In the Eyes of the Ordinary
Architecture is more than structure; it is lived space, shaped through occupation, adaptation, and care. Too often, we experience the built environment through a lens of novelty and spectacle, overlooking the intelligence embedded in everyday architecture. OPEN25 celebrates the worn, the adapted, the imperfect. In the cracks of the city, in facades softened over time, and in building traditions shaped by collective memory.
CURATORIAL STATEMENT
IN THE EYES OF THE ORDINARY
The everyday built environment is an archive of collective memory – a silent witness to the way people live, work, and dream.
— Rem Koolhaas
Architecture is more than structure; it is lived space, shaped through occupation, adaptation, and care. Yet, too often, we experience the built environment through a lens of novelty and spectacle, overlooking the intelligence embedded in everyday architecture.
This calls for a paradigm shift, one that moves beyond fascination of the exceptional, directing urban and rural architecture towards what has been neglected and undervalued, and reclaiming the ordinary as an act of resistance, a wellspring of cultural value and sustainable thinking.
OPEN25 celebrates the worn, the adapted, the imperfect. In the cracks of cities, in facades softened over time, and in building traditions shaped by collective memory, lies a potential to explore an architectural “normcore.” However, we´ll also confront its failures—the abandoned neighbourhoods, the polluted rivers, and the deteriorating housing in forgotten peripheries, where care has faded. To speak of the ordinary is to acknowledge multiple, diverse and unnoticed realities—who is seen, who is heard, and who is left behind?
Uniting the emerging and established voices, from built and unbuilt visions, from historic to contemporary landscapes, from activists to spectators, OPEN25 questions and unfolds the role and complexity of the ordinary. Reactualising architecture’s most powerful and inherent quality: its ability to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary.
Are you ready for an ordinary turn?
Karen Kjaergaard, Asal Mohtashami & Bendik Støckert.
NEW CURATORIAL TALENTS
The Danish Arts Foundation generously co-funds the advancement of new curatorial talents as part of the OPEN25 Architecture Festival.
With the appointment of this year’s architectural co-curators, Asal Mohtashami and Bendik Støckert, a strong concept and program is formed in a creative process alongside leading curator, Karen Kjaergaard.
With the OPEN series, Aarhus School of Architecture aims to develop new formats for architectural dissemination.
Denne side er ikke tilgængelig på dansk.
Line Vestergaard Cramer