About RA Month
Rotterdam Architecture Month is the Netherlands’ largest architecture festival about the future of the city. The month takes place in June and each year a new appropriate location is chosen for the festival heart. It is open to everyone, regardless of knowledge or experience with architecture.
With over 100 partners from the education, cultural and design sectors, RA Month organizes and facilitates over 125 activities across 40 locations. Discover how architecture and city-making influence and improve everyday life. Visit striking interventions, tours, workshops, lectures, exhibitions, films and festivities to explore the city of the future.
Origin
RA Month started in 2016 by bringing together and communicating a collective festival calendar. After three successful but relatively modest editions, the concept was taken to the next level in 2019 with a central festival heart in the post office on Coolsingel, over 50 activities, 70,000 visitors and explosive growth in online reach.
In 2021, the festival heart was located underground in the Kruisplein parking garage. In 2022, on the contrary, the festival heart was located at a height of 29 meters with the pink Podium.
Since 2021, the ambition continues to develop RA Month into a festival of national, and eventually international, significance. The RA Month is an initiative of AIR – Architectuur Instituut Rotterdam, Rotterdam Festivals and Rotterdam Partners.
RA Month ’23: Liquid City
This year’s theme for Rotterdam Architecture Month is Liquid City. Rotterdam is a port city on two banks, so surrounded and saturated by water. The floating festival heart in the Maashaven brings together complex challenges relating to water and climate in concrete urban solutions. In an outdoor exhibition, designers, architects and the municipal authorities present innovative solutions that are already being applied in the city and highlight which solutions you can harness to make the city more resilient to the consequences of climate change, for example.
The barges will contain a temporary park, place for urban sports and you can immerse yourself in lectures, debates, films and other events. The concept for the floating installation is created by Studio Marco Vermeulen.
