Retrofitting Lundager: Towards Climate Change Mitigation and Architectural Sensemaking

This paper presents the results of one part of a research project carried out in collaboration with the National Museum of Denmark and Roskilde University. As a cross-disciplinary research project between the fields of communication, history and critical heritage studies, and architecture, the overall aim is to investigate how the experiential potential of selected vernacular buildings at the Open Air Museum outside Copenhagen may be enhanced by making architectural interventions, and subsequently investigating whether the visitors’ experience of these interventions may become embodied aesthetic knowledge and inspire future (more) sustainable actions. The architectural subproject described in this paper is the making of a retrofit insulation of an existing threshing floor [Lo] in the Lundager Farmhouse, that is a part of the Open Air Museum. The intervention is an investigation of how to reuse and make a retrofit insulation in an existing room using biogenic materials and existing building components, so that the cultural-historical and aesthetic qualities present in the existing building are not weakened, but rather strengthened. The intervention is designed by the authors and built by students and teachers from the Royal Danish Academy in 2023.