About
DONIS is an international studio of architecture, urbanism, research, industrial design, and art. The studio has won several international prizes, including the Dubai Frame, selected as the first-prize winner from 926 proposals in an international competition regulated by UNESCO-UIA; the first prize for the National Palace of Justice in Paris; and the winning design for a new landmark for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games at the City of London. DONIS designs, develops, and builds projects across a wide range of scales and programs, consistently pursuing innovative, sustainable, and socially engaged architecture. DONIS was founded by Fernando Donis, Mexican Dutch architect who received his Master’s degree from the Architectural Association in London through the Design Research Laboratory (DRL), where he studied under Patrik Schumacher and Brett Steele. He also received a PhD in Architecture from Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), through the doctoral research program The City as a Project, led by with Pier Vittorio Aureli. His doctoral research, FRAME, is a five-chapter study of the archetype of the frame and its role in the architectural and urban history and culture of Mexico. Following his studies at the Architectural Association, Fernando Donis worked closely with Rem Koolhaas as an Associate at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) for nine years, from 2001 to 2009. During this period, he was the main designer of the CCTV Headquarters in Beijing, among numerous other architectural projects and masterplans. He also collaborated with AMO, OMA’s research and design branch, contributing to research projects concerning the European Union. Fernando Donis has taught at the Berlage Institute and the Academy of Architecture in Rotterdam, as well as at Universidad Iberoamericana and Universidad Anáhuac in Mexico, integrating architectural research, design, and urbanism across multiple scales. His work and career have received international recognition. In 2011, CNN Expansión selected him as one of the 30 most promising and influential people in Mexico. In 2015, Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs selected him as one of the country’s most creative Mexicans living abroad.
Copenhagen Framework
Carlsberg, Copenhagen
This project applies one of architecture's most fundamental compositional principles—the Nine-Square Grid, developed by John Hejduk in the mid-1950s, an urban design tool. For the first time, this architectural device is deployed at the scale of the city.
The new Carlsberg Nine-Square Grid organizes the site within urban rooms, with buildings conceived as furniture within them.
The proposal is predicated on two a priori elements. The first is the Frame, which provides the context for subsequent architectural operations. The Carlsberg Frame accommodates housing maisonettes, creating a multi-level city with residential streets in the air.
The second consists of the Elements within the Frame. The existing Carlsberg buildings become preserved cultural artifacts, capable of accommodating any future program—a European cultural hub, museums, a university, research centers, art, science, philosophy, and other civic institutions.
The dialectic between the Frame and these Elements reinforces the enduring validity of the plan diagram as an urban tool for making sequential design decisions: a neutral game board upon which multiple urban futures can unfold.
Rudolf Wittkower, whose essays on the role of geometry in the work of Alberti and Palladio were later collected in Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, argued that a common organizational schema underlies the most significant Renaissance villas: the ideal plan diagram.
The idea that the plan diagram itself could become the subject of critical inquiry emerged in postwar architectural theory through Colin Rowe's seminal essay The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa. A student of Wittkower, Rowe extended his mentor's analysis of the grid and structural bay by comparing Palladio's Villa Malcontenta with Le Corbusier's Villa at Garches, simultaneously legitimizing Le Corbusier's work and reaffirming Wittkower's theory of the ideal plan diagram.
Another important influence on the Nine-Square Grid was Rudolf Arnheim, whose theory of the psychology of form, grounded in Gestalt principles, employed art-historical analysis to reveal fundamental compositional strategies. Within this theoretical framework, the Nine-Square Grid emerged as an ideal geometric structure for understanding spatial relationships.
In Copenhagen Framework, the Ideal Villa overcomes the problem of scale to become the Ideal City: a city structured by enduring spatial relationships rather than functional zoning, where human associations prevail over functional organization.
