Welcome to the documentary and this episode of In the Studio from the BBC World Service. I'm on the harbour

side in Copenhagen, Denmark's capital, surrounded by boats and boatyards and workshops, and the studio of a very

innovative architecture practice called mast. Perhaps architecture is not the immediate word

that comes to mind, because what happens here is all about designing and making structures that

float, so a bit like marine engineering and shipbuilding. I'm Jonathan Glancy, and like other

architecture critics around the world, I've long been interested in how design and engineering can come together in a firm-line

mast to help solve some of the urban and environmental problems we face today.

So, in this studio, the two architects who founded Maast, move easily between speaking Danish and English.

Marshall Bletcher is originally from Australia, where he spent time living on a houseboat,

and Magnus Marburg is a Dane who also has a strong connection to the sea.

I grew up on an old sailing ship which my parents built.

So through that sort of childhood, I always had craftsmanship very close to heart.

And that's also why I decided to pursue this mix of my passion for sailing with architecture.

Magnus, it's a lovely name, Mast, because of the shipping implications of that.

But it means something as well, M-A-S-T?

Yeah, me and Marshall, we came up with an idea of making Maritime Architecture Studio.

So we made our own abbreviation of that into Mast.

Mast is one of the only design studios in the world which focuses entirely on the water,

how we can use the water as an alternative to the land,

how we can use this amazing resource to improve our cities.

And we saw an opportunity, especially in Copenhagen where the harbour is developing so rapidly,

and there's so much pressure from sea level rise and urban flooding and a lack of buildable

...