Crimson Historians and Urbanists

Crimson Historians and Urbanists is Ewout Dorman, Mike Emmerik, Annuska Pronkhorst, Michelle Provoost, Simone Rots, Wouter Vanstiphout and Cassandra Wilkins. Since 1994, when Crimson published its first books and became part of the urban planning team for the extension of Utrecht ’Leidse Rijn’, the office has developed a hybrid practice with a background in architectural history that focusses on the contemporary city. Crimson designs for the city, researches it, writes texts and books about it, shows it in exhibitions and works of art, teaches about it, gives advice on it and makes policies for it. More info: www.crimsonweb.org

Alfredo Brillembourg
Alfredo Brillembourg was born in New York, where he studied architecture at Columbia University. He undertook his master’s degree at the Central University of Venezuela after which he co-founded the Urban-Think Tank - an interdisciplinary design practice dedicated to high-level research and design on a variety of subjects concerned with contemporary architecture and urbanism in complex environments. Notable projects include the Caracas Metrocable, the Vertical Gym typology, and more recently the documentary and publication on Torre David – a 45-storey unfinished office tower in Caracas that has become a node for the study of informal vertical communities. Brillembourg has taught at Columbia University, where he co-founded the Sustainable Living Urban Model Laboratory (S.L.U.M. Lab), and held the chair for Architecture and Urban Design at ETH Zurich.

De Dépendance
De Dépendance works from the premise that the city of Rotterdam is intrinsically connected to global trends – from growing flows of capital, labour, goods and information to geopolitical shifts of power. In order to explain, interpret and critically reflect on these transformations De Dépendance researches how they manifest themselves in our cities and urban regions. They do this by initiating public programs that bring new perspectives, divergent opinions, alternative solutions and (radical) imaginaries. More info: dedependance.eu

Dore van Duivenbode
Dore van Duivenbode studied history at the University of Utrecht, after which she has worked for various media platforms such as VPRO, KRO-NCRV, NRC Handelsblad and Vrij Nederland. In 2018 she published her first book called Mijn Poolse huis (My Polish house) for which she has been nominated with the Bob den Uyl-award, for best journalistic travelbook of 2018. Recently she worked together with director Britta Hosman on the television series Moja Polska! during which she shows the viewer a Poland as it has not been portrayed before. She investigates how it is possible that her motherland has changed so much during her life and looks at the county’s turbulent history from communism to western democracy and more recently a return to conservatism. More info at: https://www.dorevanduivenbode.nl/

Georgeen Theodore
Georgeen Theodore is an architect, urban designer, and Professor at New Jersey Institute of Technology’s College of Architecture and Design, where she is the Director of the Master of Infrastructure Planning (MIP) Program. She co-founded and leads Interboro, a New York City-based architecture and planning research office, with her partners Tobias Armborst and Daniel D'Oca. Since its founding in 2002, Interboro has worked with a variety of public, private, and not-for-profit clients, and has accumulated many awards for its inventive and inclusive approach, including the Curry Stone Design Prize Social Design Circle (2017), the Rice Design Alliance Spotlight Award (2013), the Museum of Modern Art PS1’s Young Architects Program (2011), the Architectural League’s Emerging Voices Award (2011) and Young Architects Award (2005), and the AIA New York Chapter’s New Practices Award (2006).

Jord den Hollander
After having finished his master's in architecture at the Technical University of Delft, Jord den Hollander followed a course in scenario writing at the Filmschool in London. Throughout his career he has often combined both disciplines. He has made documentaries about art and architecture, has written and directed internationally acclaimed television series for children about art and science and is curator of the Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam (www.affr.nl), the world’s biggest architecture film festival, which he co-founded in 2002. In addition, he has designed a unique oeuvre that includes an architecture centre for children in Almere, a mobile kid’s library, a floating hotel and a tensegrity bicycle bridge.

Liza Fior
Liza Fior is a lecturer at the MA Architecture: Cities and Innovation at UAL’s Central St Martins and was previously a Visiting Professor at Yale School of Architecture. Fior is also founding partner of MUF Architecture/Art, a legendary London-based practice that combines dreamlike compositions of shapes and materials with gripping narratives. Established in the mid 90s as a new type of practice that would blur the ‘fuzzy edges’ between buildings and city, architecture, art, and the structures of society, MUF has worked on various public spaces, buildings and exhibitions that have the depth and complexity of places with a history of centuries. One such project was a development strategy for the Hofbogen in Rotterdam.

Momoyo Kaijima
Momoyo Kaijima is co-founder of the Tokyo-based design firm Atelier Bow-wow, which she established in 1993 together with Yoshiharu Tsukmoto. With Atelier Bow-wow, she works on various building, research and art projects -  always trying to get as close as possible to the community she work for in both the architectural aesthetics as well as in the materialisation and construction techniques. While engaging in design projects of houses, public buildings and station plazas, etc., she has conducted numerous investigations of the city through architecture such as Made in Tokyo and Pet Architecture. She was the curator of Japan Pavilion at the 16th Venice Architectural Biennale. Momoyo is in great demand as a teacher and lecturer in universities all around the world, including the University of Tsukuba, Harvard GSD, ETH Zurich and Rice University.

Peter Barber
Peter Barber is one of the UK's most distinguished housing architects, who has been highly praised for his attempts at tackling the pressing social issues of the day - lack of homeless shelters, lack of social housing provision - in a way that aspires to well-designed urbanism. After setting up his practice, Peter Barber Architects Ltd. in 1989, Barber's breakthrough came with his European-style street-based design for Donnybrook Quarter in east London, which won several awards and was shortlisted for the 2006 RIBA Stirling Prize.

Piet Vollaard
Piet Vollaard is an architect, architecture critic and one of the driving force behind Stad in de Maak - an association set up to take on the redevelopment of vacant properties in Central Rotterdam, together with the local community. The association renovated six buildings, investing upfront the amount of loss the buildings were projected to generate for their owner in the coming 10 years. Stad in de Maak aims to go beyond temporary vacancy management, by reaching permanence in affordable housing and working spaces through collective ownership and management.

Sam Jacob
Sam Jacob is principal of Sam Jacob Studio, professor of architecture at University of Illinois at Chicago, director of Night School at the Architectural Association, and the editor of Strange Harvest. Previously, he was a director of internationally acclaimed architecture practice FAT, with whom he designed Villa de Heerlijkheid - a community building in Rotterdam's satellite town Hoogvliet