I am wrap­ping things up here at maxwan archi­tects & urban­ists, as tomor­row is going to be my last day. I will be teach­ing urban­ism at a pri­vate uni­ver­sity in Aleppo (google maps) in a week.

We have achieved quite a bit recently - not only did we launch our new maxwan web­site, but we also won the com­pe­ti­tion for the design of 2009’s Archi­tec­ture Bien­nale in Rot­ter­dam (IABR). The motto of next year’s Bien­nale is ‘Open City’, a term Kees Chris­ti­aanse (the Biennale’s Cura­tor) has been work­ing with for a while. Maxwan trans­lates this idea spa­tially by turn­ing the NAi inside out.

A more direct access to the main large exhi­bi­tion hall turns it into a multi-​functional lobby/conference-hall/exhibition space, directly exposed to the public space instead of being tucked away in the belly of the building.

Maxwan’s new web­site stays true to maxwan’s excel-​driven soul, pro­vid­ing quite com­plete data on the projects includ­ing high-​resolution images. Check out what I have been work­ing on recently - super­vis­ing the Bark­ing River­side mas­ter­plan and pre­vi­ously devel­op­ing a new vision for Rotterdam’s Har­bour.