The island of Slotsholmen in Copenhagen has served as a seat of power since the founding of the city by Bishop Absalon, who built the first castle there, in 1167. A constant amongst an ever-changing landscape, Slotsholmen is now home to all of Denmark’s major structural institutions of power: executive, legislative, judicial, economic and monarchical.

Copenhagen is facing a multidimensional threat from water in the form of storm surges, cloudbursts, rising groundwater levels and sea level rise. As a city raised from the sea, its low-lying position makes it particularly vulnerable to these threats which climate predictions show could conspire in bringing flood levels over 4m by 2125.

In Ethics for the City, Richard Sennett proposes two approaches to urban planning under the threat of water: defence or adaptation – to which I would add a Ruskinian notion of loss.

On Slotsholmen, water becomes another dimension of power; and with the threat of it, comes the inevitability of loss.
This thesis project examines how new systems of power disrupt the status quo and become an opportunity to imagine a climate-responsive city built on participatory democracy.

The Council of Adaption, Defence and Loss raises questions about how our cities navigate a future under existential threat, and who gets to decide what should be saved or what might be reclaimed by the sea.