Were it not for going to Holland, I would not have understood that architecture is first and foremost about society — about questioning how we want to live together and about creating better social interactions and greater overall livability in response.

You could say that a city is a complex organism socially, culturally, economically and also architecturally. At Cobe, we try to understand these many urban systems; one thrust of our work is to improve the quality of life through hybrid building typologies that add value to a community or neighbourhood.

I had a strong interest in infrastructure, a belief that you could really treat it as more than a conduit to improve the livability and accessibility of a whole city. In the case of Nørreport Station, this largest and busiest hub in Copenhagen was so badly organized that it was a fantastic opportunity to show the power of architecture to improve quality of life.

I think it was during, because we were simultaneously working on Israels Plads [a previously car-oriented Copenhagen square reimagined by Cobe as “a vibrant, diverse plaza” used for sport and leisure “by all kinds of people”]. You can say that both were a hybrid of urbanism, social interaction, architecture and landscape architecture. We learned about the converging of elements by doing those two projects, and we’re still learning from those urban interventions. Since then, we have developed a business model in which the large scale implements the small scale. The ethics of urban planning, building and landscape are really embedded in each other. That’s not something that was thought out as a big mission, but it’s one we gradually adopted.

Copenhagen has transformed completely from the city I grew up in. People are moving here every month, there’s a need for housing and the city has become a marketplace. How, then, do you make a city that embraces not just the rich consumer and the investor class but takes in and absorbs everyone? That’s what we try to work out.

Creating environments where the police officer and the nurse can still afford to live in the city might be the greatest challenge in the welfare urbanism agenda. How do we maintain social inclusion in cities — and a welfare society in general — as they come under pressure from immigration or unfair wealth distribution? If architecture is good, it will have the capacity to create inclusive spaces.

Yes. If we do a commission like Tingbjerg Library and Culture House [located in the marginalized north- west Copenhagen suburb of Tingbjerg], it needs to be a place where the homeless, for example, feel welcome to read a book for six hours. If we do very expensive housing like The Silo [also in Copenhagen, in the trendy waterfront Nordhavn neighbourhood], then we encourage our clients to have public facilities on site, such as that building’s ground-floor exhibition gallery and penthouse restaurant, which are open to everybody.

In general, people are skeptical of a new thing, and citizens actually have more knowledge than the architect does about a specific place. I am focused on creating a platform of trust and understanding before undertaking a good contextual design.

We are focused on how you as an urban human being experience the city. And you can say that that experience happens through your feet — where the body meets the surface of the built environment. We often try to connect the ground level with our architecture to invite new flows, movements and interactions between people. Topography creates a direct connection between the human body and architecture.

It is one of our aesthetic tools. I hate at buildings in many ways, and we have some techniques to create texture, depth and re ections of light so that facades appear more dynamic.

It’s fantastic to be part of the early stages of a project, when we can discuss fundamental ambitions and best uses of money with the client. Also, we are vetting potential clients for their beliefs about the environment, which I didn’t do nearly as dogmatically when the rm was starting out. We have to make sure we’re leaving the planet significantly better than how we found it.

For me personally and for the whole office, working in different places with different cultures means creating a broader platform for livable cities. We often say yes to commissions if there are shared ambitions to overcome environmental challenges, impact a local community or create new solutions. For the Halftime building, we helped a global company stitch a big organization together. The building is a democratic, open one where everybody interacts in a new way. Achieving that was an ongoing discussion, and that’s what we can contribute as Scandinavian architects.

These are good examples of complex sites in a major North American city, and of our attempts to understand a community’s worries about density and historical sensitivity.

That’s exactly what makes it interesting intellectually. It is very different to work in Germany or Canada, and that really sharpens what you do, what you decide, how you communicate and how you create a platform for collaboration. Reacting to different contexts keeps us more alive, gives us more creative fuel for what we do. It keeps us developing in exciting ways.

The main advantage of cities is that they bring people together, generating economic growth, knowledge and culture. Early in its history, city planning was about increasing capacity and efficiencies, rather than creating cities for people. Now that we are becoming good at livability, there is a chance that cities are becoming too well orchestrated. Tourism is exploding in Amsterdam, for example, to the point that you can hardly go there anymore. One of the ways that we can remedy this, I think, is by focusing our design efforts on and around nature — giving nature a way to exist and thrive in cities that is independent of economic cycles or of human lifespans.