2023
2023
The work presented here was undertaken during the studio founder's tenure at CAF×.
The exhibition grew out of the International Manifesto Relay, a collection of 45 manifestos gathered from architects, artists, and researchers across 19 countries and four continents, each addressing the UIA Congress's link between architecture and the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Ahead of the Congress, CAF× put a selection of these manifestos into dialogue with the architecture manifesto's own history, asking what the form could still do in a moment when the language of dissent — loudness, persuasion, provocation — has been absorbed as readily by institutions as by the movements that once used it against them. CAF× named the exhibition itself, Architecture and the Art of Agitation, framing the manifesto plainly as a tool rather than a literary form. A five-part Reading Club ran alongside the exhibition, each session pairing historic and contemporary manifestos in conversation: Le Corbusier's Towards a New Architecture against Rem Koolhaas's Junkspace, guided by philosopher Kristoffer Weiss; a live, first-ever performative reading of a new manifesto in progress by Christian Pagh, then Director of the Oslo Architecture Triennale, answered by a panel responding in real time; the situationists' counter-urbanism, guided by urban geographer David Pinder; and a closing session comparing Patrik Schumacher's Parametricist Manifesto against Anna Heringer's own call for a more humane design culture, guided by Morten Birk Jørgensen.
A hand-drawn mind map made by the CAF× team — tracing concepts like power, technique, dissensus, and utopia across the 45 manifestos — became the starting point for the exhibition's entire visual design, developed by graphic designer Kaiu Meiner, brought on as an external collaborator, under the studio founder's direction. The collaboration went beyond the mind map itself, with a wider set of references, materials, and ideas developed together over the course of the process. The finished identity kept the mind map's own logic intact: dense, branching diagrams rendered in the style of an instruction manual, set on a saturated yellow dot-grid ground, deliberately breaking the strict information hierarchy a mind map usually imposes — the same rupture the manifesto itself performs on convention. A cast of small, roughly sculpted 3D figures, developed specifically for the identity, populated the diagram as recurring mascots — agitators embedded directly in the mind map's own branching structure. The identity ran across the exhibition's window installation at Halmtorvet, hung as vertical banners against the glass, across its presence on cafx.dk, on the event and exhibition pages built for the show, and across social media and newsletter. Six of the 45 manifestos were curated for direct display in the window itself, the physical panels changed out and rotated weekly across the exhibition's run. The 45 manifestos themselves live on separately, as an open-access publication on a satellite page under cafx.dk's Projects section.
The Reading Club sessions were held inside the exhibition space itself, arranged with soft, modular cubes people could sit on, lean against, or lie across, rearranged as each session needed — each visitor finding their own way of settling in for an evening of reading.
CAF× curated, produced, and coordinated the full exhibition and Reading Club series — its concept and curation, its identity and visual design, and the print and digital design built around it.
CAF× also handled the marketing and audience outreach for the exhibition and its Reading Club series, alongside communications more broadly — press, newsletter, and social media.
Architecture and the Art of Agitation was supported by Dreyers Fond, Realdania, Statens Kunstfond, and the Municipality of Copenhagen.
More images forthcoming.
Creative Direction
Curation
Exhibition Design
Environmental Graphics
Brand & Identity Systems
Naming
Copywriting & Editing
PR & Communications
Marketing
Campaigns
Print & Digital Design
Project Management
Event Management & Coordination
Team:
Valeria Granillo, Josephine Michau, Søren Nørkjær Bang, Signe Sophie Boeggild, Pauline Panetta, Alexandra Wedderkopp Emelianov, Kaiu Meiner.
With the contribution of:
45 people submitting manifestos within the Manifesto Relay initiative.
With the participation of:
Kristoffer Weiss, Christian Pagh, David Pinder, Morten Birk Jørgensen.