The 2026 edition launches with three open calls inviting architects, designers, artists and interdisciplinary teams to engage directly with the former ‘Ion Mincu’ Technical College, the main venue of the upcoming biennial.
Under the theme In Practice – as opposed to ‘in theory’, the building becomes a working ground rather than an exhibition backdrop. A place where ideas are tested on site, interventions built with what is already existing, and where the boundaries between research, construction, content and public space become fluid.
The calls propose three distinct modes of involvement:
Call 1: Call for Spatial Repairs and Transformative Interventions
Built interventions that repair, question, or transform the building’s interior spaces. Participants are invited to propose potentially permanent gestures that reactivate rooms, rethink circulation, or introduce new spatial relationships.
Call 2: Call for Thresholds and Transitions
Interventions for the outdoor and in-between areas: entrances, paths, courtyards, edges toward the Botanical Park. The call focuses on structures that connect people, circulation and landscape, also beyond the duration of the biennial.
Call 3: Office in Residence
A six-week relay of on-site residencies. Each team occupies the former canteen for one week, developing research on a specific aspect of the building’s transformation and discussing findings publicly before handing over to the next team.
All three calls embrace architecture as an evolving process: one that is collaborative, open-ended, and grounded in the material realities of an existing building.
Submission deadline: 8 December 2025
Shortlist conversations: 16–17 December 2025
