Het Nieuwe Instituut

In this exhibition, on show at Het Nieuwe Instituut from September 2021, curator Saskia van Stein examines the influence of Disney’s films and thinking on today’s built environment and sense of identity.

Designing the Social  is an exhibition exploring 100 years of socially driven, idiosyncratic ideas about living together. Sometimes out of idealism, often out of pure necessity, alternative design strategies were developed in the pursuit of an equal society.

City plans are often only partly based on the realities of their current residents, instead reflecting projections of ideal situations and citizens. With this in mind, Het Nieuwe Instituut created the Rotterdam for Real framework.

Designers, theorists, artists, researchers, filmmakers and others share their vision of the designed world in this magazine. Het Nieuwe Instituut invites contributors to reflect on decolonisation and racial justice from a design perspective.

At Het Nieuwe Instituut, children and young people discover that everything around them is designed, and get to try design techniques themselves.

As an extension of their short film AS TOLD TO G/D THYSELF, The Ummah Chroma collective provides a sacred space at Het Nieuwe Instituut entitled G/D THYSELF: Spirit Strategy On Raising Free Black Children. The sacred space invites visitors to explore themes of meta-physical transcendence, spirituality, and self-expression.

This exhibition considers the role of a fashion garment as a socio-political carrier. The hoodie is a staple of contemporary dress, hyped as a trend and a must-have item; but elsewhere it is also a topic of moral panic, banned by certain institutions and dissected by the media as an emblem of inequality, crime or deviancy.Curated by writer and curator Lou Stoppard.

Het Nieuwe Instituut and Caribbean arts platform Tilting Axis launch this year’s Tilting Axis Fellowship programme for mid-career or established cultural workers based in the Caribbean. The initiative aims to foster and stimulate mutual exchange between the Caribbean region and the Dutch cultural field. Together with the lead partners, other cultural institutions including Amsterdam Museum, De Appel, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Kunstinstituut Melly will collaborate with the selected applicant during the fellowship.

The exhibition Malware, curated by Bas van de Poel and Marina Otero Verzier, focusses on the most infamous examples of computer viruses. These form the starting point for an exploration of questions of security, warfare and geopolitics in times of rapid technological advance. 

Starting in the Spring of 2019, 100 years after the foundation of Bauhaus, Het Nieuwe Instituut transforms into Neuhaus, a temporary transdisciplinary academy for more-than-human knowledge. Het Nieuwe Instituut joins the worldwide celebration of the Bauhaus centenary not by glorifying the historical achievements of this legendary school, but rather by reactivating and embodying its original spirit.

In a world that is always switched on, the traditional dichotomy between day and night no longer seems relevant in terms of productivity, while the experience of clear, starry skies has become a rarity. I See That I See What You Don't See takes the complex relationships between light and dark, between seeing and not seeing, as a starting point for an exploration of their conflicting effects on humans, the Earth and other organisms. 

With a temporary archive installation, Het Nieuwe Instituut speculates on the possible contents of an archive for design and digital culture from the Netherlands. Who will save what – and how, and why – for future generations? Together with its visitors, Speculative Design Archive uncovers the value of both acknowledged masterpieces and forgotten treasures.

For the Record investigates how contemporary video culture operates as a public space for consumerism, activism and emancipation, by exposing existing realities and by imagining alternatives.

In 2018 Het Nieuwe Instituut embarks on a new programme around the theme of burn-out. The initiative addresses the exhaustion of a growing number of human and other bodies, as a symptom of the presence of exploitative structures within society throughout institutional, political and biological ecologies.

With Dissident Gardens, Het Nieuwe Instituut focuses on the most current expressions of the classic struggle between nature and culture. The programme includes a multi-part installation, a related exhibition (The Human Insect) and a series of lectures and debates.

Rafaël Rozendaal questions the anonymity and ephemerality of the screensaver and is fascinated by its subversive, playful and diffuse character. He creates an immersive space for the visitor that captures the extraordinary visual language of this virtually lost medium.

This web magazine contains background information about the interactive web documentary 51 Sprints, which puts the Olympic athlete centre stage.

With universal themes such as Birth, Work, Sex, Security and Health, the exhibition The Life Fair: New Body Products explores how the quest for an optimal body has developed into a highly competitive market. First and foremost in the development of goods and services: commercial parties whose products exploit the fears and desires underlying our physical capacities and vulnerabilities.

The multiyear cultural programme De Staat van Eindhoven (The State of Eindhoven) looked at the changing relationship between government and citizens and, specifically, Eindhoven’s twofold ambition of being a smart city in a participatory society.

Many Dutch museums include fashion within their collections but there has never been a national fashion museum. Over a period of eight months Het Nieuwe Instituut will explore the possibilities of such an institution by transforming itself into a fashion museum. The entire building will be utilised for this temporary experiment. 

In cooperation with the Society of Arts, Het Nieuwe Instituut organised the Benno Premsela Lecture 2015, given by Benjamin Bratton. Bratton's lecture examined the consequences of the widespread digitalisation for our cities. He sketched the way in which cities could develop in relation to algorithmic perception, sensory perception, cognition and physical automation

In the context of the 34th World Expo opening in Milan on May 1st, Het Nieuwe Instituut addresses this phenomenon from different perspectives between April 26 and August 23.  The exhibition Garden of Machines speculates on a new ecosystem in which technical and organic beings learn to live together.  

At the invitation of the TextielMuseum and Het Nieuwe Instituut, local and international experts will discuss the latest developments in electronic textiles. What does the application of e-textiles offer to architecture and interior design? What challenges and opportunities lie in the interdisciplinary research and development processes of material developers, technologists, companies, designers and architects?

PLASTIC: Promises of a Home-made Future is the third in a series of exhibitions about materials and their economic, cultural and social significance. Wood was the subject last time, and an exhibition about glass is currently under preparation. PLASTIC shows how far-reaching innovation in materials has fired the imagination for a century, yet continues to evoke doom scenarios.

What does it take to make a city buzzy, creative and entrepreneurial? How can creativity help to enhance older citizens’ quality of life? And how can you breathe life back into derelict areas? Questions such as these will be addressed in a series of workshops for Asian and European creative experts organised by Het Nieuwe Instituut.

Drones and Honeycombs is a long-term research project. It investigates the impact of the contemporary war and the global security apparatus on our physical environments and on our cities. In the past decades, and increasingly after 9/11, the frontline of war moved to the city. What does it means for the city, for architecture and for our roles as designers?

How can we go beyond the cult of progress to develop a better understanding of the radical technological innovations of today? The exhibition The Progress Trap formed the centre of the Dutch Electronic Art Festival (DEAF) and brought together the work of international artists, including Cohen van Balen, Louis Philippe Demers, Jenny Holzer, Nam June Paik, Boris Petrovski and Melle Smets.

Het Nieuwe Instituut and The Netherlands Study Centre for Technology Trends (STT) are organizing the joint symposium Art and Innovation: The Future of Interdisciplinarity on 19 March. For STT, the symposium marks the end of a foresight study in which new relations between art, science and technology were explored. Het Nieuwe Instituut will adopt the findings of these explorations, and will apply them in the development of their practice-based research.

Het Nieuwe Instituut examined the challenges and potential of the digital archive. Starting from the premise of the archive as system, a series of themes linked to exhibitions at Het Nieuwe Instituut formed the basis of new research by artists, designers and photographers, in search of the invisible layers of the digital archive. 

Het Nieuwe Instituut presents Designing Health, an exhibition on designing for health care, at the Designhuis in Eindhoven. Curated by Sabine Wildevuur, it shows how technology, innovation and design have influenced health care throughout history and what they are capable of contributing to it now and in the future. In Designing Health Het Nieuwe Instituut highlights the important role designers play in helping to keep and make people well.

Het Nieuwe Instituut is introducing a summer programme from 21 June 2013 under the title The Ruin. This marks the transition to the coming cultural year, in which Het Nieuwe Instituut makes use of various projects to give form to the multi-faceted ambitions. Besides eight presentations The Ruin consists of a parallel programme, including old questions, radical design practices, worn-out ideas and even the claim of a new Industrial Revolution. All in an awareness that everything passes and then comes back again, but in a slightly different guise.

Social designers are artists and designers who look at shared human problems from a different point of view. They come up with unexpected angles of approach and new ways of tackling apparently intractable challenges, such as obesity, demographic decline and early school leaving.

The Agency for Architecture, Design, and Digital Culture connects design fields with questions from the outside world, both regional and international.

This web magazine documents the proceedings, output and cultural context of the Bot Club, a recurring programme on algorithmic culture, one of the long-term research projects of Het Nieuwe Instituut’s R&D department.

Het Nieuwe Instituut has a hybrid programme of online and offline activities. Het Nieuwe Instituut Online is the platform for livestream events.

Het Nieuwe Instituut's programming and R&D has an international focus that reflects the fact that design operates in a global field and presents itself on a global stage

Members of Het Nieuwe Instituut support our mission to navigate the vast and evolving field of design. You’ll also be inspired by our special program of Members’ events, meeting up with other like-minded people as we invite you to reflect with us on design’s changing role in technology, economics, culture and society.

Design and digital culture contribute significantly to the way Dutch society defines, manifests and develops itself. A well-preserved, open and accessible archive is therefore a precondition for the design discipline in order to meet the task assigned to it by Dutch culture and society. The Network Archives Design and Digital Culture has therefore been created as a partnership between heritage organisations including Het Nieuwe Instituut, knowledge and research institutions, and individual archives of Dutch design heritage.

New presentations of mainly young design talent can be seen in the foyer of Het Nieuwe Instituut every few weeks. It is a way of highlighting a striking design or innovative research, whether or not it is connected with the current exhibition and debate programme of Het Nieuwe Instituut.

In the regional programme, Het Nieuwe Instituut concentrates on projects with local and regional governments that have a certain urgency for a particular region.

Studio Rotterdam aims to articulate new perspectives on contemporary issues and future challenges in Rotterdam. Design and designers, preferably local, will play a key role in this.

What is talent? When is someone considered a talent? Which values and qualities do we attribute to the concept?

Het Nieuwe Instituut’s Thursday Night programme addresses varied issues related to architecture, design and digital culture. Each week there is a lecture or talk show, a pop-in expo, a Thursday Bite and various partner programmes, as well as a chance to visit the exhibitions.

Het Nieuwe Instituut is a stylish and well-equipped venue for symposiums, congresses, lectures, meetings, presentations, receptions, lunches and dinners. The building offers an inspiring and creative atmosphere for your (corporate) event.

Vertical Atlas is a project about techno-political cartography developed through a series of five events. Departing from the conceptual model laid out by Benjamin Bratton in The Stack, this series aims at investigating specific geozones where the entanglement of different sovereignties surface and different stacks clash. Vertical Atlas is developed by Hivos, Het Nieuwe Instituut and Stedelijk Museum.