- Best Visual Art internationally, 2021 – NRC- Handelsblad - by Hans den Hartog Jager:
“Black Water by artist duo RAAAF ( Ronald and Erik Rietveld). One of the most impressive works I saw this year: a very subtle installation in a huge, vast former sewer treatment silo- breathtaking.” Link >>>
- Best Visual Art internationally, 2018 – NRC Handelsblad – by Thomas van Huut en Janneke Wesseling:
“RAAAF and Atelier de Lyon, put the concrete saw in a 240 meter long test flume for the Delta Works. Magical how you can make concrete undulate.” Link >>>
-Britta Peters (curator Skulptur Projekte Münster) ambassador of Deltawerk //:
"My first impression was that Deltawerk // was a colossal wall, and I found it hugely ... monumental. As we walked closer to this wall, we suddenly saw that there was an entrance to the space. And we found the artwork to be much more subtle than this huge concrete wall would suggest…" It was RAAAF and Atelier de Lyon’s own initiative to work with the delta flume. I find it interesting that they themselves determine in which places and on which themes they work, since art in the public space usually is more applied in nature. To decide for themselves which situations they want to engage with is true self-empowerment - and something I really appreciate.” >>> link
- Jury Architectural Review - Emerging Architecture Award 2013 (Sir Peter Cook, Manuelle Gautrand, Eric Owen Moss, Catherine Slessor) about Bunker 599:
“Despite the project’s small scale, it is very powerfull. It has a mix of delicateness, strength and impertinence, wich is rare to observe, and is cleverly inserted in the site linking landscape and water. It clearly stood out because of its simplicity, beauty and capacity to situate itself between art, landscape and architecture.”
>>> link
- Aaron Betsky (The Journal of the American Institute of Architects, 2013):
What interests me in particular about the firm’s work is that they have chosen to make or propose exactly the kind of projects I think are so vital for the development of our built environment.
In all their work, the Rietveld brothers make use of the power of what is empty, unused, or gone. Perhaps it is because of Ronald’s landscape perspective, but what they offer is simple, yet invaluable. Rather than ignoring what does not point to itself as a showy structure; rather than filling voids; and rather than forgetting a past that might trouble us, they show us how we can find ways to make us aware of what is not. In the voids, turned into temporary objects or just marked, we can find what might be missing in a world so filled with stuff and images. RAAAF is bringing a necessary poetry of absence to a world of built clichés and unnecessary objects.
>>> link
- Jury Prix de Rome Architecture 2006:
"As in the preliminary round, Rietveld was successful with his approach to the assignment in the final round by using processes and elements that were already present. What is more, he demonstrated that he can also initiate more complicated systems with this approach, and integrate them with each other. Certain elements appear rather surrealistic, but do give the project a powerful identity. And because Rietveld has thought through absolutely everything, it seems that all those elements eventually meld into a model for a place with true stature".
- Edwin Jacobs (quoted from the policy regarding the collection of the Centraal Museum Utrecht, 2012)
Director Edwin Jacobs characterized RAAAF as “the talents in the field of designing spatial interventions, who are absolutely free from any existing architectural of theoretical stance. They are genuine new-thinkers in images that express architecture and design.”
- Jury Rotterdam Design Prize about Vacant NL
"The jury regards RAAAF’s Vacant NL as a political statement with a bold format and a clear aesthetic. Vacant NL thus also serves as an enrichment tool for society. It brings insight and is immediately understandable and human. It also offers the rest of the world a new model. In short, Vacant NL shows that these times of cultural short-sightedness and budget cuts actually call out for one thing: space. Space to work, live and create – space for art, but also, above all, space for the spirit. And now we know that that space exists!"
>>> link jury report
- Former chief Government Architect in Avro Kunstuur [movie in Dutch]
-Jury The Great Indoor Award 2015 about The End of Sitting
"Although all submissions to the competition are thoughtful and well executed, not all of them push the boundaries and show us new ideas. This project is a prototype and a wonderfully creative attempt to think spatially about future workscapes. Formally reminiscent of Zaha Hadid’s early paintings, the design is not about taste but about the subject being addressed. Will we, in 20 or 50 years, be working while leaning over, lying down or standing up?"
-Jury 'New Talent 2015' - Metropolis Magazine - New York City
“RAAAF operates at the intersection of viual art, architecture, and landscape, which has interested me for many years. I first came to know Ronald Rietveld’s work when he won the Dutch Prix de Rome, and have followed the practice he built up with his brother, the philosopher Erik Rietveld, ever since. Their interventions have the power to evoke the nature of a place, whether the flat polders of the Netherlands or defensive bunkers and former U.S. Air Force bases, with simple abstract forms. Their conceptual installations have made space—in particular, empty and unused space—visible. They have been at the forefront in the development of an architecture of affordances, designing potentials and activators rather than mere enclosures.” —Aaron Betsky, dean of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture
-Jury Dutch Architect of the Year 2013
From the jury report: “The jury appriciates RAAAF as a unique and headstrong architecture studio. Focusing on relevant issues RAAAF sets its own agenda, explores hidden layers within these themes, and creates unprecedented possibilities in the places touched. Their work expresses crafsmanship, is concrete, visually strong, optimistic, and detailed beautifully.”