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Afterimage
Name
Ellen Leer
Education degree
Kandidat
Fagfelt
Design
Institute
Architecture and Space
Program
Spatial Design - Architecture, Design and Interiors
Year
2026
Afterimage proposes a strategic ruination of the abandoned former National Aquarium in Charlottenlund, returning it to the forest it once displaced. Driven by the narrative of a lost historical agreement, stating that if the aquarium vacated the site, the land should be returned to forest, the building is selectively dismantled and opened towards the surrounding forest, while materials from the dismantling are reused on site as pathways, landscape elements, and physical anchors for memory. This process turns the structure into a ruin and a new landscape, gradually letting structure and landscape merge. The building slowly loses its form as a conventional building, but continues as a fragment, a landscape, and memory-bearing material.
Through this transition Afterimage becomes a speculative critique of how we measure architectural value. Challenging today's demolition culture and capitalist ideas of value, the project aims to raise questions about decay, responsibility, and resource use, asking whether architectural value must always be linked to function, profit, or novelty.
A central dogma of the project is that only materials already found on site may be used in the new structure. When parts of the building mass are removed, materials are released and can be activated in new ways. The dismantled materials do not become waste, but materials for a new landscape sequence. They are not understood as new additions, but as fragments from the building given a new role in the ruin. In this way, reuse is not only a practical strategy, but also a way of allowing the building’s history to continue in another form.
Consisting mainly of concrete, yellow brick, glass, and metal, the building's core materials are each granted a new function. Glass carries memory, bricks are moved from wall to ground - from facade to passage, metal becomes a marker, and concrete acts as an anchor in the landscape. Visitors are led through the changing landscape, invited to pause briefly and encounter quiet traces of the past that do not necessarily reveal themselves at once.
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Glass
Glass is transformed into an imitation of water in solid form, referencing the nine empty aquarium niches still remaining on site. The glass cubes are positioned standing in front of each void, mirroring the exact volume size of the now empty squares, and revealing the spaces once filled with water. Motifs from the history of the site are sandblasted onto their surfaces, pointing back to the memory of the place, catching light and reflections of the forest, to be experienced differently according to the weather.
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Metal
Transformed into a sculptural marker, the metal reinterprets the trace of the missing seahorse from the gable. This new form unfolds as it is moved to a new space in the building, standing as a focal intervention in the former landscape aquarium.
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Concrete
Concrete works as the heavy traces anchoring the ruin to the landscape. The dismantled concrete is either kept exactly as it is, polished, or cut, and left as physical markers in the landscape. By placing these concrete remains, some within the structure and others leading up to the ruin, the intervention connects the existing structure to the surrounding forest and landscape.
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Brick
Bricks are released from their vertical structure and transformed into a fluid surface across the terrain. The brick paths become extensions of the existing path axes in the forest, but differ through their material. They mark a shift from forest path to ruin landscape, and guide visitors into the site.
The Royal Danish Academy supports the Sustainable Development Goals
Since 2017 the Royal Danish Academy has worked with the Sustainable Development Goals. This is reflected in our research, our teaching and in our students’ projects. This project relates to the following UN goal(-s)
