Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2009
A) PREFACE
A 1) curator’s introduction
A 2) International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam
> A 1) Curator’s Introduction
> 2009, the fourth International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam will take place in the NAI and in adjacent venues and places in Rotterdam.
>
> The curator Kees Christiaanse and his team from the ETH Zurich will focus on one of our most important, yet widely overlooked cultural
> achievement: the Open City. Under this title the Biennale and Kees Christiaanse attempt to take up an issue of global importance, to investigate it with the help of international experts, and to present it to an international audience.
>
> Rotterdam is the venue of one of the most important international architecture exhibitions; in 2009 Rotterdam will also figure as one of the case studies presented at the Biennale. Next to other cities from around the world, Rotterdam will figure as a testing ground for invited architects, urban designers and theorists who will work on projects, which are directly related to the city. By this means the Biennale wants to shed new light on the Dutch urban condition and to contribute to the future development of its hometown, Rotterdam.
>
> In this way, the Biennale 2009 is more than an international exhibition.
> The Biennale 2009 will at the same time engage as initiator and mentor, who is motivating young professionals around the world to engage in the future development of their cities.
>
> This Book will provide detailed information over the plans for the Rotterdam Biennale 2009. In chapter B curator Kees Christiaanse introduces the reader to the topic of the Biennale: the Open City.
> Chapter C explains the concept of this Biennale. It makes the reader familiar with the scope of the project, the working structure, and the kind of projects which will be produced. Chapter D explains the exhibition and the role NAI. In chapter E the reader will get details over partners, places and institutions involved. Chapter F shows the planning until September 2009.
>
> B) THEME
>
> The open city is the stage of the manifold, of the coexistence and cross-fertilization of diverse social groups from which new cultures emerge. The open city is not an entropic soup of everything mixed with everything, but a spatial framework, which enables a productive balance between public and private, between inclusion and exclusion.
> Where different cultures can settle in coexistence and give the city multiple identities like a Jewish neighbourhood, a garden city, a university or a China town.
> Despite its precise form, the open city stimulates encounter and interaction by spatial organization, structure of public spaces and building typologies, but also by size, scale and functional differentiation, a dynamic condition that establishes itself under favourable circumstances. If the open city really is the breeding-ground of interaction, knowledge and innovation, as is indicated by many social scientists, than it establishes an essential achievement of human culture that should be stimulated and protected.
>
> Worldwide, the open city is threatened by a strong increase of disparities in the form of differentiation, segregation and fragmentation and the consequent emergence of sharp borders: the construction of privatized and controlled areas like shopping-malls, gated communities and campuses, infrastructures which are not publicly accessible and deteriorated public spaces which are devoid of social encounter. This threat is not only caused by increasing disparities between rich and poor or conflicts between ethnic groups. The open city is also threatened by its own promises of individual freedom, which tends to overpower mechanisms of cohesion. It leads for instance to the emergence of mono-functional enclaves with single accesses in a fragmented and misused landscape. Thus, the open city with active public spaces changes into an archipelago of introverted islands, separated by corridors of residual space.
>
> C) CONCEPT
> C 1) scope
> C 2) sub-curator
> C 3) locality
> C 4) local participants
> C 5) projects
> Summary
> The idea of the Open City is an important value to urban dwellers all over the world. Yet, nobody has ever tried to explain or designed the Open City. The IABR4 will ask international experts to take the question for the Open City from Rotterdam to their home countries and bring back their answers to Rotterdam after one year of work.
> C 1) Scope
> Cities in different world regions are developing under very different cultural, political, economic and demographic conditions. However, people all over the world share similar hopes and believes in urban life: Job opportunities and basic living conditions, access to physical and economic resources, religious and cultural freedom, medical care, education and so forth. Thus, the open city is not a regional or cultural peculiarity, it can rather be seen as a universal idea.
> Against this background IABR4 wants to investigate the open city in different world regions and within different urban conditions.
IABR4 willwork on 5-7 world regions, where processes of urbanization are most acute, and where the question for the OpenCity is most urgent. These regions and their specific urban conditions will figure as geographic and theoretic basis of the Biennale.
>
> The IABR4 has defined the following regions:
> • Western welfare states
> • Countries in post-socialist transition
> • Sunbelt (USA)
> • Post-colonial Africa
> • Latin America
> • Southeast Asia
> Rotterdam and the Randstad
> Rotterdam and the Randstad will represent one of the regions mentioned above. It will stand for both the region of Western welfare states in general and the Dutch urban condition in specific. Rotterdam used to be a destination for thousands of foreign workers, who were integrate by means of the social welfare state. In this respect Rotterdam and the Randstad used to be an Open City. It has become one of the most diverse places in Europe and it used to be a testing ground for new architectural and urban innovations. However, political and economic conditions have changed, and the presence of immigrants can no longer be related to industrial growth.
> Like other Western European cities, Rotterdam is struggling with the consequences of insufficient integration and latent urban isolation of different groupings. Architecture and urban development is increasingly reflecting the political and social changes.
> The confrontation of Rotterdam with the other international case studies will shed new light on the Dutch urban condition. At the same time it is hoped, that the IABR4 can give something back to its hometown.
>
> (For detailed descriptions of all regions see E2)
>
> ((Diagramm 1))
> C 2) Sub-curator
> In order to represent all regions mentioned above – including the case of Rotterdam and the Randstad - IABR4 wants to benefit from the knowledge of experts from all across the world. These experts will be appointed as sub curators and cooperate with the IABR4 during the course of one year. In 2008, the sub curators will take the question for the Open City from Rotterdam to their home countries and cities, and they are asked to bring back their answers to Rotterdam in 2009. Meanwhile, the sub curators will choose localities of special interest (see C 3) and they will invite local participants (see C 4) to work on it.
> The sub curators will act as representatives of their regions and as agents and coordinators. They are experts in architecture and urban design, they have extraordinary regional and local knowledge and they are experienced in curatorial work. The sub curators will be recruited through the international network of Kees Christiaanse and his curatorial team.
>
> (For more details see E1)
> C 3) Localities
> Each of the sub curators will chose exemplary localities from their regions. Such a locality can be a building-complex, a street, a neighbourhood, a town or any other kind of urban space. They can be located in a large city or in a provincial town, in the city centre or at the outskirts. However, all localities have one thing in common: they are possible examples of “Open City” or - in reverse - show the loss or destruction of what used to be an Open City. Each locality will tell its own story about how to understand the Open City, about what it could look like and about how to live in an Open City .The localities can also tell us about possible threats to open cities, about segregation, about limited freedom or non-transparent design and planning processes.
> Example:
> Taken the region of the region “Middle East” as an example, the localities suggested by the sub-curator could be as follows:
>
> • Göktürk, Istanbul: A peripheral town, where poor informal neighbourhood are existing next to newly established, luxurious housing resorts. How does urban space develop under these conditions of extreme segregation?
> • Taba, Egypt: Taba is a holiday resort at the Gulf of Aqaba and Egypt's busiest border crossing with neighboring Israel and Jordan. Here, the Middle East conflict and international tourism are merging and generating new forms of architecture and urbanism, and new forms of coexisting. What can we learn from this region?
> • Road No1, Jerusalem: A main road crossing Jerusalem in north-south direction. This road used to be a fenced border between East and West Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967, and is still dividing Palestinia from Jewish residents today. How can this road be transformed from a barrier into a connection?
> • Nahr el Bared, Lebanon: A Palestinian refugee camp, which has been destroyed during the last Lebanon war. How can a sustainable reconstruction be managed under the precarious conditions of Palestinian diaspora?
> • Zeytinburnu, Istanbul: A dynamic and established informal quarter of 300.000 inhabitants. Because of high earth quake risk Zeytinburnu is designated to be demolished and replaced by a new urban scheme. How can a master planned reconstruction consider the needs of the local population and how can it provide similar urban qualities?
> The localities will be suggested by the sub curators and coordinated by the IABR4. The number of localities depends on their relevance for and on the existing resources of IABR4. As a result of this process, a broad variety of localities will be presented at the exhibition 2009.
> C 4) Local Participants
> The localities chosen will be the “workshops” of this Biennale. Here, local participants from different disciplines will conduct site-specific research and work on local design projects. These teams may consist of architects and urban designers, researchers, writers, journalists and artists. The IABR4 attempts to provide young professionals in particular with a platform to demonstrate their local knowledge and to get involved with the future development of their cities. The local participants will be suggested by the sub curators and commissioned by IABR4. The IABR4-team will support them as mentors, consultants and critics.
> ((Diagramm 2))
> C 5) Projects
> The IABR4 will present the Open City through different kinds of projects. Most important are the projects produced by local participants and dedicated to the selected localities (see C5.1). These projects will show individual approaches of how to understand, how to stimulate or how to design an Open City. These individual and site-specific projects will be framed by cross studies (see C5.2) and meta studies (see C5.3), which will provide basic information to the audience.
> C 5.1) Local Projects – individual approaches to the Open City The local projects are dedicated to the chosen localities. The most important objective of these projects is to generate real impact on site and to demonstrate, how architects, urban designers and other relevant actors could deal with the Open City in practice. These projects can range from research to architectural design, from large scale to small scale, from activism to planning, from existing best practices to newly initiated projects.
> C 5.2) Cross Studies – relating individual projects The local projects described above are individually produced by the local participants and they are originating from different localities. In order to draw general conclusions and to generate an added value from these individual projects, IABR4 will interrelate them through cross studies.
> These cross studies are based on defined topics and categories, which will tie the local projects together. The cross studies will be produced by external experts, in collaboration with IABR4 and the curatorial team from ETH Zurich.
> C 5.3) Meta Studies – basic information about the Open City Local projects and cross studies will be framed by a number of meta studies, such as historic, geographic overviews, cultural studies and other comprehensive investigations. These studies will provide a general background and situate the Open City within a broad context. Like the cross studies, these projects will be produced by external experts, in collaboration with IABR4 and the curatorial team from ETH Zurich.
> C 5.4) Presentations
> IABR4 will put emphasis on diverse, yet comprehensible presentations of all projects. Different media will be employed, such as plans, information graphics, models, photographs, video and others. All presentations will be accessible and comprehensible for both professional and non- professional visitors.
> ((Diagramm 3))
_________________________________
> Tim Rieniets
> Netzwerk Stadt und Landschaft
> ETH Hönggerberg, HIL H 47.2
> CH - 8093 Zürich
>
> phone: +41 44 633 2851
> fax: +41 44 633 1090
> mobil: +41 79 8164150
> mail: rieniets@arch.ethz.ch
> web: www.urbandesign.ethz.ch
> www.urbanresearch.ethz.ch
> _________________________________
