SHOCK AND ROLL will open in the fall of 2022 and is the first in a new series of biennales that will go all out for transition. The series will focus on the urgent need to put into design practice the all-embracing change to which science incites us, which the Paris climate objectives call for, to which the global community committed itself in the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and with which the reality of the climate crisis confronts us every single day.

SHOCK AND ROLL will also initiate a long-term collaboration of the IABR, DRIFT, and the Rotterdam Academy of Architecture and Urban Design (RAvB), an alliance of imaginers, transitionists and designers.

IABR president George Brugmans: ‘With the appointment of Derk Loorbach the IABR wants to take a crucial next step in actively helping to put into practice what the climate objectives are crying out for: everything has to change. This is all the more urgent now that the corona crisis has revealed our inadequacy and made it clear that we really have to organize society differently if we want to be able to face the rapidly increasing threat of the much more serious climate crisis before it’s too late. I have asked Derk to bring together the fields of design and transition with the aim of taking us from research by design to development by design. Supported by a team of young curators, it is up to Derk to turn the IABR into a transition design practice. So that we can accelerate. So that there’s more action, with a greater socioeconomic impact. To show what everything has to change means, that we have to let go of a lot, but also that we can move forward, and how: shock and roll.’

Derk Loorbach: ‘The pandemic has acted as a magnifying glass and is contributing to a significant growth in support for transformative change. Now it’s a question of linking the momentum to competencies: unlocking the lessons and experiences of effective transition practices for a large audience. Showing people that it works and how it works. This is what we need to do. In concrete terms, it means that we are going to make transition as well as make transition practice visible. SHOCK AND ROLL will be one big transition experiment and action research project.’

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