Is Copenhagen a city for many - or for everyone?

What does it mean to have equal access to the city? And how do we become more aware of the challenges that exist for different people and their access to the spaces of the city?

These are questions that 100 architecture and design students from the Royal Academy — the Department of Building Art and Design — are asking Copenhageners during this year's Culture Night.

Through various installations, the audience gets to feel the issues on their own body. Discover, for example, how difficult it is to enter a place that is not designed for your body. Or what will you do if the staircase you are going up does not have steps?

Copenhagen has been chosen as the capital of architecture in 2023 by UNESCO, and not without reason. Copenhagen is often highlighted as one of the world's most liveable cities with a high quality of life, unique cycling culture, green spaces and clean bathing water in the harbour.

But Copenhagen and the city's offerings are not always designed so that all the city's citizens can participate — for example, access can be a challenge for those challenged by physical impairments or those who need to be able to withdraw and find peace in an urban space created for many people at the same time.

This also applies to access to the city's cultural and leisure facilities, which greatly contribute to setting the framework for citizens' social life and communities.

The Royal Academy, the Department of Building Art and Design and the Copenhagen Municipality's Department of Culture and Leisure are therefore focusing on the issue during the year of architecture with the project TOGETHER — Is the city for everyone?

They do this in cooperation with the Bevica Foundation, the Lonely Gamles Værn Foundation, the Health Foundation and the Disability Council.

Together they want to spark a conversation about how to make our capital far more usable for everyone, no matter what physical or mental starting point one has.

Because there is great potential for creating more inclusive offerings and environments, and designers and architects in particular have a great responsibility to contribute to realizing this potential.

Mathilde Serup, Head of the Department of Building Art and Design at the Royal Academy says:
“100 students have gained completely new perspectives and felt on their own how big a difference they can make when they start from inclusion and universal design. This means that we send the architects and designers of the future out into the world with an inclusive mindset and an awareness of how they can help create change and design for more people”.

According to Culture and Leisure Mayor Mia Nyegaard, the idea behind urban development in Copenhagen has for many years been urban life before urban spaces before buildings.
“Art and design in urban spaces hopefully help create more life, more urban life and broaden our horizons. I hope that the various installations will give food for thought in relation to how we can develop the city in a smarter and perhaps more artistic way”, she says.

Project course at the Royal Academy
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TOGETHER — Is the city for everyone? has started at the Royal Academy with a two-week course in which 100 architecture and design students have worked on the theme based on presentations and workshops, where they have felt and worked on the issue of equal access to cultural communities in Copenhagen.

The students were divided into groups and have worked on installations that open up new ways of seeing our urban spaces and create new notions of what inclusion can look like in our big city.

The projects have been further developed and are now presented at Kulturnatt.

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