PORTRAITS—15 Buildings

The first monograph of Rotterdam-based KAAN Architecten, Portraits, published by Park Books, has been released. This is the first substantial publication offering a unique perspective on fifteen of the firm’s major built works to date, including the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands in The Hague and the Amsterdam Courthouse.

The Dutch firm, which runs satellite offices in Paris and São Paulo, gained wide renown through complex public commissions that surpass traditional notions of typology and method. Their range includes civic, renovation, and infrastructure projects as well as cultural, educational, and urban developments.

The selected projects are portrayed as different characters with distinctive physiognomies but belonging to the same family and sharing similar features, hence the book’s title. “Designs morph into characters, and then into buildings,” claims Kees Kaan, one of the firm’s founders. “Each project acquires its own identity through the narrative that is developed by the architect. This is a nurturing process that pulls people and stories together to build a powerful, simple, clearly formulated, and connective concept.”

The same idea runs throughout the book, which draws on rich visual documentation, including photographs, original illustrations, and detailed drawings, to explore the studio’s work using different lenses. The eponymous Portraits chapter retraces and unfolds the projects’ narratives, focusing on single pieces of a complex puzzle: a fragment of an image, a citation from an article, a detail. Meanwhile, Gallery, Drawings and Features simply hold up a mirror to the projects, reflecting them as they are, with no additional interpretation.

Original essays by architecture critics Pierre Chabard and Ruud Brouwers weave through the book, interpreting the common architectural themes evident in the firm’s work. Chabard’s Architecture as dialogue mainly elucidates framing, topology, geometry and craft as the hallmarks of KAAN Architecten designs. At the same time, Brouwers reflects on their strong contemporary identity, which is simultaneously rooted in history and future-proof.

By mapping out their complex genealogy, Portraits presents the works of KAAN Architecten not as single autonomous entities but rather as parts of a shared vision.

The book is available for purchase online and in specialised bookstores, as well as directly from Park Books.

Editors: Alice Colombo, Kees Kaan
Curatorial team: Alexis Oh, Alice Colombo, Dikkie Scipio, Giulia Rapizza, Kees Kaan, Vincent Panhuysen
Guest authors: Pierre Chabard, Ruud Brouwers
Authors: Dikkie Scipio, Kees Kaan, Valentina Bencic, Vincent Panhuysen
Publisher: Park Books
Design: Alice Colombo