It's 2025! Take a stance

Spatial thinkers, designers and researchers must rethink their roles and position to face today’s uncertainties and tomorrow’s challenges. So, what is your position, and what do you stand for?

We're teaming up with Rotterdam Architecture Month and the Rotterdamse Academie van Bouwkunst to continue the conversation we started last winter — it's summer, and now we’re giving you the stage. Let's come together, to scribble, sketch, write and discuss the position and attitude which shapes our work.

During our last session ‘it’s 2025, now what?’ with Lesia Topolnyk, Nikos Katsikis, Irene Luque Martín and Floris Alkemade, one insight stood out: designers must rethink their roles and position to face today’s uncertainties and tomorrow’s challenges. Now it’s your turn.

What do you stand for?

Join the next step in this ongoing conversation — and share your position. Are you an activist, designer, technocrat, mediator, steward, thinker… or something in between? What challenges do we face in holding our positions, and how far can we take responsibility for our actions: financially, socially, culturally, bureaucratically?

program

What is your position and how do you reflect on the limitations and responsibilities that come with that position?

We invite you to share your experience as an academic, activist, collective or however you define your position in the field. We want to take this moment to create an open and intimate setting for dialogue, exchange and critical examination of our positions and the responsibilities that come with that. We will discuss ways of increasing impact from these different positions and look for collaborative structures so that these diverse positions can stimulate each others’ field of change.


17:00	Walk in
17:30	Program starts introduction Why are we asking to take a stance and define their position?
17:45	Table discussion 1 What is your position and what does it mean to you? Does your professional position matter? Does your position allow you to take a stance?
18:30	Table discussion 2 What differences do we acknowledge in the responsibilities connected to our positions? Is it a collective effort to enhance the impact different positions have? How can we structure collaboration to enhance our impact?
19:15	Collective closing, next steps, share expectations
19:30	Drinks and rounding off
20:00	End of evening

There is limited capacity as we want to keep the conversation feeling safe and intimate. Make sure we have a spot for you by registering for free below. You can define if you want to join with the miniposter or open call, or just come as you are without preparatory content.

Reguliere prijs €0.00 incl.VAT In winkelmand

Featuring

Irene Luque Martín

Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft, Irene’s work is centered on radical spatial imagination and collaborative design, challenging conventional practices, she pushes the boundaries of spatial design through research by design and design by research. Irene is dedicated to preparing the next generation of urban designers to be the agents of change.

Lesia Topolnyk

Winner of the Prix de Rome 2022, Lesia is an architect, artist, researcher, and founder of StudioSpaceStation. Combining speculative design, architecture, and storytelling, Lesia explores the socio-political complexities of space. Her work challenges conventional thinking and bridges design, art, and activism, reimagining the role of spatial thinkers.

Nikos Katsikis

Urbanist and Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft, Nikos focuses on the intersections of urbanization, territorial governance, and environmental transformation. His research combines theory and practice, addressing sustainability, circularity, and equitable urban development.

Setareh Noorani

Architect, researcher and curator at Nieuwe Instituut. Noorani’s spatial and architectural designs emphasise her ongoing research into (institutional) spaces for collective inhabitation and appropriation, centering undernarrated voices. The designed spaces challenge contemporary value systems connected to art/architectural production. Setareh Noorani’s (curatorial) research at the Nieuwe Instituut (Rotterdam, NL) focuses on the role of feminism, decolonial practices, non-institutional forms of representation and more-than-human perspectives in the way we build, remember and change cities. Setareh argues for alternative future scenarios that do justice to underexposed voices and forms of collectivity.

                                            
Irene Luque Martín

Lesia Topolnyk

Nikos Katsikis

Setareh Noorani

Feeling inspired?

This miniposter marked the begining of this project.

Download here