IABR

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

Sustainable Development Goals
With its next two editions in 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 will once again focus 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. 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 will present a five-week exhibition in the HAKA Building that presents 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?

We won’t we stopped
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. And 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.

Join us!
During the biennale the IABR and its many partners present an extensive program of events in the HAKA Building and the surrounding M4H district. We are closed on Mondays, but there is something to see or do at the biennale on every day of the week.
Join us! 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 event agenda: click here

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

June, 2018

1

Jun

-

8

Jul

IABR–2018+2020–THE MISSING LINK

10:00 - 17:00

1

Jun

Water School

14:00 - 19:00

2

Jun

-

8

Jul

Smog Free Project

00:00 - 23:59

5

Jun

High Noon #01

12:30 - 14:00

5

Jun

Who Cares

19:00 - 21:30

7

Jun

Resilient Cities and Energy Transition

12:00 - 18:30

7

Jun

Aankeilen! Waste/Recycle

14:00 - 17:00

7

Jun

Aankeilen! Waste/Recycle

19:30 - 21:30

8

Jun

Resilient Cities and Energy Transition

09:00 - 17:30

8

Jun

Water School

14:00 - 19:00

View full program ▸▸▸︎

De 8^th edition of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, IABR–2018+2020–THE MISSING LINK, is open from Friday June 1 until Sunday July 8, 2018, and takes place in the HAKA Building and the surrounding M4H District.

CENTRAL LOCATION
HAKA Building
Vierhavensstraat 38
3029 BE Rotterdam

for directions, click here

OPENING HOURS
Tuesday through Sunday: 10 am – 5 pm
Closed on Mondays

ADMISSION FEES*
Regular ticket € 7,50
Passe-partout € 25 (unlimited access)
Children up to 16 years old free
Rotterdampas € 3,75

You can buy your ticket at the box office, or on line, click here

* All IABR tickets automatically provide access to program activities in the HAKA Building that happen on the same day, but only if open to the public, and if you have registered in advance or if seats are still available. You can register for each event directly in the agenda

Note that the Dutch Museum Card, the ICOM Card and other museum discount cards are not valid for this exhibition

JOIN US!
Get involved in the discussion about the sustainable future of cities and join us on:
Twitter: @IABR
Instagram: @IABR_2018_2020

#deletefacebook

Location

HAKA-building

The first part of the biennale diptych IABR–2018+2020–THE MISSING LINK is a work biennale focused on research and exchange, on development, presentation and debate, aimed at setting out research lines. That is why the entire ground floor of the HAKA Building accommodates work spaces, with the exhibition on the floor above. This is where the theme of The Missing Link will be addressed. Central questions are: How can designers respond effectively to human-made climate change? What is keeping us from taking action, what is the missing link? Can we raise sufficient social support to ensure that change will actually and swiftly start to happen by designing the necessary transition appealingly and convincingly? How can we design the future in terms of social benefits, rather than imminent loss? And what distinctive role can designers play?

The Missing Link is an exhibition looking for the essential connections that will allow us to design the necessary transformation irresistibly and convincingly and to present prospects of changes that can actually and promptly be realized. A quest for acceleration that also motivates the program, work sessions, lectures and debates.
‘Work in progress,’ therefore: demonstrating what we do today and will be doing in the coming years, showing the starting points and research questions of our quest for ways to address the missing link. The results will be on show during the next edition, in 2020.

More on The Missing Link: the exhibition ▸▸▸

From 1 June until 8 July, the IABR and its partners will present an extensive program in the HAKA Building and the surrounding M4H District that includes debates, work sessions, lectures, workshops, conferences, presentations, bicycle tours, and guided tours. Main themes are the energy transition, the relationship between spatial design and social problems, and the challenges faced by the Rotterdam M4H District and those of the Delta of the Low Lands.

A selection from the program

High Noon
Every Tuesday to Friday at 12:30 p.m., High Noon will discuss question such as: What has to change? and: What can we change? with the audience. Guest speakers include special Envoy for International Water Affairs Henk Ovink, Dutch Government Advisor for the Physical Living Environment Daan Zandbelt and Dutch Government Advisor for the Landscape Berno Strootman, and former IABR curator and expert par excellence in the field of energy and space Dirk Sijmons.
Partly, the program will be developed on the go, so do regularly check our agenda for updates.

Atelier Government Architect
During the biennale, the Atelier Government Architect will host five sessions in which Dutch Government Architect and IABR curator Floris Alkemade will explicitly interact with the audience. Together with invited speakers, he will introduce themes such as care, food production, refugee relief, the next generation, and always the design challenges that arose after the economic crisis. The Atelier will also introduce its latest, The Missing Link inspired program, Here Comes the Sun

Resilient Rotterdam and the Energy Transition
Together with Resilient Rotterdam (Department of Urban Development), the IABR will organize a two-day international conference, Resilient Cities and the Energy Transition. The City of Rotterdam will report back on the progress it has made with its first resilience strategy, which was launched during the previous biennale in 2016. And the IABR will give a presentation on the progress of the IABR–Atelier Rotterdam. The City and the IABR will subsequently explore the roadmap towards a resilient Rotterdam.

Test Site M4H+: the Merwe-Vierhavens District as a Testing Ground
Under the auspices of the IABR–Atelier Rotterdam, the City and Port of Rotterdam and the IABR have established Test Site M4H+, in which the city harbor M4H and the surrounding neighborhoods serve as a testing ground to explore ways to use the energy transition to help launch a much broader transformation that also involves generating social benefits.
The agenda of the IABR–Atelier Rotterdam steers the program of three consecutive Fridays. On the table will be issues like, amongst others, the future development of the Bospolder-Tussendijken quarter, the first quarter in Rotterdam where the Atelier actively explores the concept of the Energy Quarter.
Regularly check our agenda for updates of the program.

Test Site M4H+: the Merwe-Vierhavens District as a Showcase
The IABR asked a number of parties that have been active in the district for quite some time to put together a program on the occasion of the biennale.

Studio Makkink & Bey presents the Water School, welcoming visitors at its Marconistraat studio on six Fridays. The Water School, the prototype of a new kind of school currently under development, takes the form of a work exhibition and a temporary knowledge center. The Studio uses the biennale as a platform to propel plans for the school to the next level.
Read more here.

Every Thursday in June, the five design offices united in the Keile Collective will seize the opportunity provided by the IABR agenda to organize field trips, workshops, and lectures about and by businesses and entrepreneurs in the area, which link issues such as waste, energy, water and food, and circular area development to the themes of the IABR.
Read more here.

Throughout the biennale, Studio Roosegaarde, based in the M4H District, presents the Smog Free Project, a series of innovations by Daan Roosegaarde that reduce pollution and offer an experience that provides inspiration for a clean future at the same time.

Prospects for Action in the Delta
For the more than 40 practices united in the Delta Atelier, the 2018 work biennale is the springboard for the joint research and work trajectory that runs until 2020. In eight work sessions – grouped on the basis of different transition leaps as defined by the curators – and in other meetings, some open to the general public, some closed, we will work towards a large joint work conference to be held at the end of the biennale that will present the agenda for the three-year research trajectory that will culminate in the next edition, IABR–2020.

Towards Energetic Living
In a series of three Tuesday evening public access lectures and debates at the interface of architecture, energy transition and living environment, the Architecture Institute Rotterdam (AIR) will translate the energy challenge to the context of the built environment, the biggest end user of energy and an important work area of the energy transition. In Rotterdam the subject of an energetic cultural change has hardly come up at all. How can the city not only ensure that it realizes future housing challenges it faces in an energy-neutral way, but also that the existing city takes part in the energy transition? How can neighborhoods and districts make both a qualitative leap and an energy leap, and make them in time?

And more
In addition, every Saturday one of the curators will host a guided tour of the exhibition, the IABR–Atelier East Flanders Core Region will give a presentation, there is a comprehensive program on the Saturday of the opening weekend, there are Wunderkammer-performances, bike tours through the M4H + district, public discussions with design offices, a special program developed by the Creative Industries Fund NL, and much more.
What is a given though is that the program will not be complete until the work biennale closes.
Regularly check our agenda for updates of the program or subscribe to our newsletter.

Program Credits

curators
Floris Alkemade
Leo Van Broeck
George Brugmans
Joachim Declerck

program and sites project development
Manon van den Bliek, Marieke Francke

assistants to the curators
Simone Huijbregts, Cato Joris, Julie Mabilde, Hanne Mangelschots, Gijs Frieling, Tania Hertveld, Cateau Robberechts, Bas Vereecken

project manager
Lisette Schmetz

production and planning
Anne van Summeren, Levar Matroos

graphic design
Studio de Ronners

marketing and communication
Bonnie Kirkels, Nadine Hofman

copy editing and translations
InOtherWords translation & editing
D’Laine Camp, Gerda ten Cate, Maria van Tol

More on The Missing Link: the program ▸▸▸

You Are Here is the Brussels program of exhibitions, urban debates and work sessions as part of ABR–2018+2020–THE MISSING LINK. Starting on June 2, the Brussels World Trade Center and its vacant shopping center will be transformed into a platform and workspace. You Are Here will provide space and time to administrations, companies, citizens, community initiatives and others. And offer inspiration by and support from designers and experts, when working on the greatest challenge of our time: how do we change the way we live, work and move from place to place so that we can genuinely realize the climate targets?
Via exhibitions, public debates and working sessions we will embark on a quest for effective breakthroughs and specific spatial transformations. The WTC will become the test site and open workspace for the future of the Noordwijk, the city, the Delta of the Low Countries and by extension, the world. The WTC as a World Transformation Center that helps translate the ambitious goals into actual changes on the ground: This is where the future becomes realistic.

Three exhibitions
The ambition to make room for the future is translated into the organization of the exhibitions and the related program.
On the first floor, visitors enter The Future is Not Realistic, to be immersed, in the double-height lobby of a former bank, in a sound installation that makes The Missing Link palpable and tangible.
A second exhibition, The Future is a Practice, presents twenty distinct projects by designers, thinkers and doers from the Netherlands and Belgium. Together they demonstrate that today we already possess insights and methods to take one step further on the road towards realizing ambitious goals for the future through actual transformations of cities and landscapes. By bringing them together in one space this exhibition illustrates the joint insights and power of these spatial practices. They make the future conceivable: something that is no longer unknown, but something we can yearn for.
This power and longing are necessary preconditions for conceiving effective solutions. They drive the program presented on the 23rd floor, where the ‘workspace’ is situated. Against the backdrop of a breathtaking panoramic view of Brussels, The Future is Here makes space, literally and figuratively, for fifteen specific social change projects from Brussels, Flanders and the Delta of the Low Countries. Starting on June 2, this is where steps towards actual transformations will be advanced and visualized, together with over 400 actors, for the latter to subsequently continue on the path to achieve their goal, back at their own location.
This is where the future becomes realistic.

Your Are Here
June 2 – July 8
open from Wednesday through Sunday from 1 till 6 pm, and on Thursday from 1 till 9 pm

WTC I
Koning Albert II-laan 28-30
1000 Brussels

www.youarehere.brussels

Location

World Trade Center

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

PRE-ORDER!
IABR–2018+2020–THE MISSING LINK will be published on June 1, 2018.
Pre-order your copy before June 1, and pay €12,50 instead of €15 (postage and handling excluded).
Please note that when you pre-order the catalog you cannot order any other item in or webshop.
Pre-order your copy here

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

Would you like to work for a main event in an inspiring location, the 8^th edition of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam in the HAKA-building in the Merwe-Vierhavens (M4H) District? Are you available between 1 June until 8 July? Then you may be the person we are looking for!

Whether you are a student or working part-time, retired or only occasionally available, and for a few hours at a time; and when you are interested in architecture and culture, want to learn more about climate change and urban planning, wish to gain experience working for a cultural institution, expand your creative network or learn more about urban development: sign up now as a volunteer for the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam!

Who are you?
- helpful, representative and flexible
- interested in architecture and the future of cities
- available between 30 May and 8 July 2018
- fluent in Dutch and English
- at least 17 years old

We are you looking for volunteers who want to:
- host various events and welcome visitors and partners
- work in our ticket office and bookshop
- assist exposition attendants
- assist catering staff

What do we offer?
- an inspiring work environment where you can easily meet other people
- work experience in the fields of architecture and culture
- the opportunity to attend lectures, debates and guided tours
- a volunteer’s allowance
- a lunch on workdays and dinner when working at night
- a free copy of the biennale catalog

If you want to join the IABR-team please send us an email with a short motivation and your resume to volunteers@iabr.nl and we will reply as soon as possible – we also will if you first want to know more.

On 7 and 8 June 2018, the IABR and Resilient Rotterdam will host the international conference Resilient Cities and the Energy Transition. Under the auspices of IABR–2018+2020–THE MISSING LINK, the city and the biennale bring together policymakers, urban developers, designers, entrepreneurs, experts, and others with experience in the field, from Rotterdam and the rest of the world, to exchange knowledge and together look for new possible solutions and their implementation. Towards a resilient future!

mayor Aboutaleb launches first resilience strategy Rotterdam (2016)

^{© Roel Dijkstra}

7 June: Resilience Strategy Rotterdam
Day 1 of the conference centers on the city’s Resilience Strategy in its broadest sense. In May 2016, Rotterdam was the first Dutch city to launch a Resilience Strategy, on the platform of the IABR–2016. On 7 June we’ll focus on the issues governments, entrepreneurs, designers, engineers, and students face as they work towards the resilience of their cities.

7 June: Program
Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb will open the event at 2 p.m. Subsequently, Arnoud Molenaar (Chief Resilience Officer) and Joachim Declerck (Lead Designer IABR–Atelier Rotterdam and member of the curator team IABR–2018+2020) will give lectures. Afterwards, visitors have the opportunity to join a breakout session of their choice. For more information and to register, please click here.

Joachim Declerck’s lecture will give a sneak preview of the interim results of the IABR–Atelier Rotterdam: The Energy Transition as an Inclusive Urban Project. The second day of the conference, Friday 8 June, is entirely dedicated to the most important question the Atelier raises: How can we use the energy transition as leverage to create more resilient cities?

8 June: The Energy Transition as Leverage for Resilient Cities
The translation of the objectives as agreed in Paris into efforts at the national and local level means the real work is now about to begin. The concrete activities that follow from this directly and firmly touch upon people’s daily lives. Local governments, civil society organizations, businesses and citizens are increasingly having their say;articles about the (fresh) questions that accompany every step we take appear in the media almost daily. Common denominator of those questions: How can we bring all activities, policies, and local initiatives in line with the collective objectives, and how can we do this in a way that leads to ecological and social profit? Because it is clear that people are not equally capable of anticipating the forthcoming measures, let alone of taking advantage of them as a matter of course. How can we create a level playing field? And how can we use the interventions related to the energy transition to develop a more inclusive form of urban development at the same time?

We will address these questions on the basis of the research carried out by the IABR–Atelier Rotterdam and try to take steps towards jointly defined possible solutions. Around the world, people have dedicated themselves to this quest for solutions, which vary from integrated strategies to local initiatives at the neighborhood level. But do all of these initiatives, insights, and experiments add up to the radical adaptation and behavioral change we need? What can practices from all over the world learn from each other? And how far along is Rotterdam?

8 June: Program
In the morning, a plenary program includes contributions by George Brugmans (President IABR), Emile Klep (Director of Urban Design for the City of Rotterdam), Floris Alkemade (Dutch Government Architect and member of the Curator Team IABR–2018+2020) and Joachim Declerck (Lead Designer of the IABR–Atelier Rotterdam and member of the curator team IABR–2018+2020). Short pitches by stakeholders who are actively involved in the energy transition will familiarize you with the Rotterdam playing field. A roundtable discussion will broaden the scope of the conversation and examine ways to make the energy transition a lever of socioeconomic development.

In the afternoon, breakout work sessions based on thematic perspectives will center on issues specifically addressed by the IABR–Atelier Rotterdam:
- The energy transition as a lever of the solidary city.
- The energy transition and the circular economy.
- The energy transition and the built environment.

Each session will be kickstarted by showing research by design done by IABR–Atelier Rotterdam, followed by a number of short pitches that broaden the range of perspectives and discussion topics. A moderator will subsequently lead the joint seach for possible solutions: Which seeds have the potential to grow into scalable and replicable solutions?

Chairman: Arie Lengkeek
Language: Dutch.
For more information about the program of June 8, and to register, please click here.

Downloads

8 JUNE PROGRAM (DUTCH)

M4H+ Rotterdam

A global player, the Port of Rotterdam has a special relationship with the City of Rotterdam. Though this relationship has become more fragile in recent decades, the arenas in which the City and the Port come together, the so-called ‘city harbors’, are now of growing importance. After all, this is where smart links between the inevitable transitions in energy and resource use (circular port, circular economy) and the broader socioeconomic development of both residents and businesses in the city can be established.
In Rotterdam, the Port Authority and the City are intertwined in a single (urban) system like conjoined twins. In the city harbors they can explore, design, and test the transition to the future Rotterdam together. One of the city harbors in which port development and urban development come together is the Merwe-Vierhavens district (M4H) where IABR, Port and City have now established the Test Site M4H+.

M4H District

^{Rotterdam M4H}

City and Port in Transition
Formerly a major global fruit transition hub, the Merwe-Vierhavens district is now transforming into a completely new residential and commercial area. M4H is one of the areas highlighted in the City Harbor Program – a program by the City of Rotterdam and the Port of Rotterdam aimed at realizing distinct living and working conditions in the city’s harbor areas in the coming decades.
M4H is in a strategic location: next to vulnerable residential areas, such as the Delfshaven and Bospolder-Tussendijken neighborhoods; in the middle of an economically active port area and yet close to the city center; and opposite the knowledge campus RDM Rotterdam on the other side of the river.
The City and the Port recently launched the Rotterdam Makers District, which includes M4H and the RDM and is expected to become the hub of the innovative manufacturing industry in the Metropolitan Region. And with good reason: the old industrial buildings, the sheer size of M4H, and the fresh dynamics arising there offer many opportunities for the development of new residential and commercial typologies, of innovative maker spaces, of test facilities, and of knowledge platforms. Connecting the area to the surrounding neighborhoods (M4H+) presents an opportunity to create new jobs and to provide the ‘working population of the twenty-first century’ with new expertise and skills. And that is necessary if the goal is an inclusive city with an economy that adds local value to the city and empowers its inhabitants.
As a previous study by IABR–Atelier Rotterdam, The Productive City, already demonstrated, M4H is one example of an area where the gap between high-tech and low-tech, thinking and creating, and living and working can be bridged.

M4H: Makers District

^{foto: Mariska Vogel}

Test Site M4H+: Pilot Project and Showcase
As its proprietors, the City of Rotterdam and the Port of Rotterdam together face the challenge of making this city harbor area future proof. The aim is to generate concrete development principles and pilot projects, and therefore the IABR, the City of Rotterdam, and the Port Authority have established Test Site M4H+ as part of the IABR–Atelier Rotterdam.
Until 2020, the IABR–Atelier Rotterdam will focus on the question of how Rotterdam can use the inevitable energy transition as a lever for socially inclusive urban development to make the city resilient.
While the Atelier takes the energy transition as its starting point, M4H+ takes spatial design and integrality as its premise. There are many challenges in and around the M4H area. Here, the energy transition and social issues inevitably link up with challenges in the fields of circular economy, the (small) manufacturing industry, and food and water management. The transformation of both the M4H area and of the directly surrounding neighborhoods has to be addressed in one single urban project: researching, imagining, designing, and testing with the essential energy transition as leverage and spatial design as the instrument.
In the coming years, the Atelier will design and test plans for circular area development in collaboration with local stakeholders in M4H and in the surrounding neighborhoods. Test Site M4H+ will be a pilot project and showcase for the solutions needed to optimally integrate the space that the old port economy has left behind in what will become the resilient Rotterdam of the future.
In 2018, the IABR will use the HAKA Building, a listed industrial monument in the M4H district, to present its main exhibition and program. During the biennale, the HAKA Building will also be in use as the temporary headquarters of Test Site M4H+.

Test Site M4H+ is a collaboration of the IABR, Rotterdam Makers District, the City of Rotterdam and the Rotterdam Port Authority.
The research by design for Test Site M4H+ is carried out by TEAM 1010, consisting of 1010au, Mariska Vogel en Ronald Van Der Heijden, under the umbralla of the IABR–Atelier Rotterdam.

The main exhibition of the eighth edition of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam will take place from 1 June to 8 July 2018 in the HAKA Building, a national industrial monument in the Merwe-Vierhaven area that is better known as M4H. In that same period the HAKA Building and the surrounding M4H area will host an extensive IABR program including debates, work sessions, lectures, conferences, and guided tours.

HAKA building

From Factory to National Monument
The HAKA Building, designed by architects Mertens and Koeman, was constructed at the beginning of the 1930s on the authority of the Coöperatieve Groothandelsvereniging De Handelskamer (Trade and Commerce Cooperative), which represented the interests of the Rotterdam workers and from which the building takes its name to this day. Strategically positioned at the head of the Keilehaven, the HAKA Building was in use as a factory that up to 1973 included a coffee roasting house, a tea blending and a packaging department as well as offices, a warehouse, and a grain silo.
Like Rotterdam’s other famous industrial monument, the Van Nelle Factory, the HAKA Building was constructed in the style of the New Objectivity. It was also the first building in the Netherlands of which the concrete frame and the exterior walls were poured using a concrete pump. Since 2002 the HAKA Building, with its architectural and cultural-historical, building-technical and innovative value, is both a national monument and recognized as industrial heritage.

HAKA building

New owner Dudok Group has begun planning the redevelopment of the property into an office building; the company intends to retain its industrial and monumental character. Before the renovation starts, the IABR will furnish part of the building as an exhibition space. Since the first part of the double feature IABR–2018+2020 is pre-eminently a work biennale, there will also be work spaces, an auditorium for lectures, debate and conferences, and small presentation rooms. At the HAKAfé, Uit Je Eigen Stad will provide locally produced food and drinks.

M4H
The HAKA Building is clearly a suitable host for the items on the IABR agenda, and this is even truer of the surrounding M4H area. Various players who have been active in the area for quite some time will develop their own programs in keeping with the biennale program. But M4H is literally the work area of the IABR as well.
Up to 2020, IABR–Atelier Rotterdam will focus on the question of how Rotterdam can also use the inevitable energy transition as a lever to realize socially inclusive urban development, to create a resilient city.
Areas that the city and port have to develop together, ‘city harbors’ such as the M4H area, have to play an important part in this – they are the best possible places to explore and invent the future Rotterdam, and the best possible places to create and actually test the spatial design that Rotterdam can want.

M4H, view from the HAKA

^{picture: IABR}

Under the umbrella of Atelier Rotterdam, therefore, the IABR, the city of Rotterdam and the Port Authority have set up Test Site M4H+. M4H is in a strategic location: next to a number of vulnerable residential areas, such as Delfshaven and Bospolder-Tussendijken; still in the middle of an economically active port area and yet close to the city center, while the knowledge campus RDM Rotterdam is right on the other side of the river. This means many challenges integrate in the M4H area. Energy transition and social issues inevitably come together with challenges concerning the circular economy, the (small) manufacturing industry, and food and water management. The transformation of the M4H area and of the immediately surrounding districts is therefore best tackled as a whole – as a single urban project – researching, imagining, designing, and testing, while using the necessary energy transition as a lever. Hence Test Site M4H+, for which the HAKA Building will be the temporary headquarters during the biennale.

Location

HAKA-building

From 2017 until 2020 the IABR will once again realize a number of IABR–Ateliers in collaboration with local and regional governments, in Holland and abroad. In this new series of Ateliers, together with our partners, we will commit even stronger than before to the in-depth development of the joint research process and the concrete implementation of results. The research trajectory is explicitly aimed at real world implementation in the local and/or regional setting. Thus we also hope to make a contribution to the practice of urban development as such.

For a complete list of all IABR–Ateliers and Test Sites since 2008, click here

In the Netherlands the IABR initiates and produces the Ateliers as a lead partner for the Regional and Local Design Dialogue Program, within the framework of the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Action Agenda for Spatial Design 2017–2020.

More on IABR–2018+2020–ATELIERS ▸▸▸

Delta Ecosystem

^{_{source: De Lage Landen 2020 - 2100 (Brussels, 2018)}}

^{© AWB}

The Netherlands and Flanders are both part of the same unique spatial system in the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt delta, a densely urbanized area that plays an important part in the global economy. Here, the transformations and transitions we face today and in coming decades will manifest in their own, specific way, and therefore also require specific spatial strategies.This is why the IABR and Architecture Workroom Brussels, together with the Government Architects of the Netherlands and Flanders, have established the Delta Atelier.

The Delta Atelier aims to develop concrete prospects for action that will both reposition our delta as it faces the climate goals in the Netherlands and Belgium and create a laboratory for other deltas across the world.Knowledge sharing provides governments and local partners with internationally developed insights into the spatial challenges both countries share. While coupling local and regional challenges with replicable instruments that can subsequently be scaled and tested on a national and international level will create new opportunities.

The Delta Atelier is an initiative of IABR and AWB in collaboration with the Dutch Governent Architect and the Flemish Government Architect.

An introduction of the Delta Atelier can be downloaded at the bottom of this page. The list of participants is, for now, only available in Dutch.

Downloads

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.

Research by Design
The IABR has entered into a long-term collaboration with the Belgian organization Architecture Workroom Brussels (AWB). The core ambition is taking research by design to the next level by going beyond merely showcasing the outcomes and by building an insistence on real world application of the outcomes into the research trajectory itself. The work focuses mainly on the Delta of the Low Lands, and therefore IABR and AWB have initiated the Delta Atelier. Key (research) partners involved are the Atelier of the Dutch Government Architect and Team Flemish Government Architect.

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

Program

Visitor Information

location, opening hours and tickets

Location

The Missing Link: the exhibition

the search for acceleration

The Missing Link: the program

The Missing Link: Brussel

Location

IABR–2018+2020–The Missing Link

catalog 8th edition IABR (2018)

Partners

The IABR is looking for volunteers

Resilient Cities and the Energy Transition

Conference

Downloads

Test Site M4H+

City, Port and Biennale join forces in 'city harbor' M4H

HAKA Building Main Location IABR in 2018

Industrial Heritage in Former Harbor Area

Location

IABR–2018+2020–ATELIERS

Delta Atelier

Downloads

Main Partners and Strategic Alliances

Mission Statement

Twitter activity

location, opening hours and tickets

Location

the search for acceleration

Location

catalog 8th edition IABR (2018)

Conference

Related

Downloads

City, Port and Biennale join forces in 'city harbor' M4H

Related

Industrial Heritage in Former Harbor Area

Location

Related

Downloads

Twitter activity