In April 2023, the VELUX Group, EFFEKT architects, Artelia engineers, and Enemærke & Petersen contractors opened the doors to Living Places Copenhagen in the Railway District in Copenhagen – the first prototype of the overall Living Places concept. The vision behind the project is to lead the way in the building industry and show how rethinking buildings can help solve some of the global climate and health challenges. The concept is based on five key principles that aim to make homes that are healthy, adaptive, simple, shared over time, and scalable. These guiding principles are relevant to both new constructions and established communities.

With the project, the VELUX Group and its partners demonstrate how to build homes with a CO2 footprint of 3.85 kg/CO2/m2/, and to a price that matches the market price for a one-family house or rowhouses at scale. Furthermore, Living Places Copenhagen is designed with a strong focus on creating a healthy indoor climate using daylight and fresh air, and it delivers a first-class indoor climate.

As a part of the project, the partners carried out a complete Life Cycle Assessment, which means that each material, design, and building technique has been carefully considered and mapped in terms of the emissions they project compared to a typical Danish household. Based on that assessment, the project shows that we do not have to wait for future technology to build homes that benefit both people and the planet.

The Architizer A+Awards is one of the largest award programs focused on promoting and celebrating the year’s best architecture. The “Sustainable Private House” category awards private housing projects that incorporate sustainable systems and materials, and follow best practices within ethical design, construction, and operation. The “Architecture+Innovation” category is dedicated to projects that unlock new ways to build, including incorporating new, experimental, or unconventional design concepts and materials, or that rethink traditional approaches in pioneering ways. The Architecture+Innovation award is based on public voting.

“We are very honored to receive these two awards for our Living Places Copenhagen project, and to be acknowledged as winners of the Sustainable Private House and Architecture+Innovation categories. Our ambition with the project is, on one hand, to show that it is possible to build homes that are both healthy to live in, affordable to build, and with a low carbon footprint, but it is also important for us to inspire the industry and people to design and think homes differently than what we are used to. With these two awards, we thrive on the affirmation that the concept is not only acknowledged for its innovative approach by thousands of public voters, but also that it appeals to private homeowners,” says Lone Feifer, Director of Sustainable Buildings at the VELUX Group.

In 2023, Living Places Copenhagen won the EY Sustainability Award in the innovation category, the Innovative Design Award of Bo Bedre magazine, as well as the “Sustainable Future Award” and the “Merit Award for Architecture” from the American Institute of Architects. In March 2024, Living Places Copenhagen won the “Active House Radar Master Award” and the MIPIM 2024 award for “Best Residential Project”.