The topic of the studio, CITY FACTORY, asked the students to design a production facility for the fabrication and assembly of large scale building components for Nordhavn, a new neighborhood for 40,000 inhabitants being developed at the site of an old maritime industrial harbor.

The project proposes that the factory will locally produce components for the future development of Nordhavn. When the neighborhood is fully built out the factory will either be repurposed for another use or disassembled for re-use elsewhere. The students were asked to address both possibilities in developing their design proposals. In addition, the factory was to be built primarily of wood and have a carbon-neutral footprint. The project site is in a green post-industrial landscape adjacent to Tunnelfabrikken, a former factory that once produced pre-cast concrete parts for the tunnel to Sweden and is now being converted into a new cultural hub for Copenhagen.

The studio began with extensive research into wood construction, carbon-neutral materials, the circular economy and design for disassembly. Following this phase, groups of students conducted site/program analysis and developed a number of different site strategies for the project. During the remainder of the quarter, students worked individually or in pairs to further develop their design proposals for the City Factory.