September 18–October 19, 2025
Now is the time for artists, spatial practitioners, and filmmakers to envision the slow future.
The theme of the CAFx Biennial—Copenhagen Architecture Biennial 2025 is “Slow Down”. It investigates architecture as a matter of time and a means of slowing down overheated sites, cities, and societies. From September 18–October 19, we take over the capital of Denmark to imagine what a great deceleration of the global system might look like, feel like, and sound like. We are happy to announce three open calls: for an exhibition, two pavilions, and films.
The architecture of the 21st century will be an architecture of the slow. For it’s really not about whether we slow down, nor if we need to. It’s about how slowness will arrive. In the end, what matters is the shape that slowness will take and what will emerge—or diminish—in its wake.
If you are an architect, spatial practitioner, filmmaker, or artist, now is your time to help envision the slow future.
Slow Down: Exhibition
We call for submissions for a group exhibition—to be opened simultaneously at CAFx—Copenhagen Architecture Forum’s location at Halmtorvet 27 and the Form/Design Center in Malmö—aligned with the “Slow Down” theme. We call for new narratives and concepts for a cultural imagination tied too much to speed—shock and surge, friction and frenzy, weariness and whirl. We call for innovative protocols for collective rituals, new infrastructures for slow looking, novel techniques for slow mobility, and new sites for noticing the slow—the long-term developmental horizon of societies, the deep time of geological movements and the gradual growth of plants.
We invite contributors to unsettle traditional distinctions between urban and non-urban, challenging the binary logic that opposes sites of consumption to sites of extraction. How can we seek imaginative responses that envision the city not just as a standalone entity but as deeply interconnected with and reflective of broader ecological, geological, and societal systems?
Yet, our focus isn't solely on slow-paced solutions; we're also interested in works that critique, represent, or document the often unquestioned imperatives of speed. We welcome not just practical and concrete approaches, but also speculative concepts that challenge conventional thinking and suggest new ways to live, think, and navigate the future. Everyone can contribute, and we value transdisciplinarity and experimentation spanning a broad spectrum of media categories such as project models, installations, sound works, video, performances, drawings, and texts. We hope you will contribute to this critical investigation of speed and its impact on the future of urban environments.
Read more and apply here.
Slow Pavilions
With Slow Pavilions we call on emerging spatial practitioners based in the Nordic countries to design and build a pavilion in the Cultural Quarter of Copenhagen, that will act as a symbol and hub for the Copenhagen Architecture Biennial.
Slow Pavilions is a unique opportunity to create architectural forms that engage the public and explore innovative approaches to sustainable solutions in architecture, at central locations in the heart of Copenhagen’s Cultural Quarter, at Søren Kierkegaard Plads and Gammel Strand.
As a winner you will get a huge international platform and connections to architects, professionals and experts. You will help create awareness, sensual experiences and an access point for architecture enthusiasts, citizens, tourists, and journalists from around the world visiting Copenhagen during the Biennial
Read more and apply here.
Slow Down: Films
For our final call we are looking for films that relate to the “Slow Down” theme.
Read more and apply here.
