Poul Ove Jensen receives the C.F. Hansen Medal

The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Akademiraadet, awarded nine honorary medals on 26 March 2026 to visual artists, architects, and art mediators who have made a special contribution to Danish visual art and architecture.

Architect Poul Ove Jensen from Dissing+Weitling receives the C.F. Hansen Medal, which is the highest honor an architect can receive in Denmark.

Poul Ove’s long career in bridge design spans around four decades and is marked by a rare ability to unite architecture and engineering. From iconic connections such as the Great Belt Link to more urban projects like the Bicycle Snake, he is known for elegant, powerful solutions where function, aesthetics, and user experience go hand in hand.

At Dissing+Weitling, he has been a key driving force in establishing our international position within bridge architecture. His projects demonstrate how even the largest infrastructure can be integrated with ease and precision into both landscape and urban contexts, while adding new qualities to their surroundings.

Akademiraadet states the following in its citation for awarding the C.F. Hansen Medal to Poul Ove Jensen:

As lead bridge designer at Dissing+Weitling, Poul Ove Jensen has shaped the design of numerous international bridges and mobility projects. In Denmark, his best-known work is the Great Belt Bridge, constructed between 1991 and 1998, whose most striking element is the suspension bridge, the East Bridge.

The architect himself refers to the now 35-year-old bridge as ‘My first bridge!’. That a work such as the East Bridge could be created ‘at the first attempt’ is a testament to an architect who, regardless of scale, works with strong methodological confidence and approaches each task with care and a sense of effortless precision.

Poul Ove Jensen has also stated that ‘The most beautiful bridges are often the least expensive,’ a remark that reveals a deeper insight. To work with constraint as a creative resource, and to create beauty through simple means, points towards a path forward for a resource-constrained planet.

Poul Ove Jensen positions himself within the Scandinavian design tradition, rooted in restraint, scarcity, and ingenuity. The ability, the desire, and the necessity to ‘do more with less’—and to distill ideas into clear design gestures with an exceptional sense of scale and proportion—are clearly evident in his work.

With more than 300 bridges and mobility design solutions in Denmark and abroad, Poul Ove Jensen has contributed to infrastructure through a design approach that, grounded in modernism, integrates architecture and engineering in the pursuit of an elegant minimalism.

His many international bridge projects demonstrate an ability to collaborate within large, interdisciplinary, and global teams, and to create and sustain an architectural synthesis based on complex technical programs and highly optimized budgets. His works are characterized by a precise understanding of landscape and a keen awareness of how aesthetic, functional, and technical potentials can be unified into artistic beauty.

For this impressive body of work, Poul Ove Jensen is awarded the C.F. Hansen Medal.

Translated by Dissing+Weitling. The Danish version can be found here.

The medals were presented in the presence of H.M. The King at Charlottenborg Palace.

Warmest congratulations to all the other medal recipients.