Curatorial Statement

IABR 2018: The Missing Link

The enormous growth of the world population and the way that population behaves and largely organizes itself in cities increasingly test the capacity of our planet. Economic growth is unilaterally based on the cheap depletion of finite resources, covering our biotope with emissions and waste, excessive use of space, and accepting rapidly growing inequality. In the near future, the associated climate change may well lead to a cocktail of ecological disasters, instability, regional conflicts, and migration. No matter how unimaginable it is: if this planet is to remain fit for human habitation, people will have to adapt their way of life.

This insight requires us to make all of the dimensions of our lives more sustainable and adaptable at a fundamental level. With the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement the deceleration of climate change has been ratified as a global priority. But it is important to stay aware of the fact that combating symptoms will not suffice. The use of technological breakthroughs and massive investments in infrastructure alone will not stop global warming. Technology will not save us.

The actual problem surpasses this and is also much more challenging: we need to give up our addictions, our slash-andburn consumerism, and our blind faith in growth, our mortgage on the future. We need a radically different interpretation of ‘value,’ ‘prosperity,’ and ‘future.’ The actual problem affects the roots of our existence. Can we, collectively, deal with this?

Create space, share space

To transform the current system into a truly circular system, we need to radically rethink the use and organization of space. We have to make room, for example, for synergies with natural ecosystems, for new biodiversity, for water, and for the renewable production of energy. The creation of a future tailored to the capacity of the earth is pre-eminently a collective task. In the past decades, individualization and economic freedom of choice were prioritized –’there is no such thing as society,’ as Margaret Thatcher would have it. But we now know that we can no longer ignore the fact that individual and collective interests are closely intertwined. Not yet a self-evident starting point, but a promising one nonetheless.

The necessary fundamental changes require the making of major political and social choices. But they come with a design challenge: to facilitate behavioral change we have to be able to couple social, spatial, and ecological problems at the scale levels of the dwelling, the neighborhood, the city, and the entire planet. Creating space means sharing space.

Longing and Designing for the Future

All around the world, scientists are investigating the causes of climate change and ways to influence this process. Worldwide, citizens, companies, and governments are being persuaded of the need to act. This awareness is promising, but does not guarantee actual change. The many experiments and initiatives do not yet add up to a fundamental turn. They are the exceptions, rather than the rule. And so, at least for now, more ambitious goals in terms of climate, energy, circular economy, and social equality remain out of reach.

Developing and designing an approach to upscale and accelerate the transformation to a truly resilient system is an equally challenging and urgent task. In addition, we cannot ignore the fact that the necessary adjustments will also have a significant impact on our daily lives.

However, it is precisely because the necessary changes are big ones, the positive consequences highly abstract, and the period involved too long, that the urgency of action is insufficiently shared. Rethinking our food and energy production, our water and resource management, and the concrete impact of changed perceptions on solidarity exceed everything that we can or even want to imagine today. This, too, requires the strength of imagination and design. Alternative designs have to portray a new reality that is both realistic and concrete; both appealing and convincing. Develop an approach to upscale and accelerate the necessary change and visualize futures that successfully mobilize the longing for change: these are the most relevant tasks we can formulate for our generation. Instead of merely undergoing these major revolutions, we can take the opportunity to actively transform the future by designing what we ‘can want’. The strength to act exists by the grace of imagination.

The Missing Link

With The Missing Link, the two forthcoming editions of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam center on the development of prospects for action at all scale levels. Adjusting our way of life to the planet’s capacity is essentially a creative process that involves every one of us. The cultural free space of the biennale offers opportunities to think beyond what is described as realistic today. Designers are challenged to imagine this ‘beyond’ together with citizens, policymakers, scientists, and companies – in such a manner that their plans could be implemented. This becomes possible when we not only describe the future in terms of threatening losses, but also in terms of social and ecological returns and of new qualities. The Missing Link paves the way for a wide public debate, for new research by design and for international exchange, and for the further development of knowledge about the link between more sustainability and solidarity, between our current system and the radical change that is necessary, between the multitude of initiatives and the ambitious goals we have set, and between the fear of and the longing for change.

Five complementary trajectories within a single work cycle ending in 2020 focus on making a future that is imaginable, desirable, and possible. They are:

1. Longing for change

IABR–2018+2020 is not about sending messages to an audience of consumers. Citizens are not seen as commissioners of design processes and visitors are not seen as buyers of tickets. The goal is to involve various actors as participants in a process of overall adaptation. Together with those participants, the biennale works on a supported, widely shared narrative about and for the big change. About the longing for change. From the living room to the House of Chambers.

2. Catalyst for change

IABR–2018+2020 builds on previous editions and the research they involved, and it leans, of course, on pioneering (citizen’s) initiatives, policy experiments, investment programs, explorations of the future, and design ateliers around the world. By combining, unlocking, and connecting distributed insights, strategies, and working methods, the IABR explores ways to adjust and contextualize upscaling and acceleration and to realize and facilitate critical mass and breakthroughs.

3. Designing for the future

Architects are invited to imagine the public spaces, neighborhoods, and urban landscapes the big change may bring. By making the potential qualities of places visible, architecture and spatial design can open the door to subjects we can show and discuss. To a future that we can want.

4. Dialogue between spatial design practices

Complementary to facilitating the public debate, the IABR also provides a platform for debate among often very diverse varieties of design practices. While the bulk of designers’ commissions still take place within the frameworks of the prevailing growth model, spatial design is increasingly used to concretize and realize necessary social transitions.

5. Learning-by-doing

Together with local, national, and international partners, the IABR makes room in its own Ateliers for the imagination and acceleration of big, necessary changes, such as those in renewable energy or shared mobility. The Ateliers not only explore what is possible or desirable, but they also develop strategies and form coalitions to implement concrete transformations with a demonstrative and systemic effect.

Double feature: IABR 2018+2020

From 2017 to 2020, the IABR is fully dedicated to the design and implementation of a fundamental adaptation that is as unimaginable as it is inevitable. This is why the IABR will begin a discussion with professionals as well as the wider public in places where concrete transformations are envisaged and on its biennial international platform.

IABR 2018 - The Missing Link: Longing for Change

The 2018 edition is an intensive work biennale. It introduces the five trajectories and sets the agenda. The central question of this edition is whether and how the many initiatives, insights, and experiments add up to the radical adaptation and behavioral change that is necessary. Linking expertise from all over the world to the work in the IABR–Ateliers and the imaginative strength of designers, this edition makes room for the discussion of critical follow-up steps and the formulation of an approach for upscaling and acceleration. It will highlight the Curator Statement and the Research Agenda, a process that will subsequently serve as the starting point for the collaborative work process ending in 2020.

IABR 2020 - The Missing Link: designing for the future En route to 2020, the IABR will focus on building up to and encouraging implementation: in locations, in policy, in partnerships, and in funding. The IABR– 2020 will present practices from all over the globe and concrete results from its own Ateliers as the building blocks as well as proof: yes, we can accelerate and upscale the necessary transition – we can design the future that we can want.

The Delta and the world: a single research agenda for a collective challenge

IABR 2018+2020 chooses the NorthWestern European Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt delta as its operating base. With a BelgianDutch curator team and through intensive collaboration with public and cultural actors from the Netherlands, Flanders, and Brussels, the partners transform this Euro Delta into the primary arena of international knowledge sharing and cultural exchange. This delta features one of the oldest polycentric urbanization patterns in the world that developed in a single coherent physical and hydrological ecosystem and has several ports that together link it to the world and the European hinterland. Despite significant cultural and administrative differences, the administrative parts of this delta have shared capital and also share challenges in the area of fundamental transitions. The Euro Delta presents itself as a representative and productive laboratory for the world, and vice versa.

In doing so, the IABR commits itself to take full advantage of the productivity of the community of practice it will establish in the coming three years, and the approach it is developing in collaboration with that community, also after 2020, striving for one shared movement and platform, for one biennale in the Netherlands and Belgium.

We face a collective challenge: to adapt our way of life, our use of space, and our spatial organization to the capacity of our planet. And this is a challenge that is faced by the neighborhoods, regions, and landscapes of the Western world, the developing countries, and of all other parts of the world. To learn from each other’s insights, breakthroughs, and practices, we do not need to wipe out or ignore the indisputable and marvelous fact that the culture of each global region determines its own history and future. On the contrary.

To organize and structure the sharing of diverse and specific knowledge and approaches, the IABR is launching an open Research Agenda for The Missing Link. This Research Agenda proposes a series of transition leaps and levers that are addressed in a location-specific way simultaneously and all over the world. It is thus not only a framework for local research, but at the same time a Call for Practices and the program of editions in 2018 and 2020.