Victor Boye Julebæk

My research revolves around cultural heritage and transformation, with a particular focus on the knowledge carried in material practices, cultures and ecologies. Connecting research, practice, conservation, making and education, the research develops methods for understanding and working with existing buildings under changing conditions through historical inquiry, material studies and 1:1 experimentation.

Current research includes Atlas, which investigates how Denmark's post-war building stock may be adapted and future-proofed by building with the existing architectural, cultural and material resources embedded in it. Combining documentation, analysis, full-scale building interventions and integrated evaluation, the project develops and tests new strategies for the transformation of recent built heritage.

In collaboration with CBB, housing organisations, industry partners and researchers from DTU Sustain, the project further integrates architectural investigations with resident experience and material flow analysis. The aim is to connect architectural decision-making with broader questions of resource externalities and environmental implications, while maintaining and enhancing the qualities and values embedded in existing buildings and the communities that inhabit them.

Across my work, existing buildings, practices and landscapes are understood as reservoirs of material qualities and immaterial values. The research investigates how these embedded resources may be identified, evaluated and carried forward through practices of maintenance, repair, reuse and transformation. In doing so, it connects questions of cultural heritage and adaptive reuse with perspectives on material cultures and wider ecologies. Børsen

In the research, knowledge is generated through making as much as through analysis. Rather than separating different forms of knowing, architectural enquiry is developed through the integration of systematic observation and material engagement. Buildings, materials and landscapes are approached as research resources, while 1:1 material investigations become sites for testing, documentation, collective learning and evaluation. Venice 

This way of working responds to a central aspect of transformation. The material qualities and immaterial values of buildings, materials and landscapes are not static but continuously in change. Architectural work is part of this ongoing process, as even the most careful intervention creates something that did not exist before. Acknowledging these changes as inevitable, the research asks how different forms of intervention affect the material qualities and immaterial values embedded within that which already exists. Ingenious Houses