What happens when visual art, experimental architecture and academic philosophy join forces?
RAAAF makes site- and context specific work, which derives from the respective backgrounds of the founding partners: Prix de Rome laureate Ronald Rietveld and philosopher Erik Rietveld. The experimental studio started in 2006 during Ronald's work period at the Rijksakademie of Visual Arts in Amsterdam. Young talents who have strengthened our core team over the years include David Habets, Arna Mačkić, and Daria Khozhai.
Together with excellent craftsmen, scientists, and other artists, RAAAF has been working for decades along several urgent, ongoing thematic lines: climate change, contested heritage, and the future of our living environment.
Our spatial interventions cut through past and present in search of new meaning in the future. These interventions invite reflection and question practices, conventions and habits that people take for granted. Many of our works articulate emptiness, and create space for reflection by taking things away. In a world full of stuff and images, a "poetry of absence" is crucial.
A striking example of this is the cut-through monument ‘Bunker 599’, which unorthodoxly questions the Dutch and UNESCO policies on cultural heritage:"Hardcore Heritage". Another example is the art installation ‘Vacant NL’, the Dutch contribution to the Venice Biennale 2010, in which the potential of 10.000 governmentally-owned vacant buildings was shown.
RAAAF’s work has been published worldwide and exhibited at leading visual art- and architecture biennales such as those of São Paulo, Istanbul, Chicago and Venice. In 2016 Ronald & Erik Rietveld have been invited to become members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts (KNAW).
Deltawerk // and Bunker 599 are listed among 100 “key artworks” in Dutch public space since 1945. Museums that have shown our work include Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art Moscow, National Museum Oslo, Centraal Museum Utrecht, Kunsthal Rotterdam, and Stedelijk Museum for Modern Art Amsterdam.
RAAAF has won several prestigious awards in both visual art and architecture, including the Prix de Rome 2006, the Architectural Review Award 2013 (London, UK), the European Prize of Architecture 2017 (Philippe Rotthier), the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture 2023, under the patronage of UNESCO, a VICI-award of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and a ERC-Starting Grant. Ronald received a "Proven Talent Artist" grant from the Mondriaan Fund in 2016 and 2020. In 2013 RAAAF earned the title of New Radical and Dutch Architect of the Year.
The various juries emphasize the ability of the studio to cross and stretch the disciplinary borders of visual art, architecture and philosophy.
Portfolio RAAAF [pdf]
Curriculum vitae Ronald Rietveld [pdf]
Curriculum vitae Erik Rietveld
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