The theme
This year’s theme at Open Architecture Day is Behind the Scenes. The curated programme seeks to broaden our perception of current and future sustainable architecture, bearing witness to the shady and hidden, as well as the bright and visible sides of architectural practice
Behind the Scenes
Open Architecture Day offers a space to learn, experience, feel, and connect; a space from which the unexpected can spring forth. Dedicated to both emerging and established architectural practices from Denmark and abroad, the programme consists of 360° Round Talks, panel debates, lectures, performances, exhibitions, artistic interventions, and an open invitation to take over the scene.
Open Architecture Day will stage and dissect the core of architecture from five different scenes and through various sustainable perspectives – from social sustainability, climate and resources to future practices. The scenes are set to actively engage with the spectators and the actors in a mixed performance of architecture, landscape and planning.
Open Architecture Day this year wishes to reveal, explore and question architectural processes within the built environment from Behind the Scenes. Driven by the desire to broaden our perception of current and future sustainable architecture, the festival bears witness to the shady and hidden as well as the bright and visible sides of architectural practice. The festival offers a perspective on interconnectedness throughout the vast network of the architectural field, emphasizing new knowledge over existing experience.
The programme for Open Architecture Day is curated by Karen Kjærgaard, architect and curator at Aarhus School of Architecture, Naima Callenberg, architect, curator, and teacher at Chalmers University, and Asbjørn Staunstrup Lund, architect at Vandkunsten.
Buy your ticket now
Buy your ticket now for Open Architecture Day 2022 on 8 September.
Curatorial Statement
As a curator you start your research by asking questions. For us the most urgent question was to find out what goes on Behind The Scenes of architecture, and, if calling for a global change, what prevents us from taking action? This has led to multiple discussions, identifying a wide range of challenges within academia, practice and the business that we simply have to discuss and collaborate about. On one hand architecture as a concept and idea is simple, but when it comes to complying regulations and rules, the use of new technology and tectonics, seeing through power and politics, not to mention the number one challenge: Acknowledging the environmental impact of what we do, it becomes a complex matter.
We want to look Behind The Scenes – what lies in the shadows, unexplored and out of sight – and see through the lens of architectural mechanisms and structures – the infrastructures – that support and build architecture of today and of the future. Through the lens of architectural practice, performance, exhibitions, texts and films we want to look critically into new issues and fields of practice trying to understand architecture beyond the built object.
In concrete terms we are asking: What are the challenges for architecture in a changing society and how can we as architects produce both critical, ecologically, and economically sustainable answers to these challenges?
In order to get Behind The Scenes of architecture we have invited more than 70 architects, students, teachers, researchers, environmentalists, moderators, curators, developers, and theorists, who from five scenes will expand our knowledge on what we also need to understand about architecture.
As an institution, Aarhus School of Architecture thus wants to give architecture a significant voice when it comes to our future cities, landscapes and the environment – across academia, practice and the business.
We are excited and proud to present the full programme and the result of our research.
Naima Callenberg, Chalmers University, Asbjørn Staunstrup Lund, Vandkunsten, and Karen Kjærgaard, Curator Aarhus School of Architecture.
SUPPORT FROM THE DANISH ARTS FOUNDATION
The Danish Arts Foundation has provided funds for the development of the curatorial program for Open Architecture Day 2022, including the development of new curatorial talents.
With the appointment of two former students Naima Callenberg (Lecturer and Curator at Chalmers University in Gothenburg) and Asbjørn Staunstrup Lund (Architect at Vandkunsten), we want to let the curatorial concept be a development process between the school’s programme responsible and two external architects.
We pass on the baton from Boris Brorman Jensen and Kristoffer Lindhardt Weiss and contribute to the promotion of a career kickstarter in the field of curating architecture. A discipline which, compared to curators in the art world, does not get the same attention. With Open Architecture Day, Aarhus School of Architecture wants to contribute to the development of new formats for the dissemination of architecture.
Jan Hørløck Jensen (tv.) med kollega Jesper Kobberø ved indvielsen af den nye skole i 2021