Paraply

Paraply is an anual architecture workshop hosted at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen every summer.

We question the role of the architect in the context of the everyday, veering away from grand gestures and total control, and moving toward an exploration of what it means to be present, collective, and responsive with the resources at hand. Beyond material experiments, we delve in to the peripheries of architecture. We embrace learning by doing, free from the traditional parameters of the subject, and putting computer-aided design tools aside. We work with our hands and ideas with more attention to process than fixed outcome.

Join us in August 2026 for our fourth edition of the summer workshop. The topic, dates, and workshop leaders will be announced soon.

Each year, we address a new topic in the context of the everyday. To launch the workshop, we reflected on “100 Years” of change, automation, and industrialisation. We revisited Le Corbusier’s vers un architecture, an influential text on Modern ambitions in the built environment, and reflected on how such a manifesto would be different in 2023. In 2024, we observed the movement of materials in and out of ports, across oceans, and floating on and off land, under the topic “Drift”. Last year, we explored the forces that are hidden in today’s buildings, ecologies, and societies. “Load” referred not only to built structures, but the strain inflicted on the environment, and the digitalisation of the field.

In 2026, we look forward to turning our attention to one of the vital foundations of terrarian ecosystems.

"Paraply" comes from French parapluie, which combines Latin roots: para- ("against/shielding") from parare ("to shield/prepare") and pluie ("rain") from Latin pluvia ("rain"), essentially meaning "against rain" or "rain-shield," adopted into Scandinavian languages from French.

Metaphorically, the umbrella loosely covers a range of topics. Physically, the construction of the object is minimal and essential, able to unfold and expand into a portable shelter from the weather. An everyday object itself, it is easily forgotten. Interested in the ambiguity between space, shelter, structure, assembly, and design, we approach the summer workshop as a canopy under which mistakes are encouraged and subject silos dissolve.

The idea for the workshop was sewn in 2021, when Valentin Abend and Emil Hvelplund began teaching at Parsons School of Design in New York and the Royal Danish Academy of Architecture in Copenhagen respectively. Having worked and studied together, their dialogue identified an opportunity to bring environmental questions and architectural formation together in a critical and constuctive format.

The program was informed by Emil’s film course, art work, and studio teaching, and Valentin’s Sustainable Systems course, climate advocacy, and communnity organising. Composed of a core team and a broader network of architects, artists, and designers aligned with topics and values, the workshop comes together with an emphasis on collective experience. Each year, we welcome 50 participants from around the world, along with 3 workshop leaders, and 4 guest lecturers for 8-10 days in the Copenhagen summer.

Image 1: James Ahern and Lester Frederick, Umbrella. U.S. Patent 1,033,651, filed November 11, 1911, and issued July 23, 1912