DTU and the Royal Academy are initiating a strategic educational collaboration. From left: Rector Lene Dammand Lund, Royal Danish Academy and President Anders Overgaard Bjarklev, DTU. Photo:Thomas Steen Soerensen.

Educational collaboration for a sustainable future

Environment and pollution Climate adaptation Innovation and product development Building design
DTU and the Royal Danish Academy are initiating a strategic educational collaboration to encourage and promote innovation aimed at the sustainable transition.

The Technical University of Denmark, DTU, and the Royal Danish Academy, will greatly expand their collaboration across disciplines to create new, innovative approaches to the major challenges currently facing society.

To this end, they have entered into a formal collaboration agreement where the meeting between the areas of design, architecture, conservation, science and technology will contribute to new knowledge and methods—and equip the students to be part of the interdisciplinary contexts they typically encounter following graduation.

Eco-friendly methods

The collaboration, which will include joint study projects, entrepreneurship and innovation programmes, and research projects, builds on existing joint projects between the two institutions.

An MSc graduate from the Royal Academy’s design programme has worked on dyeing textiles where she used a new eco-friendly method based on soil bacteria in a DTU laboratory. Here, scientific knowledge and a sensuous understanding of textiles and dyeing were brought together in collaboration with a business.

Another example is a student project between an architecture student from the Royal Academy and two engineering students from DTU who won an international competition on how to design more sustainable, 3D-printed buildings using less concrete and more organic materials—with a shorter production time to boot.

President Anders Overgaard Bjarklev about the collaboration:

“I believe we should work together if we are to solve some of the major challenges facing the world. While the Danish knowledge institutions play an important and major role in society, we can and must become even better by collaborating even more across disciplines. I look forward to following the results of this new collaboration.”

Rector Lene Dammand Lund has this to say:

“I’m delighted to have established a close formal collaboration with DTU focusing on education and research. The society of the future must develop sustainable solutions based on the latest technological knowledge while ensuring that the technology becomes attractive to people in order to increase their quality of life. Here our academic competencies have a lot to offer each other.”

Academic focus areas

The collaboration agreement is based on research fields such as lighting design; industrial design, product design and materials; architectural engineering; design and innovation; and software, gaming and data visualization. At the same time, the close research collaboration between the Royal Academy’s Institute of Conservation and DTU will be expanded.

In future, it will be possible to use each other’s laboratories and technological facilities as part of the joint projects. In addition to educational, innovation, and research collaborations, the agreement provides for interdisciplinary dissemination, joint lectures, workshops, seminars, and networking activities.