Since founding her eponymous studio 26 years ago, Danish architect Dorte Mandrup has specialized in projects that demand a high degree of consideration and care, creating architecture characterized by its contextual cohesion and profound understanding of the relationship between place and building, human and space, form and function. For Mandrup, the context extends beyond the physical elements one can see, touch, and feel and includes the invisible layers of memory, emotion, and identity that give meaning to a place.

In this lecture at the Weitzman School of Design, at the University of Pennsylvania, Mandrup will discuss the importance of context in her studio’s work, which spans fragile UNESCO-protected landscapes in the Arctic – including such extraordinary projects as The Whale in Norway, the Exile Museum in Berlin, Nunavut Inuit Heritage Centre in Canada, and Ilulissat Icefjord Centre in Greenland – and the intertidal coastline of Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands. It has also created architecture in places inhabited by difficult historic content, such as the design for the future Exile Museum at Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin and the masterplan and reimagination of Saalecker Werkstätten in Central Germany.