Archibald Buchanan Lázaro-Carrasco

Student of Diploma in Architecture 2024-2026.

FINAL DESIGN THESIS:

The thesis explores the contextual analysis of the site at the threshold between Israels Plads and Ørstedsparken, re-imagining an abrupt threshold between the public square and an urban park as an active, functional bond. Synthesising the question of how the unification of the urban square, along with its embedded cultural and social functions, and the natural world, come together to create an intervention aiming to enhance both urban realms. The approach positions the integration of natural forms as a catalyst to strengthen community presence and enabling purposeful forms of social interaction where an outdoor amphitheatre emerges from the threshold between the square and the park.
The project’s outcome is rooted in experimenting with architectural forms that link the natural world with the existing square, whilst integrating the proposed civic programme: Theatre, music and performance. This holistic social activity harbours gathering, which is present in the key spaces of the proposal, semi-submerged under a mantle of greenery and vegetation that springs up from the park below. Understanding the site’s spatial, social, and historical conditions allows the research to synthesize programme and form into a unified intervention: an architectural landscape that transforms this transitional zone into an amphitheatre terrain embedded within Copenhagen’s public realm