The exhibition 'Institution Building' displays and questions the different elements of a museum - not only the most visible parts (such as the exhibition) but also the less public, often hidden components (such as archive, administration, maintenance). Following a sequential logic of 10 institutional components the exhibition will grow week by week, adding another element and eventually present the institution as a cadavre exquis – a permanently changing organism, constantly on questioning and legitimizing its raison d´être.

Situated at the beginning of a phase of transition between the CIVA as it is in 2021 and its new home at Kanal in 2024 Institution Building is a self-reflection of an institution in transformation, a questioning of the role of cultural institutions as such - and of the CIVA in particular - and hence instigating a process of reinventing itself for the coming years. In a sequential logic each chapter aims to reimagine one component of the architecture museum: Hospitality (26.08), Format (02.09), Collection (09.09), Audience (16.09), Agency (23.09), Pedagogy (30.09), Emancipation (07.10), Environment (14.10), Preservation (21.10), Idiom (28.10). The exhibition and collateral events will include more than 150 architects, artists, historians, writers and activists.