COBE: Monuments of the Future

COBE, with offices in COpenhagen and BErlin, was founded in 2005 by the two principal architects Dan Stubbergaard and Vanessa Miriam Carlow. In the one-hour documentary Stubbergaard, interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner in the summer of 2014, discusses COBE's process for schools, libraries, and other building types. While the architect is refreshingly humble and honest about his firm's work, the highlights of the film are his comments on buildings, such as the Grundtvig Church, what he calls "a powerful insertion in an urban context" and "a monument for a certain time."

So, how do we build monuments for the future, as the title alludes? Stubergaard says, "I love the idea that we sometimes – as a society – invest and build for the past, but that it is also about celebrating the future, because it will stand for decades and be a memory of something important way back."