International Architecture Biennial Rotterdam Mobility: a room with a view
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February 6, 2003
Press release

International Architecture Biennial Rotterdam presents the theme: 'Mobility: a room with a view'

From May 7 - June 7, 2003 Rotterdam will host the first International Architecture Biennial, a large-scale architectural conference to be held every two years in Rotterdam. Kristin Feireiss, former director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute, instigated (promosse) the project in 1999. Feireiss' vision of the Architecture Biennial Rotterdam was an ambitious one, foreseeing a unique platform in Europe where architects, urban planners, landscape designers, students, filmmakers and photographers from around the world would converge to present their plans and visions regarding a specific theme to a broad (largo) public. Once the concept of 'mobility' had been chosen as the central theme of the first Biennial, the board of directors appointed Francine Houben curator of the event. Houben (of the Mecanoo architecture firm and professor at the Delft University of Technology) had previously, in the debate preceding the fifth government white paper on environmental planning, taken a stand against corridor forming, stressing the importance of the motorway as a public space and the significant consequences of mobility for urban as well as rural planning.

Architecture Biennial Rotterdam as a laboratory
In support of her stance against corridor forming, Houben instigated a study of the status and condition of the Dutch motorway landscape under the title 'Holland Avenue'. The Biennial offers an excellent chance to expand this pioneering study, which has sparked interest worldwide, to include an impressive array of metropolitan areas: Los Angeles, the Pearl River Delta, Jakarta, Mexico City, Tokyo, Budapest, the Ruhr region, Beijing and Beirut. The confrontation induced by the study's results, gathered from differing situations within a variety of cultural settings - each with its own point of view regarding the importance and effects of mobility - makes this first Biennial in fact a large-scale laboratory. Instead of the customary exposition of a collection of ready-made plans, the curator has opted for an event with a radically different orientation. The Architecture Biennial Rotterdam will resemble a journey of discovery, a 'work in progress', a journey whose destination and results are not determined beforehand, and one whose progress will be closely monitored both during and after the event.

Mobility: a room with a view
Billions of people worldwide spend a good deal of their time in the automobile, bus or train. In accordance with the universally valid principle of the equivalence of travel time, a growing portion of the world's population travels further every day, but in the same amount of time as before. The effects of this vast expansion of the radius of activity have caused road systems, freeways and rail networks throughout the world to develop into a diversified 'mobility landscape' that not only encroaches further and further on the available open space, but also continually creates and re-creates both urban and rural landscapes. Mobility has transformed the world and exerts significant influence on our daily lives and on mankind's daily experience. The level of alienation is, moreover, intensified by the fact that the world's largest public space, where countless travellers can spend up to several hours every day, appears to have been so sorely neglected. The network of roads and motorways is largely an anonymous space, the domain of traffic experts and politicians, where the input and expertise of designers is seldom (raramente) utilized. The fact that mobility is not just about traffic jams (blocchi) , asphalt and delays (ritardi), and that the traveller sees the car and the train as more than simply a means of getting from A to B, but also as 'a room with a view', seems to have escaped the attention of governmental authorities. The central issue concerning this first Architecture Biennial is to examine the development of the 'mobility landscape' that has emerged in the Netherlands and worldwide in recent decades and to search for ways in which it can be influenced and designed.
The Biennial offers a large number of exhibitions and programmes, each of which will concentrate on one particular aspect of daily mobility. For more information regarding the programme, please consult our web site: www.biennalerotterdam.nl.
For more information and/or visual materials, please contact Tineke van den Polder or Fraukje de Wreede: 010-4401331 or by e-mail: [email protected]


Programme
The main programme of the International Architecture Biennial Rotterdam will be held in two separate venues: the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi) and the warehouse Las Palmas on Rotterdam's Kop van Zuid.

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