A look back at 2023A look back at 2023

A new year, a new look! At the beginning of 2023, we launched a new visual identity that better expresses the museum we want to be: accessible, multivocal, recognisable and public-friendly. A team of designers – Jacob Hoving, Cengiz Mengüç, Maureen Mooren, Vera van der Seyp and Maud Vervenne – translated the principle of multivocality (‘many voices’) by playing with combinations of different fonts and colours. They chose a series of ‘revivals’ – new versions of typefaces created before the digital age – two of which are always used side by side.

Automation is having a major impact not only on the labour market, but also on the design of our landscape. The beautifully designed book Automated Landscapes brings together five years of research documenting and exploring the rapidly proliferating yet anonymous architecture of fully automated working landscapes, from dairy farms and horticultural greenhouses to factory buildings and data centres. The book is the result of a global research collaboration exploring the evolution of the local and worldwide networks linking labour, technology and space.

“Spend five minutes wandering around Workwear, the surprising exhibition at the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, and you’ll immediately notice that workwear has always had a huge appeal for designers and other followers of fashion,” said Dutch daily newspaper de Volkskrant. Bonne Reijn is one of today’s designers inspired by workwear: to coincide with the exhibition, he designed a special utility jacket for the Collection department team. The jacket was also displayed in the exhibition and visitors were able to buy a limited edition. With Workwear, the Nieuwe Instituut made the Dutch evening news for the first time in its history,

Sabine Marcelis was the first guest in our brand-new interview series, An Evening With. In this series, we meet both emerging and established artists and designers who talk in depth about their practice, sources of inspiration and dreams for the future. For example, Marcelis, formerly a semi-professional snowboarder, explained how the light, space and ever-changing perspectives high in the New Zealand mountains have shaped her as a designer. Marcelis was followed by Kunlé Adeyemi, Germane Barnes, Anupama Kundoo, Claudy Jongstra, Donna Haraway, Bruno Clarke and Rosi Braidotti. Next year there’s another great programme and exciting guests to look forward to.

Once again, the Nieuwe Instituut commissioned the Dutch Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. With Plumbing the System, curator Jan Jongert of Superuse Studios created a test-bed for futuristic, regenerative and circular design. The photo shows the stunningly detailed drawing by researcher and cartographer Carlijn Kingma, who mapped the pipelines through which raw materials and resources are distributed in the capitalist system. Nieuwe Instituut was also involved in the London Design Biënnale in June, as artistic director and commissioner of the Dutch pavilion.

In June we celebrated Design Day with designers, design enthusiasts and archivists. How will we remember today’s designers 50 years from now? And will we still know the work that inspired them? And will we still know the works that inspired them? The survival of design archives is threatened, in the Netherlands and worldwide. Fortunately, archivists are finding new ways to preserve such archives and make them accessible. In between the conversations, there were tours of the exhibition devoted to Droog, one of the most controversial Dutch design labels: Droog30. Design or non-design?. Design Day was organised in collaboration with the NADD (Network Archives for Design and Digital Culture).

Water Cities was the perfect summer exhibition. Indoors, there were contemporary and historic examples of living and building on the water. Outdoors, architect Kunlé Adeyemi’s floating pavilions provided the setting for a range activities – from Sunday morning yoga and documentary films to talk shows and live radio. Or you could lose yourself in the meditative underwater sounds in a hammock. During the Family Fest, children also discovered these cleverly built structures and designed their own water creatures and water worlds. The opening party, organised by Notes, transported us to Lagos, to the sounds and rhythms of Afropop, Amapiano and Afrobeats. Together with the Nieuwe Instituut, Notes organises the annual Youtdem programme by and for young creators.

The impressive exhibition Soengoe Kondre / Submerged Heritage opened on 15 September, contrasting personal stories about the construction of the Afobaka Dam in Suriname in 1964 with its ‘official’ history. The dam’s construction meant forced resettlement for the local Maroon communities: along with their villages, they saw part of their identity and way of life disappear under the water. A look back at 60 years of migration, organised for Suriname’s Independence Day, was an opportunity to celebrate the rich culture of the Maroons, with a fashion show and traditional Maroon cuisine.

Imagine if consumption didn’t harm the environment, but actually helped to preserve it. How would that look? In an open call, the Nieuwe Instituut invited designers to think about designing products, shops and exchanges differently. During Dutch Design Week, in our prototype New Store, three of them presented their ideas for products that do not exploit, extract or deplete resources. There was soap made from recycled urine and cooking oil, for example, and a lighting installation built from discarded electronics. This first pop-up store will be followed by a second, expanded version at the Salone del Mobile in Milan in 2024.

In the Month of Digital Culture, our programme was full of exactly that, with most of the (press) attention going to REBOOT, the exhibition we created in collaboration with LI-MA. “A fascinating journey through the history of digital and media art,” said Dutch newspaper NRC, awarding us four stars. But there was more: with the installation Archives at Risk, Seeking Shelter we drew attention to the precarious existence of digital culture archives, while with the opening of -1 the institute added a new hub for digital culture: a laboratory and exhibition space in one. At -1, works in progress explore the influence of technology on people, culture, society and the planet.

What began as a celebration of the centenary of the collection has become a highly topical exhibition on spatial planning in the Netherlands, created in collaboration with the Dutch Board of Government Advisors, of which the Government Architect is a member. Based on the numerous social issues that affect us all, we look at solutions past and present. How do we treat nature and the countryside? And how do we want to live together? For the exhibition Designing the Netherlands, an unprecedented wealth of collection objects has been brought out of storage. During this festive month for the collection, we also celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Maison d'Artiste, Theo van Doesburg’s 1923 icon, and published the Design Drawings Damage Atlas in collaboration with Metamorfoze.