ON THE EDGE: Mark Isitt (SE) in conversation with Ane Cortzen

What does it take to create the perfect framework for a National Library? That is the big question that the architecture critics Ane Cortzen and Mark Isitt ask each other in a conversation that springs from the Royal Danish Library's exhibition On the Edge. The exhibition celebrates the 25th anniversary of the construction of The Black Diamond and has been made together with the architectural studio Schmidt Hammer Lassen, which in its time won the architectural competition for Denmark's new national library.

Ane Cortzen and Mark Isitt will give their take on why The Black Diamond has largely succeeded, and based on the Diamond, they will talk about what it takes for architecture to work well. The conversation between the two mediators, who have worked extensively to communicate architecture and design in their respective Denmark and Sweden, will discuss the importance of the connection between buildings and their surroundings.

How should buildings meet people, the city they are built in and the landscape in which they are located? With a number of examples from the Nordics, they will put The Black Diamond in a Nordic perspective. In addition, they will raise the pressing question of architecture's predatory use of the earth's resources. How are we going to build and maintain a form of connection with the plant world and nature, in an über-urban future?

Participants

Mark Isitt

Mark Isitt is an award-winning journalist and author who has been writing about architecture and design since the 1980s. He is an architecture critic at Göteborg-Posten and a well-known TV host in Sweden, where he is a programme host for Grand designs (TV4) and Hemma hos Arkitekten (SVT), which can also be seen on DR. He has written several books, including The United Nations and about the architecture of the metro in Stockholm Sub. In public, he often relates to Danish and Nordic architecture and urban development.

Anne Cortzen

Ane Cortzen is a trained architect at the Danish Academy of Fine Arts. She has hosted a number of cultural programmes on television. She has dealt with the question of whether architecture makes our lives better and whether buildings give back to their surroundings. Through a long series of cases and interviews on DR, she has investigated why in our time we often end up with architecture that goes wrong. And has therefore raised the question: Has there been an architect present?