Studio René Boer

René Boer (1986, he/him) is a queer organizer, researcher and critic with a focus on spatial justice, urban imaginations and radical heritage, based between Amsterdam and Cairo. He is managing editor at Failed Architecture, part of the Non-fiction collective and involved in various urban social movements. He has recently taught at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, Design Academy Eindhoven and the Gerrit Rietveld Academie.

selected projects
Architecture of Appropriation
Contemporary Commoning
Failed Architecture
Grounded Urban Practices
Misericordia
Post-Fossil City
Reimagining Cairo
Smooth City
Terraforming Indonesia
The Right to Build
Useful Life
Wallen2020

mail@reneboer.net
@rene_boer_

Useful Life

This series of dialogues, recorded as part of the WORK, BODY, LEISURE show at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, explores the multifaceted effects of automation processes on the organisation of work, the freedom of bodies and the nature of the spaces they inhabit.


Photo: Daria Scagliola.

One of the premises of the debates around the impact of automation is that these processes render (non)-human bodies and spaces obsolete. Yet automation may also revitalise those entities or simultaneoulsy create new ones. These mechanisms are the starting point of unscripted conversations with the show's exhibitors and guests.



Useful Life is a collaboration with Arif Kornweitz (JaJaJaNeeNeeNee), and features Mark Wigley, Hamed Khosravi, Taneha Bacchin, Simone Niquille, Liam Young, Giuditta Vendrame, Paolo Pattelli, Victor Muñoz Sanz, Maarten Kuipers, Gonzalo Herrero Delicado, Amal Alhaag, Marina Otero Verzier and Katia Truijen.