The IABR, the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, was founded in 2001. It's time for the 9th edition but unfortunately, it will be a biennale in times of pandemic. Over the next 10 months a program will incrementally unfold. With a series of exhibitions and activities, adapted to the challenging circumstances. The theme this year is Down to Earth. ''Can we, as it were, re-settle on planet Earth, in a sustainable balance with other lifeforms? Can we, as philosopher Bruno Latour puts it, redesign our living environment as that on which a terrestrial depends and always ask ourselves what other terrestrials also depend on it? For this is now inevitably the challenge: redefine all our actions as what leads toward the Earth.''
IABR will mainly take place in the IABR’s new home, the Keilezaal, in the Merwe-Vierhavens District in Rotterdam. Naturally, the IABR follows the guidelines of the RIVM. There is a maximum number of visitors at the same time in the exhibition, there are time slots and advance reservations are required.
The first exhibition will start on September 19. Drought in the Delta will pick up where the previous biennale left off in 2018: in the Dutch Delta. Cinstantly we hear that our delta is in danger of drying up. Water companies warn us not to water our gardens, wash our cars or fill our swimming pools. At other times, the streets are flooded and there is too much water. In the past year, the IABR–Atelier Drought in the Delta headed by lead designer Marco Vermeulen explored the possibilities for increasing the delta’s water-buffering capacity and
the opportunities that this would create for transformational change. The results are visualized by means of a spectacular 30-m-wide, 3.5-m-high animation of a cross section of the Dutch Delta – the heart of the exhibition. Looking in the direction of Germany, France and Belgium, upstream along the Rhine, Meuse and Scheldt, and the Alps in the distance. In about seven minutes, the animation shows how our delta is currently functioning, what problems have arisen due to climate change and what possible building blocks there are for a new freshwater strategy in conjunction with other transition challenges such as the energy transition, food production and urbanization.
In addition four initiatives are presented. COASTAR, Water Mosaic Groene Hart, Panorama Waterland and Sponstuin explore concrete solutions at the local or regional level.
The second exhibition will open on October 30. It focuses on the energy transition. Since 2017 the IABR–Atelier Rotterdam has been exploring ways to use the energy transition as leverage for achieving a more socially inclusive form of urban development – and since 2019 in Rotterdam’s Bospolder-Tussendijken neighborhood specifically. The creation of a truly CO2-neutral neighborhood not only presents technological, spatial and financial challenges, but also social ones.
The transition to the sustainable production of solar and wind energy is also a transition to a different energy management system, from centralized to decentralized, from extractive to circular, and therefore possibly to other forms of ownership. After all, especially at the level of the neighborhood in which the energy will be generated, stored and traded, one can ask: Whose energy is it, Anyway? Rather than mere consumers, neighborhood residents – especially if they associate – can also become producers, distributors and entrepreneurs.
By cleverly linking the energy system to the local economy, the energy transition can quite naturally transform into a social challenge. In that case the securing of common ownership in such a way that citizens not only receive energy bills, but also get to actively co-own the
transition and profit from it, becomes pivotal.
To achieve a more socially inclusive transition and implement it spatially, we need a LEAP, a Local Energy Action Plan supported by the community, which is what Atelier Rotterdam is now developing together with many partners in and residents of Bospolder-Tussendijken.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet