Iconic buildings such as the former headquarters of the Holland America Line on Kop van Zuid are closely tied to the maritime identity of Rotterdam. As the company’s name suggests, the building symbolizes global flows and networks. Its form and function emerged from tangible movements of ships, goods, and people, as well as from intangible flows of capital, ideas, and cultures. Understood here as Systems of Support, these global flows are locally anchored yet globally connected. They evolve with changing populations, corporate strategies, and technologies, intersecting with shifting local politics, economies, and cultural practices.
These Systems of Support are particularly visible and active in port city territories, where maritime flows link cities to faraway places across seas and oceans, creating what appears to be an expansive and open foreland. Yet the role of maritime flows at the interface of water and land remains understudied, especially given the long-standing focus on land-based analyses and nation-state frameworks. In an era defined by climate change and increasing pressure on water systems, it has become ever more urgent to think in terms of flows and interconnected systems. Recent approaches to living with water and dynamic processes – such as the Room for the River program, Maritime Spatial Planning, and the Blue Economy – reflect this shift toward systemic thinking.
Confronted with planetary boundaries, political instability, and growing data dependency, we must reconsider how global and local systems are connected. The Systems of Support we choose to maintain or construct are ultimately shaped by values – principles that guide collective action beyond purely economic or technological considerations. A value-based approach to the built environment calls on architects and urban designers to recognize the structuring role of flows and networks and to design new Systems of Support aligned with shared contemporary values. This requires clarity about which values are at stake, and what role architecture and design can play in articulating and spatializing them.
It is both an honor and a pleasure to have been invited to co-curate the IABR 2026 together with an outstanding team of colleagues – Saskia van Stein, Wouter Veldhuis, and Martina Muzzi – and the excellent IABR team. The journey has already been a stimulating one, bridging academia and practice, research and curation, and past, present, and future. We now look forward to the selection of a building in which to exhibit and engage the public in a dialogue about future values.
