2023
2023
The work presented here was undertaken during the studio founder's tenure at CAF×.
Life Form's curatorial statement argued that architecture has been shaped by a dualistic worldview — one that splits culture from nature, style from matter, master from mastered, form from life — and that the task ahead was to dismantle that split rather than manage around it. It named concrete directions for what could follow: regenerative design, bioinclusive biomimicry, symbiotic co-creation, architectural asceticism. Its central provocation was a reversal of how form itself gets understood — not architecture imposing form onto nature to serve consumption, but architecture learning form from how life itself generates it, reading a building as a habitat, a city as an ecosystem, and an architect less as a self-sufficient genius-author than as a facilitator working alongside the systems a project sits within.
The programme spanned more than a hundred events across several of Copenhagen's neighbourhoods over eleven days: Kødbyen and Jernbanebyen as its two local centres, alongside Cinemateket and venues across the city. Across its clusters, the festival brought together architect and theorist David Gissen, presenting his newly published The Architecture of Disability; architect and theorist Lydia Kallipoliti; media theorist Jussi Parikka; Berlin-based collective Raumlabor; Brussels-based Rotor; Copenhagen's own Center for Militant Futurologi, whose event graphic material was designed by the studio founder; architect Søren Pihlmann, whose own transformation of Halmtorvet 27 the festival's Kødbyen programme sat inside; Camilla Van Deurs, then Copenhagen's City Architect; and David Basulto, ArchDaily's founder and, at the time, its CEO. Kødbyen's programme centred on Symbiotic Commons, a mapping and research project by Bodil Eiterstraum and Tyra Matilda Rex tracing the symbiotic business and cultural relationships already at work across the district, culminating in a series of events including an evening on process and fermentation at ÅBEN Brewery, and a live Compost Canteen installation composting food waste on site throughout the festival. Jernbanebyen's programme, developed with Cinemateket, included The Ecological Turn, a four-part seminar series, and a talk series built around Gissen's work. The festival opened with the Danish premiere of Arkitekten, a satirical Norwegian sci-fi series that had debuted at the Berlinale earlier that year, followed by a live talk show on the housing crisis with the director and a panel of researchers and practitioners. The festival's own printed reader carried further essays and manifestos alongside the programme, including Josephine Michau's exhibition text for Coastal Imaginaries, running concurrently as the festival's own satellite presentation of that year's Danish Pavilion at Venice.
Life Form's identity was designed by Kiosk Studio, working closely with the team under the studio founder's direction — each year, CAF× invited a different design studio to interpret the festival's annual theme, and 2023's was Kiosk's. The system was built from a library of natural forms rendered in monochrome cut-out photography — ferns, seed heads, branches, a snail shell — recombined across a set of contrasting colour pairings specific to that year's identity: light blue against dark red, blue against tan, red against cyan, orange against light blue. Small geometric shapes — circles, rectangles, squares — punctuated the system throughout, and the festival's own wordmark carried a second reading: the bold orange X running through many of the compositions doubled as the Roman numeral for the festival's tenth edition. Text ran two registers at once: cool, structured editorial setting for most of the programme, and, in places like the printed reader's contributor pages, a dynamic, declarative treatment closer to a Futurist manifesto — oversized type, ellipses, statements broken and re-set at different scales. The system flexed consistently across posters, the printed catalogue and reader, the festival's own website, and a full digital campaign of newsletter, social, and event material.
CAF× produced and coordinated the full scope of the festival: the curatorial framework underpinning its programme, brand identity and campaign production working from Kiosk's system, the editorial work of the printed catalogue and reader, and the marketing, PR, and communications carrying more than a hundred events to their respective audiences across the city, alongside the project management and event coordination the scale of the programme demanded throughout its eleven days.
Life Form was supported by Realdania, the Municipality of Copenhagen, Dreyersfond, Det Danske Filminstitut, and the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, with further sponsorship — additional funding, venues, and products — from Bevica Fonden, VELUX, Institut Français, Goethe-Institut, Statens Kunstfond, and others. Media partnerships ran with Politiken, koozArch, and ArchDaily. Part of the programme itself came from open contributions — events proposed by outside organisers and selected for fit with that year's theme — alongside standing collaboration partnerships CAF× maintained over multiple years, among them SPACE10, the Danish Architecture Center, and Byens Netværk.
More images forthcoming.
Creative Direction
Brand & Identity Systems
Copywriting & Editing
PR & Communications
Marketing
Campaigns
Print & Digital Design
Editorial & Book Design
Project Management
Event Management & Coordination
Team:
Valeria Granillo, Josephine Michau, Søren Nørkjær Bang, Signe Sophie Boeggild, Ida Willadsen Bang Kjeldsen, Alexandra Wedderkopp Emelianov, Open Studio, KIOSK Studio.