The International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) is a bi-annual international event bringing together international knowledge and experience in various design disciplines (architecture, urban planning, and landscape architecture), and presenting this knowledge and experience to a broader audience.
Unlike other events such as the Venice Biennale of Architecture, the IABR is a thematically designed research biennale; each edition addresses a pressing issue, from the perspective of current (Dutch) practices within an international context, and always with a focus on the future of the city.
The IABR implements its agenda by means of international research projects, exhibitions, master classes, workshops, conferences, lectures, debates, essays, a website, blogs, a catalogue, book, brochures, film, DVD, etc. Since the fourth edition, in 2009, the IABR has increasingly combined its research projects with concrete urban planning assignments. Particularly in the cities of Rotterdam, Istanbul and São Paulo, the biennale is actively involved in the actual development of the city.
Marjetica Potrč is an artist and architect based in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Potrč's interdisciplinary practice includes on-site projects, research, architectural case studies, and drawings. Her work documents and interprets contemporary architectural practices and the ways people live together. She is especially interested in social architecture and how communities and governments can work together to make stronger, more resilient cities. In later projects, she has also focused on the relationship between human society and nature, and advocated for the rights of nature.
Venice Biennale of Architecture is an international exhibition of architecture from nations around the world, held in Venice, Italy, every other year. It was held on even years until 2018, but 2020 was postponed to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic shifting the calendar to uneven years. It is the architecture section under the overall Venice Biennale and was officially established in 1980, even though architecture had been a part of the Venice Art Biennale since 1968.
Simon Rastorguev is a Russian architect.
Lars Matthias M. Spuybroek is a Dutch architect and theorist who lives and works in Atlanta, where he is a professor of architecture.
Hashim A. Sarkis is a Lebanese educator and architect. Since 2015, Sarkis has been Professor and Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also founding principal of Hashim Sarkis Studios since 1998.
Andrés Jaque is an architect, writer and curator. In 2016, he was awarded with the 10th Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts. In 2014, he won the Silver Lion to the Best Project at the 14th Venice Biennale. His work explores architecture as a cosmopolitical practice. In 2003, he founded the Office for Political Innovation, a trandisciplinary agency working in the intersection of design, research and environmental activism.
Wilhelmus "Winy" Maas is a Dutch architect, landscape architect, professor and urbanist. In 1993 together with Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries he set up MVRDV.
Ma Yansong is a Chinese architect and founder of MAD architects. He serves as adjunct professor at School of Architecture, Tsinghua University, and the visiting professor at Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture.
Maarten Allard Hajer is a Dutch political scientist and regional planner. Since 1 October 2015, Hajer has been Faculty Professor of Urban Futures at Utrecht University, where he leads the Urban Futures Studio.
Bat Yam International Biennale of Landscape Urbanism, "Urban Action," is a design project in Bat Yam, Israel dedicated to examining and re-designing city landscapes and lifestyles.
Aldo Cibic is an Italian designer.
Miguel Robles-Durán is an urbanist, Associate Professor of Urbanism (tenured) at The New School / Parsons The New School for Design in New York City, and co-founder of the non-profit Cohabitation Strategies, a cooperative for socio-spatial research, design and development based in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and New York City, US.
Henrik Bjørn Valeur is a Danish architect-urbanist, founder and creative director of UiD (Denmark) and UiD Shanghai Co., Ltd (China), curator of CO-EVOLUTION: Danish/Chinese Collaboration on Sustainable Urban Development in China, which was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2006, and author of the book India: the Urban Transition - a Case Study of Development Urbanism (2014), which is based on his experiences teaching, researching and practicing in India.
Defne Ayas is a curator, educator, and publisher in the field of contemporary art and its institutions. Ayas directed and advised many institutions and collaborative platforms across the world, including in China, South Korea, United States, Netherlands, Russia, Lithuania and Italy. She is known for conceiving exhibition and biennale formats within diverse geographies, in each instance composing interdisciplinary frameworks that provide historical anchoring and engagement with local conditions. Until June 2021, Ayas was the Artistic Director of 2021 Gwangju Biennale, together with Natasha Ginwala.
Robert Owen is an Australian artist and curator. He lives and works in Melbourne, Australia.
Lucas Grandin is an artist, curator, teacher, and active initiator of various projects. Lucas Grandin has developed an approach combining sound, video, light, low-tech with a particular focus on the urban planning and architecture. Currently he lives and works in Sarthe, France.
Ole Bouman is a Dutch German historian, writer, curator in urbanism design and architecture. Bouman is the founding director of Design Society, an initiative of China Merchants Group and the Victoria and Albert Museum in Shenzhen, which opened in December 2017.
Ana Miljački is a historian, theorist, educator and curator of architecture. She is an Associate Professor of Architecture at MIT where she directs the Critical Broadcasting Lab, the Architecture and Urbanism Group and the Master of Architecture Program.
Eva Franch i Gilabert is a Catalan architect, curator, critic and educator based in New York City who works in the fields of contemporary art, architecture, and public space. From 2010 to 2018, she was executive director and chief curator of Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York. From 2018 to 2020, Franch was director of the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. She is currently a visiting lecturer at Princeton University.
Beatrice Galilee is a British curator and international writer on design and architecture. She is the co-founder and executive director of The World Around, and the author of Radical Architecture of the Future.