Rob Damen, architect 

After studying Construction at MBO, Rob steadily progressed through college as well and completed the Master of Architecture at the Rotterdam Academy of Architecture. His final project at the academy, 'unlimited living', is a design for a housing collective in which the housing units are tailored to a person with a physical disability, but intended for everyone. With the method he developed for 'unlimited living', types of housing units can be varied within one building system. He presented this project unorthodoxly not with a scale model but in a 'double book', in which he worked out two models in concrete terms for a location in Breda. With its design, the book makes the proposed method tangible.

During and among his studies, Rob worked at various architecture firms. He designed, among other things, inner city transformation assignments, large-scale renovations and conversions and restorations of monuments. cepezed appeals to him because he likes to search for logic, flexibility and integrality within an assignment. Moreover, like cepezed, he is an innovator.

Rob thinks adaptivity is the most important aspect of sustainability. If buildings can successively handle various functions, they are ready for the future. His projects at cepezed include the Onderwijsslocatie Laan op Zuid and QuTech. For this quantum laboratory for Delft University of Technology, he finds translating the complex programme of requirements into a logical structure a challenging task.