Mixing conventional ingredients such as living, leisure, working, and shopping

Wandering our way back to SOHO after a quick stop at the Paul Frank store last weekend, we stumbled upon a neat exhibition at the avant-garde Storefront for Art and Architecture.

A study in urbanism, the gallery presented various modern residential solutions as a response to societal demands in Copenhagen, Denmark. Proposed by Danish design group BIG, the ideas are an attempt to find balance between competing, and often contradictory, environmental, social and economic demands. The reality of Danish urban planning and construction in the past century are a launching pad for new, intriguing concepts on how we live and commune with one another.

The models and videos presented in the exhibit were thoughtful in how they asked you to engage yourself in the overall question of what compromises you are willing to make in choosing a place to live. They open a conversation as to what a city can do to find new housing solutions in an ever crowded world.

The truth is, the conversation reminded me that I would have a hard time living in most of the proposed developments. While I adore the energy and vitality of urbanism, I also know that I value personal space and open air environments. It is why despite having spent time in major metropolises -- and finding myself ever drawn back to their energy -- I deeply value the open space on the canal I wake up to every morning here in Denver.

While the solutions envision open-space environments, you cannot disguise the sheer density of some of these proposals. Much more refined than other philosophical attempts to put entire live-work-social environments into single skyscrapers, these ideas at least attempt to find more realistic solutions for our ever-crowded cities.

I am firmly a proponent of density in urban cores, but at which point does density itself lower your standard of living?

Sadly the exhibit closed shortly after we visited it, so it is too late to encourage any of you to go find it. Storefront did succeed in presenting an intimate thesis on urban living that thoughtfully engaged one of the key questions facing humanity today:

With more and more of us migrating to cities around the world, where -- and how -- will everybody live?