Deconstructed barns become cocooning pavilion at Copenhagen Architecture Biennial
Weathered wood salvaged from disused farm buildings has been repurposed in Barn Again, a pavilion at Copenhagen Architecture Biennial designed and built by British practice THISS Studio and architectural designer Tom Svilans.
Located at Gammel Strand in the Danish capital, the pavilion was built from reclaimed wood from disused barns and landfill sites in Norway, which would otherwise have been burned.
It was designed by THISS Studio and Svilans to serve as a meditative space for the public that doubles as an opportunity to showcase the potential of reclaimed materials.
Barn Again is one of two pavilions at Copenhagen Architecture Biennial selected through its Slow Pavilions open call, which invited structures designed in response to its theme Slow Down.
The other pavilion is Inside Out, Downside Up by architecture studio Slaatto Morsbøl, which was also built of reclaimed materials, including perforated bricks.
For Barn Again, the goal of THISS Studio and Svilans was to highlight the abundance of existing materials in the world today and their structural and aesthetic potential in architecture.
"The building materials that we need to build now already exist, and we need to find them and work with them," said THISS Studio co-founder Tamsin Hanke.
"For me, this has been the prevailing message," she told Dezeen during the opening of the pavilion.
The reclaimed wood boards used for the structure are each heavily textured, marked by both weathering and human activity during their previous lives.
"You'll see markings from when they were originally made with what they call the carpenter's marks, and all sorts of little details that tell their story from who knows what past they've had," added Svilans.
Their textured look is enhanced by their stepped, overlapping arrangement, which steps up to form a tunnelling roof.
Barn Again's form emulates the way that the wood was delivered from Norway – stacked and layered on palettes – and was designed to feel like a cocooning environment in which passersby can find respite from the bustle of the city.
"Spatially, it will feel like a real moment of pause to the city, because you're surrounded by all this timber, all this history," concluded THISS Studio co-founder Sash Scott.
"It's going to be a very, very calming space. It's going to smell great, it's going to feel great," Scott continued. "I really hope that the public will come and they will meditate on the lifespan of those individual pieces of timber."
After the biennial, the pavilion will be dismantled and repurposed elsewhere – though the exact site is yet to be determined. THISS Studio described this as "a temporary interruption in the supply chain".
"This is just a storage until it goes through to its next site," said Hanke.
Dezeen is a media partner for Copenhagen Architecture Biennial, which takes place across the Danish Capital until 19 October 2025.
The inaugural event is being run by the Copenhagen Architecture Foundation (CAFx) and directed by Josephine Michau, who told Dezeen that the goal is to offer solutions to the global challenges exacerbated by the built environment.
"It's time for activism," she said. "I see ourselves as maybe more 'soft activists', but we really want to push for change."
Other pavilions recently featured on Dezeen include a cob structure inside the V&A made from mud from an HS2 excavation site and a colourful bandstand by Charles Holland and RASKL.
The photography is by Maja Flink.
Copenhagen Architecture Biennial runs from 18 September to 19 October 2025. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.
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