Keynote speakers

Kenneth Snelson

Kenneth Snelson, born 1929, is a world famous artist known for amongst others his work on tensegrity and other sculptures. He holds a number of patents in this area. Kenneth Snelson has been awarded the Honorary Membership of IASS last year which he will be conferred to him in Amsterdam.

More information can be found on his website.

Laurent Ney

Laurent Ney (born 1964) is a civil and structural engineer trained in Belgium and Germany. Since 1995 he has been a lecturer on structural engineering at several Belgian universities. In 1998 he founded the engineering firm Ney & Partners in Brussels and Luxembourg. In 2012 a satellite office was opened in Tokyo. Ney’s approach is marked by research-based design: optimization and form-finding. Constructability and sustainability are integrated into all the designs.

Werner Sobek

Photograph copyright a.t. schaefer, stuttgart/germany

Prof. Dr. Dr. E.h. Dr. h.c. Werner Sobek, born 1953, is an architect and consulting engineer. He heads the Institute for Lightweight Structures and Conceptual Design (ILEK) at the University of Stuttgart. From 2008 until 2014 he was also Mies van der Rohe Professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago and guest lecturer at numerous universities in Germany and abroad, e.g. in Austria, Singapore and the USA (Harvard). In 1992, Werner Sobek founded the Werner Sobek Group, offering premium consultancy services for architecture, structures, façades and sustainability. The Werner Sobek Group has offices in Stuttgart, Dubai, Frankfurt, Istanbul, London, Moscow, New York, and Sao Paulo. All its projects are distinguished by high-quality design and sophisticated concepts to minimize the consumption of energy and materials.

Mick Eekhout

Mick Eekhout (born 1950) educated as an architect, worked at Frei Otto’s IL, started his design & build company Octatube on lightweight structures for roofs and facades in 1983, with projects all over the world. His designs contain stretched membranes, space frames, tensegrity structures, glazing structures, cable structures, cable net glass facades, polyester sandwich roofs, cardboard structures. He was the chair of Product Development at the Faculty of Architecture TU Delft 1992-2015.

Tim Ibell

Tim Ibell, born 1967, is the 2015 President of the Institution of Structural Engineers. He is Associate Dean for Research at the University of Bath, UK, where he researches the use of fabric to form architecturally-interesting and structurally-efficient concrete structures. He has a passion for ensuring that structural engineering education places creativity at its heart, and he is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Mike King

Mike King is a Principal and Structural Engineer in Arup’s Singapore office. Over his 24 year career he has come to specialize in long-span structures for major stadia, airports, sports arenas and stations in his native Australia, North America, the UK and South East Asia.

His 20 year career in Arup has seen him based in Arup’s Sydney, New York, London and now Singapore offices. Amongst his most prominent projects are the 310m span Singapore National Stadium, the London Aquatics Centre for the 2012 Olympics with Zaha Hadid and the diagrid-shell roofed new entrance building for London’s iconic King’s Cross Station with John McAslan Architects. Mike has been a key figure in the design of long-span airport roof structures for Arup with Foster and Partners in Beijing and SOM/Moshe Safdie in Toronto and led the design of the Manchester City stadium roof in the UK as well as many award-winning commercial and institutional buildings with notable Architects including Michael Hopkins, Grimshaw Architects and the Danish practice Schmidt Hammer Lassen.

Bill Baker

William F. Baker is the Senior Structural Engineering Partner for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, LLP. He led the development of the “buttressed core” structural system for the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest manmade structure. In addition to his work on tall and supertall buildings, his expertise also extends to long-span structures as well as noteworthy structures such as Broadgate Exchange House and the GM Renaissance Center-North Lobby. Baker has also collaborated with numerous artists, including Jamie Carpenter (Raspberry Island-Schubert Club Band Shell), Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle (Gravity is a Force to be Reckoned With), James Turrell (Roden Crater), and Jaume Plensa (World Voices). In addition to many other honors, Baker is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Foreign Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Rob Torsing

Rob started out as a student in sculpture at the Rietveld academy. ‘They nicknamed me the engineer, I made well reasoned constructivist sculptures, a kind of models without a purpose.

His taste for collaboration and the need he felt to be directly useful in society made him choose against a career as sculptor. Following art school he chose to study architecture and building technol- ogy at TU Delft, initially because he was gripped by the beauty of structures, in which mathematics, material and feeling come together.

What is so great about being an architect entails three things for Rob. First the fact that thought ex- periments and visions of beauty can become reality. Second, managing the designprocess in which everything comes together. And the entrepreneurial adventure that is a part of being an architect.

Working in emergent markets produced a culture shock. At first you have no network there, you are forced way outside your comfort zone, because you have little clue as how they do business there. You take enormous risks. Tremendously exciting. It is such a fascinating region where big and rapid changes take place. What is really inspiring is their drive to think far into the future and plan and build with great optimism.

ZJA is an internationally operating architectural firm that focusses on the design of infrastructural projects (bridges, highways, wild life crossings, tunnels, light rail-, metro- and train stations) and stadiums and other sports venues.
In all these areas there is a strong emphasis on the integrated use of innovative materials, new engineering methods and computational design to find sustainable and intelligent solutions for complex buildings where questions relating to crowds, light, heat, energy and the use of water are concerned. As can be seen in for example the light rail station Beatrixlaan in The Hague, the extended bridge over the river Waal in Nijmegen and ZJA’s involvement with NEST (Next evolution in Sustainable building Technologies) in Zürich, where it contributes research into the parametric design of cable-net supported fabric formwork.”

Mels Crouwel

Mels Crouwel (1953, Amsterdam) graduated as engineer from the Faculty of Architecture at Delft University of Technology in 1978. In 1979, he founded the office Benthem Crouwel Architects in Amsterdam together with Jan Benthem. Mels Crouwel is a member of the Royal Institute of Dutch Architects (bna) and a honorary member of the Association of German Architects (bda).

Mels Crouwel has been a member of multiple committees and boards, such as the Amsterdamse Kunstraad (1985-1987), Raad voor de Kunst (1987-1991), Nederlands Architectuur Instituut (1996-2004) and the Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst (1998-2005). From 2004 until 2008 Mels Crouwel held the position of Chief Government Architect to the Dutch government.

Miguel Loos

Miguel Loos (1970, Caracas / Venezuela) received his MSc in Architecture in 1997 from the Technical University of Berlin. After obtaining a master degree from the renowned Berlage Institute in 1999, he worked as an architect at de architectengroep in Amsterdam, before starting his own office LOOS ARCHITECTS in 2005. He has been a member of the design advisory board of the city of Amsterdam, guest teacher at several Dutch architecture schools and jury member for various design competitions and awards.

Since 2010 Miguel Loos is senior advisor at Bureau Spoorbouwmeester, the office of the Dutch Chief Railway Architect. Bureau Spoorbouwmeester advises NS and ProRail on their architecture and design policy.