Climate change will affect the same climate zones relatively similarly. When considering how to design residential architecture for future climates it is therefore relevant to understand how residential architecture can adapt within the specific climate zone. Denmark is placed within the oceanic climate zone and shares many of the same problems that countries in similar climates do. However, the architectural responses have developed radically different. Denmark has been building heating efficient housing for the last decade, which have lately caused increased overheating problems and surging energy demands for cooling. This paper compares the architecture of different oceanic zones with Danish architecture. The strategies for adapting to climate change represents a broad variety. Western European tradition has itself created varied methods for coping with the climatic struggles their societies meet. Danish architecture has for centuries been focused on heavy robust constructions that would withstand the large amount of precipitation and wind that is predominant in the country. In Holland flood danger has been a constant threat to society, which has led both to defensive and reactive measures in the form of dykes and amphibious housing. On the other side of the globe, New Zealand’s traditional architecture has adapted to similar problems but with a much lighter construction, leading to architecture that is resilient to lateral forces like wind and earthquakes. While lacking the thermal properties of northern European houses the New Zealand homes show a remarkable flexibility and mobility through simple timber-frame constructions. The vulnerabilities in the Danish building stock is due to an unwillingness to invest in adaptive measures. It might be necessary to integrate a flexible building style to future sustainable housing and build up a different expectation for how a house is used. In the face of climate change, architecture need to be adapted to the problems apparent on the building site and draw on experiences from other cultures that might have faced similar problems in the past. Danish architects might likewise use the non-rocky ground for water retention through planting and landscaping strategies in relation to architecture.

architecture has historically had to respond to landscape, ecology and climate. The paper investigates how this relationship has developed in Danish architecture, and how architecture of the future may develop during climate change. Through literature studies on the subject of Danish low-rise residential architecture and on climatic adaptation, it has been examined how late vernacular, modernistic, regional, modern and ecological/sustainable residences have responded to landscape and climate. Vernacular architectural designs were based on inter-generational knowledge of how to design according to the landscape and environment with materials locally available within communities. The connections with the landscape were intrinsic but were wholly anthropocentric by necessity. The 1920s' introduction of modernism and the International Style reduced the importance of local landscape and climate. Danish architects of the era started to incorporate architectural elements and colors from foreign climates, at the expense of lessons from the vernacular. The regional modernism in Denmark sought to reconcile a regional architecture with the functionality of modernism. This architecture was better suited to the local climate and connected with local materiality. The 1960s saw a demographic and housing boom, the consequence of which was hastily built 'cookie-cutter' housing and concrete apartment blocks that still dominate the housing stock. The oil crisis of the 1970s hit Denmark hard, enforcing energy savings on architecture, which over time developed to become reliant on passive solar strategies and thermal mass. The current Danish sustainable architecture has a primary focus on minimizing greenhouse gas emissions; the control of the indoor climate diminishes the connection to the exterior environment. Danish architecture must merge the vernacular understanding of climate and landscape with the mitigating properties of sustainable architecture. an embedding in the landscape and climate will reduce the impacts of climate change.

Since a large portion of greenhouse gases are emitted by the building sector, there has been a push towards sustainable low energy architecture, which could help mitigate the effects of climate change. Although climate change is considered inevitable, adaptive measures must be taken in the field of architecture to alleviate its impact. Creating an overview of the state of the art in the field of architecture as it adapts to climate change will help identify the problems and possibilities of architectural adaptation. The aim must be to create buildings that are as suitable to the current climate as they are to the climate of the future and maintain an ability to resist the impacts of climate change; this ability to resist potential change is defined as adaptive capacity. It is challenging to reconcile the energy requirements for contemporary buildings with rising temperatures and extreme weather in temperate climate zones. The literature on the subject is explored through iterative searches in scientific databases. In discussions about the possible adaptations to climate change, there needs to be a focus on human adaptation facilitated by architecture and the built environment’s utilization and support of ecosystem services in adaptation strategies, since the scope of climate change reaches beyond the singular building. There are plenty of strategies and technologies from which to draw but little focus on how these should support the design of a building and its inhabitants. In the future it will be necessary to look at the adaptive capacity of a building itself and how the building can benefit its surroundings.