Global circulation of people, information, and goods has destabilized what we understand by residence, questioning spatial permanence, property, and identity—a crisis of belonging. Circulation brings greater accessibility to ever-new commodities and further geographies. But, simultaneously, circulation also promotes growing inequalities for large groups, kept in precarious states of transit.

The Triennale was curated by After Belonging Agency. The Triennale presented a six-folded core programme consisting of two main exhibitions, an international conference, a publication, a public space art project and a one week long global student forum related to the topic of the triennale. Together with the extended programme, the triennale comprised a total of 150 event which took place in 41 venues all over Oslo, in addition to several sites around the world.

2016 was another record-breaking year for OAT, not only when it comes to size and scale, but also in terms of outreach and public interest both in Norway and internationally.

The Oslo Architecture Triennale 2016 was divided into six parts:

On Residence was one of the two main parts of the Triennale. It dissected the architectures entangled in the contemporary reconfiguration of belonging, documenting the ways in which these architectures redefine residence, and the spatial, aesthetic, technical, and sociopolitical implications of this redefinition.

In Residence was one of the two main parts of the Triennale. It speculated on architectural intervention strategies at a selection of sites—in Oslo, the Nordic region and around the globe—that are understood to encapsulate the contemporary transformation of belonging.

The Embassy: New World Embassy: Rojava is a stateless embassy that represents, through cultural means, the ideals of “stateless democracy” developed by Kurdish communities of the autonomous region of Rojava, northern-Syria. The embassy is conceived and designed by Studio Jonas Staal in collaboration with the Democratic Self-Administration of Rojava, and took the form of a temporary installation in Oslo City Hall.

The Academy was a forum organized by the Oslo School of Architecture and Design AHO. The Academy brought schools from around the world to enter in a global dialogue and knowledge-sharing experiment, reflecting on issues related to the topics explored in the Oslo Architecture Triennale 2016.

The publication After Belonging: The Objects, Spaces, and Territories of the Ways We Stay in Transit investigates the objects, spaces, and territories of our transforming condition of belonging.

The Conference brought together architects, thinkers, decision-makers, and local experts in order to dissect the architectures entangled in the contemporary reconfiguration of belonging.