RAAAF [Rietveld Architecture-Art-Affordances]

RAAAF makes site-specific work and has developed the design approach of ‘strategic interventions’ (download PDF), which derives from the respective backgrounds of the founding partners: Prix de Rome Architecture laureate Ronald Rietveld and philosopher Erik Rietveld. Besides them the core design team consists of architect Arna Mackic. Design research by varying multidisciplinary teams consisting of scientists and other specialists leads to clear concepts, evocative visualizations, and novel horizons. A striking example of this is the installation ‘Vacant NL’, the Dutch contribution to the Venice Architecture Biennale 2010, in which the potential of 10.000 governmentally- owned vacant buildings was shown and that now is central in the discussions concerning innovative re-use. Another example is the cut-through monument Bunker 599, which unorthodoxly questions the Dutch and UNESCO policies on cultural heritage. RAAAF’s work has been published world-wide and exhibited at leading art- and architecture biennales such as those of São Paulo, Istanbul and Venice. The studio has won several prestigious awards, including the Prix de Rome Architecture 2006, the Rotterdam Design Prize 2011, the Architectural Review Award 2013 and a VIDI-award of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). In 2013 RAAAF earned the title of New Radical. The various juries emphasize the ability of the studio to cross and stretch the disciplinary borders of architecture, science and art. RAAAF [Rietveld Architecture-Art-Affordances] is the new name of our studio. More than Rietveld Landscape did, this new name reflects the actual nature of our practice at the crossroads of architecture, art and science.