This monograph on the Rotterdam-based firm KAAN Architecten provides a comprehensive overview of their most important projects to date. KAAN Architecten, who run satellite offices also in Paris and São Paulo, gained wide renown through complex public commissions that go beyond traditional notions of typology and method. The range includes include government offices, museums, urban development projects, as well as buildings for health care, education and research.

The fifteen designs documented in the book are presented as different characters with varying physiognomies, but which belong to the same family and feature similar traits, hence also the title of the book. KAAN Architecten invite us to view the projects with different eyes and to trace their evolution.

Divided into five chapters that reveal various aspects of the works, KAAN Architecten - Portraits shows their works as individual pieces of a complex puzzle: a fragment of a picture, a quote from an article, a detail. The essays by Pierre Chabard and Ruud Brouwers interweave rich visual material: photographs, visualizations, plans and construction drawings.


Kees Kaan is an architect and founding partner with Rotterdam-based KAAN Architecten. He also teaches as a professor of architectural design at Faculty of Architecture, TU Delft. Vincent Panhuysen is an architect and founding partner with KAAN Architecten in Rotterdam. Dikkie Scipio is an architect and founding partner with KAAN Architecten in Rotterdam. She teaches as a professor of architectural design at the Münster University of Applied Sciences’ School of Architecture in Münster, Germany.

This monograph on the Rotterdam-based firm KAAN Architecten provides a comprehensive overview of their most important projects to date. KAAN Architecten, who run satellite offices also in Paris and São Paulo, gained wide renown through complex public commissions that go beyond traditional notions of typology and method. The range includes include government offices, museums, urban development projects, as well as buildings for health care, education and research.

The fifteen designs documented in the book are presented as different characters with varying physiognomies, but which belong to the same family and feature similar traits, hence also the title of the book. KAAN Architecten invite us to view the projects with different eyes and to trace their evolution.

Divided into five chapters that reveal various aspects of the works, KAAN Architecten - Portraits shows their works as individual pieces of a complex puzzle: a fragment of a picture, a quote from an article, a detail. The essays by Pierre Chabard and Ruud Brouwers interweave rich visual material: photographs, visualizations, plans and construction drawings.


Kees Kaan is an architect and founding partner with Rotterdam-based KAAN Architecten. He also teaches as a professor of architectural design at Faculty of Architecture, TU Delft. Vincent Panhuysen is an architect and founding partner with KAAN Architecten in Rotterdam. Dikkie Scipio is an architect and founding partner with KAAN Architecten in Rotterdam. She teaches as a professor of architectural design at the Münster University of Applied Sciences’ School of Architecture in Münster, Germany.