Hi, my name is René Boer.

I work as a critic, curator and organizer in and beyond the fields of architecture, design, heritage and the arts. In my practice I articulate new perspectives on spatial conditions and facilitate fertile ground for imagining and materialising alternatives. In recent years this has resulted in a wide range of research projects, public programmes, exhibitions, educational experiments and political positions, often in close collaboration with a network of likeminded institutions, movements, practitioners and friends. I am also one of the founding partners of Loom — practice for cultural transformation, together with Katía Truijen, Mark Minkjan, Michiel van Iersel and Radna Rumping. We are currently weaving our practices together into this new collective structure, which seeks to initiate and sustain profound transformations by developing reflections, propositions, rehearsals, and real-world alternatives that bring people together around urgent issues. I have also been part of the transnational platform Failed Architecture for many years, as well as been involved in various urban social movements and art, architecture and design schools in Amsterdam and beyond. While it is this city where I developed my practice and where I am currently based, Cairo is also central to a large part of my work.

Scroll down to learn more about some of the main threads of my practice, or send an email to mail@reneboer.net to get in touch.



Contemporary Conflict

Acknowledging, centring or even starting conflicts remains a taboo in most contemporary (Western) societies, and more specifically in both the art world and activist circles. As part of our fellowship at Framer Framed, a platform for contemporary art, visual culture, and critical theory and practice in Amsterdam, artist Winnie Herbstein and I are critically examining the role of conflict today, and developing, testing and practicing new (curatorial) methodologies which acknowledge and engage existing conflict and its transformative potential. This project, originally developed at the Social Practice Workshop at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, is first and foremost a response to the renewed interest of the arts in political engagement, such as community activism and politicised research, and the obvious limitations of this phenomenon. While some activists, movements and communities have benefited in terms of visibility or funding, their work tends to hit a dead end in art spaces and is often aestheticised to the point of becoming a comfortable, consumable viewing experience. Contemporary Conflict explores new ways of working, in close collaboration with groups combining art and activism. Listen to a recording of our first event at Framer Framed.



Smooth City

Based on a similar criticism of aestheticisation and on years of research, interviews and workshops I wrote a book about the urban condition I refer to as the 'smooth city'. It departs from the observation that in cities around the world this urban condition, characterised by ever-increasing levels of ‘perfection’, efficiency and control and the active eradication of any aberration or alternative, is spreading rapidly. In the smooth city, urban space is sanitised and urban life compressed into a seamless experience. While the need for safe, clean, and well-functioning urban environments is clear, the rise of the smooth city undermines the democratic nature and emancipatory potential of cities while leaving almost no space for anything that is experimental or incompatible with dominant norms. This publication offers a critical analysis of the origins, characteristics and consequences of the smooth city, while also offering a starting point to challenge the obsession with perfection and instead collectively work towards porosity in the urban realm. The book has been designed by Kees de Klein, who also contributed with a visual essay. Order a copy directly from the publisher.



Architecture of Appropriation

While the smooth city is a critique on urban perfection, many of my other projects engage with various ways to instigate alternatives. Architecture of Appropriation is a research, archive, series of exhibitions and publication, which acknowledges squatting as a spatial practice with a large impact on the urban landscape, and recognises the resulting spatial constellations as an architectural style. This project is a collaboration with Het Nieuwe Instituut and seven communities in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Groningen and Maastricht, and originated from a request by the State Archive for Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning to make their collection more inclusive by starting to collect the contribution of anonymous, precarious and even criminalised groups to the city. The project reflects on approaches to researching, archiving and representing appropriated spaces in the institutional framework of an archive and museum, and establishes forms of reciprocity and solidarity within the project. Architecture of Appropriation also consisted of various international collaborations, such as with Ocupaçao 9 de Julho as part of the 11th International Architecture Biennial São Paulo. Read more about the research outcomes in the full pdf of the publication.



Contemporary Commoning

Besides urban social movements, artists and designers can also contribute to new forms of collectivity in the urban realm. Commissioned by the Gerrit Rietveld Academy I developed Contemporary Commoning as a two-year artistic research project examining the potential relations between art and design practices and forms of 'commoning' in the newly developed neighborhood of Zeeburgereiland on Amsterdam's eastern fringes. Artistic and academic researchers from RAAAF, Waag: Technology & Society, Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Sandberg Instituut, Casco Art Institute and the University of Amsterdam contributed to the research with various investigations and experiments. For example, the temporary installation "Black Water" by RAAAF sought to create new relations among the area's inhabitants inviting them to an abandoned and forgotten space which constituted an immediate contrast with the bright and smooth surroundings. In 2022, the installation was nominated for the Amsterdam Prize for the Arts. The interdisciplinary collaborations resulted in a multifaceted toolkit with 'recipes for the commons' published on commons.art and a booklet to inform the inhabitants of the island about the project. Learn about artistic approaches to commoning in this booklet.



Grounded Urban Practices

Another position from which the status quo of business-as-usual spatial production is being challenged is that of collaborating architects, designers or spatial practitioners grounding themselves in urban areas, movements or communities, while using space as a key agent of change. In collaboration with the Cairo-based CLUSTER studio I brought these so-called 'Grounded Urban Practices' (GUPs) from cities as different as Cairo, Tunis, Berlin, Rotterdam and Amsterdam together in an international network, to exchange knowledge and ideas about legal, financial and organisational models as well as new strategies and methods. The participating GUPs ranged from initiatives for new housing cooperatives to practices bringing communities together around heritage issues. This project originally started with the observation that a wave of GUPs had emerged in Cairo and Tunis after the revolution and in Amsterdam and Rotterdam during the financial crisis, while also acknowledging that many GUPs in both contexts face serval difficulties today. In 2024, a new generation of GUPs from various African and European cities met in Cairo parallel to the 12th World Urban Forum. Visit the grounded urban practices website to study the impact of this movement.



The Right to Build

A specific kind of grounded urban practices consists of initiatives in which inhabitants of a town or city realise their own housing. While 'self-building' is often the norm in cities in the Global South, in many other cities it is a relatively new phenomenon through which inhabitants can shape their own urban and living environment. 'The Right to Build: Self-build Between Dreams and Reality' was a research project and exhibition shown at the Architecture Centre Amsterdam (ARCAM), which I curated in collaboration with architecture critic Mark Minkjan. It examined a decade of self-building in Amsterdam and beyond and addressed the tension between self-builders' personal desires and the collective nature of the city. To stimulate the debate about the upcoming ten years of self-build, architecture firms KRFT, LOA and SLA were invited to develop a vision for the future of self-build. What kind of contribution can self-build offer to the 250,000 extra homes which are needed in the Amsterdam metropolitan region? Who is allowed to build what, and what kind of city should result from this? Read a review of the exhibition in Topos Magazine.



Failed Architecture

'Reconnecting architecture with the real world' has for many years been the core slogan and ambition of Failed Architecture (FA), referring to the disconnect between the architecture profession and the many social, ecological, political and financial realities it often fails to address. Since I joined FA at the earliest stages of the project it grew from a simple blog run by a few people in Amsterdam to a transnational platform for architecture criticism, supporting a global network of writers, editors and critics committed to challenging dominant spatial narratives and exploring alternative realities. Together with the FA team I hosted a series of workshops focusing on specific buildings and urban areas in among others Talinn, Budapest, Seoul, Amman and Cairo, started the FA Podcast (and the shorter episodes called 'Breezeblocks') and developed the FA Situations format, which are encounters in cities across the globe aiming to take critical reflections on architecture and space from the digital realm to, again, the real world. After concerted efforts to consolidate Failed Architecture as an organisation, a new generation is now taking over the editorial lead. Visit the Failed Architecture website to explore a decade of research and criticism.



Terraforming Indonesia / Lahan Becek

Rooted in Failed Architecture's critical analysis of global spatial developments, Terraforming Indonesia started as a research on the countless ambitious land reclamation projects currently reshaping Indonesia’s coastline, mostly for maritime industries but in particular also for high-end real estate near urban centres. These terraforming operations started in the colonial era with the construction of harbours, which were a crucial link in the chains of colonial extraction. Today’s land reclamation projects are in many cases still being carried out by Dutch multinationals, and often have disastrous social and ecological consequences. Terraforming Indonesia was developed with the Jakarta-based collective and educational initiative ruangrupa/gudskul and the Research Center for Material Cultures (RCMC) in Amsterdam and was later reformulated as 'Lahan Becek'. This term translates to 'muddy lands' and in slang carries associations with new opportunities. By shifting the perspective from the colonial obsession with separating solid earth and wet water to an already existing appreciation of 'ubiquitous wetness', it became possible to create space for new, critical reflections on these phenomena transcending the postcolonial framework and standard forms of spatial criticism. Watch gudskul's 'praktik spatial' students presenting their interpretations of lahan becek.



From Cairo to Amsterdam's Red Light District

While my practice engages with a wide variety spatial constellations there are two places which I continue to return to in my work. Cairo has been crucial for my thinking on cities ever since I studied the independent cinema reflecting on the urban transformations taking place in the aftermath of the Egyptian revolution. Later I taught at the Cairo Institute for Liberal Arts & Sciences (CILAS), an independent educational initiative which emerged as part of the same revolutionary political conditions. In recent years I have also collaborated extensively with CLUSTER, among others on the Grounded Urban Practices project described before, as well as on the development of a 'Community Care Vehicle' in collaboration with design and research studio AP+E. Amsterdam's Red Light District is the other spatiality which is important to me, ever since Failed Architecture had a studio in a side building of Oude Kerk, Amsterdam's oldest building. With FA I worked on various mapping projects of the area, and collaborated with sex workers' organisations on campaigns against the neighbourhood's upcoming transformation. For Oude Kerk, which is nowadays also a center for contemporary art, and in collaboration with Michiel van Iersel I developed 'Misericordia', an artistic research and public programme on the pasts and futures of 'being merciful'. Get your copy of the Misericordia publication at the Oude Kerk bookshop.


Many thanks for your interest. For projects developed as part of Loom make sure to check out the Loom website. Feel free to connect on Instagram or LinkedIn or to email me at mail@reneboer.net.

— René