Reinier Hendrik de Graaf | |
|---|---|
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| Born | 30 June 1964 |
| Nationality | Dutch |
| Alma mater | TU Delft; Berlage Institute |
| Occupation | architect writer |
Reinier de Graaf (born 1964) is a Dutch architect, architectural theorist, urbanist and writer. He is a partner in the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), and author of the books Four Walls and a Roof: The Complex Nature of a Simple Profession and The Masterplan.
Reinier Hendrik de Graaf was born in Schiedam, Netherlands, where he graduated from Stedelijk Gymnasium in 1982. He holds an architecture diploma from Delft University and a master's degree in architecture from the Berlage Institute. De Graaf worked for architecture firms in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom before joining OMA in 1996.
Reinier de Graaf is OMA’s longest serving non-founding partner. He is responsible for building and master planning projects in Europe, Russia and the Middle East. His built projects include Norra Tornen (2020) in Stockholm, winner of the International Highrise Award in 2020; the nhow RAI Hotel (2019) in Amsterdam; Holland Green (2016), the redevelopment of the former Commonwealth Institute in London; Timmerhuis (2015) in Rotterdam, the new G-Star Headquarters (2014) in Amsterdam; and De Rotterdam (2013). Among De Graaf's ongoing projects is Mangalem 21, a residential housing development in Tirana. [1] He has led the masterplan of the Skolkovo Innovation Centre (the “Russian Silicon Valley”) and the Greater Moscow Development Framework. His involvement in the future planning of Amsterdam Airport Schiphol and the Hamad International Airport in Qatar have made him widely regarded as one of the world's leading experts on the development of airports as urban systems.
Since 2019, De Graaf has led OMA's research on healthcare architecture. He has co-authored the film The Hospital of the Future, which premiered at Matadero Madrid in 2020 and is on view at the Venice Biennale of Architecture. [2] [3]
Since 2002, De Graaf has directed the work of AMO, OMA’s think tank. AMO’s clients include Prada, Universal Studios, Condé Nast, Schiphol Airport, the Hermitage Museum, Harvard University and the European Union, for which it conceived a new graphic identity in 2004, including a proposal for a new European flag. De Graaf is responsible for AMO’s involvement in sustainability and energy planning, with projects such as Zeekracht: A Strategic Masterplan for the North Sea; Roadmap 2050: A Practical Guide to a Prosperous, Low-Carbon Europe for the European Climate Foundation; and The Energy Report, a global plan for 100 percent renewable energy by 2050, made with the WWF.
In 2011, De Graaf curated the exhibition On Hold at the British School in Rome about the impact of the financial crisis on OMA's master planning work across the globe. The exhibition Public Works: Architecture by Civil Servants featured at the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2012 and at the König Galerie Berlin in 2013. [4] [5]
In 2010, De Graaf was involved in the founding of the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow, where he taught topics such as energy planning, the history of utopian predictions and the advent of the megacity. [6] In 2014, he continued the research on megacities with graduate students at PennDesign, the architecture program at the University of Pennsylvania, under the title Megalopoli(tic)s. [7]
In 2018, De Graaf taught a design studio at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design titled “Phantom Urbanism.” [8] The studio produced a database of urban projects that never managed to attract residents. [9]
Since 2018, De Graaf is the Sir Arthur Marshall Visiting Professor of Urban Design in the Department of Architecture at the University of Cambridge. [10]
Since 2020, De Graaf teaches the 'Asset Class' seminar at The Berlage, which investigates the relation between architecture and finance. [11]
De Graaf co-authored three books on behalf of OMA: Content (2003), Al-Manakh I (2007) and Al-Manakh II, Gulf Continued (2010).
De Graaf's first book under personal title Four Walls and a Roof: The Complex Nature of a Simple Profession, published in 2017, is a collection of essays on the changing nature of the architecture profession into the 21st century. Four Walls and a Roof was named among the best books of 2017 by The Financial Times and The Guardian. [12] [13] Paul Finch wrote about the book:
“This is the most stimulating book on architecture and its practice that I have read for years, a perceptive analysis of how architecture represents, or connects with, wider political and economic movements and trends. The ambivalence with which architects approach their task, and the claims they make for themselves, are subjected to withering examination. The overall tone, which is one of brutal, not to say Brutalist, honesty, but even if de Graaf generally appears cynical about architecture and architects, one might bear in mind the definition of the cynic as ‘frustrated romantic’. You suspect he writes not from contempt, but love.” [14]
In 2019, De Graaf was the guest editor of the German architecture magazine Baumeister. [15]
De Graaf's second book The Masterplan, published in 2021, is a novel that chronicles the trajectory of an architect craving recognition. The Architects' Journal describes The Masterplan as "a short novel about professional vanity, succession within large practices and the Faustian dilemmas facing ‘international starchitects’." The book reflects on "the shifting and unstable nature of global power and the corrupting character of the global property market." [16] His most recent publication is Architect, Verb: The New Language of Building (Verso, 2023), which "skewers the platitudes of the [architecture] industry". [17]
Remment Lucas Koolhaas is a Dutch architect, architectural theorist, urbanist and Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. He is often cited as a representative of Deconstructivism and is the author of Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan.
MVRDV is a Rotterdam, Netherlands-based architecture and urban design practice founded in 1993, with additional offices in Berlin, New York, Paris, and Shanghai. It is currently regarded as one of the world's finest architecture firms. MVRDV is an acronym of the founding members' surnames: Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs, and Nathalie de Vries.
The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) is an international architectural firm with offices in Rotterdam, New York, Hong Kong, Doha, and Australia. The firm is currently led by eight partners - Rem Koolhaas, Reinier de Graaf, Ellen van Loon, Shohei Shigematsu, Iyad Alsaka, Chris van Duijn, Jason Long, and managing partner and architect David Gianotten.
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Alejandro Zaera Polo is a Spanish architect, theorist and founder of Alejandro Zaera-Polo & Maider Llaguno Architecture (AZPML). He was formerly dean of the Princeton University School of Architecture and of the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam.
N. John Habraken was a Dutch architect, educator, and theorist. His theoretical contributions are in the field of user participation in mass housing, the integration of users and residents into the design process. The visual result of his theory is the architecture of lively variety. Habraken was the initiator of the international "Participation movement" in architecture. His book Supports: An Alternative to Mass Housing, first published in 1961, is the manifesto and starting point of this movement. The theme resident or user participation has been linked to Structuralism and open building.
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Kees Christiaanse is an architect and urban planner from the Netherlands. After working with Rem Koolhaas, he started two firms, KCAP in 1989 and Architects and Planners in 1990, where he was a partner till 2002. Christiaanse has "tackled some of the highest profile urban design schemes in the Netherlands, hosting buildings by" the finest Dutch and several international architects.
The Berlage Institute was an independent unaccredited postgraduate school of architecture in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, Netherlands, that operated from 1990 to 2012. Named after the Dutch architect Hendrik Petrus Berlage, the Institute had an international student population and teaching staff.
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Rivierenbuurt is a neighbourhood of Amsterdam, Netherlands. The neighbourhood is situated in the eastern part of the borough of Amsterdam-Zuid, bordered by the river Amstel to the east, the Boerenwetering canal in the west, the Amstelkanaal in the north and the A10 motorway in the south. In 2013, the Rivierenbuurt had approximately 28,400 residents.
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Kunlé Adeyemi was born on the 7 April 1976 and is a Nigerian architect, urbanist and creative researcher. Adeyemi is founder and principal of NLÉ, an architecture, design and urbanism practice, based in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. Adeyemi studied at the University of Lagos in Nigeria and Princeton University in New Jersey, the United States. Before starting his own office in the Netherlands, he worked nearly a decade at Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA).
Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design is a non-profit international educational project, founded in 2009 and located in Moscow. Strelka incorporates an education programme on urbanism and urban development aimed at professionals with a higher education, a public summer programme, the Strelka Press publishing house, and KB Strelka, the consulting arm of the Institute. Strelka has been listed among the top-100 best architecture schools in 2014, according to Domus magazine.
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