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The International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam appoints Derk Loorbach as chief curator of IABR–2022, SHOCK AND ROLL

2021-03-30T13:03:00-04:00

The International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam has announced the chief curator of its next edition: Derk Loorbach is the director of the Dutch Research Institute for Transitions (DRIFT) and professor of Socioeconomic Transitions at the Erasmus University Rotterdam's Erasmus School of Social and Behavioral Sciences.

Titled SHOCK AND ROLL, the 10th IABR will open in the fall of 2022 and commence a new series of biennales focusing on the "urgent need to put into design practice the all-embracing change to which science incites us, which the Paris climate objectives call for, to which the global community committed itself in the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and with which the reality of the climate crisis confronts us every single day."

Related: Archinect Interviews George Brugmans, IABR - Part 1, Making City; Part 2, Arnavutköy, Istanbul; and Part 3, São Paulo, Rotterdam and Beyond

"With the appointment of Derk Loorbach, the IABR wants to take a crucial next step in a...

The International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam's focus is climate change in 2020 with "DOWN TO EARTH"

2019-09-23T19:30:00-04:00

"DOWN TO EARTH: how can we redefine all our actions as what leads toward the Earth? How can we adapt in such a way that our urban living environments can cope with the impending climate crisis – not at the expense of but in balance with nature? Indeed, where can we land?” George Brugmans (IABR)

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned us in the fall of 2018 that to avoid catastrophe, human societies have 12 years to completely transform the way we use energy and land. Change is urgently needed and on a scale for which ‘there is no documented historical precedent’. That is why IABR–2020 starts from the premise that we are facing the deepest crisis in human memory. And that we have no time to waste. Can we transform our urban landscapes and living environments, comprehensively and democratically, with time for serious reflection on how we do it and for whom we do it – while we're doing it?

The International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam releases their Curator Statement, Research Agenda and Call for Practices for IABR—2018+2020

2017-10-23T18:55:00-04:00

The next International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) will be split in two parts, the first held in 2018 and the second in 2020. Appropriately dubbed IABR—2018+2020, it will be based in both the Netherlands and Belgium and will use the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change (COP21) as its impetus.

Curated by Floris Alkemade of Floris Alkemade Architectm (the Chief Government Architect of the Netherlands), Flemish Government Architect Leo Van Broeck of Bogdan & Van Broeck, and Joachim Declerck of the Belgian practice Architecture Workroom Brussels, the trio calls on innovative practices from around the globe to participate in The Missing Link: a three-year (from early 2018 to summer 2020) program of knowledge sharing, peer supervision, and joint research by design including presentations and debates at the biennales of 2018 and 2020.

This experimental program aims to see practices from various domains and continents and with different bac...

The next International Architecture Biennale of Rotterdam will be split across two years and two countries

2017-04-20T12:14:00-04:00

The next International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) will be split in two parts, the first held in 2018 and the second in 2020. Appropriately dubbed IABR—2018+2020, it will be based in both the Netherlands and Belgium and use “the world as its source of inspiration”. This follows in line with a couple other major cultural events that have recently spread out from their original base, notably this year’s documenta, which is held in both Kassel and Athens.

The curators of IABR—2018+2020 will be Floris Alkemade of Floris Alkemade Architectm, the Chief Government Architect of the Netherlands; Flemish Government Architect Leo Van Broeck of Bogdan & Van Broeck; and Joachim Declerck of the Belgian practice Architecture Workroom Brussels.

The Biennale will use the Paris Agreement as its impetus, which they consider “an actual change of direction, a fundamental transition”. To that end, the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt Delta and the Low Countries serve as appropriate workspaces. The regions b...

Cutting out the (real estate) middle man: a closer look at Self-Builds

2016-07-15T13:46:00-04:00

It’s not a new argument to say that cities are increasingly morphing from social configurations to investment vehicles. [...] “Self-builds”, “Baugruppen”, and “zelfbouw” are just a few ways to define variations of building-it-yourself (BIY), whether done individually or as a collective. The end users (who are the commissioners), together with architects, decide on the design of their homes, and then take care of the construction themselves or have contractors do it.

IABR–2016–Call for Projects

2015-04-28T11:38:00-04:00

The seventh edition of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam,IABR–2016–THE NEXT ECONOMY–, will open in April 2016.

Chief Curator is Maarten Hajer, director-general of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.

IABR invites urban designers, architects, landscape architects, academics, artists, planners, cities, universities, companies and social organizations, or coalitions thereof, to submit best practices, projects and plans in response to the challenges formulated in the IABR–2016–CALL FOR PROJECTS– and further articulated in the IABR–2016–CURATOR STATEMENT–.

IABR–2016 is a platform for fresh ideas on the possible future of the twenty-first-century city. IABR will exhibit designs and promote dialogues that open up perspectives of the city. IABR wants: a clean city, a communal city, a productive city – a city in which the public space once again occupies center stage.

If you want to submit your project for IABR–2016, please read the Call for Projects and the Curator S...

IABR: Maarten Hajer appointed chief curator of IABR–2016–

2014-09-04T14:19:00-04:00

The International Architecture Biennale of Rotterdam has announced the appointment of Maarten Hajer as Chief Curator of IABR–2016–. The theme of the seventh edition of the IABR will be “The Next Economy” and it will open in May 2016.

One of the most prolific and progressive architecture and urban design biennales in existence, IABR announced yet another building block for a better world, better discourse and more meaningful step towards the future of our cities, resources and the environments that are in development. Titled "The Next Economy" the IABR 2016 promises to be concerned with the role of ever so developing economical factors every project must deal with in order to evolve.

It will be curated by Maarten Hajer who is internationally renowned for his exploration of the relationships between public policies, urban development and environmental issues. He is professor of Public Policy at the University of Amsterdam and currently serving a 7-year term as Director–General of the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.

As the Director of IABR George Brugmans says, “I do not believe in throwing good stuff away. Every IABR edition builds on earlier editions. We refocus, change perspective, pick up new ele...

IABR–2014–URBAN BY NATURE– Part 3: Exploring the Underground

2014-07-30T20:53:00-04:00

IABR–2014–URBAN BY NATURE–, the sixth edition of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR), claims that we can only solve the world’s environmental problems if we solve the problems of the city.

Looking through the lens of landscape architecture, IABR–2014– redefines the way we deal with urban challenges by analyzing the relationship between urban society and nature, and between city and landscape.
This edition of the biennale argues that cities are an integral part of huge urban landscapes, complex systems that have become our natural environment. This perspective has many implications for the way we plan and design our urban environment. Perceiving it as an organism opens up possibilities to develop spatial interventions that make use of its metabolism.
With the use of new and innovative design strategies that effectively address the city as the bigger urban landscape that it is, we can make the city more resilient and thus truly contribute to a more sustainable future...

IABR–2014–URBAN BY NATURE– Part 2: The Urban Metabolism

2014-07-25T17:53:00-04:00

IABR–2014–URBAN BY NATURE– Part 1: A Planet Cultivated

2014-07-21T17:46:00-04:00

IABR–2014–URBAN BY NATURE–, the sixth edition of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR), recently wrapped up a packed roster of conferences, debates, lectures, excursions and other events spanning over several weeks.

URBAN BY NATURE– focuses on the interdependence of society and nature and the intricate relationship between city and landscape. Six separate exhibitions, still on display until Sunday, August 24 at the Kunsthal and the Natural History Museum Rotterdam, showcase almost one hundred projects that address these issues.

In this article, we highlight the first of the six exhibitions, A PLANET CULTIVATED:

Photo 2: Aranzadi Park (Aldavoyer Architecture) © Gerencia de Urbanismo, Ayuntamiento de Pamplona

Today, there are more trees in parks and nurseries than there are in forests. What we call nature is never free of human intervention: whether as small-scale as parks, or as large-scale as the climate. At the same time, we are part of nature. Now that more than 50 ...

Vernon CA, known for meatpacking, corruption and Tapatío, featured in LA Forum's submission to the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam

2014-06-04T19:41:00-04:00

Forty years after "Reyner Banham loves Los Angeles" another architect with the gaze of the foreigner takes us on a ride through the City of Angels, or as the Turkish architect Orhan Ayyüce likes to refer to it: "La Citta Capitalista". [...] An ‘exclusive industrial town,’ Vernon borders on the cosmopolitan downtown of Los Angeles... Are alternative forms of housing, agriculture, and nature imaginable in a town that relies solely on industry and transport?

Los Angeles architect Orhan Ayyüce takes a weekend drive through a vacant Vernon, in the following short film for the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam. Submitted by the LA Forum for Architecture and Urban Design and run by Ayyüce, The Vernon City Project is being featured in IABR's main exhibition, "Urban By Nature".

Watch The Vernon City Project below.

IABR 2014 Urban By Nature: Call for Projects

2013-04-24T12:33:00-04:00

The sixth edition of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, IABR–2014–URBAN BY NATURE–, opens in May 2014 in the Kunsthal in Rotterdam. The Dutch landscape architect Dirk Sijmons is the curator and the theme is Urban by Nature.

The IABR calls for best practices from all over the world to support and substantiate the Biennale’s main exhibition’s narrative. Prospective participants who have designed or are designing concrete projects that deal with the relationship between man, nature and city, are invited to respond to the IABR–2014– Call for Projects–, and submit their applications by June 9, 2013.

Apply Here

Previously on Archinect:

Archinect Interviews George Brugmans, IABR - Part 1, Making City

Archinect Interviews George Brugmans, IABR - Part 2, Arnavutköy, Istanbul

Archinect Interviews George Brugmans, IABR - Part 3, São Paulo, Rotterdam and Beyond

Editor's Picks #300

2013-01-30T11:35:00-05:00

Orhan Ayyüce published parts 1 + 2 of a multi-part interview with George Brugmans (Executive Director of the IABR)...Thayer-D chimed in "This is an excellent example of how well intentioned architects continue to talk past each other...One of the speakers spoke of the need to create relationships with politicians, developers and the public in general to forge a new way forward...What's amazing is that this has been happening for the last 20 years in the Congress for New Urbanism

In the first edition of our In Focus in 2013 Archinect spoke with Yohan Zerdoun an architectural photographer based in Germany/Switzerland.

Plus, Orhan Ayyüce published parts 1 + 2 of a multi-part interview with George Brugmans (Executive Director of the IABR) in which they continued their discussion from where they left it two years ago. Topics include; the theme of the 5th Biennale itself: Making City, the model used for the 5th IABR of Test Sites and Counter Sites, and also Istanbul as either "the next metropolitan nightmare, or...an inspiring example?".

Thayer-D chimed in "This is an excellent example of how well intentioned architects continue to talk past each other while so many of their interests intersect...One of the speakers spoke of the need to create relationships with politicians, developers and the public in general to forge a new way forward. Again, I'd be in full agreement. What's amazing is that this has been happening for the last 20 years in ...

Dirk Sijmons To Curate 6Th IABR

2012-06-13T20:55:00-04:00

Looking at the city through the lens of landscape architecture allows us a clear view of the situation. There is just one course of action available to us: if we are to resolve the world’s ecological problems we first need to resolve the problems facing our cities. And the only way we can reach these solutions is by naming and researching them in terms of the metabolism of the city.

-Dirk Sijmons, renowned landscape architect and former Governmental Advisor on Landscape, has been appointed curator of the next edition of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam. The 6th IABR has the working title “URBAN by NATURE” and opens in May 2014.

It focuses on the ‘natural’ character of the city as human biotope. By examining the metabolism of the urban organism, the 6th IABR explores the relationship between city and nature whilst also reflecting on city as nature. The city as nature, as a metabolism, not only comprises the built environment, but the broader context: the landscape that is the material condition for our urban society.-