Fr 25 Sep 09 - Su 10 Jan 10
Open City: Designing Coexistence
On 10 January 2010, the exhibition Open City: Designing Coexistence closed its doors. This also ended the 4th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR). We wish to thank all our visitors for their interest in the Biennale and all our partners for their effort. We are looking forward to meeting you at the 5th IABR.
This website shows you pictures of the 4th IABR (more to be uploaded in the coming weeks). And of course, you can still take note of this Biennale's themes. Please, have a look on the page Publications.
Open City: Designing Coexistence
With a direct link from the street into its largest exhibition hall, the NAI will literally open itself up to the city of Rotterdam. Visitors enter into a dynamic public forum. A large-scale walk-through model of the Open City fills the space of the Forum, mixing introductory exhibitions with public activities.
Curator: Kees Christiaanse, co-curator: Tim Rieniets
Open City Event Program
For twelve consecutive weeks, an interdisciplinary Open City Event Program animates the Forum – the heart of the Open City exhibition at the NAI.
Each week, from Wednesday through Sunday, a cluster of activities – lectures, films, workshops, presentations, debates, tours, excursions, music, literature, and more – revolve around a specific theme.
The exhibition "Open City: Designing Coexistence" consists of:
Forum
[NAI Gallery 1]
The Forum reflects a way of thinking about what an Open City is or could be. This entails questions such as migration, diversity, social and cultural differences, and the way in which architects and urban designers can meet these challenges within their designs.
The Open City is about access. Access to resources that can enrich city life, such as mobility, communication, knowledge, education, health care, housing, work and social networks.
The quality of the Open City is therefore also determined by facilitating such access, and the degree of freedom and convenience people have in utilizing these resources. Architects do not create society, but they can help create some of the conditions for an open society.
Strolling past the various presentations, visitors to the Forum encounter “urban” facilities, including a café, a bookshop, a library, and a hall for lectures, films and debates named “The Hood”.
Curators: Kees Christiaanse, Tim Rieniets, and Fabienne Hoelzel
Maakbaarheid
The rediscovery of the urban project in Rotterdam: in search of a new credibility for architecture and urban development following the financial crisis of 2008
[NAI Foyer]
The paradox of Rotterdam is that the Municipality has always claimed to know what the city should be, but not what the city actually is. Not knowing one’s real identity means not being able to know what one wants to be.
Maakbaarheid, which can best be translated as “makeability”, is a polemical vision of the City of Rotterdam. The exhibition consists of three parts. The manifesto Make No Big Plans argues that the time is not yet right for the Big Solution, but rather argues for architectural interventions on a scale that still allows for perspective. The film Story of an Open City shows, how time has left its mark on the city’s structure. With Facts on the Ground, Crimson and its partners make a pragmatic effort to get the discussion about “maakbaarheid” going. Projects have been designated at nine locations in Rotterdam; together they serve as a repair kit for the fragmented city.
Sub-curators: Crimson Architectural Historians
From 21 to 25 October the Event Program focuses on Maakbaarheid
Refuge
Architectural Propositions for Unbound Spaces
[NAI Entrance space]
Refuge, a safe haven, describes a place where people come together to escape from hunger, violence and poverty. Refuge can also suggest escapism – a desire to withdraw from the hectic ways of the city and to flee to an exclusive, gated neighborhood. One finds both kinds of safe havens in the Middle East and the southern Mediterranean, sometimes right next to each other. What kind of challenge does an architect or urbanist face when all the norms have fallen by the wayside and he cannot rely on processes and conditions under which architecture normally proceeds? Refuge calls for alternative, pragmatic and simple design strategies to overcome the destructive forces of flight and escapism.
Sub-curators: Phillip Misselwitz and Can Altay
From 18 to 22 November the Event Program focuses on Refuge
Reciprocity
Urban Bartering Strategies in Jakarta
[NAI Gallery 2]
In developing countries, the informal economy – frequently simply referred to as bartering – is often more important than the official economy. The importance of this informal process will increase dramatically in the coming years as the cities in poor countries undergo explosive population growth. Reciprocity examines how this system of barter and returning of favors affects the infrastructure and vitality of the city of Jakarta. The capital of Indonesia is a rich and complex example of this urban bartering network. A large majority of the population receives its wages in kind, and creates its own alternative chain of supply and demand.
Sub-curators: Daliana Suryawinata and Stephen Cairns
From 25 to 29 November the Event Program focuses on Reciprocity
Community
The American Way of Living
[NAI Gallery 2]
American society, especially in the suburbs, is extremely segregated – at least, that is the story often told. But when one studies the suburbs closely, the Open City turns up in places where no one would expect it, such as in shopping malls, parking places, churches, and sports complexes – places usually not set up to stimulate a process of integration, but which in practice fulfill that role.
The Community exhibition is designed as a dictionary, consisting of 101 “weapons” that architects, project developers, urban planners, politicians and action groups can employ for or against the Open City.
The 101 “weapons” are part of The Arsenal of Exclusion/Inclusion collection. Visitors can examine them in alphabetical order or choose from five thematic tours.
Sub-curator: Interboro
From 7 to 11 October the Event Program focuses on Community
Squat
The Informal City under Development
[NAI Gallery 3]
Worldwide more than one billion people live in slums, ramshackle huts, squats, tents and cardboard boxes – as well as in abandoned high rises and derelict apartment buildings. These so-called informal cities are incredibly varied, growing in number and pose very specific challenges. How can architects and urbanists contribute to the socially and ecologically sustainable development of these urban areas?
The Squat exhibition has two main themes. Construction of Knowledge centers on urbaninform.net, an internet platform for inhabitants of informal settlements to further the exchange of experiences and solutions. Construction of the City focuses on projects in two megacities: Kotebe Hanna Mariam in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia; and Paraisópolis, with its 60,000 inhabitants forming one of the largest informal settlements in the Brazilian metropolis of São Paulo.
Sub-curators: Jörg Stollmann and Rainer Hehl
From 16 to 19 December the Event Program focuses on Squat
Collective
Architecture and Mass-production
[NAI GAllery 3]
In the Soviet Union from 1956 to 1989, fifty million standard flats were erected in districts known as “Microrayons”. After the collapse of the socialist regime, these uniform districts are facing a crisis in public space, as no one takes responsibility for them anymore. Yet, according to the Collective exhibition, there is no need to fear mass production in architecture.
The Collective exhibition argues that one should combine the best features of mass production with the “Western” idea of designing individual building lots. The essence of Collective’s proposed solution is not to design each site as such, but to develop a standard for all sizes of sites – just as for example in the shoe industry, which has developed a standard for shoe sizes. Such an approach will thus result in greater variety rather than uniformity, and this will in turn work to the advantage of the quality of public space.
Sub-curators: Bart Goldhoorn, Alexander Sverdlov, and Anna Bronovitskaya
From 11 to 15 November the Event Program focuses on Collective
