We are excited to announce the appointment of two highly accomplished architects / urban designers as full professors in the Department of the Built Environment.
The Architecture, Urban Design and Engineering (AUDE) unit of TU/e is committed to excellence in design teaching and research. For over sixty years, architects educated at TU/e have left their mark on the built environment in the Netherlands and beyond. Driven by curiosity and innovation, our students and department push the boundaries of architectural knowledge and practice, leveraging the power of design to create a more sustainable and inclusive future. As part of this vision, we are delighted to welcome Jacob van Rijs and Tom Frantzen.
Introducing Jacob van Rijs
Jacob van Rijs is partner, co-founder and principal architect at MVRDV, renowned for his dedication to bold concepts combining daring ideas with a humane and user-friendly approach. Van Rijs has developed this approach over the past thirty years in practice, leading to a wide range of the office’s most notable projects, from cultural and civic buildings to transformations, and from residential buildings and social housing to interiors.Van Rijs’s teaching and work are increasingly concerned with transformations, with a particular interest in how to preserve, reuse, and transform ’anti-monuments, buildings that are unwanted and unloved, to deliver new perspectives and functionality while minimizing climate impacts. Since 2015, Van Rijs has combined this practice with a position as full professor of Architectural Design at the Technical University of Berlin, Germany, including both teaching and research. In addition to academia, Van Rijs is also engaged in the profession on a broader scale, delivering lectures to academic and commercial institutions worldwide together with juror assignments.
Starting in September at TU/e, Jacob will become full professor in Architectural Design. Excited by the freedom and opportunities presented by transformations and their relevance to sustainability and climate impact mitigation, this will be a topic within his education. As most recently demonstrated by Van Rijs unveiling MVRDV’s Carbon Confessions exhibition in Berlin, the necessity for the construction industry to reduce its carbon emissions has been of longstanding importance to his and the practice’s ideas and projects, and this will play a key role in his teaching.
Introducing Tom Frantzen
Tom Frantzen founded FRANTZEN et al. soon after graduating cum laude from TU/e in 1995. In 2009, he co-founded Lemniskade, a project development company dedicated to designing and realizing innovative sustainable projects. With the groundbreaking projects Patch22 and Top-Up, Frantzen revitalized Open Building principles and introduced the use of Cross Laminated Timber as a structural material in Dutch housing architecture. In 2018, Lemniskade received the Golden Pyramid State Prize for architecture. Frantzen is a visionary thinker who will encourage students to set bold, unconventional goals and explore new paths to achieve them.Frantzen will join the AUDE unit as full professor in April. He will also hold the Habraken Chair of Open Architecture. As the first appointed dean of the Department of Architecture at TU/e, Prof. John Habraken established a modern, open, and integrated environment for education and research between 1967 and 1975. This connection reflects TU/e’s commitment to advancing architectural education and research in line with Habraken’s principles. His vision of an adaptable, human-centered built environment continues to inspire new generations of architects and researchers at TU/e and beyond. With Tom Frantzen’s appointment to the newly established Habraken Chair of Open Architecture, we are confident that the strong cohesion between architecture, planning, and technology will continue to thrive.
These appointments represent significant milestones in our commitment to further strengthen our innovative and interdisciplinary education and research. Both Frantzen and Van Rijs join AUDE in a part-time capacity and will continue their architectural practices, maintaining the vital connection between architectural education and professional practice. We look forward to their contributions in shaping the next generation of architects and urban designers.
