Chief Government Architect of the Netherlands and Professor at the Academy of Architecture Floris Alkemade, Flemish Government Architect Leo Van Broeck and Belgian architect Joachim Declerck are the curators of the next two editions of the IABR-2018+2020 - a two-part Biennale that has the Netherlands and Belgium as its workspace and the world as its source of inspiration. 

The three curators Alkemade, Van Broeck and Declerck, together with the IABR, will explore in what ways spatial transformation can respond to our major challenges.
The workspace is the unique urban ecological and economic system of the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt Delta, the Low Countries where excessive land use is the norm and where we share many challenges. If we redesign the way we live, work, and dwell together in this urbanized delta we can proactively make space for the energy transition, for the transition to a circular economy, for inclusive urban development, and for an innovative approach to mobility problems, health care issues, and the food production and water challenges.

IABR–2018+2020 provides a workspace as well as a platform for a future agenda. It will be a call to architects worldwide to help us link social themes to spatial problems that are urgent because of the climate change and the ensuing question of how to redesign space for the greater physical and social resilience of our cities and landscapes. In times of radical uncertainty, the IABR–2018+2020 deliberately focuses on offering action perspectives, on the design of that which we can want, and on the imagination and presentation of that which we can achieve as a society. Government Architect Floris Alkemade: ‘We need to look for the social value that each design challenge can add. To think about the future in terms of social and ecological profits, rather than imminent losses.’