Archival is a value-driven, Copenhagen-based design studio. Since 2018, we have built spaces that evolve over time, growing, being reimagined, and shared as life unfolds.
Our commercial work ranges from large-scale consultancy to smaller design-build projects. Regardless of scale, every project is approached holistically, from material detail to social context. We collaborate with clients and partners who share our values and understand the time and care that meaningful solutions require.
Our practice is not speculative, but active. Each project begins with contextual analysis and develops through prototyping, co-creation, and real-world testing. Clients are engaged as active partners, ensuring that every outcome is tailored, inclusive, and alive.
Architecture is complex and never realized alone. Since 2022, we have built the collective union Foreningen Værkstedvej 23, sharing a studio and experimental workshop on the outskirts of Copenhagen. It brings together designers, architects, joiners, and engineers who elevate one another’s research and development.
Archival is led by architect and founder Emil Roman Frøge, but shaped by the full team and the many people who have contributed to the practice, especially former partners Qiang Qiang (2025), Yuan-Chieh Yang (2025), and Benediktas Burdulis (2022).
Workshop
X / X
Architecture
We engage with architecture as a living process, one that can adapt and grow with people. Architecture shapes how we move through the world, how we relate to one another, and how we imagine the future. Because the current state of the world holds more questions than answers, we carry each project with care and urgency.
The focus of our practice develops over time, reflecting the challenges architecture can help address. Currently, we work with the following topics, both internally and through the projects we take on:
+ Transformation through interior architecture
+ Pairing traditional craft with digital fabrication
+ Circular production within the timber industry
+ Urban mining of soil, concrete, steel, and wood
+ Open-sourcing strategies
+ Open-book client relations
Archival aims to support wider impact, while remaining a small and flexible entity. Through built work and consultation, we seek to develop discourse, and explore the technical and poetic potentials of materials, contributing to a new material practice, culture, and economy for all living entities
Exhibition, Archival Studies x Gammel Strand, 3 Days of Design, 2024
Publication, book, Reset Materials, exhibition design, 2023
Exhibition, Parts of a Whole, with Artikel København, 3 Days of Design, 2023
Exhibition, Mindcraft Project, Online exhibition, 2021
Publication, magazine, Kōnā Restaurant, Monocle, 2021
Publication, magazine, Archival Studies, Euroman, 2020
Exhibition, Studio X , 3 Days of Design, 2020
Publication, book, 11 rum: Nyindretning at Marienborg, 2019
Exhibition, Give Tradition a New Meaning, Living Is Giving, Beijing Design Week 2018
Grants and Residencies
Dreyers Legatforløb 2025
Business Grant, The Young Artistic Elite Grant, Statens Kunstfond Danish Arts Foundation, 2019
Travel Grant Japan, Danish Arts Foundation, 2019
Travel Grant Japan, Dreyers Fond, 2018
Residency, Danish Art Workshops, Copenhagen, 2018
Project grant, Danmarks Nationalbanks Jubilæumsfond, Denmark, 2017
Lectures
The Royal Danish Academy of Art, School of Architecture, ‘Archival Praxis’, Copenhagen, 2025
Singularch Lecture Series, ‘Transforming the Already Excisting’, Bratislava, 2024
Latvian Design Award, ‘Transforming the Already Excisting’, Riga, 2023
The Royal Danish Academy of Art, School of Architecture, ‘Understanding the Already Excisting’, Copenhagen, 2022
The Royal Danish Academy of Art, School of Architecture, ‘Lecture 01’ Copenhagen, 2018
