Stories of Impact

Lela Cooper was recently selected as one of the 2025 Husky 100. Lela first learned about and experienced the benefits of Scan Design Foundation as a participant in the Greenland Exploration Seminar led by Dr. Michelle Koutnik at the UW College of the Environment. Lela also pursued a minor in Danish at the UW Scandinavian Studies Department. As part of her graduate program in Urban Design and Planning she participated in the 2024 SDF Interdisciplinary study tour and studio at UW College of Built Environments. She consequently worked with the new Interdisciplinary Scan Design Foundation Professor, Vincent Javet, on her thesis on bicycle planning, for which she returned to Copenhagen last winter to interview several bicycle planners and advocates.

BOLIGLABORATORIUM: A DANISH HOUSING LAB is a joint initiative of the Danish Arts Foundation and Realdania. The U.S. premiere of the exhibition is presented by Seattle-based Scan Design Foundation. The exhibition was first showcased at the 2023 Architectural Congress in Copenhagen. It has been on tour in the Pacific Northwest from November 2024 to May 2025, joining institutions in Seattle and Portland to spur cross-cultural dialogue about how we can build for the needs of today’s communities.

With the current spotlight on Greenland, we invited our partner, Dr. Michelle Koutnik, a glaciology research faculty member at the University of Washington's College of the Environment, to offer her perspective to help illuminate some of the interconnected and complex issues that go beyond the media headlines. She kindly shared some relevant background, current information, and helpful resources as she prepares herself and her students for another Scan Design Foundation-funded trip to study the effects of climate change on the Greenland Ice Sheet this summer.

In this blog, we spotlight our long-standing partnership with the UW-College of Built Environments to illustrate how investing consistently in well-run programs over multiple years can have an outsized impact — in this case on the development of the Seattle Waterfront.

SDF has funded the University of Washington Architecture Intern Exchange program by UWCBE since 2009. The interns are placed at some of Denmark's top architecture firms. One of the 2023-24 SDF Interns was UWCBE Master of Architecture student, Shannon Payne. Read her blog about her experiences working at Cobe Architects and living in Denmark through the SDF Architecture Program.

Funded by a grant from the Scan Design Foundation, the Capitol Hill EcoDistrict partnered with COurban to embark on a Masterclass program in Copenhagen and Malmö, traveling with a cohort of 14 intentionally selected participants. The program focused on creating a comprehensive framework that would result in the development and innovation of public life and space design improvements in Capitol Hill’s EcoDistrict.

Scan Design Foundation sponsors the Danish intern exchange program at the Museum of Danish America for students from Denmark. Read this blog by Svend A. Buus, our fall 2023 intern:

Read this blog about two University of Washington programs in Greenland sponsored by Scan Design Foundation. SDF Program Officer, Line Larsen, writes about her experiences in Ilulissat with the students.

Under the banner “Sustainable futures - Leave no one behind”, thousands of architects, urbanists, politicians, civil servants, developers, designers, students and others gathered for four immersive days at the UIA World Architecture congress in Copenhagen in July 2023. Read this blog from Bettina Werner for some key takeaways!

Coming this summer! We are thrilled to announce an exhibition by Danish environmental artist, Thomas Dambo - Northwest Trolls: Way of the Bird King. Thomas is building six giant whimsical trolls entirely from recycled materials around the Pacific Northwest. Read our new blog for an introduction to the project by Scan Design Foundation Program Officer, Line Liblik Larsen, followed by a piece about trolls by Dr. Ann-Charlotte Gavel Adams.

John Halliday, Muckleshoot tribal member, was selected by the tribal council to represent Muckleshoot art and culture in an artistic exchange with Denmark’s artist Thomas Dambo, sponsored by Scan Design Foundation.

Cities are classrooms in this unique study abroad course organized by the University of Oregon. Scan Design Foundation funded the 2022 Sustainable Transportation Study Abroad Course in Denmark. Read more about the 2022 program in this blog by Rebecca Lewis and Nick Meltzer:

14 University of Washington students are traveling to Greenland during summer 2023 to participate in the Scan Design Foundation sponsored program, "Impacts and Responses to Changes in Arctic Ice and Climate", to explore how changes in ice impacts the Arctic environment and the people living in the Arctic. Read more about the program in this blog by Research Associate Professor, Michelle Koutnik:

A group of nine transportation students traveled to Denmark and Sweden during the summer of 2022 to participate in the Portland State University (PSU) Sustainable Transportation Study Abroad Program partially funded by Scan Design Foundation. Through the program, the students met with planners and engineers and experienced the transportation systems in Copenhagen and Stockholm.