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
We want to go Behind the Scenes and explore the mechanisms and infrastructures that support and build today’s and future architecture. What lies in the shadows, unexplored and out of sight?
We want to look critically into architectural practice to understand architecture beyond the built environment through critical keynotes, performances, exhibitions, and film. We want, as keynote Charlotte Malterre-Barthes states, “…to reposition architecture and planning centerstage, through a “plurality of resistances’ to produce informed notions of practice and formulate agencies to act responsibly and more inclusively.”
In concrete terms, we ask: What are the challenges for architecture in a changing society, and how can we as architects produce critical, socially, ecologically, and economically sustainable answers to these challenges?
How should the way in which we practice architecture change in order to create a sustainable future, both within the built environment and within the practice?
Together with practice, the industry, and academia, we want to expand the discussion on architecture, looking creatively into the responsibilities and agencies we have, both as individuals and as a collective profession.
Experience architecture from Behind the Scenes, listen when Danish and international keynotes from five different scenes discuss architecture, participate in the debates and meet old or new colleagues.
Let’s meet Behind the Scenes – and on stage!
Naima Callenberg, Asbjørn Staunstrup Lund and Karen Kjærgaard
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.