22 Sep 2009

PRESS RELEASE

OPENING 4th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam - opening weekend starts on 24 September

The 4th edition of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, entitled Open City: Designing Coexistence will open to the public this Thursday, 24 September. More than a thousand guests from all over the world will attend the official and festive opening ceremonies.

The Biennale contains five main components: three exhibitions, a unique collaboration with a public broadcaster, and an extensive Open City Event Program of lectures, film screenings, debates, workshops, an international master class, and other events.

Opening in Rotterdam and Amsterdam
The main exhibition, Open City: Designing Coexistence, will officially be opened at the Netherlands Architecture Institute by Jacqueline Cramer, Dutch Minister for Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment and by Ahmed Aboutaleb, Mayor of Rotterdam. Ramsey Nasr, the Dutch Poet Laureate will read a poem he has written especially for this occasion.
On 25 September, the exhibition Parallel Cases//IABR@RDM opens at the RDM Campus in the Rotterdam harbor. This exhibition will be opened by the Dutch Chief Government Architect Liesbeth van der Pol, and by Richard Burdett—Chief Adviser on Architecture and Urbanism, Olympic Delivery Authority London 2012; Centennial Professor in Architecture and Urbanism at the London School of Economics; and director of Urban Age.
On Saturday 26 September the IABR’s third exhibition, The Free State of Amsterdam, will open in Amsterdam. The ceremony will start in Rotterdam where the new High Speed Train will depart on an exclusive journey to Amsterdam with the IABR’s guests. The German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk will deliver the keynote, after which Ronald Plasterk, the Dutch minister for Education, Culture and Science, will open the exhibition.

Book Open City and Biennale Award
During the opening in the NAI, the book Open City: Designing Coexistence will be presented. The book was published by SUN Publishers in cooperation with the IABR and ETH Zurich.
In the Parallel Cases exhibition, student teams and researchers from 28 universities in 20 different countries present their responses to the Open City theme. At the opening ceremony, an international jury, chaired by the Dutch Chief Government Architect Liesbeth van der Pol, will announce which entry represents the most inventive and creative approach to the challenge of shaping the Open City.

^{The International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam
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 event of exhibitions, conferences, lectures and other activities devoted to themes in the field of architecture and urban development. The 4th IABR will be held from September 24, 2009 to January 10, 2010 in Rotterdam, and this year’s edition will also include activities in Amsterdam. The 4th IABR’s central location is the NAi. The theme this year is Open City: Designing Coexistence and the curator is the Dutch architect and urbanist Kees Christiaanse, a professor affiliated with the ETH Zürich, and founding partner of KCAP Rotterdam. During the 4th IABR, a comprehensive program will be held at the NAI, which will include debates, lectures, theatre performances and film screenings. The director of the IABR is George Brugmans.}

^{Note for the editor
For more information, visual material and interviews with professionals contributing to this event,
please contact Ms. Eveline van Engelen or Ms. Xandra Nibbeling of the IABR Press Office at +31
(0)10 206 00 33 or pers@iabr.nl.
More information is also available on www.iabr.nl}