Elizabeth Diller, Founder and Partner at Diller Scofidio + Renfro, will give the closing keynote address at the World Architecture Festival (WAF) in Amsterdam on 6 December 2019. She will follow a stellar line-up of over 48 speakers shaping the global architecture agenda over the three-day event, including Ben Van Berkel and Doriana Mandrelli Fuksas and Massimiliano Fuksas. The festival runs from 4-6 December.
The WAF programme takes advantage of host city, Amsterdam, with an Open Building Summit on the Festival Hall Stage on 4 December that will explore a new generation of Dutch architects implementing the principles of Open Building, a philosophy first introduced by John Habraken in the sixties. In addition, Dutch architecture and design speakers include Petra Blaisse, Founder and Lead Designer at Inside Out; Marc Koehler, Principal, Marc Koehler Architects; and Ben van Berkel, Founder and Principal Architect at UNStudio.
They are joined on the line-up by established international architects from across the world including Doriana Mandrelli Fuksas and Massimiliano Fuksas, joint Directors of Studio Fuksas; Andrew Whalley, Chairman at Grimshaw Architects; Angus Campbell, Senior Partner and Deputy Head of Studio of Foster + Partners;; Jacques Ferrier and Pauline Marchetti, joint Founders of Ferrier Marchetti Studio; Kai-Uwe Bergmann, Partner at BIG Architects; and Kasper Guldager Jensen, Director and Senior Partner at 3XN / GXN.
As well as architects and designers from leading global practices, the diverse speaking programme for both WAF and INSIDE includes commentators from leading educational institutions and city planners, including: Sir Peter Cook with a lunch time lecture named ‘Coming up For Air’; Saskia Sassen, Professor of Sociology at Columbia University and a member of its Committee on Global Thought; Anuradha Mathur, Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania; Dilip da Cunha, Lecturer in Urban Planning and Design at Harvard University; and Nick Tyler, CBE, Chadwick Professor of Civil Engineering, University College London.
The INSIDE World Festival of Interiors, which is co-located with WAF and takes place simultaneously in Amsterdam, has also revealed three keynote speakers that will be headlining at the event: Petra Blaisse, Founder and Lead Designer at Inside Out; Nigel Coates, Director of architecture practice Nigel Coates and Oliver Salway, Director of architecture practice Softroom.
This year’s programme responds to the Festival’s theme, ‘Flow’ and will include speeches, discussions and debates examining the complex and deep-rooted relationship between architecture, design and people, data, nature and power. Presentations and talks on the event’s main stage and the festival hall stage will analyse not only the movement of millions of passengers through a train station or airport, and the endless flows of data and workers through workplace buildings for example, but at a broader level, the flow of everything from street traffic through cities, to the flows of energy, people and trade within national policy making, and the flow of political power and responsibility that effect the conditions in which architecture takes place.
The speaking programme for World Architecture Festival will culminate with keynote speeches from Marc Koehler on Wednesday 4th December and Studio Fuksas on Thursday 5th December; plus a live presentation followed by a Q&A with Elizabeth Diller (Diller Scofidio + Renfro) on Friday 6th December.
For more details on the WAF Awards and the festival please visit: www.worldarchitecturefestival.
