School's Out! #40 with Donna van Milligen Bielke

For School's out! on Friday 29 March 2024, we invited Donna van Milligen Bielke. Donna is fascinated by the redefinition and positioning of boundaries, and the influence of architecture on public space. Instead of dividing architecture into volumes, and the city as a collection of volumes, she sees architecture as a means to shape, connect and respond to urban tissue. She thus operates on the border between architecture and urban planning and moves between different scale levels, from the architectural interior to the urban fabric.

During the lecture Donna travelled in time into her works in order to give us an overview of her fascinations and interests behind her projects. She started with her graduation final project “Boogie Woogie”, a new proposal for the City Hall of Amsterdam. Following, she navigated between different projects, from housing to more urban scale. She showed “Vertical” - a residential tower recently built at Sloterdijk in Amsterdam, that can be read as a stacking of different biodiverse human and non-human habitats. She ended her talk with her most recent project “De Kunstwerf”, a collaboration with Ard de Vries Architecten. This project is the cultural home for four dance and theatre companies. Their focus laid on the public space where these companies meet and interact in a public Hortus Conclusus. ⁠

Programme

18:00 Doors open, drinks bites and tunes

19:00 - 20:15 Talk by Donna van Milligen Bielke + Q&A

20:15 - 20:30 Short film by AFFR

20:30 - 22:00 Drinks bites and tunes

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About Donna van Milligen Bielke

Donna received the Prix de Rome for architecture in 2014 for the “cabinets of curiousities” plan for reorganising public space in Rotterdam. In 2019, she got awarded with the Young Maasskant Prize, for her specific focus on architecture as part of the urban fabric. Studio Donna van Milligen Bielke has been working together with Ard de Vries Architects since 2017. Kunstwerf a collective building for 4 different cultural institutions in Groningen, which is their first building they delivered together has won several prizes including the Abe Bonnema Prize in 2023.