Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2026

SYSTEMS OF SUPPORT is the 12th edition of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, focusing on how architecture, urban design, landscape architecture and spatial imagination can respond to societal systems under pressure. The biennale examines the infrastructures and arrangements that shape daily life, including water, energy, materials, housing, logistics, production, food and information. Its central concern is how these systems can be rethought to become fairer, more resilient, regenerative and locally rooted, rather than driven by extraction, depletion and continuous growth.

The event is structured around an exhibition, public program, research and design trajectories, prototypes, stories and conversations. It presents more than 50 designs, research projects, installations, films and spatial presentations that explore how the systems behind water, energy, materials, housing and infrastructure influence the living environment, where they are under strain, and what alternative approaches may be possible. Lectures, conversations and workshops further examine the relationships between economy, ecology, infrastructure and everyday life.

SYSTEMS OF SUPPORT addresses both the general public and professionals working across architecture, urbanism, landscape architecture, design, policy and research. It is also relevant to designers, researchers, policymakers, knowledge institutions, students, social partners and residents. The program positions design as a way to make complex systems understandable, tangible and open to public discussion, linking local spatial questions with broader global systems.

Wouter Veldhuis, architect, urban designer, co-founder of MUST, and former Government Advisor on the Physical Living Environment, leads the curatorial team. The team also includes Carola Hein, Professor of the History of Architecture and Urban Planning and UNESCO Chair Water, Ports and Historic Cities, and Martina Muzi, curator, designer and educator. The Start Symposium, Building Value, is organised around thematic sessions curated by Veldhuis, Hein and Muzi, addressing shared values, flows and architecture, and pedagogies that engage with infrastructures.

The biennale frames architecture and design as public tools for examining the economic, ecological and social systems that structure contemporary life. Its broader significance lies in connecting spatial practice with questions of value, reciprocity, resilience and collective capacity, while using design to understand and reshape the systems that support people, places and other forms of life.