Henrik Valeur is an architect-urbanist, critic, curator, thinker and writer.
He was born in Denmark (1966), the son of visual artist Mogens Valeur and fashion designer Birgitte Valeur. His grandfathers were both civil engineers.
Henrik Valeur graduated in 1994 from the School of Architecture in Copenhagen, having previously studied with Enric Miralles at the School of Architecture in Barcelona (ETSAB). He subsequently worked for Rem Koolhaas’ Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam.
In 1997 he founded UiD (un-identified) - a networking urban consultancy and a pioneer of participatory and collaborative planning and design - and in 2007 he founded UiD Shanghai Co., Ltd in China.
As the creative director of UiD, Henrik Valeur has developed the architectural concepts of real time living and self-organizing spaces, garden flats and green streets, the concept of parallel processing in urban planning and the related planning tools 1:1 sketch model, 4D model and change design model.
Henrik Valeur is also co-founder of CoMa - a research project on urban regions and multicultural societies. In addition, he has conducted research on rapid urbanization in emerging regions; policies, methods and technologies related to sustainable urban development; the correlation between climate change and cities. Focusing on sustainable urban development as a means to both combat poverty and protect the environment, he invented the term development urbanism.
He is the author of essays, the editor of publications and the curator of exhibitions about art, architecture and urbanism.
As the curator of the Danish contribution to the Architecture Biennale in Venice 2006, Henrik Valeur introduced the concept of co-evolution in architecture and conceived of the project CO-EVOLUTION: Danish/Chinese Collaboration on Sustainable Urban Development in China. The project was awarded the Golden Lion for Best National Pavilion.
“We salute the creativity, intelligence, and generosity of the Danish pavilion.” The Jury of the Venice Biennale, 2006
Henrik Valeur has served as an organizer, moderator and speaker at numerous international seminars and conferences. In 2010 he gave the Le Corbusier Memorial Lecture in Chandigarh, in which he noted that “the problem with modernist architecture is not only that it tries to erase the past; it also obstructs the future!”
He has furthermore served as a juror on several international architecture competitions and has taught architecture and urbanism at various international universities. He frequently gives interviews and participates in public debates.
Henrik Valeur is inspired by the situationists (art), chaos theories (science) and daoism (philosophy).
He has lived and worked in Copenhagen, Barcelona, Rotterdam, Los Angeles, Shanghai and Chandigarh.