About the event

Prof. Dr. E.h. Werner SOBEK

ILEK (Institute of Lightweight Structures and Conceptual Design), Stuttgart University
Special Guest RIFF Bucharest 2011

At RIFF I have spoken about the most important challenge architects, engineers and product designers, will have to deal with in the near future will be the following: to make ecology really atracting and full of emotion.

Arch. Marta GRZADZIEL

BAROZZI/VEIGA, Spain, the Winner of Mies van der Rohe Award 2015
Special Guest RIFF Bucharest 2015

I am very glad to have been at the RIFF conference. It was a great experience, I participated in the lectures and some debates which were before my lecture here and it was a very rich experience. I have spoken about the Philharmonic Hall of Sczecin, the first building in Poland winning the Mies van der Rohe Award. I am Polish, but all my professional experience comes from abroad and this project was a very unique possibility of coming back to Poland with the experience I had abroad.

Arch. Tony LING

Jestico + Whiles, UK
Keynote Speaker at RIFF Bucharest 2015 conference

I’m fascinated by the idea of meeting people from different cultures, working in different ways. All went very well at RIFF, the organisation of the event was very efficient! I had a wonderful time and met very interesting people.

Lukasz PLATKOWSKI

GENSLER, UK
Chairman in RIFF Warsaw 2015 Conference

I was very, very positively surprised of RIFF event, first of all of the audience, then of the quality of the speakers and of the projects presented.
I was really impressed about the organisation and of the quality of conference.

Farshid TAVAKOLITEHRANI

Studio FUKSAS, Italy
Special Guest in RIFF Warsaw 2015 conference

I think the event was very interesting and also I’m very glad to see examples of modern architecture from of all the Europe or all of the world and I was very glad to see that the way of thinking here in Poland or wherever in UE countries it’s sometimes similar, sometimes different, but you can see the stream of modern architecture that is in the right road and somehow we got the same language, we understand each other, the language of architecture is universal. This is the very positive meaning of this conference.
It’s very well organised event and the quality of organisation is very high,so I must to say that I’m very,very glad I participated in this event.

Arch. Borys CZARAKCZIEW

Guest Speaker RIFF Bucharest & Warsaw 2015
Member of the Board and Plenipotentiary for international matters, National Chamber of Polish Architects (IARP)

RIFF event is splendid, the subject touches very important issues for architects. And I’m really very impressed how many people have an interest to come at the event and are interested in architecture. The exchange of points of views it’s very important for us, as architects. The scheme of the event is very profitable, because mostly the speakers are those who were rewarded in architecture. That’s a very good lesson for young people. And we, a little bit older, we can meet together and exchange our experiences about architecture and our work, which is very profitable.
And I think that the idea of combining business and architects, it’s very good.

Arch. Mariusz ŚCISŁO

President of THE ASSOCIATION OF THE POLISH ARCHITECTS SARP

It was a very good combination of fresh designers who are somewhere at the beginning or in full swing of their career and who allow us, in fact, to anticipate the future. What pleased me very much was that the public had the opportunity to see what this effort to produce quality interiors means, as the speakers presented their projects behind the scenes, where we saw a huge labor, which one must be both driven and subtle to understand when decoding the result.
Another thing that I find important is that this conference highlights the exceptions and things that can be inspiring, models to follow.
The world does not know them, does not see them and this justifies the public’s appetite for this conference. A great benefit is also its educational role.

Arch. Anders SÆLAN

Henning Larsen Architects, The Winner of Mies van der Rohe 2013, Special Guest of RIFF 2014

One of the most important forces behind architectural progress has always been the possibility of coming together, to create platforms where interaction and inspiration can take place. RIFF is creating one of those progressive forums and I therefore I am glad I have participated in the RIFF conference in November 2014. I was excited to share some of our latest work and to hear other speakers share their thoughts, and hopefully this will lead to a constructive dialogue about architecture and its potential in society. Personally, I was also excited to visit the RIFF conference in November because I had never visited Romania before. I see the eastern part of Europe as one of the most exiting places in architectural development in the coming years.

Arch. Şerban ŢIGĂNAŞ

President of THE ORDER OF THE ARCHITECTS OF ROMANIA Co-organizer of the Romanian editions of RIFF

We have met to discuss about how to build better between architects, engineers, entrepreneurs, suppliers of systems and materials, who have succeeded to achieve quality in construction and want to contribute to raising the standard in the industry. This can be a time of balance in which we can try to understand what happens on a daily basis, what and how it happens when quality works emerge and how the exceptional is sometimes generated. We want our daily work to be of high quality, what we usually do must be well-done, even exceptionally done, the exception becoming the usual and the exemplary works being able to change mentalities and the expectations of the world built. I suggest that we meditate creatively together about the state of architecture, to make this balance and try, through these dialogues and meetings, to build the answer to the question: How must the world of construction change?

Arch. Yoav MICHAEL

YASHAR ARCHITECTS, ISRAEL

Thank you for inviting me, the conference was very well organized. Romania is a beautiful country will continue this development, there’s a big potential here. It was a great conference, very nice topics, very interesting speakers from around the world. I presented here a few projects from Tel Aviv, two high-rise buildings, that was an example for how the facades follow the form that follow the functions – that was the theme of the lecture – and it was interesting to me to meet even the local industry here. I met people from glass industry, from the curtain-wall, insulation and panels, so I hope we will cooperate with them as well. I hope you’ll invite us for the other conferences as well.

Arch. Richard JOBSON

DESIGN ENGINE ARCHITECTS

In terms of conferences like these, I think it’s interesting because you get to see other people’s perspectives on the architecture in their own countries. I haven’t been to something like this before. I’ve done a lot of presentations in the UK, so it has been interesting to get involved in. What was interesting in the conversation we had afterwards the conference and after the tour ww have done in Bucharest is that all the buildings are of a particular style, kind of a French-Romanian mix, with the history here and the change in 1989 has been a kind of rebooting in the potential architecture portfolio of Romania. Clearly the RIFF conference represents the start of an ambition of the country to embrace the architectural ideas across the world.

Arch. Nasser ABULHASAN

AGI ARCHITECTS, KUWEIT

The quality of the overall conference was quite high. What you’ve done here is on an international level. We attend this type of conferences everywhere in the world. Mostly when you’re talking about environments like here, the under-developed world, a lot of these conferences are very critical because you get to bring local and international experts together and I think the most benefits actually go to the students, because they get to learn a lot, they get to see a lot of international and local people presenting their works in a very open forum. In an environment like this, the learning is very high. I look forward to participate in the future if you ever invite us here again.

Bogdan BĂLAN

SAINT-GOBAIN RIGIPS

As feedback I just had a discussion with an architect and he said that he had been following my presentation, first and foremost, and he understood what I was presenting. The feedback is punctual, on the spot, immediately after the presentation, it is very important to us, but beyond that, sometimes we are interested in more aggregated feedback, volume feedback. This kind of feedback we receive from projects that we do. I think that the improvement is that ABplus does not give up and continues the series of events RIFF and CONTRACTOR which continue to carry the flame of hope because for sure better days will come.

Esra AYDINOĞLU

It was a nice chance for us to meet at the event with the architects and constructors from all over Europe. The presentations were very nice, I had a chance to meet important architects from all over Europe. I think they enjoyed the presentation, the audience was watching, and I was glad. I would be very glad to be again in RIFF, and thanks to ABplus Events.