The New Material Award invites artists and designers to present designs that offer innovative solutions to the issues of today and the challenges of tomorrow. Each project should integrate new materials, or innovative ways of using materials.

As the curators of the exhibition Finders Keepers, the editors of the design and crafts magazine MacGuffin reveal the universe of the collector, bringing together objects from dozens of collections and exploring the collectors’ strategies, the aesthetic pleasure of collecting and the hidden life of things.

12 February is the opening of the intervention A Mental Image – Blavatsky Observatory in Sonneveld House by artist and architect Santiago Borja. On this evening Het Nieuwe Instituut is also looking forward to the coming season of the Temporary Fashion Museum during the New Season Night.

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. 

The New Haberdashery was established as part of the Temporary Fashion museum. It is a studio in which visitors can try their hand at making clothes and other textile products.

Het Nieuwe Instituut presents the work of sixteen designers, artists and architects who are nominated for the New Material Award 2014.  The New Material Award challenges artists, designers and architects to create and present designs featuring the use of new materials and innovative techniques that contribute to a better and sustainable society.

What will the future look like when nobody writes anymore, or when people live on the planet Mars? Students of the Willem de Kooning Academy present future scenario's that glimpse into these possible futures in the exhibition Design Fiction in Het Nieuwe Instituut from 23 January until 2 February. The projects are presented in relation to the event How Do You Do Biodesign where one of the topics is Design Fiction.

For the Biodesign exhibition, curator William Myers has selected dozens of projects that illustrate new ways to harness living systems for art, design and production