It’s about time
Curatorial statement IABR
The consequences of our footprint on planet Earth are increasingly noticeable: melting ice caps, forest fires, floods and periods of drought. The situation as it is today was predicted 50 years ago by the Club of Rome.
The 10th edition of the Architecture Biennale Rotterdam will take place from 22 September to 13 November. The title ‘It’s About Time’ hints at the ever-mounting time pressure under which we are trying to counteract the effects of climate change and connect them to other environmental and social challenges. The title also zooms in on time and speed as crucial factors in architecture and spatial design processes and appeals to the profession to work effectively to resolve socio-ecological urgencies.
As a starting point, the biennale formulates three strategies that designers can follow: those of the Accelerator, the Activist, and the Ancestor. The Accelerator is efficient through the use of smart technology. The Activist works together, in the here and now, with local communities on small-scale bottom-up projects that have a great deal of social support in neighborhoods and districts. The Ancestor considers the consequences that design choices made now or in the past will have for future generations.
The projects and practices that the Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2022 gathers together in the name of these three strategies are ambitious, often the result of long-term research, and widely applicable. They have been developed in close collaboration with local actors, take the spatial aspect of socioecological issues as their starting point, and use time as a tool in the design process.
Together with director Saskia van Stein, the curatorial team of the 2022 edition includes the Peter Veentra (LOLA Landscape Architects), Léa-Catherine Szacka (PASZA Platform for Architectural Research), Véronique Patteeuw (École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture et du Paysage Lille) and Derk Loorbach (DRIFT). Visit the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2022 website for more info.
Read the full curatorial statement here.
Curators Peter Veentra, Léa-Catherine Szacka, Véronique Patteeuw and Derk Loorbach - photography Dana Romina
Curatorial statement It's about time - IABR 2022
