Kalundborg Circular Campus, Kalundborg, Denmark

Source: Desire site experience and future plans, AAU, page 30-

Kalundborg, Denmark, located 100 km west of Copenhagen, is renowned for its thriving industrial symbiosis model, interconnecting over 20 streams of water, energy, and materials with active participation from public and private stakeholders. 

Over the past five years, aligned with the Danish Government's strategy to decentralise higher education, Kalundborg's industrial, political, and educational stakeholders have collaborated to attract higher education institutions to the city. And now a new Circular Campus is being developed. 

In this context, the Royal Danish Academy has been mandated to establish a new architecture program in Kalundborg.

The Circular Campus aims to integrate educational institutions into the local fabric and promote collaboration across sectors and generations. This initiative leverages the proximity of leading companies and vocational schools and aims to foster the active involvement of younger generations in shaping their future environment through co-creation and participation.

Stakeholders have also worked on developing plans for the necessary infrastructure and housing to accommodate new students and employees, aiming to create a vibrant urban community that retains residents during and after their academic studies. 

However, the strong industry focus in Kalundborg poses challenges in fostering a sense of belonging among students, requiring ongoing efforts and deliberate decisions to connect them with the community. Participatory methods are crucial in this process. 

The task of finding a ‘home’ for the education will involve the first architecture students and the community, exploring how the new program can be meaningfully integrated into Kalundborg by listening to citizens and adding new value to the city while respecting the existing community. 

Within Desire, Kalundborg chose the principles of aesthetics, movement, and belonging.

How can we create sustainable, attractive, and inclusive urban spaces? Together with project partners and the locals, we experiment with this as part of the Desire project in Kalundborg, Denmark. In recent years, the city has witnessed growth in the biotech industry and the relocation of universities to the area. Now, the city aims to kickstart urban development by collaborating with its citizens to envision new possibilities. Have a look at the film! The Filmmaker is Benjamin Hesselholdt. 

One circular strategy already implemented involves the decision of the Royal Danish Academy's new School of Architecture to repurpose existing buildings rather than construct new ones.

For instance, it repurposed the local cinema, which remains unused during the daytime, for hosting lectures. This initiative met some resistance from local decision-makers; however, a series of meetings were held with the management team of the local municipality to explore various strategies for the future location of the growing school. Three scenarios were presented and discussed, each varying in the degree of concentration of functions across one or more locations. 

Planning for another new campus in Kalundborg is underway, with a focus on leveraging the city’s robust biotech industry. Desire aims to harness this potential by spearheading the development of a Biotech Campus, which will play an important role in integrating the industry into the city’s overall development strategy. As a hub for the Danish biotech industry, Kalundborg anticipates the launch of several new higher education programs in this field in the coming years. 

Consequently, the new campus needs to accommodate these educational initiatives while ensuring sustainable strategies for both physical construction and social integration within the Kalundborg community. The School of Architecture will play a crucial role in this initiative, conducting research on innovative biogenetic materials to support the campus's development. 

Workshops and field trips were organised to generate collaboration and knowledge sharing between the various educational institutions in Kalundborg. Another key initiative encompassed establishing a broad network of connections and interdependencies with individuals and institutions within the city. 

From a broader perspective, the project concerns the urban development of Kalundborg, touching upon topics such as housing, cultural life, and placemaking, which unfolded through the Power of Place approach supported by the Really Regenerative Center (associated partner with Desire) early in the process. 

With this approach, Kalundborg has seen the formation of the citizen-driven Phoenix Group, from which principles of future development have emerged rather than being imposed top-down. 

As part of Desire, the initial step towards forging these connections involved convening local stakeholders who collectively wish to initiate change in Kalundborg and recognize the potential for collaboration with the Royal Danish Academy in workshops and through field trips. The citizens who became part of the group known as ‘the Phoenix Group’ expressed interest in catalysing positive change in Kalundborg.

The Phoenix Group, which can be considered a tool itself, as it is initiated with a specific approach of being open-minded and focuses on trust building as its initial aim, defined its scope of operation and established rules of conduct, using mind-mapping and dilemma tools. 

A dilemma tool is a structured exercise that juxtaposes contrasting ideas on a scale, followed by discussions with stakeholders to determine their preferred positions. This facilitated reflections on potential controversies, such as prioritising small versus large projects, short-term initiatives versus permanent development, and municipal leadership versus civil society empowerment. 

Through this exercise, stakeholders engaged in critical dialogue to navigate complex issues and identify optimal pathways forward. Based on these discussions, the Phoenix Group identified specific projects, focusing on a rectangular block for aesthetic and functional improvements.

Partnering with the Danish landscape and architecture firm 3rd Nature and students from the new architecture education program in the city, the Phoenix Group developed proposals for temporary movable installations in five city locations to see if simple elements could create green and cosy places where citizens want to gather.

These proposals were presented to local stakeholders in a September 2023 exhibition. In addition, they could also be examined at an Open House event at Kalundborg Station, where the new Royal Danish Academy of architecture is located, which was attended by many citizens. 

However, balancing detail with abstraction proved challenging, leading to potential confusion and lack of engagement. Some ideas were quickly transformed into physical installations, such as repurposing old trash containers into movable seats and tree pots. 

A number of young citizens gave the containers an aesthetic makeover so they could function as plant pots in the city's spaces. Prototypes were tested in various urban contexts to assess their impact. The group also visited other campuses for inspiration.

Recognizing the need for younger perspectives, the architectural education engaged anthropological firm BARK to conduct walk-and-talk sessions and image association workshops with teenagers. Students from various educational backgrounds participated in a ‘Listening to Place’ workshop to quietly gather impressions about the city.

Results indicated a lack of attractive, non-commercial gathering spaces, highlighting that Kalundborg does not yet meet its aesthetic and community goals. To strengthen the sense of belonging among younger people, student assignments are contextualised within the local environment, offering opportunities to engage with and instigate change. 

This approach aligns with the Phoenix Group’s efforts, which, following the third Desire principle of movement, pursue bottom-up change within the local context, independent of municipal involvement.

Story

How little does it take to make a public space attractive and green? Through the Desire project, the city of Kalundborg, DK has established a citizen group that, together with architecture students and a design firm, will experiment with small, simple things in public spaces. Read the article here

The site’s representative’s reflections suggest that there may be a tendency among some industry players in Kalundborg to focus on global market interests, which could sometimes overshadow local needs. Similarly, it seems the municipality often prioritises the well-being of the industry. 

As a response, it might be beneficial to consider redirecting some attention inward to better address local issues and enhance community resilience and development. The challenge within Desire is to facilitate this shift in perspective. 

A key learning from the project has been the critical role of relationships in driving meaningful change. Prioritising dialogue and collaboration across stakeholder groups, including establishing forums for shared decision-making, is essential for holistic development aligned with circularity and community engagement principles. 

Collaboration at higher decision-making levels, such as within the municipality, has also proven challenging. There is a prevailing lack of interest in experimentation and a stronger focus on expediency, posing difficulties for Desire's approach, which advocates exploring new, experimental methodologies. Additionally, there is a lack of understanding of the significance of Desire's experimental initiatives. 

Desire also faced challenges due to the late involvement of stakeholders from the Royal Danish Academy, who joined during the experimentation phase. Their primary focus on designing education programs has overshadowed their commitment to the Desire project.

Materials and helpful links

Find links at the top of the page.

Desire territorial transformation plan

The Desire territorial transformation plan for Kalundborg builds on three results which are defined as decisive towards the implementation of the overall ambition of creating an irresistible circular campus (ref to DoA). 

The three results are interconnected, and they relate to the involvement of two key organisations in the activities, the Royal Danish Academy and Knowledge Hub Zealand, with different but interconnected ambitions for the urban development of Kalundborg. 

The results represent different levels of ambition and scope, and the implementation covers different time horizons. Even though the financial plan treats each of these three results individually in the concrete steps to be taken and in the potential financial resources to be attracted, they are deeply interrelated and overlaps concerning what will happen, whom to be involved and how actions will be taken characterize the plan.

A brief outline of the three results.

• The Kalundborg Circular Campus - a clear framework for developing a comprehensive physical infrastructure involving 6 different educational institutions. The framework is based on a vision which informs the actual implementation

• Plan for embedding the Royal Danish Academy in the city and playing a role in urban development. The Royal Danish Academy initiated educational activities in Kalundborg in September 2023 – the role and integration of the Academy into the city has been tested through multi-level engagements (citizens, industry, other educational institutions and the municipality).

• Vision for greater synergy between the city and Kalundborg Circular Campus on a broader level.

A synthesizing element of these three results is framed by the Kalundborg Model, which is a general name for the collaboration framework developed in Kalundborg through the Kalundborg Symbiosis for the past more than 50 years. 

While the Kalundborg Model originally was developed in the context of collaboration and circular economy with respect to resources and industrial waste stream, most recently and because of Desire, it has been applied to the development of the campus and the city.

The long-term vision

To establish an irresistible circular campus based on the physical infrastructure and fostered through structures for ongoing dialogues on urban development and open collaboration between different types of stakeholders. 

Included in this is the vision of a forum for debate concerning the future of the city, involving the educational institutions, the industry, citizens and the local authority. And to see the irresistible circular campus as an approach to sustain circular solutions locally.