Thomas Leerberg is an external associate professor in the Department of Design, Aarhus School of Architecture. He is also Urban Strategist and Manager of Urban Design at Sweco Architects A/S.

Thomas Leerberg engages in research that is related to his extensive practice as an architect, designer and urban planner. His current research is associated with a project for the renewal of the Slotsgade area in the town of Nykøbing Falster. This research project is called The Urban Design Experience and is co-funded by the Danish Ministry of the Interior and Social Affairs. The project addresses the dynamics of the urban space, people and the design objects that are used in the public space, such as street equipment.

One of the goals of this project is to generate knowledge for the development of methods to enhance the quality of interpersonal relations in the urban space by adding appropriate design. This may increase the social capital of local residents and companies with positive effects for the overall economic development of an area.

In The Urban Design Experience project Thomas Leerberg is drawing on experiences from his first research project (1997-98), where he studied the North American Suburb with an emphasis on the styling or “stage design” that is evident when a neighbourhood is kept in, say, an Italian or Spanish architectural style, or when a residential area is walled in and equipped with surveillance cameras in order to reduce crime. Paradoxically, the latter often has the opposite effect – underscoring the need for knowledge about the impact of design and equipment on human behaviour.

Previously, in the project Virtual Platform, Thomas Leerberg was involved in developing a web-based work space to facilitate close collaborations between designers in far-flung corners of the globe. In the project Immaterial Materials he explored how designers might address the material experience offered by the new digital media. For example, how does the experience of working on a PC differ from the experience of working on a Mac? Knowledge about these features is as essential for multimedia designers as knowledge of wood, metal or paper is to a furniture designer or a graphic designer; not least when the particular properties of the new media are to be used innovatively rather than merely in replicating the expression, function and texture of familiar materials.

In his Ph.D. project Embedded Spaces Thomas Leerberg studied the relationship between three stages of spatial existence in the creation of a design object: the designer’s ideas about a space, a digitally crafted spatial model, and the resulting physical space. Articulated knowledge about the relationships between these three spatial perceptions may help designers bring out the qualities from the original concept in the resulting product.

Thomas Leerberg graduated as an architect from the Aarhus School of Architecture, the Department of Urban Planning in 1996 and earned his Ph.D. there in 2004.