglaboratorium: A Danish Housing Lab, an exhibition curated by Nord Architects, is a joint initiative of the Danish Arts Foundation and Realdania. The US premier of the exhibition is presented by Scan Design Foundation, whose mission is to support the cross-cultural exchange between Denmark and the US, in partnership with the Embassy of Denmark in Washington DC.

Comments