IABR-

◂IABR–2020–DOWN TO EARTH /

OPEN CALL

Water as Leverage

Water as Leverage Asia

© Cynthia van Elk

Sarah Ichioka, the IABR–2020–Curator for Water as Leverage, and the IABR invite the submission of best strategies and practices in response to the Open Call: Water as Leverage.
Prospective participants –including designers, architects, academics, artists, planners, activists, cities, universities, companies, and social organizations– are invited to respond to this Open Call, and submit their applications by November 1, 2019.

The Open Call can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.

We look forward to receive concrete design proposals, preferably developed in productive collaboration with local, regional, and national stakeholders. The final result of the Open Call –best practices and strategies from around the world– will be presented alongside other main content elements in Flows (working title), the main exhibition of IABR–2020 to be presented in the Keilezaal, located in Rotterdam's dynamic Merwe-Vierhavens district.

DOWN TO EARTH
IABR–2020–DOWN TO EARTH starts from the premise that we are facing the deepest crisis in human memory. We must urgently rethink the ways we inhabit the Earth, through real climate action, a new political orientation, and integrated planning. This is a design challenge entwined in a political struggle and the opportunity for cultural transformation. We must begin to think of ourselves and our work as a form of political activism, take stock of our capacity for real impact, and remake our disciplines to more purposefully tackle compound global challenges related to the climate crisis.

By showcasing substantive, promising strategies to transform our urban landscapes and living environments, and that stimulate the use of the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in urban development narratives, designs and programs, IABR–2020 aims to foster people’s capacity to act, offer them real prospects for action, and even incite civic activism - the need for which seems more urgent every day.

IABR–2020–DOWN TO EARTH will focus on two major challenges –Water and Energy Transition– as levers for the comprehensive transformation of our urban landscapes, and for devising new ways to inhabit the Earth.
IABR–2020 opens in the first week of September 2020 (exact dates to be announced). The Water as Leverage exhibition will take place in the Keilezaal, centrally located in the IABR–Test Site M4H+ area, and will be open to the public until well in December.

Artist impression Keilezaal

image: GroupA


Please download and read the complete Open Call document carefully.
When you want to submit your project, please click here to go to the Application Form.

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IABR–2020–DOWN TO EARTH

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?

From Missing Link to Down to Earth
IABR–2020–DOWN TO EARTH is the sequel to IABR–2018–THE MISSING LINK, with which it forms a diptych. DOWN TO EARTH explores whether we can address the missing link which we identified and investigated in 2018, and do so very concretely, by employing urgent challenges as a lever for the comprehensive transformation of our urban landscapes and societies.

Water and Energy Transition
The two that we have chosen are water and energy transition-related challenges. How can designers tackle water issues - too much, too little, too polluted - in such a way that they become also the starting point for working on resilient cities? (How) can designers help realize the energy transition so that we can simultaneously use it as a lever for socially inclusive urban planning? How can design driven responses to water and energy transition-related challenges help us to develop new approaches to inhabit the earth, in a much more balanced way, one that helps us realize the Sustainable Developments Goals?

Curator Team
To address this issue, how to take action now, from the global level to that of the urban district, a new Curator Team has been appointed.
Sarah Ichioka was appointed Curator for Water as Leverage, and Thijs van Spaandonk Curator for Energy Transition as Leverage.
They will work closely together with co-curators who will operate in and from the perspective of the two sites where IABR–2020 will take place: the adjacent districts M4H and BoTu. Robbert de Vrieze is co-curator in and on behalf of the Bospolder-Tussendijken, while Rianne Makkink and Jurgen Bey will operate in the M4H-area.
As in 2012 (5th IABR - Making City) George Brugmans will chair the curator team.

M4H + BoTu
The most important locations of IABR–2020 are the Merwe-Vierhavens area (M4H), a city harbor that is a breeding ground for the new circular economy, and Bospolder-Tussendijken (BoTu), a socioeconomically vulnerable and culturally very diverse Rotterdam district. M4H + BoTu: two adjacent areas we jointly named Test Site M4H+ during the previous biennale. Together, they are representative of the many challenges facing not only the city of Rotterdam but also many other cities. The water challenge and energy transition play a part here, but here we can also explore the new circular economy, the housing challenge, accessibility, and social inequality. Here, the poor and unemployed live alongside start-ups and enterprising artists. Old and new meet, city and port, rich and poor, local and global.
M4H+BoTu is an exemplary Test Site for the transition: challenges and approaches come together in the now and how, and in a very provoking manner as well. It is an ideal location for the IABR, in and also after 2020.

The New Normal?
Family in flood water, Semarang, Indonesia

© Beit Emmett

Action
IABR–2020 will take place in the autumn of 2020, from the first week of September until well in December. This we can connect to the Global Climate Adaptation Action Summit in October 2020, that will be hosted by The Netherlands, with much of the program happening in Rotterdam - all explorations of how to take action, in Rotterdam, in The Netherlands, and in the World.
In our own research, the focus in 2018 was on the Delta of the Low Countries, where we initiated new IABR–Ateliers, partnerships between the IABR and various provinces and municipalities in the Netherlands and this time also in Belgium. In 2020, the focus will no longer be solely on our own delta, but again on the entire world - building on, for example, on the Water as Leverage/Asia practice, spearheaded by Henk Ovink, and that IABR co-initiated.

The IABR has fully committed itself to contribute to the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations and of the objectives stated in the Paris Climate Agreement.
The IABR is a research and development institute as well as an international cultural platform. Therefore, contribute we can with the tools that we have: research by design, the power of the imagination and the potency of design.

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◂IABR–2020–DOWN TO EARTH /

Curator Team IABR–2020–DOWN TO EARTH

The DOWN TO EARTH Curator Team consists of Sarah Ichioka, Curator Water as Leverage; Thijs van Spaandonk, curator Energy Transition as Leverage; Robbert de Vrieze, Co-Curator Energy Transition as Leverage in Bospolder-Tussendijken; and Rianne Makkink en Jurgen Bey as Co-Curators Water as Leverage for the Test Site M4H+.
The Curator Team is chaired by George Brugmans, president of the IABR.

Curator Team IABR–2020–DOWN TO EARTH

from the left: Robbert de Vrieze, Jurgen Bey, Rianne Makkink, George Brugmans, Sarah Ichioka, Thijs van Spaandonk

picture: Fred Ernst

Convince and inspire
The curators want to present well-designed, well-substantiated and promising strategies and best practices in the fields of water management and energy transitions: convincing projects that demonstrate how we can comprehensively transform the challenges our urban landscapes and living environments offer; inspiring examples that stimulate the targeted realization of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by telling the story of urban development from a new perspective, thus enhancing people’s ability to act – by offering them real perspectives, which – if needs be, and that increasingly seems to be the case – even encourage concrete social activism.
DOWN TO EARTH: where can we land; 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?

Public correspondence
The questions and issues that IABR–2020 puts on the agenda and with which the Curator Team will be grappling in the coming year, are, to say the least, complex. The curators therefore opt for an open conversation - with each other, with partners and with prospective participants - and, as yet, do not want to publish an authoritative Curator Statement. They have chosen to formulate the agenda for IABR–2020–DOWN TO EARTH step by step, partly in response to each other and partly on the basis of growing insight, in the form of an exchange of letters. Their mutual correspondence is public and every subsequent letter can always be downloaded from this website.

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◂IABR–2020–DOWN TO EARTH / IABR–Test Site M4H+ /

Test Site M4H+ and IABR–2020

Rianne Makkink and Jurgen Bey co-curators

For the Test Site M4H+, the IABR-Atelier Rotterdam carried out research in 2018 into what a "circular area development" is or can mean for the area, and what conditions and coalitions are needed to get this going. The research, What Do You Need?, conducted by Team1010, provides insight into promising flows, in involved parties and companies, and into the missing links that must be addressed for a circular future of M4H. The IABR also proposed guiding principles for a sustainable transition, which were translated and integrated into the Spatial Framework that was approved by the Municipality of Rotterdam and the Port Authority in early 2019.

One of eight guiding principles for sustainable area development as advanced by Team1010 / IABR–Atelier Rotterdam

What's next?
The M4H Program Office (PBM4H) has witnessed strong interest among companies and knowledge institutions to develop M4H effectively as a testing ground for the next economy. Parties see M4H as a learning environment, a research object and a subject for debate. Some are already active in the area, such as the Keilecollectief and Studio Makkink & Bey. Many connections are made, but always the question arises: how does M4H really become a learning environment? How do you develop, care for and disseminate existing and new knowledge and skills, and how do you use them specifically for the development of the area itself, how do you involve relevant parties, and how do you get to concrete action?
PBM4H finds that there is currently a specific need for a connector, for a platform that connects programmatically, signals themes and/or challenges, and activates knowledge development based on these observations. What PBM4H deems necessary is an independent platform with a proven trackrecord when it comes to connecting different stakeholders, knowledge and research results, that knows how to put assignments on the agenda of officials and administrators, private parties and communities in situ, and how to commit parties to the results and their implementation.

IABR moves to the Keilepand
IABR, naturally, remains enthusiastic about the possibilities that the Test Site M4H+ offers, now and in the longer term. And it decided to walk the talk, in 2020 it will move its offices to the Keilepand, centrally located in M4H.

Keilepand

picture: Frank Hanswijk


The area offers challenges that fit in perfectly with the ambition of the IABR to work concretely and locally, in Rotterdam, while productively combining its mission with its functions as an international platform and as a research & development institution.
As a research platform, IABR is keen to continue a multi-year process in and with all parties in the M4H area and to keep it going while "learning to area-develop by doing": i.e. advance a practice of result-oriented area development in a learning environment. This relates directly to one of the key questions that IABR–2020 asks: can we, as city-makers, think carefully about how we do it and for whom we do it, while we're actually doing it?
Rianne Makkink and Jurgen Bey

picture: Fred Ernst

IABR–2020–Co-Curators M4H+
It is therefore in close consultation with PBM4H that IABR has appointed Rianne Makkink and Jurgen Bey (Studio Makkink & Bey) as IABR–2020–Co-Curators Water as Leverage with a specific brief for the Test Site M4H+. They are to advance the platform referred to above and present the results at IABR–2020. The central question they will explore is how to move from knowledge development to concrete action, how to make M4H a truly interactive learning environment, where the development, preservation and dissemination of expertise can be utilized for the actual development of the area.
The guiding principles from the Spatial Framework, developed by the IABR-Atelier Rotterdam, will serve as a point of reference when Makkink and Bey, of course in close collaboration with the other curators of IABR–2020, the IABR, PBM4H and key players in the area, will explore and visualize what future for M4H we can want.

Test Site M4H+ is a collaboration of IABR, PBM4H, the City of Rotterdam and the Rotterdam Port Authority.

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IABR–Atelier Dordrecht

Water safety as leverage for sustainable urban development

Dordrecht is not just a city, it’s also an island. And due to its location in a transition area between the sea and major rivers, theIsland of Dordrecht is extremely vulnerable to flooding. Wisely, the city of Dordrecht is always looking to improve the measures that protect it from the water.After all, its water safety strategy has to take into account the unlikely possibility of dikes breaking and the city flooding. As it stands, if there’s a flood the people who are not able to leave the city on time are advised to take refuge in their attics.
But the higher-situated district De Staart, which lies outside the dikes, may provide a better and safer alternative – if it is converted into a large-scale temporary shelter.
What is the best way to set up De Staart to function as a safe haven in the event of flooding? And how can the city use the resources this takes as sensibly as possible? Not just for the exception, but also for other problems Dordrecht needs to solve?
De Staart in Dordrecht
In IABR–Atelier Dordrecht, the IABR and the city of Dordrecht examine ways to use water safety as a leverage for a new and widely supported sustainable urban development strategy. They look for possibilities to turn De Staart into a safe haven in case Dordrecht needs one, as well as a location in which both (part of) the city’s housing challenge is met and truly sustainable urban development is realized in the best possible manner.

Adriaan Geuze

© Ed Lonnee

The Atelier is led by landscape designer Adriaan Geuze (West 8 Urban Design & Landscape Architecture), who curated the second IABR, The Flood, in 2005. Geuze was born in Dordrecht.

Vulnerable
Because the island of Dordrecht is vulnerable to flooding, the authorities have been working on the development of a so-called ‘multilayer safety strategy’ for many years. This may also involve evacuation in the event of extreme storms, which can only be predicted a short time in advance. In the worst-case scenario, it is estimated that only 20,000 of Dordrecht’s 120,000 inhabitants will be able to flee the island on time. The people left behind in the flooded area are advised to take refuge on the upper floors of buildings, which the safety strategy calls ‘vertical evacuation’. But it is hard for that many people to survive in the city’s attics for any serious amount of time and evacuating them from the tops of buildings is also relatively complicated.

Evacuation to Areas Outside the Dikes
Fortunately, there is a possible alternative – one that involves better conditions that reduce the risk of casualties – and that is to evacuate people to higher ground outside the dikes. De Staart, the district east of Dordrecht’s historical city center, between the Wantij waterwayand the Beneden-MerwedeRiver, meets these conditions. And because the area is easily accessible from the water, it is ideal for the next step of the evacuation: getting people to safety at other locations in the country. However, this alternative has not yet been sufficiently researched. It is as yet unknown how many people De Staart can accommodate. And people are not eager to evacuate to areas outside the dike, either: intuitively, it feels unsafe – running towards the water rather than away from it.

Connection with Other Challenges
Due to its location, De Staart is eminently suitable as a large-scale shelter in the event of flooding. But it’s a complicated area. Half of De Staart is currently residential – a socially vulnerable residential area partly located on a former illegal dump – and the other half is an industrial zone, with many chemical companies. There is a waste incineration plant that supplies heat to the heat network, a water company, a major reservoir and a penitentiary. And this in a unique location, between two rivers, near the historical city center and with national park De Biesbosch just around the corner.
Therefore, anyone that considers the future setup of De Staart cannot but wonder about the future prospects of this unique but complex area. And this is best done against the background of the major housing challenge Dordrecht faces – space for at least 6,000 more homes must be found within the existing city – and the need to create new jobs in manufacturing industry as well as room for all of the interventions needed for the energy transition. Only looking at all of this in conjunction will allow us to get to grips with the real challenge.

Water Safety as Leverage
The IABR–Atelier Dordrecht investigates how to set up De Staart as a safe, self-sufficient shelter to use in the event of imminent flooding, in such a way that the approach can serve as leverage for the initiation of truly sustainable urban development that will help to meet the housing challenge the city faces, that will make room for the next economy after the energy transition, that will ensure good accessibility, and that will reconnect the city of Dordrecht with water and nature.

The IABR–Atelier Dordrecht is a collaboration of the IABR and the city of Dordrecht. The lead designer is Adriaan Geuze ((West 8 Urban Design & Landscape Architecture).

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IABR–Atelier Rotterdam

Energy Transition as leverage for socially inclusive city making

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 as a lever - a means to work on an attractive future and a resilient and inclusive Rotterdam.

Bospolder - Tussendijken

picture: Frank Hanswijk

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. With this approach, the energy transition helps us to realize various Sustainable Development Goals.

Experiment, Test, Develop
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?
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 Atelier has focused on the development of new building typologies for the energy transition, the results of which were presented at IABR–2018. At the district level the Energy District concept is tested, while Test Site M4H+ highlights 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 are now working on further developing the "energy district"–concept, specifically in the Bospolder-Tussendijken district. In 2019 and 2020 the focus is on advancing a Local Energy Action Plan. The results will be presented at IABR–2020, when Bospolder-Tussendijken itself will become a biennale exhibition. After which –and this is what the two clients, the Municipality of Rotterdam and the IABR, have committed to– these results will be implemented.

The IABR–Atelier Rotterdam is a collaboration of the two clients, the IABR and the Municipality of Rotterdam (Department of Urban Planning Department and Resilient Rotterdam). At the Test Site M4H+, the Port of Rotterdam Authority has joined this collaboration.

Energy Transition as Leverage for Socially-Inclusive City Making is, after The Urban Metabolism and The Productive City, the third research project of Atelier Rotterdam.

The Energy Transition as Leverage research process is led by Joachim Declerck (AWB). Research by design commissions have been given to Civic, Team1010 (1010au, Mariska Vogel and Ronald Van Der Heijden), Posad Maxwan, Energiewijk BoTu (Transformers, Beekhuizen Bindt, Eliza Works and Steps2Inspiration) and OOZE Architects and Urbanists.

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◂IABR–2018–THE MISSING LINK /

Main Partners and Strategic Alliances

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 on 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 other active partners are the Port Authority of Rotterdam, Delfshaven Cooperation and others.

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