FEDERICA ZAMBELETTI / KOOZ Thanks for agreeing to take part in this exchange between the four of you. Saskia, as the director of International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR), it would be nice to hear your thoughts on the theme of hopeand what that means within your practice.

SASKIA VAN STEIN Let me quickly kick off before giving the proverbial floor to other brilliant minds. For two decades now, IABR has given assignments and has related design research to large societal topics for which the Biennale then functions as an umbrella for the exhibition, the public programme and all the events that surround it. The first IABR I was responsible for was entitled “It's About Time”, where we've put the emphasis on the Club of Rome report ‘Limits to Growth’ as it's been 50 years since they wrote their influential scientific report. With the curators, we basically asked how far on track are we, with their projections for 2072? How are the architecture, design and landscape disciplines responding to contemporary climate urgencies?

For the longest time, I've been very interested in ground politics and value creation in particular; my thinking around Nature of Hope, the IABR 2024, started off with a nitrogen map that had been released into the public realm by our government shortly before the summer break, leading to widespread protests by farmers — which in turn led to really an acceleration of the shift to the right in the political landscape. I found myself asking, how can we anticipate complexity and propose the systemic changes that need to manifest through the lens of a positive story, rather than the fear-mongering that we see all around us on a global level. Adjacent to that, there was the question: is architecture part of the problem or part of an answer? Possibly both. This was the moment where I started the conversations with Janna, who brought in a nuanced understanding of regenerative practices and the large transformations we are actually facing.

KOOZ Thank you so much. You mentioned politics and about a more regenerative practice. Diederik and Alastair, both of your practices look at this, albeit in two distinct ways — whether by systematising through a kind of a network, or looking at the scale of materials. Within your practices, how does hope resonate?

DIEDERIK DE KONING What Saskia was saying touches me too; that is, questioning whether there is hope. At some point we decided that it is necessary to change the building practice into a healthier direction at large, but there are two different challenges. One is the larger political scale: lobbying, regulations, political questions. These are not the aspects where we find gratification quickly. Also it is very difficult to build without telling the client that you're taking something away from them when you go into a material transition. So we use less concrete, less energy, a bit less carbon, and that feels like we're doing something. So this hope boils down to doing things actively ourselves, that that we enjoy, and that that does make some sort of contribution in a positive manner, without it necessarily being the solution on the larger scale. But this exhibition is so great because then you get confronted with this larger scale; it was very eye opening.

ALASTAIR PARVIN On one level, I agree with you and Saskia: when you look at everything that's going on, hope seems rather futile. But then if there's anything more futile than hope, it is the opposite. So I see our work as simply a practical form of hope.

If you look around, the times that we're living in are very strange. There is this really weird disconnect between our stated objectives and what we’re actually doing. In fact we agree, to a large extent, on a number of things: we want to create security for all. We want to create food security. We want to have abundant housing. No one thinks homelessness is a good idea. We want to tackle climate change. Notwithstanding all the slightly exaggerated political tribalism, most people actually agree on these things. Yet, we’re not doing them. So the question is, why not? What we tend to do is blame individual players. It's just a few greedy individuals, right? Well, no, it’s not. We tend to over-blame the players and under-blame the game. The other thing that we tend to do is look to our politicians to fix it — but they too are stuck within a system. So we’re all living with this weird cognitive dissonance. All of us disagree with the burning of fossil fuels, and yet we largely travel in vehicles that use them. It’s the same for architects. There's no architect who thinks that it's a good idea to be spaffing carbon. Yet a lot of architects are still using bricks, even though it is a very carbon-intensive material.

Despite our best intentions, we are stuck within these underlying systems and the incentives they create. We are running these outdated, obsolete nineteenth and twentieth century ways of organising and we're trying to bring these systems to bear against 21st century challenges. Surprise, surprise — it's not working. Once we can establish that we somehow need to shift these systems — and that the policy and our political institutions themselves are part of this system — there's a question of whose job it is to do that? Whose job is it to redesign these systems? In general, the state seems to think that it's the market's job and the market thinks that it's the state's job. Essentially, that's the basis for Open Systems Lab; it’s saying, ‘Hey, we're designers, so let’s try to redesign these systems. ’ On one level, you might say that's futile — but someone has to try. So without hubris or expecting to succeed easily, there is a very practical optimism there. I'm cautiously optimistic that if enough people can find a path to do that, it will make a difference. I'm always quoting the great Buckminster Fuller: if you want to change something, don't fight against the existing reality. Build a new one that makes the old one obsolete. I think designers have an extraordinary ability to do that, so let's try it.

SVS The only thing I would add is that, for me, hope is not necessarily optimistic or pessimistic. In the exhibition, we have approached hope as a verb. Looking at the systemic change that you were just referencing brings the awareness that, through the polycrisis, there is some systemic fear in our institutional bodies and maybe society at large. A new, more integral way of understanding what design is and what it could or should do, is something that the curatorial team and myself have tried to pick up on — then using nature as a basis to literally root again and grow — is what we try to attempt.

JANNA BYSTRYKH This exchange between Diederik and Alastair also highlights and gives focus to the change in systems of building and architectural practice that is already happening at different scales and in different formats, going beyond the problem solving capacity of our professions that has been mentioned. Diederik and la-di-da work on a different scale, partly framed by a material lens, but also focused on systemic change. Maybe Diederik could share some thoughts in terms of what it is that we are able to initiate and change as architects today, from within the building industry?

KOOZ That's a great point. Diederik, it's quite telling that you start from the bare foundations upon which architecture is based, to reroute the system.

DDK The perspective is that in most countries (though not in the Netherlands, for some reason) the building industry is legally disconnected from the architecture discipline. You can't be an architect and a builder at the same time. What we realised is that if you want to change something, you need to be the builder, not the architect. In our case, we come across moments where a certain design solution might be possible, but we have some sort of constraint, right? Whether it's a constraint in law or certain regulations, or it costs a lot, or maybe something degrades, generally, the easiest solution is to resolve it by proposing a new solution. But we are actually interested in unpacking precisely the point at which good proposals — ones that should be embraced — cannot continue.

So one of these is the foundation poles: currently foundations are calculated to last forever, basically. For us, the question is not ‘how can we make concrete more durable’ but rather, ‘why should foundations last forever’? Most buildings do not. It sort of taps into the ego of the architect to want to build something well, so it will last forever. That means, if we would remove that one little bit that doesn’t last forever but maybe for— let's say, a human lifetime — then suddenly it becomes possible to make a foundation pile fully out of wood, with a top that is made of treated wood, which we have witnessed in the Netherlands. These technical solutions exist, but then we are faced with regulations; we are faced with clients who have a mortgage, and so we have all these questions and doubts that surround it. We try to go as far as we can in practice in order to get this debate going. The consequence is that by addressing all these taboos, so to speak — these problems or knots that we need to untangle — we hope to shift the perspective towards a direction where perhaps a slightly less radical version becomes normalized. We embrace smaller scale projects in order to experiment more to make certain things acceptable in society at large. Almost every project now is faced with a ‘no, we can't do this.’ Why not? That's a tough challenge for us to swallow. I think at the IABR, these are the moments that have to be addressed, because somehow everyone agrees that you shouldn't have a no. But somehow we are faced with situations where what society has written down in law is not enough.

JB Across many countries there continues to be a political mood of delay and resistance towards significant climate and biodiversity actions, policies for change and incentives. While action on regional, local scales and individual level continues to grow, without sharper regulations these actions are often not enough to set in motion a reshaping of the building industry, as we see in the Netherlands. What can architects do to continue to instigate change?

DDK That's a good point. I think this goes back to the disciplinary shift. We're not builders anymore, but architects and so we design aesthetically — I'm exaggerating here deliberately, but if we consider architecture this way, as the art of designed spaces, then everything that you cannot see becomes irrelevant. A foundation — we don't care, it'll be under the ground. You don't see it, someone else will take care of it. Or even glass — we draw glass and hatch it in a way where we know that it's transparent. That's why we are currently also researching how we can use recycled glass in the building industry. We like to look at architectural blindspots, where the profession has become not about building but about designing. Again I'm exaggerating, of course; it's more complex than that. Topics like how to build, how to measure, where do you get your resources from? Let’s embed these topics in the architecture discipline! Aesthetic committees don't discuss whether the material is beneficial to those who build with it or eventually have to disassemble it, to the landscape and ecosystem where it’s mined, or whether you respect building regulations that people don't care about too much. We’d like to contribute to that debate through our projects.

KOOZ Having been in practice for several years, I think the gypsum cladding has been our greatest ‘frenemy’ — by hiding everything, we've become lazy in understanding how our buildings could work in a more optimised way, what good materials are. So it's interesting that you talk about invisibility and I wonder if you share this observation.

DDK We always joke that architecture in the Netherlands has to have a white box inside. Painted white plaster walls and then whatever it is on the outside, it should look like brick. It isn't even brick anymore; mostly, it's just these slices of brick for ornamental purposes. That's basically the context within which most architects have to work, which is very difficult. It leaves everything that is actually about architecture in the middle, under the skin. Generally the way we resolve it is to try and show as much of the system as possible: leaving the bare minimum at least shows the building as it is, in a sort of genuine manner. We realise that may be difficult, because generally, there is a preconception of what house should be, what a house should look like. That again boils down to this question of societal change; to show that what we think a house looks like ought to change. If we really want to change, then we have to change the perception of what architecture should or could look like, and be more accepting of the physical outcomes of a critically questioned process. You can do innovative things in one unique project, but to do it in a large housing project, it's almost impossible.

KOOZ On one hand, there's what a house or building should look like, and what that means for the larger public. On the other hand, we know that the reason why we're in the state we are in, is because of a number of standardisations and regulations. Alastair, with Open Systems Lab you talk about how regulations have more influence over the built environment than any architect. In terms of building futures, that are not only in the hands of the politicians or contractors, where does that leave the architect?

AP Of course, it goes beyond regulations. There are a whole stack of systems that shape our homes and cities. But if you just take regulations, there's a really simple answer to this question of ‘where does it leave the architect?’. If you accept the premise that regulations have more impact on shaping the built environment than an architect, there are two options: one is, as an architect, to find clever ways to work within those regulations, and the other is to work to redesign those regulations. So let's rehearse the first one. When I was at architecture school, you were taught to draw and study the ‘context’ of a building; what they almost always meant was the physical context, not the legal context. But there's no reason why the same set of architectural skills shouldn't be invested into understanding the legal context. There is more of this kind of knowledge coming through. I actually went to see some student work recently; some students had done this fantastic project which centred around a loophole in a series of regulations that actually was allowing them to buy empty buildings and convert them into affordable tenure housing. A lot of these regulations haven't really been studied; no one really reads them. People just get away with what they can. So there's a whole domain right there; if we start with that premise, let's understand our legal context and find ways to be clever and inventive within it.

The second way is changing regulations. What tends to happen — and I really don't mean this to be a criticism — is that once architects and designers hit these political edges, they tend to stop being designers and become bad politicians or bad campaigners. Don’t do that. Be a designer — it's a really interesting role, because you can actually begin to push these parameters, find new regulations and start testing the edges of them. It’s amazing how much of a knowledge gap there is. Recently I found myself invited to a room where we talked about a particular set of UK planning regulations. I had one thing to squeeze onto the agenda in the last few minutes — one line in the legislation, which is basically, whenever people extend their homes, it's making them match the existing materials — namely brick, which is carbon intensive. If you just remove that piece of line from the legislation (I'd done a back-of-the-envelope calculation) the potential carbon savings would be the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of people flying from London to Edinburgh every year.

For sure, there are loads of vested interests; whenever you get into these things, as Diederik has mentioned, for sure the concrete industry has a lobby; for sure, designing systems is all about designing incentives in the end. But you'd be amazed how often this gap between what we say we should be doing and what we actually are doing can be filled simply with knowledge — by someone actually bothering to go and make the case. In this case, there was no resistance at all. Everyone was immediately on board; they just didn’t know about it. Right now across the UK, there are local planners who insist on bricks on the facade — even though they work for municipalities who have policies saying they're going to get to zero carbon by 2050. They are just not aware. We need to avoid being lazy and meditating on futility. There's nothing in the architect's professional charter that says you have to work in any particular way; what it does say is that if you are a professional architect, you have a public duty to try and improve the built environment. So if it can be done through that dimension, do it! Find a way to do it, through any dimension.

KOOZ The project of HouseEurope! by b+ hopes to address the bigger picture. Within the next year, that initiative needs to gather one million signatures at a European level, to be able to propose the changes in regulation and in the EIA (European Impact Assessment). What is the potential of cultural institutions in building momentum towards this kind of systemic change?

JB Thanks for bringing up HouseEurope! into the conversation: it’s an incredibly inspiring project and action that started out with professional observations and frustrations, and the need for action, which grew as an educational project, and which has now grown into an impressive formal European Citizens Initiative (ECI), which will be open for public voting from February 1, 2025. It’s an action which could lead to significant change in the building industry and in how we relate to our build environment, as well as new EU legislation reducing unnecessary, speculation-driven demolition and fiscal advantages in reuse of materials, among other things.

From the perspective of the IABR 2024, our ambition has been to bring in as many examples of change in the making as possible. With an emphasis on sharing knowledge amongst ourselves as a community of professionals, but also how we relate that knowledge to a wider audience and society. How do we share that knowledge? How do we make people aware in terms of what is already possible, the gaps and opportunities in existing systems? With over eighty contributors in the exhibition, we tried to engage and connect as many sites and voices of action as possible within a space of less than a thousand square meters. The experience of perhaps even crowdedness and multivocality in the show was very intentional, and hopefully contributing to knowledge building.

KOOZ Indeed, there's the importance of knowledge building; there is also the matter of making sure that this knowledge is accessible and simple. Alastair, could you discuss your project of Plan X, in terms of a simplified and more operable system for architects? How did we get to a point of such complexity?

AP I mean, how we got to this complex system is a very long answer, to do with the invention of the state and bureaucracy. Yet we are where we are. Your point about simplifying is exactly right. One of the things about being a designer is that you can persuade. As I heard it put — and I'm going to use a quote without attribution, apologies: ‘People don't think their way into a new way of acting. They act their way into a new way of thinking.’ One of the approaches we take with Open Systems Lab is to ask ourselves, ‘what is the change that we want to bring about, and what is a useful Trojan horse to do it?’. One of my friends, mentors and heroes, is Dan Hill, who wrote a fantastic book called Dark Matter and Trojan Horses. This idea of a Trojan horse is a really useful thing. It’s not referring to Trojan horses as bad things – carriers of viruses or angry Greek soldiers, but rather the idea of building something that is useful right now, but contains within it the DNA of a better future system. In the case of the UK, we have an especially bad planning system: it's called a discretionary system, which is a fancy way of saying that we make it up as we go along. It's a bit like the referee in a game of football who will not tell you what the rules are: you have to ask every time before you kick the ball. You can imagine the kind of chaos, inaccessibility and opacity that results. So we said, how can we go about changing that? If we'd rocked up to planning authorities and said to them “we've got this vision for how you're going to be doing planning in a totally different way in ten years time”, they would have told us where to go, frankly. Instead, we turn up saying that we've built a tool that makes it simpler for you to do your job right now; but by the way, it also contains the DNA for a much simpler, more transparent way of doing planning.

A lot of the time, we’re all so busy talking about the ‘what’ that we ignore the ‘how’. Earlier we were talking about how regulations are powerful; actually, with the PlanX project, we're going one step beyond redesigning regulations, to something that is ever more weirdly meta. We’re trying to redesign how regulations are made and how they are consumed. Our basic idea is that if we can redesign how these things are made and consumed, other people will then change it directly. So we're really erasing ourselves into the system here! That's the basic tenet of Plan X: if we can make a tool that makes it easy for local planners to actually collaborate and to build simple services that allow people to navigate these complex regulations — instead of having to pick through long documents on a website in about five minutes — then boom. It's been astounding, actually: within a few years, we've somehow gone from being this complete set of outsiders to working with a whole network of planning authorities and central government. We were very lucky to have the opportunity to work with Southwark Council in London; then suddenly we found ourselves working with three, then five, and then several more — then the central government were like, ‘Hello, what are you doing over there? That looks interesting.’ So it went from being outsiders, to getting the chance to work directly with planners. We had never dreamed that we'd be able to get this opportunity. If someone had told me a few years ago that I would be getting paid to build open source code to help transform the way we do regulations, I simply wouldn't have believed them. If we can do it in that domain, it's definitely possible to do it in others.

Now, I'm not going to say that we've declared victory: we're a long way from that. Shifting these systems is the job of decades, not a few years. There is still a very high chance that we will fail. But by getting in proximity with the people who own the problem, trying to understand their needs and incentives, we at least have a chance — and you don't really understand the system until you've tried to change it. A good way to try to change a system is to say to people, how can we make it easier for you to do the right thing? Obviously digital technology is super helpful, because if you ask technology the right question, it can give you advantages in an order of magnitude. This is where we get to your point about knowledge. What we’re really playing with here are knowledge systems. That is a deeply architectural idea: if you go back to the formation of the architectural profession, one of the two core, civic duties of architecture is the responsibility for knowledge over society, in the built environment. So we have a responsibility to knowledge about design, but also a responsibility to design how knowledge works. Another book, which I talk about a lot, is called The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande, which describes medical knowledge. The point he makes is that essentially, there is more knowledge in the world than any practitioner can meaningfully hope to use on any given Tuesday. So our job is to create systems that can change that: that can put knowledge into people’s hands, not just more information.

There's a whole fascinating history here — the history of the professions, and the period in the 1800s when they formed all these institutions and you got letters after your name. The fascinating upshot is that our knowledge systems are massively obsolete. The web has transformed information, but we have not transformed our idea of the way that knowledge really works.

KOOZ In terms of Open Systems Lab, who are those professionals who are bringing about the change? From a very practical perspective, what kind of backgrounds make up the project of Open Systems Lab.

APBasically we have a whole bunch of clever people who used to do something else! Who used to be architects, or used to be engineers, or used to be management consultants and so on. Obviously we have a lot of software developers. It doesn't really matter. In the 20th century, we used to define people based on their profession, on who they were – and the letters they had after their name and so on. But in the 21st century it’s much more interesting to ask people ‘what problem are you working on, and for whom?’ So, yeah, we have a mix of people, but we're not especially interested in what people call themselves. We're interested in what problems we can work on together.

KOOZ Over to Saskia and Janna on this note: what problems are you keen to address and what opportunities does a platform like IABR bring together?

JB Saskia already mentioned this, our conversation began around the notion of our relationship with nature, and the important rooting of that idea in the needed shift within architectural practice. A topic I have been engaged with for some time now. The IABR has been an amazing platform and journey to explore and expand that further, an opportunity to connect with incredible practitioners, thinkers, community leaders, and to be able to share and connect their stories in the show, all actively contributing and imagining by making future practices of architecture. For me, working on regenerative architecture – what it is, what it can be, and how it can contribute to the needed transformation of design and building practice – is a continuation of this incredible, inspirational year.

SVS Well, in parallel to IABR 2024, I've also been writing on the policy plan until 2028, entitled System of Support which was granted — which is obviously fantastic, as we can continue our work for the next four years. That work sits somewhere on the cusp of design by research, media strategies and knowledge production, and the Biennale as a platform. The overall umbrella is called Systems of Support — not care, but support. This hints at what we are actually trying to understand a bit better: where does the agency of architecture sit but also what role cultural institutes, like the ones I run, could play. Personally, I think we have the ‘what’ figured out, but indeed the how and the where — where do institutes activate the leverage for the change you want to see happening? This will be IABR's focus for the next few years. One of the things that we already set up is the Carbon College. I noticed that actually not so many architects are truly designing with — or rather without — carbon in mind, still not. This is very straightforward knowledge production and ultimately shared. Everybody has a little piece of the puzzle, yet there's no sharing for obvious reasons, because it is related to the business model. We should try to connect the knowledge(s) we have, in order to not become fully obsolete in the near future. With Diederik on my left and Alastair on my right, it comes to mind that between your practices stretch the systems we at IABR would want to understand — which are hyper local, really, at the root of things, versus the abstraction of finding the gaps in legislation. Here we share a huge respect for Dan Hill, in looking at systemic innovation and the roles we can play there. So we're honoured to be the representative of HouseEurope! in the Netherlands. In other words, we look forward to furthering that project initiated by House Europe! and aim to literally gather a million signatures to change the law (on the demolition of buildings). This is to say that as a cultural institute, we are also shifting gears beyond facilitating representation and particular discursive practices; that we are ourselves delving deeper into what we should enable and how we can enable it — we take a bit more risk, we get our hands dirty.

Lastly, I never expected to be doing this. My practice is rooted in the culture of architecture, but I'm shifting towards influencing real change in design practice at the moment, which is where I see that real change can be very impactful. That said, we are still highly involved with projects that question rebuilding strategies in areas of conflict; we still pick up on a multitude of ways to enhance the narratives that we want to see happening — both in society and in terms of the role that architectural practice has to play in facilitating those narratives. At least in the Dutch context, after SuperDutch, there is no new story, no new narrative about architecture to be told. Roles have been marginalized. Everybody's in their little tribal bubble, but we need to speed up, scale up and get some skin in the game. Hopefully the Architecture Biennale can be an ally in that quest, providing support where needed. To give a little hint, data and technology will be something that we'll be delving deeper into, as well as the future of a European circular economy: what would that mean in a spatial and material manner? The future of knowledge, social ecological justice and technology is something we will pay attention to. I hope that's enough of a window into the near future.

KOOZ It absolutely is. I do agree that in architectural offices, we were not really practicing what we were preaching. It is good to see how each of us, ever so often, questions where their agency lies and redirects it to a greater purpose — moving from culture to building, for example.

SVS In terms of the cultural landscape of the Netherlands, I'd like to see us as one party that is really driving change, and then hopefully we can share this with other parties. People like Janna are, of course, also deeply related to education and pedagogy; these are lines that we're looking into. And we're a very small player. Thank you, Alastair, thank you, Diederik, for sharing your brilliance with us here.

KOOZ Thanks to all of you for your time.

Bios

Saskia van Stein is artistic and managing director of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR). Currently, van Stein also co-leads The Critical Inquiry Lab MA programme at the Design Academy, Eindhoven. Previously, she was artistic and managing director at Bureau Europa, Maastricht, between 2013–2019. Van Stein’s curatorial practice started at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (now Nieuwe Instituut) in Rotterdam, 2002–2012, where she has programmed exhibitions on the intersection of architecture, culture, design, fine arts, political and human sciences.

Janna Bystrykh is an architect and researcher. She is the head of the Master in Architecture program, at the Academy of Architecture Amsterdam, where she leads the development of a climate curriculum for architecture, and runs her design and research practice BYSTRYKH. Bystrykh has experience with complex urban projects, museum transformations, experimental education and installations. At OMA, she worked on the ‘Elements of Architecture’ exhibition for the 2014 Venice Biennale and on the research and exhibition project Countryside: The Future.

Diederik de Koning is the co-founder, together with Laura van Santen, of the design and architecture studio la-di-da (2015, The Hague). They are driven by curiosity and an eagerness to understand the entire construction process from raw material to product. As every line on paper has an ecological and social impact elsewhere on the planet, they feel that architects need to take full responsibility for designs they make. In collaboration with various workshops, they conduct material experiments to develop new architectural products. They share this knowledge at several academies of design and architecture around the Netherlands, and apply their knowledge in commissioned projects.

Alastair Parvin is a systems designer and civic entrepreneur. He is co-founder of Open Systems Lab, a non-profit R&D company developing digital technologies to transform housing, planning, construction and development in the 21st century. Their current projects include WikiHouse, Plan✕ and Fairhold. He also writes, speaks and advises widely on housing, property, digital innovation, and role of design and innovation in overcoming social and economic challenges, including 'A Right to Build' (RIBA Award for research 2011) and 'Scaling the Citizen Sector' (2016), and sits on the Scottish Government Task force for Digital Planning.

Federica Sofia Zambeletti is the founder and managing director of KoozArch. She is an architect, researcher and storyteller whose interests lie at the intersection between art, architecture and regenerative practices. In 2022 Federica founded KoozArch with the ambition of creating a space where to research, explore and discuss architecture beyond the limits of its built form. Prior to dedicating her full attention to KoozArch, Federica collaborated with the architecture studio and non-profit agency for change UNA/UNLESS working on numerous cultural projects and the research of "Antarctic Resolution". Federica is an Architectural Association School of Architecture in London alumni.