2024 - 11th edition

NATURE OF HOPE

29 juni – 13 oktober 2024

Nieuwe Instituut, Museumpark 25, Rotterdam

The 11th edition of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) with the title Nature of Hope will take place from 29 June to 13 October 2024 and will include an exhibition at the Nieuwe Instituut, a public program and Botanical Monuments, green places in Rotterdam. The theme of this edition, Nature of Hope, focuses on how architecture can restore ecological balance by taking biodiversity and nature as a starting point.

Plan your visit

In addition to the exhibition at the Nieuwe Instituut, it includes an extensive Public Program and a green network through Rotterdam to visit its so-called Botanical Monuments. Through a series of events, lectures, workshops, excursions and other activities, Nature of Hope’s Public Program of connects to various forms of existing knowledge and the practices that are transforming the very nature of the design disciplines. Some of these will take place in the Practice Place, where we invite the architectural community in the broadest sense to come together around transforming practice. Keep an eye on the agenda for the full program.

Nature of Hope will focus on a combination of hope and nature. This choice stems from the recognition that everything begins with the Earth and that our exploitation – or rather, depletion – of the Earth, each other, and the living world is leading to multiple ecological and social crises. As humans, we can no longer place ourselves above or at a distance from nature and nor do we wish to. How can we put the knowledge and practices of spatial design at the service of the planet and all the creatures that live on it?

Curator Team

This year’s biennale edition, themed Nature of Hope, is put forward by IABR Director Saskia van Stein and curated by the IABR 2024: Nature of Hope Curator Team. The team consists of architect and researcher Janna Bystrykh, architect-researcher and philosopher Catherine Koekoek, researcher and writer Hani Salih, spatial designer and researcher Alina Paias, and designer and writer Noortje Weenink. The curator team, whose members come from different backgrounds but share a common basis in spatial design, manifests the change that is already underway.

Saskia van Stein, director of IABR, giving a tour during the opening of the exhibition. Photo: Jacqueline Fuijkschot

Highlights

Nature of Hope Exhibition

Nieuwe Instituut
Museumpark 25
3015CB Rotterdam

The exhibition takes place at the Nieuwe Instituut and shows in over 70 ways how to spark hope, inspiration, and discussion about the ways in which we can all contribute to and positively influence positive change in our environment.

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Botanical Monuments

25 green spots through Rotterdam. Discover all locations on the Botanical Monuments page.

Botanical Monuments is a green route encompassing 25 locations in Rotterdam. Participation in activities or accessing the monuments requires registration. For detailed information on opening hours, tickets, and venue availability, please refer to the online map.

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Curators Nature of Hope 2024

Saskia van Steinn

Saskia van Stein (she/her) is the artistic and managing Director of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR). Currently, Van Stein also holds the position of co-head of department of the MA program The Critical Inquiry Lab at the Design Academy, Eindhoven. Prior to this, she was the artistic and managing Director of Bureau Europa, platform for architecture and design, Maastricht, 2013–2019. Van Stein’s curatorial practice started at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (now Nieuwe Instituut) in Rotterdam, 2002–2012, where her first steps were made by programming exhibitions at the intersection of architecture culture, political and human sciences, design, and fine arts.
Over the span of her career, her deep-seated interest in the discourse surrounding the politics of representation developed into experimentation with different exhibition formats, modes of display, and methods of knowledge production, as well as moderating and participating in numerous discursive events. She has often spearheaded topics and themes, in and outside of the confined walls of the institutional realm of the museum, questioning cultural production and the designed environment itself.
Photo: Sabine van der Vooren
Janna Bystrykh

Janna Bystrykh is an architect and researcher. She is the head of the Master in Architecture program, at the Academy of Architecture Amsterdam, where she is leading the development of a climate curriculum for architecture, and runs her design and research practice BYSTRYKH. Janna Bystrykh has experience with complex urban projects, museum transformations, experimental educational projects and installations. At OMA*AMO she worked on the ‘Elements of Architecture’ exhibition for the 2014 Venice Biennale and on the research and exhibition project Countryside: The Future.
Photo: Sabine van der Vooren
Catherine Koekoek

Catherine Koekoek has a background in architecture and philosophy. She is a PhD candidate in Political Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her dissertation examines how democratic infrastructures – from community centers to the Rotterdams Wijktheater, with which she collaborates – enable democratic coexistence. Together with Veerle Alkemade, Catherine Koekoek produces the feminist architecture podcast Respons.
Photo: Sabine van der Vooren
Hani Salih

Hani Salih works as a researcher, designer, writer, editor, and curator. He works across a range of disciplines and practices, from architecture to systems and policy. Hani Salih is interested in the broader contexts in which social and cultural phenomena take place, and is currently exploring this in his work as a lecturer in Architecture and Design, and as a curator of events and debates at De Dépendance in Rotterdam. He is drawn to the built environment’s potential to facilitate and encourage social change on a micro and macro scale and believes that multidisciplinary thinking is the way forward in a complex and interconnected world.
Photo: Sabine van der Vooren
Alina Paias

Alina Paias works as a designer, researcher, teacher and curator. She uses feminist philosophy, new materialism and philosophy of technology to explore the work, the forms of knowledge and the technologies involved in the production of architecture. She has years of experience as a spatial designer, having worked on projects in Brazil, the United States and the Netherlands.
Photo: Sabine van der Vooren
Noortje Weenink

Noortje Weenink has been working as a junior curator at the IABR since 2021 and is active as a spatial designer, writer, guest lecturer, and climate activist. Together with Irene Feria Prados and Wouter Stroet, Noortje Weenink ran the design studio Queer(ing) Space at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture. In her professional and everyday life, she explores how disruptive practices can be used for social and climate justice. At Studio Ossidiana she worked on the winning Prix de Rome project Amsterdam Allegories.
Photo: Sabine van der Vooren

Team ▶