Compass
stage

The Compass Stage will be dedicated to forward-looking building strategies that support human well-being and environmental responsibility. Rather than broadly addressing the climate crisis or sustainability, the conference’s speakers and discussions will open up a conversation centring on seven key industry challenges phrased around the following opening questions:

Are our buildings sufficiently flexible to adapt to change? Does quality of design matter? Can buildings help regenerate the environment? Can buildings support our personal health and wellbeing? Can buildings help strengthen communities? How does contemporary building design support local, cultural contexts? Do our buildings help make everyday life affordable for ordinary people?
Compass Stage keynote speakers will address these seven important questions in a variety of ways, while also offering their insight into and ideas for possible solutions on how we can work together to ensure a better, more sustainable future.

The goal for the Compass Stage is to encourage a positive dialogue and a forward-thinking discussion of how buildings can help connect people and the planet.

Meet the Moderators

The Compass stage will be moderated by Ane Cortzen from the main stage in Copenhagen. Ane is an architect, graphic designer, entrepreneur, and award-winning TV presenter. Ane will be joined by the following co-hosts: Marcus Fairs, Editor-in-Chief of Dezeen, will broadcast live from Dezeen’s studios in London. Pernille Berg, Head of the Science Programme at BLOXHUB (Nordic hub for sustainable urbanization), will moderate a session from BLOXHUB. Christina Yao, editor of Dezeen China, will host a Shanghai panel.

Ane Cortzen

Ane Cortzen is an architect, graphic designer, entrepreneur, and award-winning TV presenter. Born in 1974, Ane graduated from Denmark’s Royal Academy, School of Architecture before beginning her career as an art director for Bodum Design Group in Switzerland.

Later, she co-founded the graphic design firm Timeline, before becoming a program developer and on-screen presenter at DR, Denmark's oldest and largest media outlet.

Since 2019, Ane has worked as a freelance TV and radio host, writer, event moderator, lecturer, and creative consultant for clients including the Danish Association of Architects, the Danish Design Center, and the Danish Film Institute.
Marcus Fairs

Marcus Fairs is founder and editor-in-chief of Dezeen. He is the first digital journalist to be awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Institute of British Architects. The honour, for "the enormous contribution he has made to architecture," was bestowed in January 2017.

Marcus regularly appears on radio and TV, writing and presenting a documentary about French designer Philippe Starck for the BBC in 2003 and appearing in the major BBC series Home in 2006. An accomplished public speaker, Marcus has spoken at conferences in London, Tokyo, New York, Stockholm and Cape Town, among others.

Marcus launched Dezeen at the end of November 2006 and the site has grown rapidly ever since, now attracting over two million unique visitors every month. It is widely regarded as the most influential and popular design website in the world.
Pernille Berg

Pernille Berg, Dr. Fil., is a passionate scientific innovator who facilitates academic knowledge to create new, cross-disciplinary solutions within the built environment. Heading the Science Programme at the Nordic hub for sustainable urbanization, BLOXHUB, Pernille aids a holistic approach, bridging the newest scientific insights, commercial opportunities with policy influence.

From the onset of her career, Pernille has conducted research in the fields of innovation, education and sociology. Furthermore, she has vast executive experience within the field of entrepreneurship, innovation, strategic management & leadership and research & development.

Skilled in fundraising, process organization and project conceptualization, Pernille puts her substantial innovation experience into play when curating her Build for Life program with contributions from her vast network of both young researchers breaking new ground and A-level academics offering the latest insights and perspectives.
Christina Yao

With over ten years of design journalism experience, Christina Yao is the China editor of Dezeen, responsible for all of Dezeen’s Chinese-language content. She previously lived in London for over six years as foreign correspondent where she produced a series of exclusive interviews with world-renowned architects and designers, before moving back to China in late 2019.

She is now based in Shanghai.

Compass themes

The Compass model is a system developed by VELUX, MOE and EFFEKT architects over the past two years. It serves as a strategic tool that outlines seven points of relevance to guide the process. Together, the seven relevance drivers enable collaborators across sectors to discuss an easy framework development of homes for the future that benefit both people and the planet.

Flexible

A flexible building can undergo modifications and support changes of function with limited structural interventions.

People should be able to actively shape their home, environment, and community to everyday needs through a dynamic envelope and responsive climatic tools and systems.

Homes must be able to adapt to seasons, life patterns, situations, and needs. People must be able to personalize and shape their homes and make use of relevant services and opportunities.

A flexible home is designed to change over time, with adaptive floor plans, indoor climate zones, and general functionality.
View Relevant Speakers
Quality

A good quality building is designed and built to last. With the typical user in mind, homes should be designed for longevity, using aesthetics and functional design to enable easy maintenance and durability.

Durable, quality materials, detailed solutions, and choice of assembly enables longevity, a sense of home, and belonging.

More than just meeting specifications and building norms, quality in building design is about giving shape to aspirations, with a high degree of performance, durability, and functionality.
View Relevant Speakers
Environment

Resource conscious design is about reducing negative impacts and striving to create lasting positive effects on our climate and natural environment.

Our homes, and the way they frame our lifestyles, should therefore be designed, delivered, and maintained in respect for planetary boundaries.

The footprint of a home must adhere to best practice targets in all aspects and must account for total service life of a building, including the impact of emissions and consumption. An environmentally friendly home preserves precious natural resources, with a regenerative mindset.
View Relevant Speakers
Healthy

People spend a great deal of time indoors and at home. This reality directly affects
our physical and mental health. Enabling an optimal indoor climate is an essential aspect of house design.

Designing for health and wellbeing is not only about reducing discomfort but it is also about minimizing negative impacts. Healthy building design must incorporate a holistic understanding of the parameters that influence indoor environmental quality of the spaces we inhabit. A healthy indoor climate doesn’t just alleviate chronic diseases and allergies; it enhances occupants’ safety, productivity, and well-being.
View Relevant Speakers
Community

Beyond walls and the surrounding plot, buildings affect the communities and the environment all around them. A healthy community is one that continually creates and improves its physical and social environments, offering common resources and spaces that enable people to mutually support each other.

A healthy community supports all the functions of life by enabling growth and optimization. Homes should be designed as a part of a community, where people can connect and engage, share, and support one another.

Communities designed in this way can provide benefits in relation to social contact, sharing of spaces and resources and a reduction of negative environmental impacts.
View Relevant Speakers
Local

Vernacular architectural typologies, traditional construction methods, and local building materials make up a diversity of building cultures across the world. Careful consideration of local context, identity, and heritage is therefore crucial to building culturally sensitive, aesthetically pleasing, and enduring buildings.

Homes should include contemporary and innovative approaches to traditional building designs, materials, and crafts. It is therefore important to apply materials, technologies, and solutions proven valuable to a given locale over time.

Shaping homes with solutions from local building and climatic traditions, is the foundation of successful design and a key to the long-term acceptance of a building with regards to the local community and context it has become a part of.
View Relevant Speakers
Affordability

For any housing type to be affordable, an occupant must have sufficient disposable income left for other essential items which are a part of daily life (ie: food, recreation, and health care).

It must be economically feasible for the average citizen to live in a home that supports their personal needs while also being socially responsible.

Homes should therefore be designed to be healthy, sustainable, and cost-effective in order to give access to safe, quality spaces without having to compromise the impact on people, society, and the natural environment.
View Relevant Speakers

- Compass
- Quality
Mary Parsons
National Regeneration & Partnerships Director; Commissioner Lovell Partnerships; Building Better Building Beautiful

Mary has over 25 years experience of in planning and delivering complex large scale new developments and urban regeneration. She is National Regeneration & Partnerships Director at Lovell Partnerships; part of Morgan Sindall Group plc.

In addition, Mary is also a Commissioner for the Government’s ‘Building Better Building Beautiful Commission’, Chair and Trustee of the Town & Country Planning Association, Board Member of the University of Cambridge’s Property Board, Trustee of educational charity MOBIE (Ministry of Building Education & Innovation) founded by TV Architect, George Clarke, Trustee of Design South-East, Commissioner for the ‘No Place Left behind’ Commission into community-led regeneration
- Compass
- Healthy
Lidia Morawska
Physicist, Distinguished Professor Queensland University

Lidia Morawska, a physicist, is a Distinguished Professor at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, and the Director of the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health at QUT, which is a Collaborating Centre of the World Health Organization.

Lidia also holds the position of Vice-Chancellor Fellow, Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE), University of Surrey. She conducts fundamental and applied research in the interdisciplinary field of air quality and its impact on human health and the environment, with a specific focus on the science of airborne particulate matter. An author of over nine hundred journal papers, book chapters and refereed conference papers, Lidia has been involved at the executive level with a number of relevant national and international professional bodies, is a member of the Australian Academy of Science and a recipient of numerous scientific awards.
- Compass
- Affordability
- Pecha Kucha
Marilyne Andersen
Full Professor EPFL

Marilyne Andersen is Full Professor at EPFL and Head of the LIPID Laboratory. With a background in physics, she conducts research on performance as a driver for design, with an emphasis on daylight and a focus on questions of comfort, perception and health.

She was a tenure-track professor at MIT from 2004 to 2010, was Dean of ENAC at EPFL from 2013 to 2018, is Academic Director of the Smart Living Lab and co-founder of the consulting startup OCULIGHT dynamics. She was Visiting Professor at SUTD in Singapore in 2019. Author of over 200 refereed scientific papers with several distinctions, she was the inaugural laureate of the global Daylight Research Award in 2016 and led the winning Swiss team for the US Solar Decathlon 2017 competition
- Compass
- Community
Christopher Trott
Head of Sustainability Foster + Partners

Christopher graduated from the University of Wales with a first-class honors degree in engineering and went on to gain an MSc in Building Services Engineering from the University of Glasgow.

After graduating he joined Arup in 1981 and there gained 30 years of experience. In 2011 he joined Foster + Partners’ engineering team which brings integrated engineering design to projects across the practice. He is now Head of Sustainability and leading the sustainability team which guides all projects in aspects of social, environmental and economic sustainability. Additionally, his role includes running a sustainability network throughout the practice to ensure that all staff have an increasing practical understanding.
- Compass
- Quality
Dana Behrman
Senior Urban Designer, Associate Director UNStudio

Dana Behrman is a Senior Urban Designer, Associate Director at UNStudio and leads UNS_Urban.
Dana received an MA with distinction from the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths College, University of London in 2010.

She also graduated from the Architectural Association, School of Architecture in London with a BA and from the School of Visual Arts in New York with a BFA.
She has been practicing as an urban designer and architect for the past eleven years in several award-winning international offices. She joined UNStudio in 2014 to lead the newly formed Urban Unit. She specialises in urban spatial analysis. Her role includes consulting design teams on development of urban responses, site context analysis and urban visioning, as well as lead designer in international master plans assignments.
Dana is also an urban strategist at UNSense, UNStudio’s start-up, focusing on the link between technology and the built environment.
- Compass
- Healthy
Zakaria Djebbara
Postdoc at CREATE Aalborg University

Dr. Zakaria Djebbara, postdoc at CREATE, Aalborg University
As architecture has an extensive impact on health and well-being, it is crucial that design decisions are evidence-based. We need to know how space impacts us and our mental well-being.

Zakaria is dedicated to measuring the impact of space in the human brain. Zakaria is a renowned and talented researcher in the crossing of architecture and cognitive neuroscience, a rather unique combination of scientific interest.
As a recipient of the Spar Nord Fondens Research Award with the acknowledgment of 250.000 DKK Zakaria’s talent is evident to many and his contribution to research is recognized by many. His main approach revolves around firstly creating experiments of everyday interactions with varying spaces while looking into the sensorimotor brain dynamics—and secondly to model the underlying structures for analytical purposes. He’s driven by the general question; how does architecture affect our everyday capacities?