Henrik Valeur

Other projects include a proposal for vertical kitchen gardens in a colony of rehabilitated slum dwellers in Chandigarh, developed in collaboration with a local NGO, and a proposal for self-built low-cost garden flats for current slum dwellers in Bangalore, developed with a local developer. In Chandigarh the lack of open space in the colony led to the idea of placing community kitchen gardens on top of each other. In Bangalore residents would be provided an open frame structure to be filled out by themselves according to individual preferences and possibilities. The reasoning for both projects, i.e. to provide poor people in urban settings with opportunities to produce their own food and to create their own dwellings respectively, owes a debt to the Indian economist Amartya Sen’s capability approach.

In the following years he worked with Indian students and researchers, activists and bureaucrats, developers and entrepreneurs, and participated in public discussions about the urban transition of India. His book India: the Urban Transition - a Case Study of Development Urbanism, which is based on his teaching, researching and practicing, primarily in Chandigargh in North India and Bangalore in South India, was published in 2014. "The book contextualises city making as a complex highly political process and contends that it is the Indian city that can truly be the landscape on which the idea of India, with its diversity, flourishes".

The book India: the Urban Transition (2014) provides a number of proposals, including the revitalization and integration of an existing system of water canals with a new network of pathways for pedestrians in the city of Bangalore, the replacement of asphalt with natural surfaces, so-called green streets, in the city of Chandigarh and the use of plants and natural ventilation to create fresh air inside an office building, in which the plants are also used as movable space dividers with the interior planning being based on principles of self-organization.

Henrik Valeur and Fredrik Fritzson's ideas of planning were implemented in the development of Musicon in Roskilde, for which they made the structure plan and the process manual, based on a scenario game and role play with local stakeholders. Roskilde Municipality was awarded the Danish Urban Planning Award in 2012 for the "exceptionally creative planning" of Musicon.

Among the projects Henrik Valeur created while living in China was the Bicycle Tower, a design for vertical bicycle parking developed jointly by UiD in Shanghai and Malmö, and exhibited by the City of Malmö as part of the Urban Best Practice Area at the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai.

In 2010 Henrik Valeur gave the Le Corbusier Memorial Lecture in Chandigarh, in which he noted that:

In 2010, Henrik Valeur wrote an op-ed in the Danish newspaper Information. In the English translation of the article the term “development urbanism” appears for the first time.

In a feature article in Politiken (2009) he argued that in response to climate change, i.e. extreme weather, sea level rise and stormwater etc., ecology and urbanity must be integrated. But rather than moving the city out into the countryside, as Ebenezer Howard had proposed with his garden city concept more than a hundred years earlier, Henrik Valeur suggested that nature be incorporated in the city both physically, for instance in the form of soil and vegetation that can absorb excess water, and conceptually, in the way we think about cities. Ten years later, in another feature article in Politiken, he used Fredens Havn (Harbour of Peace), a spontaneously evolved and self-organized floating settlement in the central parts of Copenhagen, as an example of climate adapted living in the city.

Henrik Valeur was himself a member of the jury for the 7th International Architecture Biennale in São Paulo, Brazil, in 2007. That year he also founded UiD Shanghai Co., Ltd in China and was the co-curator, with Professor Pan Haixiao of Tongji University, of the exhibition Harmonious City, which included examples of Danish experiences with sustainable urban development and projects by students from Tongji University and was exhibited at Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center.

Henrik Valeur was appointed curator of the Danish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2006. He traveled to China where he met with universities and city administrations in several of the biggest Chinese cities. Based on the conversations he had with people there he conceived the project CO-EVOLUTION - Danish/Chinese Collaboration on Sustainable Urban Development in China in which young professional Danish architects and architecture students would work together with professors and students from leading Chinese universities in the cities of Beijing, Chongqing, Shanghai and Xi’an. The curator and his team wrapped the exterior of the Danish Pavilion in a green scaffolding, often seen on Chinese construction sites, and conducted a research project on problems and possibilities related to the processes of rapid urbanization in China, which constituted the background story of the exhibition, literally in the format of billboards mounted on the interior walls of the pavilion, with the project proposals developed by the four teams placed as free-standing installations in space. CO-EVOLUTION was awarded the Golden Lion for Best National Participation by the jury of the 10th International Architecture Exhibition, Richard Sennett (President), Amyn Aga Khan, Antony Gormley and Zaha Hadid, who said:

Henrik Valeur introduced the concept of co-evolution in architecture in 2006 as curator of the project CO-EVOLUTION: Danish/Chinese Collaboration on Sustainable Urban Development in China for which he asked four young architecture offices from Denmark to work together with planners and researchers from four Chinese universities to answer the question: "How can China proceed with its ambitious project to improve living conditions for its population without exhausting the very resources needed to sustain a better life?"

In response to the tradition of central control and the associated principle of determinism in Scandinavian planning, Henrik Valeur, in collaboration with Fredrik Fritzson, developed the concept of parallel processing in urban planning, which was discussed at the 6th European Biennal of Towns and Town Planning in 2005 and implemented in the development of Musicon in 2007.

CoMa was exhibited, in the format of a multimedia installation, at Form/Design Center in Malmö in 2002 and at the Danish Architecture Centre in Copenhagen in 2004. In addition, the team organized a conference about the Øresund Region and contributed a sound installation to an international group exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde.

For the development of Trekroner East in Roskilde (2002–03), Henrik Valeur organized a workshop with groups of young architects, artists and representatives of various interest groups, the municipality, local citizens and experts, who worked together to design the landscape of this new part of the city - prior to the design of the buildings, thus making it a practical example of landscape urbanism and of a participatory and collaborative planning process.

With Swedish architect and comedian Fredrik Fritzson, he initiated CoMa in 2001 – a research project about the newly formed Øresund Region, centered on the cities of Copenhagen and Malmö, hence the name CoMa, and the urban regions of Los Angeles and Pearl River Delta/Hong Kong. The project was based on a “diagnosis of society as a multicultural society. [T]his diagnosis becomes the frame for conceiving a new regional strategy that crosses the national borders of Denmark and Sweden, using urbanism as an integrating force”.

During the early 2000s, Henrik Valeur and Fredrik Fritzon developed a series of planning tools intended to make planning processes flexible and inclusive. These tools, which include the 1:1 Sketch Model, the 4D+ Model and the Change Design Model, were demonstrated and discussed at a fair-like idea shop, which they organized for the 6th European Biennal of Towns and Town Planning in Copenhagen in 2005. Several young Danish and Swedish architecture offices participated in the idea shop, which was entitled A New Future for Planning – Young Architects Show the Way!

In 1999 he was invited to present his work at Arkitekturgalleriet, an exhibition venue for young architects at the Danish Architecture Centre. He included in the exhibition, entitled ‘99 but sometimes wrongly referred to as UiD/Henrik Valeur, not only his own work but the works of other architects, as well as material that is not commonly seen in architecture exhibitions. Architectural projects were not presented as unique, solitary pieces, but were mixed with commercials, news pieces, slogans and snap shots. The Danish architecture critic Allan De Waal commented:

In 1995 Henrik Valeur started out on his own making competition entries of which a few were awarded, including a proposal for a new entrance to Copenhagen Zoo and for a new university on Amager (U97), following which, in 1997, he founded UiD, a networking urban consultancy.

Henrik Bjørn Valeur (French pronunciation: ​[valœʁ] ; born 13 October 1966) is a Danish architect-urbanist, founder and creative director of UiD (Denmark) and UiD Shanghai Co., Ltd (China), curator of CO-EVOLUTION: Danish/Chinese Collaboration on Sustainable Urban Development in China, which was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2006, and author of the book India: the Urban Transition - a Case Study of Development Urbanism (2014), which is based on his experiences teaching, researching and practicing in India.

Henrik Valeur was born in Denmark in 1966 to visual artist Mogens Valeur and fashion designer Birgitte Valeur. His grandfathers were both civil engineers. He grew up in Tibirke (Tisvilde), a small village located to the north of Copenhagen, and studied architecture with Enric Miralles at Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura in Barcelona and at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture in Copenhagen, from where he graduated in 1994. He then worked briefly for Rem Koolhaas’ Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam.