From 18 September to 19 October 2025, the Danish capital will host the first edition of the Copenhagen Architecture Biennial, an evolution of the city’s former annual festival into a broader, more reflective platform. Organized by the Copenhagen Architecture Forum (CAFx), the event opens under the theme “Slow Down”, inviting architects, designers, and the public to question how architecture can respond to the hyper-acceleration of modern life.
Rather than just a slogan, slowness becomes a design strategy. The Biennial explores how architecture can counteract the impacts of global overconsumption, energy dependence, and disposable culture—what the organizers term “the Great Acceleration”—with a focus on sustainability, longevity, and circular design.
Earlier this year, CAFx launched an open call for pavilion proposals that would physically embody these principles while serving as public gathering points. Two winning responses, “Barn Again” by Tom Svilans and THISS Studio, and “Inside Out, Downside Up” by Slaatto Morsbøl—bring the Biennial’s ethos to life in two distinct, tactile structures.
Installed at Søren Kierkegaard Plads and Gammel Strand, the Slow Pavilions are built from regenerative, reused, and salvaged materials, and developed in collaboration with Revalu, Dreyers Foundation, and Buro Happold. Both installations frame slowness not only as a lifestyle, but as a material and spatial condition.
“Barn Again”, designed by Tom Svilans in collaboration with UK-based THISS Studio, Bollinger+Grohmann engineers, and Winther A/S carpenters, reconstructs the form of a Norwegian barn using reclaimed wood from a disused structure. Located at Gammel Strand, the project contrasts the archetype of the rural barn with digitally machined joinery, offering a space for pause, renewal, and reflection. It speaks to slowness through its material reuse, its invitation to rest in the city, and its thoughtful merger of traditional craft and precision fabrication.
At Søren Kierkegaard Plads, “Inside Out, Downside Up” by architects Thelma Slaatto and Cecilie Morsbøl reimagines salvaged building components into a sensorial shelter. Halved ventilation pipes, exposed bricks, thatching reed, and reclaimed timber are layered into a structure that prioritizes sensory recalibration. Visitors are encouraged to move slowly, listen closely, and reconnect with the material processes often lost in industrialized construction. The design is both intimate and provocative—turning reused parts into a space for reflection and presence.
Together, the pavilions offer a glimpse of what slowing down the built environment might look like in real terms—not just aesthetically, but structurally, socially, and ecologically.
The launch of the Copenhagen Architecture Biennial adds to a packed season in global architecture. One month after the opening of the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale, and with national pavilions already under construction for Expo Osaka 2025, the shift in Copenhagen marks a renewed focus on reflection, slowness, and sustainability.
