Practice Place: Towards Bioregional Building?

How do we create conditions for a sustainable and hopeful design practice? IABR 2024 introduces a Practice Place, a meeting space in the exhibition, where we call on the architectural community at large to come together around the transformation of practice.

The Dutch government has committed to a circular economy by 2050. But how does circularity affect our relationship and the origins of materials, building culture, and the landscape? In this meeting we bring together experts who have gained experience with design and construction processes that are part of long-term relationships with local materials, landscapes, and the knowledge embedded in them. We discuss whether and how circularity implies radical re-localization, and what that means for complex urban and rural areas.    

The demand for bioregional building is by definition place-based. This meeting is therefore the starting point of a series of local meetings in regional architecture centers, organized in collaboration with Ministerie van de Toekomst. On July 19, they will conduct a workshop to train attendees in organizing place-based meetings around systemic and local questions. Studio Inscape will spark imagination inspired by their Bioregional Design Game.

Towards Bioregional Building? is part two of a series of seven day-long workshops. It will be documented in a living archive in the exhibition, inspire a podcast series in collaboration with The Architect, and ultimately lead to a New Narrative for Architecture and Urbanism (NNAU) that will be festively presented on the closing weekend of the biennial.

The spoken language is Dutch.

The event is free, but registration is required.

Practice Place logo. Image: Studio Le Roy Cleeremans