Danish Architect Dorte Mandrup to Present 'Conditions and Beyond' Lecture on March 9

Image by Mir, courtesy of Dorte Mandrup A/S

The Whale, in Andenes, Norway.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Dorte Mandrup will present a lecture at 4 p.m. Monday, March 9, in Ken and Linda Sue Shollmier Hall, Room 250 of Vol Walker Hall, on the University of Arkansas campus, as part of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design lecture series.

Mandrup is the creative director of Dorte Mandrup A/S, in Copenhagen, Denmark.

In her lecture, "Conditions and Beyond," Mandrup will present six projects with cultural programs: Wadden Sea Center in Ribe, Denmark; Trilateral Wadden Sea World Heritage Partnership Center in Wilhelmshaven, Germany; Wadden Sea Center in Lauwersoog, Netherlands; Icefjord Center in Ilulissat, Greenland; Culture House and Library in Karlskrona, Sweden; and The Whale in Andenes, Norway.

Five of the projects are related to UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) World Heritage sites, four are related to UNESCO protected landscapes, and one is placed in a UNESCO protected townscape. Mandrup will focus on the specific conditions surrounding each project, and how these conditions have influenced the design process.

Mandrup is an architect and humanist with a distinct nonconformist mindset. Through strong compositional takes, her forte is designing for complex and challenging sites with an insightfulness that addresses environmental and societal contexts. Her preoccupation with exploring sculptural and material qualities of architecture leads to artful, intriguing spaces that foreground their environment and the conditions from which they arise.

Mandrup studied in the Visual Arts Department of the School of Arts and Crafts in Kolding, Denmark, and studied sculpture and ceramics in the G.S.C. Art Department in the United States. In 1991, she received a Master of Architecture from Aarhus School of Architecture in Denmark.

After graduating, Mandrup worked for Henning Larsen for four years, before co-founding Fuglsang & Mandrup-Poulsen Architects in 1996. In 1999, she set up her own studio, where she works hands on and in close interaction with all project teams, attaining design responsibility for the layout of every project in the studio.

In 2017, the IKEA Hubhult Global Meeting Center in Sweden was named Breeam Building of the Year in the Sweden Green Building Awards, and it received a 2017 Green Good Design Award from the The Chicago Athenaeum. The Wadden Sea Center in Denmark received a 2017 Esbjerg's City Fund Award and was named the 2017 Byggeri Magazine Building of the Year.

In 2019, Dorte Mandrup was awarded Architect of the Year by AW Architektur & Wohnen and the Kunstpreis Berlin (Berlin Art Prize), Architecture Section Award. She headlined at the curated international exhibition at La Biennale di Venezia in 2018 and was appointed chair of the prestigious Mies van der Rohe Award 2019.

Mandrup has been a guest professor at Cornell University (2018), guest professor at University of Washington (2012-2014), adjunct professor at Lund University's Department of Building Conservation (2011-2014) and honorary professor at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts' School of Architecture (since 2011).

Among other professional appointments, she is a board member at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (since 2011), was appointed by the Danish Culture Ministry as a member of the Historic Buildings Council, and was invited to exhibit at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia in 2018.

The school is pursuing continuing education credits for this lecture through the American Institute of Architects and the American Society of Landscape Architects.

This is the 2020 Dean's Lecture in Nordic Architecture, in promotion of the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program.

The public is invited to attend. Admission is free, with limited seating.

For more information, contact 479-575-4704 or fayjones.uark.edu.