Call for Projects Museumpark
The organisers of Rotterdam Architectuur Maand ‘24 (Rotterdam Architecture Month or RA Month) hereby cordially invite designers, design education institutions and other stakeholders in the development of the spatial domain to submit projects for Rotterdam Architecture Month 2024’s central exhibition. The latter will run for the entire month of June at Museumpark. Projects can be submitted until Friday 29 March 2024.
Rotterdam Architecture Month has developed into the largest architecture festival in the Netherlands about the future of cities. Every year, in June, architecture’s innovativeness and quality are celebrated together with the design sector, education, the business community and many initiators. The RA Month facilitates well over 125 activities across some 40 venues with more than 100 partners from the education, culture and design sectors.
This year, the Museumpark is the festival’s central point where the general public, professionals, educational and cultural institutions can meet and exchange knowledge. There is something for everyone, irrespective of their knowledge of or experiences with architecture, including conspicuous interventions, an exhibition, films, workshops, lectures, guided tours and much, much more.
From private estate to cultural hotspot
The Museumpark is part of ‘The Land van Hoboken’, the former estate of the eponymous family of shipping magnates that extended from the Nieuwe Binnenweg to the Westzeedijk and from the Westersingel to the Coolhaven. In 2024, it will be exactly 100 years ago that this area was opened up to Rotterdam’s inhabitants. Over the past century, it has developed from a private estate into one of the city’s cultural hotspots. It attracts a wide range of visitors from the unhoused to international culture lovers, and from young skateboarders to young professionals.
Route through the Museumpark
The area’s continual development showcases a range of opinions on the importance of greenery, culture and recreation for the city. During RA Month, the various institutions, locations and stories will be linked by an alternative route through the area that shows visitors the contemporary Museumpark’s historical layers with new perspectives added by today’s designers using an outdoor exhibition with spatial, programmatic and location-specific interventions.
This Call for Projects invites the design sector to contribute projects that respond innovatively to at least one of the four sub-themes of the lead theme Tuin van de stad [the city’s garden]. Do you have an existing project, installation or model aligned with the theme? If so, submit it through RA Month’s website by 29 March 2024 at the latest. The following provides further information on the themes, selection criteria, conditions and guidelines.
This year, the Rotterdam Architecture Festival’s central point will be organised by OMI and AIR. The organisers are looking forward to all your submissions.
RA Month 2024’s main theme: The City’s Garden
The Museumpark is a patchwork of various gardens from a variety of eras, each with their own characterisations as romantic, geometric and landscape gardens. It is home to trees that were planted for the Landgoed van Hoboken, pergolas from the Floriade [an international horticultural exhibition] in the rose garden and the stone river reminds us of OMA’s design for the Museumpark. New gardens have been added recently including the Nieuwe Tuin around the Nieuwe Instituut [museum for architecture, design and digital culture] and a roof garden at Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen and on Erasmus MC [a hospital]. RA Month occasioned an exploration of the past, present and future of gardens in the city as well as the activation of the Museumpark as the collective garden for and of the city.
Exhibition themes:
How public are public spaces?
Who do public spaces target and who do they belong to? With huge home building ambitions, the obligation to increase housing densities and various impending transitions, cities are changing rapidly and pressure on public spaces is increasing. Creating green areas, from collective courtyard gardens to floating urban parks, plays an increasingly prominent role in contemporary urban development. This call seeks projects that are about the voices various users have in the development of urban greenery, when it comes to restructuring public spaces, but also how a collective narrative can contribute to ownership thereof. This concerns original approaches that provide a range of users with the space to shape ideas and participate. Think, for example, about discussions on urban swimming or the role of parks as meeting places for various (sub)cultures including skateboarders and other urban sports.
The healthy city of the future
Our climate is changing and, as recent years have demonstrated, this is happening a lot faster than expected. While, on the one hand, our summers are getting hotter and drier – low water levels in rivers, heat stress and drinking water shortages – on the other, we increasingly face torrential downpours, high rivers and flooding. RA Month is looking for examples of projects in which squares, parks and gardens are used to make our cities adaptable to climate change and keep them that way. RA Month is also looking for plans that consider which other functions green areas could perform in the future. How can they contribute to a healthy city in the fields of consciousness raising and wellbeing, food production and social cohesion.
Voice of the park
If the gardens and parks had a voice, which conversations would they have about their layouts? In recent years, there has been increasing room for discussions concerning, as well as space for, urban nature. RA Month is looking for examples of urban developments in which living nature is a full stakeholder and for projects that reinforce biodiversity. Think, for example, of fish-friendly locks, hedgehog bridges or other facilities in infrastructure, projects that give rats, insects and bats a say in the development of new housing estates or the connection of existing green areas in the city, in line with natural logic.
The everyday garden
Allotments, playgrounds, zoos, botanical gardens and roof gardens occur in every conceivable variation, type and size. However, what does a garden mean to individuals as a contemporary venue for contemplation, inspiration and relaxation? RA Month is looking for projects which portray gardens from a quotidian perspective as meeting places for locals, areas for storing garden furniture or cars or primarily places that require little maintenance. And what are the typological alternatives? Roof terraces, facade gardens and balconies or conversely communal courtyard gardens? This theme aims to elicit projects that visualise gardens from the broadest (or narrowest) perspectives.
Take part!
Submissions
- A fully completed registration form including pitching your exhibition proposal
- A maximum of six pages A4 as a PDF (max. 5MB) with interest-arousing conceptualisations such as models or 3D objects, drawings, photographs or moving images that support your exhibition proposal. Ensure your story or message has a clear progression/structure with a brief explanation of what the image(s) depict. Please note: only suggest copyright-free images for use in the exhibition
- Any questions you may have can be posed to Jamie Hornis by emailing: j,hornis@airrotterdam.eu up to and including Thursday 28 March 2024
- Projects can be submitted until 29 March 2024 using this link.
Selection criteria
A selection committee will select some 20 projects from all the submissions to participate in the exhibition at the heart of the festival for RA Month. The committee will assess all the entries using the following criteria:
- The project provides a valuable contribution to RA Month’s main theme
- The project is presented in an accessible, comprehensible manner to a wide (and not solely professional) audience
- The project inspires and generates interest among the RA Month’s audience for architecture and spatial development
- The project is aligned with the overarching concept of the route through the park, that links ideas concerning urban gardens from the past, present and future. The exhibition’s scenography was developed on the basis of the space available, the themes defined and the projects submitted after the Call for Projects.
Submission conditions
- All designers, design students, educational programmes, (landscape)architects, urban planners, commissioning parties, policymakers and other parties involved in concretising plans in the spatial domain are welcome to submit their project(s)
- Both existing projects as well as plans, visions or imaginings may be submitted
- The entry to the exhibition should have no commercial intent
- Proposals may only be submitted by completing the registration form which can be found on the RA Month website
- Alongside the fully completed registration form, a complete entry consists of a PDF with renderings that support the exhibition proposal to a maximum of six pages A4 (max. 5MB). Provide correct, factual information for the images such as captions, credits and (in the case of models or 3D objects) dimensions
- You may enter multiple projects simultaneously. In that case you should submit a separate and comprehensive entry for each project to the RA Month website
- Entrants must supply copyright-free information, illustrations, drawings, models and other materials so that the latter can possibly be used for various online and offline communication objectives
- If applicable: please inform the organisers if the project submitted will also be part of the IABR exhibition ‘Nature of Hope’ at the Nieuwe Instituut and/or elsewhere in the city (opens in late June).
Conditions for the projects selected
- RA Month’s main exhibition opens on 1 June 2024 and runs until 30 June at the Museumpark
- The exhibition is bilingual (NL and ENG). RA Month’s organisers will be responsible for writing, editing and translating the texts for the exhibition or having the latter edited, but will ask that entrants submit basic texts (project introduction and captions)
- The exhibition will take place in public spaces. Entrants are responsible for making the object(s) and/or model(s) vandal proof or having this done as well as for the resulting costs. This is why there is no opportunity to utilise equipment such as beamers, sound systems or monitors
- At the selection committee’s recommendation, an entrant may be asked to augment their entry with additional or alternate images or, conversely, to make a selection from the images submitted. For the benefit of the exhibition’s concept a selected entrant may also be asked to submit the project in a manner other than initially proposed
- The exhibition’s graphic design will be handled by Studio de Ronners. In the event of a 2D exhibition proposal, the selected entrant will be asked to convert the entry to the format specially developed for the exhibition
- The entrant is responsible (also financially) for the substantive development and the creation of images that have been selected for the exhibition
- RA Month’s organisers are responsible for printing and will cover the costs of printing the selected images, the exhibition texts and the setting up/installation of all the projects in the framework of the exhibition unless agreed otherwise
- RA Month’s organisers are responsible for setting up the exhibition and will cover the costs of exhibition bearers and lighting
- In the event of complex presentations, the selected entrant(s) may be asked to support the installation and tear down of the object to be exhibited
- The selected entrants will submit copyright-free materials that can be used in both the exhibition as well as for various online and offline publications
- The RA Month exhibition is a freely accessible route through the Museumpark, with a small section of indoor public spaces that provide more security for objects.
Timeline March – July 2024
| 04 March | Start call for projects |
| 29 Maric | Closing date of the call for projects |
| 12 April | Announcement of the selection |
| 15 May | Installation commences |
| 1 June | Opening RA Month |
| 1 – 30 June | Rotterdam Architecture Month |
| 1 – 5 July | Tear down of the exhibition |