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Architect Francine Houben (born 1955) is the founder and creative director of Mecanoo architects. Her oeuvre ranges from theatres, museums and libraries to residential areas and parks.
She designed Europe’s largest public library, located in Birmingham, UK. Her renovations include the New York Public Library and the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, DC, originally designed by Mies van der Rohe. She will also be renovating the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum.
In her book People, Place, Purpose (2015), Houben describes seventeen Mecanoo projects that illustrate her architectural vision. Every design starts with observation of the people, the place, the culture and the climate involved. This analysis forms the starting point for a design that meets the needs of today, but also anticipates predictable and unpredictable changes.
Francine Houben was professor of mobility aesthetics at Delft University of Technology and also taught at Harvard University. She was curator of the first International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam. Houben became a member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin in 2010. In 2015, she received the Cultuurfunds Prijs, which she used to found the Eye Opener Fund, dedicated to library innovation. She received an honorary doctorate from Utrecht University in 2016.