Architect Søren Pihlmann: Make Materials Matter

Video Description

“Care for the existing. Don’t waste materials.” The Danish architect Søren Pihlmann wants nothing less than to revolutionise how we build. For one and a half years, we have followed him as he applied his philosophy to the Danish Pavilion on the grounds of the Venice Biennale. “This exhibition here in the Danish Pavilion in the Giardini area in Venice is about simultaneously renovating and restoring the Danish pavilion and at the same time staging an exhibition purely based on the construction process. Everything we produce as part of this process will go back into and thus stay inside the pavilion. It’s like an open laboratory.” Can buildings heal themselves? Can we reuse the materials already present in buildings to modernise them instead of tearing down and building anew? ”The more we know, the better we can sense a place”, Søren Pihlmann says. ”The first thing we always do is try to better understand what is present. We are registering the initial condition and the properties of the materials present. What are they capable of? What kind of environment does a specific material thrive in? How does it react together with the other materials? And can we, as architects and curators, alter that interaction?” To find answers to these questions, architects need to cooperate with other specialists and fields of knowledge. To Pihlmann, materials are partners. So, who else can help analyse, reveal, and penetrate their layers? And make visible their inherent qualities? ”I feel the whole discussion about how we can build the future architecture still takes its starting point in a very old-fashioned way of looking at resources, where you accept that you always go out in nature to harvest and process new materials, so they become a building component later on in architecture. But when we look at the buildings being built today, most are actually in areas where you already have buildings.” ”We have to be better at looking at the resources already processed, resources that we already put into this world, and not just for saving energy and resources, but also because they are embedded with many poetic qualities. They have traces of history. They have their own narratives. If we work with these materials in the right way, we can use them as a stepping stone to create architecture that works like a bridge between the past, the present, and potentially the future. I feel there is a huge potential in this, and in my opinion, it's not really investigated right now.” Søren Pihlmann (b. 1987) founded the Copenhagen-based office pihlmann architects in 2021. By exploring novel materials and re-evaluating existing ones, he strives to rethink conventional architectural perspectives. Examining the potential of both overproduced and underestimated materials, he combines them based on their inherent properties, creating compositions that evoke both familiarity and discovery. In recent years, Pihlmann has made a significant mark on the Danish architectural scene through a series of transformative projects that have strongly influenced contemporary discourse. In 2023, his project House14a received Denmark’s most prestigious architectural award, the Årets Arne, named after the celebrated modernist Arne Jacobsen. That same year, he was shortlisted for three Architectural Review awards, having previously received the Henning Larsen Foundation Honorary Award in 2022. His innovative practice has led to his appointment as the curator of the Danish Pavilion at the Biennale Architettura di Venezia in 2025. As mentioned above, the exhibition will incorporate the renovation of the pavilion itself as part of its concept. The architectural philosophy underpinning his work emphasises the potential of existing materials and resources, challenging how we continue to build by focusing on what we already have. This approach is exemplified by his recent transformation project, Thoravej 29, which was awarded Building of the Year 2024 in Denmark and reused 95% of the existing materials. Simon Weyhe has been documenting Søren Pihlmann’s work with the Danish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale between December 2023 and April 2025. During the same period, Pihlmann was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner on multiple occasions. Camera: Simon Weyhe Edited by: Simon Weyhe Produced by: Simon Weyhe & Marc-Christoph Wagner Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2025 Louisiana Channel is supported by Den A.P. Møllerske Støttefond, Ny Carlsbergfondet, and C.L. Davids Fond og Samling. This film is supported by Dreyersfond. Subscribe to our channel for more videos on architecture: https://www.youtube.com/thelouisianachannel FOLLOW US HERE: Website: http://channel.louisiana.dk Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/louisianachannel Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LouisianaChannel