Pavilion gives barns new life at Copenhagen Architecture Biennale

The timber pavilion is constructed entirely from salvaged timber from disused Norwegian barns. The design responds to the festival theme of ‘Slow down’, which examines what a great deceleration of the global system might look, feel, and sound like at a local scale.

THISS Studio and Svilans won the commission via an international competition. Their design sees stacked beams tapering up in a pointed form. The structure exposes, reconfigures, and layers the history of the salvaged beams. Weathered surfaces, aged joinery, and old connection details remain visible, telling the story of the wood’s first life. New incisions and precisely machined joints are overlaid, ushering in the timber’s next phase of life.

Barn Again is a reflection on craft, reuse, and sustainability, and it invites passers-by to slow down and reflect on the pace of their own busy day-to-day lives.

The brief for the project was to create a pavilion within a busy thoroughfare, which could offer shelter and space for a programme of events throughout the Biennale. The stacked timber enclosure offers both openness – through spaced joints and thresholds – and intimacy, with sheltered seating and a kiosk for small gatherings.

Three censers, designed by British design studio, EJM, hang within the pavilion to help create a calm, meditative environment, and a bespoke incense cone has been formulated in collaboration with skincare brand Formerly Known As Haeckels.

You can find the Barn Again pavilion in Gammel Strand, Copenhagen. The Biennale runs until 19 October at various venues across Copenhagen.