IABR

On 1 June 2018, the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam launched its eighth edition, part one of IABR–2018+2020–THE MISSING LINK, in one go in two cities: Rotterdam and Brussels.

^{picture: Aad Hoogendoorn}

In Rotterdam, the main exhibition was on show in the HAKA Building, a national industrial monument in the Merwe-Vierhavens area (M4H), until 8 July 2018, with an extensive program of activities.
During that same period as well as in the fall, the World Trade Center in the Noordwijk area in Brussels, Belgium, is the location for the second exhibition and another extensive program: You Are Here.

Sustainable Development Goals
With its two editions of 2018 and 2020, the IABR wants to contribute to the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations and the Paris Climate Agreement. In the spring of 2017, and with this in mind, the president of the IABR, George Brugmans, appointed three curators, Dutch Chief Government Architect Floris Alkemade, Flemish Government Architect Leo Van Broeck and the Belgian architect Joachim Declerck, for two biennales. Together with the curators and their teams the IABR once again focused on the sustainable future of the city, and this time in one continuous process of research by design and activities from 2017 to 2020, expressly marked by a work biennale in 2018 and a result-oriented biennale in 2020.

Our future in the delta, the delta of the future
Arguing that spatial design is crucial leverage, the IABR–2018+2020–THE MISSING LINK focuses on the question of how we can effectively realize the urgent acceleration and scaling of the transition to a resilient future.

The Missing Link

^{picture: George Brugmans}

In the build-up to its active engagement with this major challenge, the IABR first focuses on the Delta of the Low Lands, in which research by design takes place and IABR–Ateliers, collaborations between the IABR and various provinces and municipalities in the Netherlands and in Belgium, have been established. What and how can design contribute to our future in the delta and to the delta of the future?

What’s stopping us?
From 1 June 2018, the IABR presented a five-week exhibition in the HAKA Building that introduced the work agenda across five consecutive spaces, taking visitors on a search for how to address the missing link: we know what we have to do, so what is keeping us from making a successful transition to a resilient future? How to connect the plans to the projects, and the projects to the plans? What's stopping us?

We won’t we stopped

The Missing Link - the exhibition

^{picture: Ivo Haarman}

The IABR won’t be stopped though. In the IABR–Atelier Rotterdam, for example, the City of Rotterdam and the IABR together with the Delfshaven Coöperatie and housing corporation Havensteder are working in Bospolder-Tussendijken to create one of the first energy neighborhoods in the Netherlands. Also, the IABR together with the City and Port Authority are exploring ways to turn former city harbor M4H and the surrounding neighborhoods into a testing ground and showcase for a technologically and socially successful energy transition in Rotterdam. The IABR and the Province of East Flanders explore in the IABR–Atelier East Flanders Core Region how rapid demographic growth can be turned into an opportunity for resilient city making. And then there's Water as Leverage for Resilient Cities: Asia, initiated by the Dutch Water Envoy, IABR, AWB and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

We can't predict the future, but invent it together we can.

Want to read more?
For the Curator Statement and Research Agenda: click here
For the IABR–Ateliers: click here
For the complete event agenda, past and future: click here

More on IABR–2018+2020–THE MISSING LINK ▸▸▸

Space for Energy in Rotterdam

^{picture: Frank Hanswijk}

The energy transition is one of the key challenges of the coming decades. One important issue is how the transitions will actually take shape. How the advantages and disadvantages will be distributed is not yet clear. The energy transition will involve more than infrastructure and the most important question may well be: What kind of new urbanity will the energy transition allow us to create?

The IABR–Atelier Rotterdam will turn the opportunity created by the energy transition the city and port face into a driver for inclusive urban development and an engine for other important challenges regarding food, the productive city, living, social equality, and others.
This means the Atelier considers energy transition not only a goal, but also a means to work on an attractive future and a resilient and inclusive Rotterdam.

The Energy Transition as an Urban Project
The energy transition is a technical challenge, of course, but at the same time it is also a spatial challenge that we have to integrate into a social agenda. After all, the reduction in the consumption of energy and the transition to renewable energy impact every aspect of daily life. From the way people travel to more energy-efficient dwellings and energy-producing neighborhoods. But is there a level playing field for everyone involved, can everyone keep up with the changes or even benefit by them? Energy poverty as a consequence of the energy transition is already imminent, especially in the more vulnerable neighborhoods.
Given the right approach, conversely, the energy transition can contribute to a high-quality, attractive future if it is used as a means to work on a resilient and inclusive Rotterdam in which citizens are enabled to be not only energy consumers, but also energy producers.
The question the IABR–Atelier Rotterdam raises is about what this new urban quality is that the energy transition will allow us to achieve. What ecological and social added value for the city, its neighborhoods, and every individual citizen will the energy transition be able to generate?

Experiment, Test, Develop
Against the background of the challenge of the energy transition the IABR–Atelier Rotterdam tests new methods for inclusive urban development and generates concrete spatial proposals with the intention of eventually realizing them. In the period between 2017 and 2020, research by design is used for different lines of action and at various scale levels. At the building level, the IABR will focus on the development of new building typologies for the energy transition. At the district level we will test the ‘Energy District’ concept. Test Site M4H+ will highlight integral area development.

The platform of IABR–2018 has mainly been used to present and exchange expertise and knowledge and to actively involve partners and actors (from the city and region as well as beyond) in shared knowledge development.
We now continue to work in the "energy districts" Bospolder-Tussendijken and Rotterdam Central District. The final results will be presented at the IABR–2020, after which they will be implemented.

The IABR Atelier Rotterdam: Energy Transition is a collaboration between the IABR, the City of Rotterdam (Urban Planning Department and Resilient Rotterdam) and the Port of Rotterdam Authority.

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Oogst en Doorkijk, tussentijds verslag IABR–Atelier Rotterdam (Dutch)

IABR−2018+2020–THE MISSING LINK
George Brugmans (ed)

2018, IABR, Rotterdam

design: Studio de Ronners

ISBN: 978-90-825137-2-1

124 pages
english / dutch
paperback / full color

€ 15 plus postage and all transfer costs
order your copy directly from IABR

IABR–2018+2020+THE MISSING LINK
8th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam
1 June – 8 July 2018

There is a direct connection between the future of the city, the subject of the IABR since its founding, and the key challenges of our time, climate change
and rapidly growing social inequality. And as these challenges quickly become more urgent, the position of the IABR becomes increasingly firm and
action-oriented.
What then can the IABR, small player in a huge force field, actually do?
The tools that it has are the power of imagination and the ability of designers to show us what we can want. Nothing more – but nothing less, either.
For such an endeavor to be effective, an environment in which good plans can be turned into concrete projects is vital. It is already happening, but with difficulty and not nearly often enough. There is a missing link. In every respect, and everywhere. That is why, in the next three years, the IABR will fully focus on finding that missing link, on bridging the gap between innovative design and sustainable realization. To start with in the Delta of the Low Countries, with research and Ateliers taking place in the Netherlands and Belgium, and with exhibitions and programs in Rotterdam and
Brussels.
IABR–2018+2020–THE MISSING LINK: one program, two biennales, in two countries.

This bilingual catalog starts with a general introduction, the Curator Statement and the Research Agenda 2018-2020, followed by introductions to the IABR–Ateliers, the Delta Atelier, the main exhibition and the program in Rotterdam and the exhibition in Brussels.

With contributions by Floris Alkemade, Leo Van Broeck, George Brugmans, Joachim Declerck, et al.
Edited by George Brugmans

The Dutch government, the City of Rotterdam and the Creative Industries Fund NL are IABR's main partners.

The IABR is a lead partner of the Dutch government in implementing the Action Agenda for Spatial Design (ARO) 2017 - 2020 of the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations. The IABR is funded in the Culture Plan 2017 - 2020 Budget of the City of Rotterdam and subsidized as part of the Grant Scheme for Multi-Year Architecture, Design and E-Culture Programs of the Creative Industries Fund NL (SCI).

Strategic alliances
As part of its multiyear policy plan 2017-2020, Towards a Resilient City, the IABR has entered into two action-oriented collaboration agreements.
One is with the Special Envoy for International Water Affairs of the Kingdom of The Netherlands (Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management). The aim is to globally explore potentially viable projects for which "water" can be the key to finding integrated and innovative solutions to existing challenges. One focus is on South East Asia where water related problems are most urgent. In partnership with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Global Center of Excellence on Climate Adaptation and 100 Resilient Cities, IABR, the Special Envoy and AWB have initiated the project Water as Leverage for Resilient Cities: Asia. The Special Envoy and the IABR, together with Deltares and the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, have also initiated the World Water Atlas.
The second agreement is with Resilient Rotterdam (Department of Urban Development, City of Rotterdam), resulting in the IABR–Atelier Rotterdam 2017 - 2020, in which a second active partner is the Port Authority of Rotterdam.

The International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) was founded in 2001 on the conviction that architecture and especially urban planning are of great social importance. Since 2004, when George Brugmans became its director, the IABR therefore mainly focuses on the future of the city where, in a couple of decades, nearly 80 percent of the world’s population will produce more than 90 percent of our wealth—and this will have to be done sustainably.

In its multiyear policy plan 2017-2020: Towards a Resilient City, the IABR expressly places the future of the city in the context of climate change and increasing social inequality. In any way it can, the IABR wants to contribute to the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations and the achievement of the objectives set out in the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. That means well-designed, socially inclusive, resilient cities are of key importance. We can only solve the climate problems if we solve them in the cities first. And to achieve this, good design is crucial.

Objective
The IABR is a knowledge institute as well as a cultural platform and its main objective is to generate real world change, using the power of imagination and design as its main instrument.
How does the IABR do this? By bringing together key disciplines and sectors to carry out result-oriented research by design into the city of tomorrow, both in the Netherlands and abroad. By adding value to policy making and decision making and by influencing the social agenda. By bringing the results – knowledge, plans and projects – extensively into the limelight in an international setting once every two years. And, last but not least, by actively contributing to the realization of these results and actually ‘making city’.

The two most important tools the IABR uses to achieve its objectives are the IABR–Ateliers and the Biennale itself.

Ongoing research in IABR–Ateliers
An IABR–Atelier is a long-term research by design project that is always established in collaboration with governments and other stakeholders to work towards concrete, applicable solutions to existing problems. An Atelier uniquely enables involved governments to carry out actual research by design, to bring in extra quality, to explore new ideas and unexpected options, to test and to try, to learn and to exchange knowledge in a free and international setting and concretely take their challenges to the next level.
To achieve this, the IABR has developed a sustainable and open methodology. Every edition, it looks for a new position and a new perspective, but it always builds on what was learned and developed in previous editions. Knowledge and results add up in a continuous research trajectory to ensure that each Atelier can stand on the shoulders of a previous Atelier.
In recent years the IABR produced successful Ateliers in the Netherlands (on Texel, in Brabant and Groningen, Utrecht and Rotterdam, and together with the central government, businesses and environmental organizations in the North Sea) and abroad (in São Paulo, Istanbul, Brussels and Albania).

Bridging the gap between research and action
Cities have to explore the road to a sustainable future together. Even if they can rarely take over each other’s solutions one-on-one, it is imperative that they know how to learn from each other and exchange experiences as resourcefully as they can.
The Biennale is one place where this can happen, and where research and researchers, design and designers, administrators and policymakers, doers and thinkers, performers and customers, builders and citizens, the Dutch and foreigners, and professionals and their audiences meet.
The first two editions, Mobility (2003) and The Flood (2005) have put the IABR on the map internationally, profiling it as a manifestation focusing on the future of our cities. The editions Power (2007), Open City (2009) and Making City (2012) have explored ongoing rapid urbanization and its consequences, while staking out a position for urban design and making a case for how it can tangibly contribute.
The 6th and 7th editions have taken this agenda one step further. The need to design our future habitat in terms of a sustainable balance between demographic, ecological and economic concerns, between people, planet and profit, have given direction to IABR–2014–URBAN BY NATURE and IABR–2016–THE NEXT ECONOMY.

Now, rather than a goal in itself, the Biennale is a means: an international podium for the transfer of knowledge among designers, among cities, among governments, and among professionals and the general public to bridge the gap between research and action, between imagination and realization.
Instruments the IABR uses to that end include exhibitions, conferences, films, books, lectures, debates, workshops, and master classes that together comprise the Biennale program.
Using the free cultural space this way – coupling research by design to public presentations in a work process that is always insisting on concrete application – makes the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam unique in the world.

IABR-

IABR–2018+2020–THE MISSING LINK

IABR–Atelier Rotterdam

Energy Transition as leverage for socially inclusive city making

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IABR–2018+2020–The Missing Link

catalog 8th edition IABR (2018)

Main Partners and Strategic Alliances

Mission Statement

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