Het Nieuwe Instituut

Enter is an experimental platform for online and hybrid meetings in the cultural field.

Enter was initiated by Het Nieuwe Instituut in the spring of 2019.

MVRDVHNI: The Living Archive of a Studio explores the archive of architecture office MVRDV. Het Nieuwe Instituut displays the MVRDV archive as a living entity in an office context, rather than in a museum gallery context. As a working environment, after all, the office is the place where ideas and projects move fluidly back and forth between present, past and future.

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.

With a multifaceted Temporary House of Home Het Nieuwe Instituut explores how our thinking about domestic interiors and design has evolved over the past decades. 

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.

Het Nieuwe Instituut works with Rotterdam-based collective Concrete Blossom and its founder Malique Mohamud on a regular and intensive basis. As partners in a long-term trajectory, the institute and collective combine their efforts to research and experiment with possible approaches to cultural programming and institutional practice that are better attuned to the needs and potential of a super-diverse city like Rotterdam. Together, we explore the Inbetween, a (design) domain found in the space between formal institutions and the informal knowledge and art produced by a multifaceted contemporary counterculture.

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.

Conceived as a spa resort, the exhibition Lithium highlights the beneficial and destructive aspects of the eternal human search for energy. Researchers, designers and artists reflect on the role of the chemical element lithium in powering today’s economy. 

A new look at the work of Nelly and Theo van Doesburg is possible thanks to the restoration of their architecture archive. The exhibition recognises Nelly as a key figure in the consolidation of the reputation of Van Doesburg and De Stijl. 

The New Garden has been part of the outdoor space of Het Nieuwe Instituut since 2015. It is used to raise current design issues. Ecological management and creating a high level of biodiversity are the starting points. In the winter of 2021, the garden was redesigned due to the restructuring of the Museum Park. In the coming years, work will be done on the ecological restoration of the garden and it will come into full bloom once more.