2023-2025
2023-2025
The work presented here was undertaken during the studio founder’s tenure at CAF×.
The Biennial was CAF×'s first — the flagship of the organisation's newly established biennial cycle. The editorial and communications remit spanned the full public-facing surface of the Biennial: the digital platform, the CAFx Journal, public programme communications, and international press.
The theme Slow Down emerged collaboratively from the curatorial team. Its argument was that architecture is a matter of time — that the last century's acceleration in construction, extraction, and consumption cannot continue, and that the twenty-first century will have to become an architecture of the slow, whether by choice or by force. Editorially, the theme named a disposition that had been shaping the organisation's public voice for some time already: an attention to durability, repair, and material intelligence; to practices working with heritage and reuse; to slower forms of writing and listening — long-form essays, podcasts, considered interviews — that resisted the pull of the fleeting and the spectacular, and gave time to ideas rather than moving quickly past them.
The CAF× Journal — the digital magazine launched in 2021 — ran in parallel with and inside the Biennial's editorial life. It strengthened the year-round programme, and it was also where much of the Biennial's own editorial content lived. Articles, essays, interviews, and podcasts developed over the two-year run-up carried the theme into public conversation before the pavilions were built.
One significant structural decision was to keep the Biennial's digital presence inside cafx.dk rather than spin it off as a separate site. Developed with Open Studio, the biennial section was designed as a distinct but integrated part of the CAFx platform — a choice that reinforced the argument that the Biennial belonged to the Forum, not to a separate institution. Positioning, editorial framework, contributor relations, media strategy, visual identity research, and the coordination of an international press effort all developed alongside this.
The visual identity was one of the pieces of work developed with the greatest care. Its research — into what "slowness" could look like as a system of forms, colours, and typographic choices — informed how the Biennial appeared across every surface, from the Halmtorvet façade to press materials to social channels.
The Biennial closed on 19 October 2025. It reached 159 pieces of press coverage across international and Danish media, with an estimated 5.45 million lifetime views and 161 million audience reach. Media partnerships were developed with ArchDaily, Politiken, KoozArch, and Dezeen. Coverage figures: CoverageBook.
Research & Strategy
Strategic Insight & Development
Business Development
Strategic Partnerships
Creative Strategy
Creative Direction & Concept - Creative Direction
Brand & Narrative - Brand & Identity Systems
- Naming
- Copywriting & Editing
- PR & Communications
- Campaigns
- Brand Activation
Print & Digital Design
Project Management
Team:
Valeria Granillo, Josephine Michau, Søren Nørkjær Bang, Ida Willadsen Bang Kjeldsen, Pernille Maria Bärnheim, Sabina Eklund, Open Studio.