Information about the speakers
Daniel Libeskind, is an US-American architect and urban planner of Polish-Jewish origin. He studied music in Israel and New York and also worked as a professional musician since he was a kind of child prodigy on the accordion. Later he opted for architecture and graduated from Cooper Union in New York and the University of Essex. In 1989, he moved to Berlin with his family and founded the architecture studio “Studio Daniel Libeskind”. After winning the bid to rebuild the World Trade Center in February 2003, he relocated the headquarter to New York City, where he still lives today. Branches of the studio are also located in Zurich and Milan. He taught at Yale, London, Zurich, St. Gallen, Graz, Berlin-Weißensee, Karlsruhe and Lüneburg.
Francine Houben, born in 1955, is founding partner and Creative Director of Mecanoo architecten, based in Delft, Netherlands. Her work ranges from theatres, museums and libraries to neighbourhoods, housing and parks. Through her works she has gained international acclaim. Some of her works include the Delft University of Technology Library, La Llotja Theatre and Congress Centre in Lleida, the Library of Birmingham, and the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts in Taiwan. Currently, she is working on the renovations of the New York Public Library and the central library of Washington, DC. In 2015, Queen Máxima of the Netherlands presented her the prestigious Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Prize for her entire oeuvre.
Sylvia Karres, born in 1956, studied landscape architecture at State College of Gardening and Landscaping in Boskoop and at the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam. She has previously worked at Bureau Bakker and Bleeker (now B+B) in Amsterdam. In 1997, she co-founded the office of Karres en Brands together with Bart Brands. Her work encompasses major design projects, such as the concept for the redevelopment of public space in the centre of Breda and the design of Federation Square in Melbourne. Karres is a guest lecturer at many schools of architecture and universities. In 2015, she was appointed as Robertson Guest Professor at the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia.
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Premiere! The event series Architects, not Architecture will hold its first edition in The Netherlands. Every architect knows famous buildings – but do you know the people, who designed and built them? Who are they and how did they become what they are today? You will find the answers, and a lot more, at the Kunsthal Rotterdam on October 3.
The concept is always the same and has already inspired hundreds of people in different cities. Architects, not Architecture or “AnA” – as the name suggests – provides a glimpse on great personalities of architecture. The event series is not about the projects of the architects, but about them, their professional backgrounds and formative individual experiences that shaped the projects we all know. This provides new perspectives and inspires on a more personal level. Come to Kunsthal and discover a new kind of event series.
On October 3, two relevant Dutch architects and one special guest will talk about their personal experiences and important creative periods in their lives and, as always at “AnA“, not a word may be lost about their projects:
- Daniel Libeskind, founder of Studio Daniel Libeskind, New York, www.libeskind.com
- Francine Houben, co-founder of Mecanoo, Delft, www.mecanoo.nl
- Sylvia Karres, co-founder of Karres en Brands, Hilversum, www.karresenbrands.com
The three of them are well-known for their significant work. The Polish born and New York based Daniel Libeskind is characterized by a narrative language of forms. He uses elements that explicitly refer to extra-architectural content and thus have a different meaning in context. He recently publish his biographical book, which will be sold at the event, where the attendees will also have the opportunity to get a signed copy. Francine Houben graduated with cum laude honours from the Delft University of Technology and founded Mecanoo architecten, which has been grown into a prominent Dutch architecture practice. She bases her work on precise analysis coupled with an intuition built over three decades and interweaves social, technical, playful and human aspects of space-making together in order to create a unique solution to each architectural challenge. For Sylvia Karres, intuition and a ‘sense of place’ play an important role in her output. She tackles a variety of tasks in the public domain with her offices, both at home and abroad. These three all have a different focus in their work, which makes the evening even more exciting, but they all have in common that their approach to architecture goes far beyond its limits.
This event is supported by our partners BoConcept, JUNG, KUBUS and Object Carpet.
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