The Copenhagen Architecture Biennial Announces Theme and Dates for Its Second Edition

The origins of the Copenhagen Architecture Biennial trace back to the establishment of the CAFx yearly festival in 2014, which was renamed Copenhagen Architecture Forum in 2024 to lead new projects focused on architecture and urbanism, such as the shift from festival to biennial, with a first edition in 2025. Today, the details of the second edition are being announced: it will take place from September 9 to October 15, 2027, under the theme "Elements." After the Biennial's inaugural call to Slow Down, the event is turning its attention to the planetary elemental forces that architecture has sought to master and prepare to inhabit, questioning one of modernity's most persistent promises: control over the environment. Activities will be dedicated to and organized around each of the four elements: fire, earth, air, and water, including an open call for pavilions, exhibitions, and a symposium.

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The curatorial approach begins with a critique of the modern promise of unlimited technological development, beyond climate, geographical, biological, and material constraints. Architecture has been a tool for fulfilling this promise, managing temperature, humidity, and contact. The organization's diagnosis is that this foundational modern promise is increasingly unattainable in a world marked by rising temperatures, polluted air, rising sea levels, dead soils, and growing pressure on natural resources needed to sustain life. The promise has become an undesirable future. This year's theme for the Copenhagen Architecture Biennial is grounded in this double disenchantment, leading to the question of how architecture can live, build, and plan with "elements" rather than against them, in protection of human life. The Biennial poses the questions: Who is protected and who is exposed? What is maintained and what is allowed to fail? And what kinds of common life might emerge: habit, happiness, ritual, and care?

For decades, architecture has promised us mastery over heat, earth, air and water. With 'Elements', we ask what happens when we stop pretending we ever had that mastery, and start designing from dependence instead? The buildings that will serve us best aren't the ones that shut the world out, they're the ones that let us feel it. - Josephine Michau, part of the Curatorial Collective & Director of the Copenhagen Architecture Biennial

The program will take place across Copenhagen's Cultural District and more than 60 venues across the city. Event highlights include four exhibitions exploring architecture's relationship with elemental forces, held at the newly built Vandkulturhuset Papirøen by Kengo Kuma, as well as at Simian, Kunsthal Nord, and Halmtorvet 27. The Biennial's professional symposium, Assemble!, will focus on policy, the regulatory structures that govern how cities build, extract, and consume, following the inaugural edition's call for new legislation. After the success of the Biennial's Slow Pavilions, there will be a second open call inviting architects, designers, and researchers to propose new pavilions responding to the Elements theme. Details of the call will be available on the website. Further program details, including exhibiting practices, pavilion winners, Assemble! speakers, and the full public events schedule, will be announced ahead of the Biennial's opening.

With four exhibitions built around fire, earth, air and water, an open call for new public pavilions, and Assemble! Returning with a sharper focus on policy, the 2027 Biennial is our most ambitious attempt yet to make the elemental legible as the very ground of architecture itself. - Josephine Michau, Founder and Chief Curator, CAFx & Copenhagen Architecture Biennial

For the second year running, Copenhagen was named the world's most livable city in the 2026 Economist Intelligence Unit's Global Liveability Index. According to the Danish Architecture Center, part of this progress in urban quality of life is due to the work of Danish architect and urban planner Jan Gehl, whose 90th birthday is being celebrated at DAC with a calendar of activities and an exhibition. Around the world, other architectural events are sharing content to advance the architectural discipline. In the UAE, the Sharjah Architecture Triennial (SAT) has released the full documentary film series A Journey into Architecture Archives: Baghdad, Damascus, Tunis online. In Chile, a new gathering in Valparaíso is bringing together master builders to safeguard traditional trades. In Estonia, the 8th Tallinn Architecture Biennale (TAB 2026) brings the question "How Much?" to the center of its program, examining how cost, scarcity, and constraint shape architectural production.