The web­site for this year’s 4th Inter­na­tional Archi­tec­ture Bien­nale Rot­ter­dam 2009 is fully online and oper­a­tional. Rot­ter­dam archi­tect Kees Chris­ti­aanse will curate the pro­gram, and has devel­oped the theme: Explor­ing Urban Futures. He will be work­ing in asso­ci­a­tion with a team in Zurich at the ETH, where he also teaches urban design. In Rot­ter­dam, Chris­ti­aanse runs his own office, KCAP, which is rec­og­nized for work in both archi­tec­ture and urban design. Being the 4th bien­nale, expec­ta­tions are high fol­low­ing what many per­ceived as a decline in the scale and qual­ity of the last, 3rd Bien­nale enti­tled “Power”.

Many events are planned between now and through­out the exhi­bi­tion, one of which just passed in Zurich at the ETH, The Open City sym­po­sium. The AIR Foun­da­tion will also be hold­ing a series of Urban Meet­ings. Also to be exhib­ited are the results from the inter­na­tional com­pe­ti­tion, Gotong Royong City – Envi­sion­ing the Future of Jakarta, where the reg­is­tra­tion period is unfor­tu­nately already closed. There are lots of events to keep track of, and we will follow-​up in the coming months, as well as inte­grate the events into our Dys​turb.Net Calendar.

The Mis­sion State­ment from the cura­to­r­ial team:

IABR Explor­ing Urban Futures
The Inter­na­tional Archi­tec­ture Bien­nale Rot­ter­dam (IABR) is an inter­na­tional urban research bien­nale founded in 2001 on the con­vic­tion that archi­tec­ture is a public con­cern. It is an inter­na­tional fes­ti­val of exhi­bi­tions, con­fer­ences, lec­tures and other activ­i­ties devoted to themes in the field of archi­tec­ture and urbanism.

Link­ing the con­tem­po­rary Dutch agenda to the inter­na­tional con­text, the IABR invites the design dis­ci­plines to exam­ine an urgent social issue in rela­tion to a par­tic­u­lar urban condition.

The IABR serves as a plat­form, a cat­a­lyst and a medi­a­tor between local and global cul­tures, thus advo­cat­ing an inter­na­tional exchange of ideas and encour­ag­ing public dis­cus­sion among design­ers, researchers, aca­d­e­mics, artists, politi­cians, public author­i­ties, real estate devel­op­ers and other investors, social orga­ni­za­tions and the public at large, at home and abroad.

Why Cities Matter
Our futures will unfold pre­dom­i­nantly in cities. Urban dwellers now com­prise more than half the world’s pop­u­la­tion. What we call the coun­try­side will soon be home to less than a third of human­ity. Urban regions are the hubs of the global econ­omy and the pro­duc­ers of cul­ture and wel­fare, yet they are also the source of immea­sur­able envi­ron­men­tal damage. They are the locus of con­sumers and slum dwellers alike, of glob­ally oper­at­ing media and finan­cial net­works, of crime and tourism. As they absorb the growth of the world’s pop­u­la­tion, cities strug­gle to pro­vide ade­quate and sus­tain­able living con­di­tions for their inhab­i­tants. The most sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge for archi­tec­ture there­fore lies in address­ing urban problems.

The curator’s biog­ra­phy – Kees Christiaanse:

Kees Chris­ti­aanse (1953) is inter­na­tion­ally rec­og­nized among today’s fore­most researchers and prac­ti­tion­ers in the fields of urban design and archi­tec­ture. He stud­ied archi­tec­ture and urban design at Delft Uni­ver­sity of Tech­nol­ogy. From 1980-1989 he was a part­ner at OMA in Rot­ter­dam and con­se­quently founded KCAP Archi­tects & Plan­ners with offices in Rot­ter­dam and Zürich.
From 1996-2003 he was Pro­fes­sor of Archi­tec­ture & Urban Design at the Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­sity Berlin; since 2003 he has been Head of the Insti­tute of Urban Design at the Net­work City-​Landscape of the ETH in Zürich. In addi­tion he is a vis­it­ing Pro­fes­sor in the Cities Pro­gram of the London School of Economics.

Having suc­cess­fully com­bined prac­ti­cal inter­ven­tion and sci­en­tific research in diverse urban con­di­tions, Chris­ti­aanse is highly qual­i­fied to curate the next Bien­nale, and to struc­ture and inten­sify its net­work with research insti­tu­tions. He is actively involved in con­crete urban projects such as the revi­tal­iza­tion of port-​areas in Ams­ter­dam, Rot­ter­dam, and Ham­burg. In addi­tion, for the Olympic Legacy Mas­ter­plan in London, he is design­ing an “urban breed­ing grounds” with del­i­cate sys­tems of public spaces on which inter­ac­tive cul­tures of mixed use can unfold, cat­alyz­ing the rede­vel­op­ment of the sur­round­ing city. Fur­ther­more, Chris­ti­aanse is actively research­ing, lec­tur­ing, and pub­lish­ing on the theme of the Open City, and has cul­ti­vated an impres­sive inter­na­tional net­work of col­leagues work­ing on sim­i­lar conditions.

The bien­nale runs from the 24th Sep­tem­ber 2009 to the 10th Jan­u­ary 2010. It takes place through­out Rot­ter­dam, most notably at the NAi, but with smaller exhi­bi­tions at the Rot­ter­dam Acad­emy of Archi­tec­ture and Urban Design and a tie-​in exhibit in Ams­ter­dam. The Berlage Insti­tute will also be plan­ning a Master Class linked to this year’s theme.

Fur­ther Infor­ma­tion Link: PDF launch document.