Crafting buildings that are more than just buildings

More connective pieces of infrastructure than simple stand-alone buildings, the designs of Danish firm Cobe typically interweave architecture, landscape architecture, urbanism and much more. Dan Stubbergaard, who founded Cobe in 2006, describes what his firm does a little more expressively: creating “urban living rooms.” Having successfully realized that concept in its home city of Copenhagen, Cobe is now practising what it preaches elsewhere in Europe and as far afield as Canada, where it’s currently working on two major residential projects in Toronto: Block 8 in the city’s emerging West Don Lands neighbourhood and The James at Scrivener Square in the tony midtown Summerhill area.

According to Stubbergaard, both Toronto projects reflect Cobe’s vision of urban structures as places where people of all stripes can intersect and interact without self-consciousness. Between November and January, conducted a series of conversations with the architect about his distinctive oeuvre, which is the subject of an