International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam

On June 1, 2018, the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam will launch its eighth edition, part one of IABR–2018+2020–The Missing Link, in one go in two cities: Rotterdam and Brussels. The Dutch Chief Government Architect Floris Alkemade, the Flemish Government Architect Leo Van Broeck and the Belgian architect Joachim Declerck are the three curators to address the missing link in one ongoing research by design process, setting off with first a work biennale in 2018 and resulting in a show and tell biennale in 2020.

IABR–2018+2020 starts from the challenge that was put on the agenda of the world community in 2015 by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change (COP21). They clearly marked a spot on the horizon. This allows an actual change of direction, a fundamental transition. But how do we advance? How do we activate our societies, and not in a defensive but in a positive way? What does the qualitative leap forward that this transition will allow our cities and landscape to make actually involve?

The main exhibition of the eighth edition of the biennale will take place in the HAKA Building, a national industrial monument in the Merwe-Vierhaven area that is better known as M4H. In that same period the HAKA Building and the surrounding M4H area will host an extensive IABR program including debates, work sessions, lectures, conferences, and guided tours.