The Polder of Babel – a superdiverse city in the anthropocene, is a community of learning in parallel to the Dutch contribution to the 17th Venice Biennale of Architecture, in which the question “How will we live together?” as posed by Biennale curator Hashim Sarkis and the counter-question “Who is we?” which is central to the Dutch contribution, will be connected to urban development of Rotterdam.

On June 17 & 18, the School will work together with a group of 20 employees of the municipality of Rotterdam from various departments as well as a selection of other spatial professionals who are active in the area. Together we will explore different cases in Rotterdam through the lens of the Anthropocene and Superdiversity in order to ground these comprehensive and sometimes unclear topics in the reality of Rotterdam. As part of this exploration the participants will also study the various contributions that are shown at the Venice Biennale during a visit to the exhibition in July 2021. The community of learning will result in a public event in September next year, during which the collective results and observations of this community of learning are presented to a larger audience.

More information about the exact dates of the public (online) events will follow soon.

The Polder of Babel is developed at the request of Het Nieuwe Instituut, commissioner of the Dutch pavilion, and the municipality of Rotterdam.

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