Copenhagen Architecture Festival 2023

We will host new meetings, bridging across the usual disciplines, borders and identities and among others examine architecture in relation to climate adaptation, inclusion and community. Over two and a half weeks in June and July 2023, we will offer a wide range of public events such as film screenings, debates, studio visits, city walks, performances, exhibitions, workshops, seminars, etc. This year, we are inspired by the UN agenda of Sustainable Futures: Leave No One Behind agenda and how it plays out in the city's built and grown environment. Thus, we are partners of the UIA and will be present in the Bella Center, but are particularly present in the city.

In terms of content, we embrace both nature and history as well as everyday life, and we are both a festival for professionals and citizens with an interest in the spaces in which we are living, working and dwelling. Themes of events could, for example, be about how we should tackle rising sea level rise, involve groups that are rarely heard or how different professional groups can collaborate on climate-friendly solutions for sustainable urban development.

We will concentrate on different hubs in the city, ranging from our local context of the Meatpacking District and Vesterbro, over Cinemateket, to the new and sustainable district of Jernbanebyen. Simultaneously, various partners will host events spread all over Copenhagen. In this way, the city and its local agendas will be a prism from which we examine other places and contexts. Dialogue, interdisciplinarity and the site-specific are paramount, while sustainability, community and diversity in relation to inspiring new conversations, collaborations and practices are crucial to our architectural understanding and set of values.

We are settling into our new premises at Halmtorvet 27 and this gives us the opportunity to have activities both before and after the actual festival period, i.a. in the form of exhibitions that form the framework for various events. This year’s focus is largely about how we can challenge universality in the sense of a “one-size-fits-all attitude” towards architecture vis-à-vis the crises we are currently confronted with, caring for and including those neglected or unheard, not least non-human actors and nature. In spring, we will have an exhibition, based on the manifestos we have collected from architects all over the world leading up to the UIA, and put the spotlight on the role of language and different voices within architecture. During the UIA, we will have a local branch of the exhibition that festival director Josephine Michau is curating for the Danish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, i.a. with a focus on sea level rise and climate adaptation. In October, we will host the pan-European network of architecture festivals and museums LINA, where young talents will present proposals for solutions for a European Green Deal.