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Let's Talk Architecture · Dec 25, 2025 · 31 min

Can Architecture Heal Us?

Timber instead of tiles, curiosity instead of corridors, and a 15-metre-high atrium designed to make people feel safer, healthier and more connected. Copenhagen's Centre for Health proposes a new typology for public healthcare architecture. In this episode, Michael Booth meets architect Dorte Mandrup, widely regarded as one of Denmark's greatest living architects, to explore how a complex and often contradictory brief — openness and privacy, care and community — was translated into a warm, tactile and quietly radical public building. Together they discuss the centre's boomerang-shaped footprint, full timber construction and soaring atrium, and how architecture can gently nudge behaviour, foster wellbeing and create spaces that feel inclusive without feeling exposed. Guest: Dorte Mandrup, Arkitekt, Dorte Mandrup A/S Host: Michael Booth Let's Talk Architecture is a podcast by Danish Architecture Center. Sound edits by Munck Studios.

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show notes

Timber instead of tiles, curiosity instead of corridors, and a 15-metre-high atrium designed to make people feel safer, healthier and more connected. Copenhagen's Centre for Health proposes a new typology for public healthcare architecture.

In this episode, Michael Booth meets architect Dorte Mandrup, widely regarded as one of Denmark's greatest living architects, to explore how a complex and often contradictory brief — openness and privacy, care and community — was translated into a warm, tactile and quietly radical public building.

Together they discuss the centre's boomerang-shaped footprint, full timber construction and soaring atrium, and how architecture can gently nudge behaviour, foster wellbeing and create spaces that feel inclusive without feeling exposed.

Guest:

  • Dorte Mandrup, Arkitekt, Dorte Mandrup A/S

Host:

  • Michael Booth

Let's Talk Architecture is a podcast by Danish Architecture Center. Sound edits by Munck Studios.