We design across scales — from a 4m² teahouse in Kyoto to a 240,000m² waterfront masterplan in Aarhus. The work is unified by an attention to site, climate, and the time of day light enters a room.
View selected workMost architecture today is too fast, too thin, too disconnected from the place it sits on. We are interested in the opposite of all three.
We accept fewer commissions than we could. We spend longer on each — typically four to seven years from first sketch to opening day. Our buildings are designed to last a hundred and fifty years, which is to say, well past anyone who works on them now.
That timeline shapes every decision. The materials we specify are ones whose hundred-year behavior we can name. The details we draw are ones a future repair crew can read and remake. The plans we make are flexible enough that the building can change use twice without being demolished.
Every project begins with a year of observation — sun path, wind, water table, the existing community. We build around what we find, never against it.
Stone, brick, wood, plaster, glass. Materials that age legibly and can be repaired by a craftsperson — not by a manufacturer's spare-parts catalog.
We still draw by hand for the first six months of every project. Only after the idea is clear in pencil do we move to digital tools.
We remain involved with every building for at least a decade after opening — supporting clients through change, repair, and small expansions.
Halden & Voss was founded in 2009 by Astrid Halden and Daichi Voss, who met in graduate studio at the Royal Danish Academy. We have never had more than fifty people on staff.
Today, forty-two architects, planners, landscape designers, and craftspeople work between our Copenhagen and Tokyo offices. Many have been with the practice for ten years or more.
Trained at the Royal Danish Academy and AA London. Visiting critic, ETH Zürich. Author of The Patient Wall (Lars Müller, 2021).
Trained at Tokyo Geidai and the Royal Danish Academy. Visiting professor, University of Tokyo. Curator, Venice Biennale 2023 (Japan Pavilion).
Leads the practice's masterplanning and public-realm work. Joined as the firm's seventh employee in 2011.
Heads landscape and ecology. Previously with Plot Architects (DK) and Nikken Sekkei (JP). Joined the firm in 2014.
Leads the Tokyo studio's residential portfolio. Trained at Waseda and the GSD.
Leads the Copenhagen studio's cultural and public commissions. Recipient of the Danish Arts Foundation's Travel Grant, 2022.
Halden & Voss have produced what may be the most careful architectural practice operating between Europe and Asia today — buildings that insist on being old the moment they are finished, in the best possible sense.
Domus · Issue 1085 · April 2024+45 35 89 14 02
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