Architecture of Consequence
Exhibition
text Ole Bouman
Architecture of Consequence began life as the Dutch presentation at the São Paolo Architecture Biennale in 2009, encapsulated the results of Shape our country!, the challenge the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi) issued to its public over a six-month period in 2008. Formulating responses to fundamental questions of our time is, it seems, everyone’s business. So, with a deluge of proposals, the people of the Netherlands rose to the challenge of pinpointing their needs:
1. New guidelines for food production 2. Sustainable energy sources 3. Solutions for a shortage of space 4. Less time loss, more quality time 5. Social cohesion 6. A healthy living environment and 7. The recalibration of economic value.
All of the above issues converge in spatial planning and design, an Architecture of Consequence, so to speak. The Netherlands Architecture Institute subsequently selected 22 Dutch architecture firms with genuinely innovative ideas about how to address these seven imperatives. The result was an agenda for the future of our living environment and proof that designers have the creative power to make it happen. Architecture of Consequence proves that any notion that architecture should be an ‘expression of its time’ or should do no more than express the vanity of its commissioners, pales into insignificance when compared with its tremendous potential for resolving urgent societal, and even existential, problems.
Project | Architecture of Consequence
Concept | Ole Bouman
Curator | Saskia van Stein
Commisioned by | HNI Rotterdam
Type | Exhibition
Date | October 2009
Location | São Paulo Biennial Pavilion
Architecture | EventArchitectuur
Design | Herman Verkerk & Paul Kuipers
Graphic Design | Koehorst in ‘t Veld
Project Management HNI | Suzanne Kole & Arianne van der Veen
Construction | Landstra & De Vries