MAKS is a Rotterdam based studio for architectural designs, strategies and research. It was founded by Marieke Kums in 2009. With an international network of collaborators, the studio is involved in building design and realization and urban planning.
The studio develops projects that engage culture and consciousness, nature and artificiality, surrealism and pragmatism. MAKS strives to go beyond conventional values and scales, as the range of people’s awareness is ever expanding in an age where it’s possible to find out about almost anything in the world in an instant. MAKS’s projects vary from small art installations, to building projects and urban (renewal) schemes in the Netherlands and abroad.
Marieke Kums studied at the MIT in Boston and at Delft University of Technology from which she received her MSc Arch degree cum laude. Between 2003 and 2005 she worked with OMA / Rem Koolhaas and from 2006 to 2009 with SANAA / Kazuyo Sejima & Ruye Nishizawa in Tokyo.
Marieke has been invited as a visiting lecturer and external critic at various architecture schools and institutions, such as Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam, the TU Delft, the American University of Sharjah, the Yokohama GSA, Princeton, Harvard GSD and the University of Cluj in Romania. She is a jury member for the Creative Industries Fund NL.
