Ruben Dahmen

A building usually knows what it wants. My work begins with standing there long enough to hear it.

I am an architect and have been working since 2015 on cultural breeding grounds, conversions and non-residential buildings, from the first sketch to handover. Designing and building lie close together in my practice. I know the site, the details and what they cost, and it shows in the plans I draw: they are buildable before they are beautiful.

Method

Looking. Measuring with a tape and with my body. Harvesting what is already lying there. Sawing, fitting, starting again. Gluing nothing that has to come apart later.

Little new material is involved. Almost everything has had a previous life — an exhibition, an ice rink, the workshop of a contractor who was emigrating, the cavity of the house itself. I leave that provenance visible. Character you do not have to design is the cheapest there is.

Practice

For nine years I was a designer at Jos Rhemrev architectuur en stedenbouw: housing and clients from small and medium-sized businesses, responsible from concept and planning permission through to construction, with close attention to the interior. Before that at Studio Valkenier, where I worked on De Ceuvel, the Tuin van Bret and the head office of Médecins Sans Frontières, and at Caro van Dijk Architectuur on care buildings, mainly for people living with dementia.

Alongside that, my own practice has run since 2015, in which design and execution coincide. Often together with other makers and clients, among them het Marktheater, Dutch National Opera & Ballet, Plan B and Fiction Factory.

What I am looking for

An old building whose skeleton could still become something else entirely, in a place that belongs to everyone. Put up out of what is already there. With a crew, because building alone is quiet.

In brief

Architecture at TU Delft, with minors in advanced prototyping and landscape architecture. Architecture at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture — an evening programme, where studying and working run side by side; graduated in 2026 with Wat wil het huis?, mentored by Machiel Spaan. Working from Amsterdam, project by project together with befriended makers and designers; earlier work was published under the practice name Ruimterups. Saxophone and bass clarinet in de Fanfare van de Eerste Liefdesnacht, Krullevaar and the Soundscapes Music Collective.

This site shows a selection; everything I have worked on is in the full list of projects.

Something to discuss? Send a message.