George Brugmans

^{picture: Fred Ernst}

George Brugmans has been the executive director of the IABR since 2004, and its president since 2014. He chaired the Curator Team of the 5th IABR: Making City and is the chief curator of IABR–DOWN TO EARTH.

As IABR's director, George Brugmans, as a former filmproducer and documentary-maker inspired by what he had observed and documented in the world and subsequently by the collaboration with Adriaan Geuze during his first biennial, The Flood (2005), explicitly chose to put the future of the city first on the biennale's agenda. Urbanization became the common thread of a series of biennials that increasingly raised the issue of genuine commitment. Even though the IABR is a cultural institution, in view of the enormous challenges facing us all, from climate crisis to depletion of resources, from overpopulation to loss of biodiversity, from rapidly growing social inequality to a growing democratic deficit, it must not only commit itself to imagining the future city as best as it can, but also and above all to real world change, and not tomorrow but now. He opted for an IABR that advances and practices a research by design approach while insisting on the realization and implementation of the results. The IABR must, itself, actually take action –walk the talk.

As chief curator of DOWN TO EARTH, Brugmans will therefore not only coordinate, he wants to also ensure that the basic attitude of the IABR remains that of an activist: #DownToEarth.

DOWN TO EARTH: how can we redefine all our actions as what leads toward the Earth? How can we adapt in such a way that our urban living environments can cope with the impending climate crisis– not at the expense of but in balance with nature? Indeed, where can we land?

Thijs van Spaandonk

^{picture: Fred Ernst}

Thijs van Spaandonk studied Architecture at Eindhoven University of Technology. As a partner at BRIGHT, Head of Urbanism at the Rotterdam Academy of Architecture and in other roles and responsibilities, Thijs explores and addresses the cultural aspects of the major challenges our living environment is facing.

Thijs van Spaandonk is partner at BRIGHT, an R&D cooperative for urban development, he co-founded with Gerjan Streng in 2017. Bright produces observations and prototypes to investigate and intervene in the impact the systems of energy, food, mobility and economy have on our surroundings. Recently Bright was intensively involved in the exhibition Places of Hope in Leeuwarden; the Dutch Climate Agreement and the Regional Energy Strategy for the Province of North-Holland; a serious game to support neighborhood Climate Agreements in Amsterdam with Play the City and Space & Matter; the educational game Ministry of Food in collaboration with Lava and the national broadcaster KRO-NCRV, and a series of bat houses. Bright is member of international design collaboration The Cloud Collective, a cooperative that wants to address the social impact of architecture and design.

Thijs holds that education has an important role to play in exploring the profession. After teaching at various Academies of Architecture, Thijs is currently Head of the Urbanism Master’s Program at the Rotterdam Academy of Architecture. The focus is to explore how climate mitigation and climate adaptation can and will impact the city of Rotterdam and more specifically, what competences architects and urbanists need to develop to be involved in this process.
Thijs is also a member of the Future Urban Regions research group. His research-by-design focuses on the delta region of Zeeland, where he was raised.
He is co-author of the book Urban Challenges, Resilient Solutions: Design Thinking for the Future of Urban Regions.
Thijs was also involved in international collaborations in Delhi and Beijing and has acted as visiting critic at Columbia University (New York) and Hong Kong University (Hong Kong).

Rianne Makkink and Jurgen Bey

^{picture: Fred Ernst}

Designer-architect Rianne Makkink and designer Jurgen Bey hold that urban planning, architecture and landscape architecture are inextricably linked with product design.

In more than 400 projects, commissioned by museums, galleries, art institutions, government organizations, companies and private commissioners, as well as in many lectures, Rianne Makkink and Jurgen Bey have reaffirmed their unwavering belief in a design vision in which the form of the design follows from its context. In their opinion, connecting existing elements within the context of a project is like stringing beads.

Their design collaborative Studio Makkink & Bey is based in Rotterdam in the M4H area. Supported by a diverse design team, the Studio has been operating since 2002. The Studio's various projects include interior design, product design, public space projects, architecture, exhibition and shop window design, research projects and applied arts. Designs of Studio Makkink & Bey have been awarded with numerous national and international prizes.

Lately, they have initiated the Water School that was first presented in M4H, at IABR–2018. it is a speculative school, designed and organized around water as an essential, material, matter, subject, social, economic and political phenomenon. It proposes the rethinking of the economic and infrastructural model of education. Water School has been displayed in working exhibitions around the globe, building a curriculum for the subjects to be taught (education) and constructing all spaces needed separately (architecture) along the way. The M4H area will be a testing site for how the Water School can evolve in the future.

Makkink & Bey’s interiors, products, furniture, and interventions in public space are often produced in collaboration with other architects or designers such as Rem Koolhaas, MVRDV, Kessels Kramer, companies such as Vitra, Prooff, Droog Design and Moooi, and other professionals. Their work has been presented in several museums and is part of the collection, amongst others, of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, FNAC in Paris, the V&A in London, The Indianapolis Museum of Art in the USA, Musée des Beaux-Arts Montreal in Canada, Museum Boymans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Centraal Museum in Utrecht. Clients include commercial and private parties such as Spring Studio's London and New York, Vitra and Hermes, governmental and cultural institutions, fashion designers such as Jean Paul Gaultier, and galleries such as Contrast Gallery in Shanghai.

Both Rianne Makkink and Jurgen Bey are heavily involved in education to pass on their design strategy that strives at expanding the role and further the strategic position of the designer-architect as much as possible.

Makkink has been teaching at several universities and academies within the field of architecture and design, amongst others at University of Ghent, the Design Academy Eindhoven, Art Academy Linz and Technical University Delft.

Bey has been one of the most influential Dutch designers of the last three decades, his TreeTrunkBench, Cocoon furniture and Earchair now have an iconic value in the world of design. He is also the director of the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam, and the Master of Art and Design of the Rietveld Arts Academy, also in Amsterdam.

^{Eva Pfannes}

^{picture: Aad Hoogendoorn}

Based in Rotterdam, Eva Pfannes is an architect and urban designer working in Europe, India and Brazil. She co-founded the international design practice OOZE in 2003 with Sylvain Hartenberg, working across scales, from regional strategies to architecture and research, combining an elaborate understanding of natural, ecological processes, with technological expertise and deep insights in to the social-cultural behaviour of users of the built environment. The cyclic closed-loop processes found in nature are the foundation for each intervention and integrate the human scale within a comprehensive urban strategy.

Eva is co-curator of the ninth edition of the International Architecture Biennial Rotterdam (IABR), DOWN TO EARTH (2020 - 2021) and in 2020 she was the lead designer of the IABR–Atelier Rotterdam III, working on a Local Energy Action Plan (LEAP) to decarbonize a local neighbourhood. She is the team lead for the City of 1000 Tanks project in Chennai, part of the global Water as Leverage program of the Dutch Government. Her expertise covers urban, participatory and climate resilience strategies including Nature Based Solutions and developing multi system models with an interdisciplinary team.

Eva's work was widely published, including in the Materials Book by Ruby Press, DOMUS, AJ and The Guardian and exhibited in the Venice Biennial, Studio-X-Rio, the Sao Paulo Architecture Biennial and the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam. Awards include the 2017 Landscape Institute Award UK for ‘Best Design for Temporary Landscape’ and the LafargeHolcim Bronze Award-Latin America 2017. In 2015, she was Practitioner in Residence at Central Saint Martins (UAL) and served on the jury for the Rotterdam Architecture Prize 2018. Eva is a Jury member for the 6th International LafargeHolcim Awards-Europe 2020.

Robbert de Vrieze

^{picture: Fred Ernst}

Robbert de Vrieze is a social designer and architect. With his agency and network Transformers he operates at the cutting edge of design, community, politics and economy.

After having studied Industrial Product Design and Fine Mechanical Engineering Robbert de Vrieze worked for Philipsen design agency EJOK. He then started his own design agency (first HUB and later Transformers) and developed a fascination for the transformation of old buildings and brown–fields. He worked on the transformation of the grain silo Maashaven and RDM Campus, both in Rotterdam. Living in a housing cooperative (Stampioendwarsstraten in the south of Rotterdam) sparked an additional fascination for the principles of self-organization. These interests led him to a study at the Rotterdam Academy of Architecture and Urban Design where he graduated in 2012 on 'the Architecture of Politics & the Politics of Architecture'.

In 2013 Robbert co-founded WIJ Delfshaven, an (a-)political network of citizens’ initiatives in Rotterdam West. He participated in local elections and served for four years as a citizens’ representative on the Area Council of Delfshaven. He co-founded Delfshaven Coöperatie, a neighborhood cooperative with a local investment fund for the long-term value development of Bospolder Tussendijken, one of the poorest districts of Rotterdam. In partnership with institutional parties and local citizens' groups new initiatives on community building, welfare, work and energy were kickstarted and/or facilitated.
His interest in the healthy city concept led to Robbert becoming a founding member of Stadslab Luchtkwaliteit, a city lab that, with the input from citizens, entrepreneurs and designers, made air pollution visible and tangible. He is also a board member at Bouwkeet, a social makerspace for children aged 10-15, and involved in the Grassroots Business Lab, an incubator for Rotterdam’s Roadmap Next Economy. More recently he co-founded Delfshaven Energie Coöperatie, an energy cooperative that wants to use the energy transition as a lever for social-economic impact.

In 2018 Robbert received the Job Dura Award for his work with Stadslab Luchtkwaliteit, as well as the prestigious Van Der Leeuw Award for his work as a city-maker in Rotterdam.