Frankfurt Dialogues

Dutch and Flemish architects will discuss their shared convictions about craftsmanship, customisation and spatial quality, despite their divergent cultural and historical conditions.

Four dialogues
Surprisingly often, young firms on both sides of the border engage with craftsmanship from the practical point of view of composition, rhythm and materiality. They explore poetry; the reasons - big or small - behind their design proposals; and how architecture can be both reserved and integrated, or indeed radical and perverse. Against the backdrop of the exhibition in Frankfurt, Het Nieuwe Instituut’s Agency has seized the initiative, and over the autumn period will be organising forty dialogues between both young and established Dutch and Flemish architects. Whilst the exhibition looks both at the past and the future, the dialogues particularly turn their gaze on the present and the future. They take a look at an up-and-coming stream of architectural firms on both sides of the border, who arrive at their architecture differently to what was done before, and who emphatically converge in the debate about architecture’s potential.

Programme

Dialogue 1. Limitless Customisation
27 Oct 2016 - Het Nieuwe Instituut (Rotterdam)
Speakers: Floris de Bruyn - GAFPA (BE), Freek Dendooven - Raamwerk (BE), Floris Cornelisse - HCVA (NL), Koen van Velsen - KVVA (NL) and Gideon Boie - BAVO (BE)

Dialogue 2. Radicalism & Poetry
9 Nov 2016 - Deutsches Architekturmuseum (Frankfurt)
Speakers: Wim Goes - Goes & Berry (BE), Olivier Goethals (BE), Donna van Milligen Bielke (NL), Freek Persyn (BE), Lara Schrijver (NL)

Dialogue 3. Composition & Material
24 Nov 2016 – Flanders Architecture Institute (Antwerp)
Speakers: Geert Somers - ONO (BE), Marjolein van Eig - BureauvanEig (NL), Job Floris - Monadnock (NL), Daniel Rosbottom (UK)

Dialogue 4. Reason & Location
8 Dec 2016 - Deutsches Architekturmuseum (Frankfurt)
Speakers: Bart Hollanders - Eagles of Architecture (BE), Jan Nauta - Studio Nauta (NL), Guus Tielens - Korth Tielens architecten (NL), Christian Kieckens (BE), Tom Avermaete (BE)

The dialogues are initiated and facilitated by Het Nieuwe Instituut’s Agency for Architecture, Design and Digital Culture in collaboration with the Flanders Architecture Institute. The selection of firms was created in part as a result of the efforts of Jantje Engels and Marius Grootveld, who as curators are also responsible for the Prelude section of the MAATWERK exhibition.