Kumu Documentary: Søren Pihlmann: Make Materials Matter
Dir Marc-Christoph Wagner, Simon Weyhe
Denmark 2025, 55 min
In English
The evening will be introduced by architect Maria Helena Luiga, co-founder of the studio kuidas.works
The Danish architect Søren Pihlmann, one of the pioneers of contemporary architecture, aims to transform the way we live, build and design. The film follows him for a year and a half as he applies his philosophy to the Danish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
In recent years, the discussion about how we live, build and design our physical surroundings has gained a distinct Danish voice that is getting global attention. Through several projects, the architect Søren Pihlmann has demonstrated how houses can be transformed by reusing their basic materials. In 2025, Søren Pihlmann curated the Danish Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale: a building that needed both climate protection and an overall upgrade. The renovation became an experimental exhibition that showcased how the materials themselves contributed to the pavilion’s future.
“The more we know, the better we can sense a place. What kind of environment does a specific material thrive in? How does it react with the other materials? And can we, as architects and curators, alter that interaction?”
The documentary follows Søren Pihlmann for a year and a half as he applies his philosophy to the Danish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
In recent years, Pihlmann has made a significant mark on the Danish architectural scene through a series of transformative projects that have strongly influenced the contemporary discourse. In 2023, his House14a project received Denmark’s most prestigious architectural award, the Årets Arne, named after the celebrated modernist Arne Jacobsen. That same year, he was shortlisted for three Architectural Review awards, having previously received the Henning Larsen Foundation Honorary Award in 2022.
The director, Marc-Christoph Wagner, is the founding and managing editor of the Louisiana Channel, which features the works of artists, architects and writers. For many years, he was a journalist and TV-producer for ARD German TV & Radio, before joining the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in 2012 to create the Louisiana Channel. Today, the Louisiana Channel is the world’s largest online platform on contemporary art, featuring interviews with artists. In 2023, the Royal Danish Academy awarded Marc-Christoph Wagner a medal for his work.
We thank: Louisiana Channel
