Roemer van Toorn
(1960)
Netherlands
  

 

 

 Roemer van Toorn is an architect, author and critic, photographer, and curator in the fields of architecture, urbanism, art and film. After graduating from the University of Technology Delft, he published The Invisible in Architecture in 1994, in collaboration with Ole Bouman; in this acclaimed encyclopaedic manifest he dissects the varied range of cultural, economic, political and philosophic outlook within the contemporary architectural discourse with the aim of outlining the different positions and issues of today’s architecture. As a teacher, he runs and coordinates the Projective History and Theory program as well as the “Projecting the City” Progressive PhD reseach at the Berlage Institute together with Wiel Arets and Alejandro Zaera-Polo, at the same time as pursuing a career as an international lecturer. He has several times been co-editor of the annual publication Architecture in the Netherlands, as well as being an advisor of the magazine Archis and Domus, and, as an author and photographer, he also contributes to many other publications. As a photographer, his work The Rise of the Megacity was exhibited in the Plug In ICA Gallery, Winnipeg and part of the travelling exhibition Cities on the Move curated by Hou Hanru and Hans-Ulrich Obrist. It consisted of twenty large colour photographs depicting the recent phenomenon of hype-development in Asia. The photographs are accompanied by quotations from philosophical tracts. Currently he is working on a text-image publication In Search of Freedom in Contemporary Architecture. From Fresh Conservatism to Radical Democracy.