Kaisa Karvinen

Kaisa Karvinen is an architect, curator, and researcher based in Helsinki. Her practice consists of writing, exhibition making, and teaching. She approaches architecture as a material archive of society’s latent structures, which she analyses via artistic-architectural collaborations and autonomous institutions. She holds a Master’s degree in Architecture from Aalto University and a Master of Research in Art and Design from Sint Lucas School of Arts in Antwerp. She is a PhD researcher at the University of Oulu. She works as a curator at the Architecture & Design Museum Helsinki. She recently curated exhibition Industry Muscle: Five Scores for Architecture at the Nordic Countries Pavilion of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025. 
She taught the Gender and Technology course with Louna Hakkarainen at Aalto University (2021–2024). With Karita Rytivaara she co-edited the book (2022) and curated an exhibition titled Stripped Frame (2021), which examined the demolition of buildings from the 1960s and 1970s. As a researcher and curator for the urban research project (Re)configuring Territories (2019-2022), developed in collaboration with Tommi Vasko, the Narva Art Residency, and the Finnish Cultural Institute of Estonia, she investigated the social, cultural, and material dynamics of post-industrial landscapes around the Baltic Sea. Along with Ott Kagovere and Tommi Vasko, she co-edited Borrowing Positions: Role-Playing Design and Architecture (2019), a publication investigating live-action role-plays (LARPS) organised by Trojan Horse collective (2015-). Karvinen is a member of Henriikka Himma’s working group for the performance productions I Was Living in the Strange Place (2021–2024) and Sakraaliesseet (2025), that have performed at the Baltic Circle Theatre Festival, the ANTI Festival, and the Hanko Teaterträff Festival.

Borrowing Positions

How is the curator’s position redefined when autonomous, collectively organized work shifts into the context of the museum institution? I approach the subject particularly from the perspective of curating architecture and design.