Preannouncement: 2022 Architecture Prix de Rome Exhibition - Healing SitesPreannouncement: 2022 Architecture Prix de Rome Exhibition - Healing Sites

In a time of climate emergency and growing inequality, this year's competition considers architecture's response to these demands. Capitalism, colonialism and imperialism have damaged, destroyed or even eradicated entire ecosystems. Moreover, architecture is complicit in this process. How do architects, urban planners and landscape architects deliberate on this, and how can they reformulate their practices to negate this legacy?

The exhibition's four proposals each address a site of social trauma: the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the wreckage of flight MH17, the site of the Colony of Benevolence in Veenhuizen (Drenthe), where orphans, underprivileged families and beggars were 'educated' through agricultural labour, and the service desks of the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration. Accompanying the nominees' models, images and films are historical examples from the National Collection of Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning and documentation of this year's Prix de Rome's process, thus reflecting on the architect's changing societal role in relation to the Healing Sites theme.

The exhibition's spatial design is by Zico Lopes of Rotterdam-based practice Spatial Codes. Alex Clay and Karin van den Brandt of Lesley Moore design studio are responsible for its graphic design.

The winner of the prestigious Prix de Rome Architecture 2022 will be announced 1 December 2022 at Het Nieuwe Instituut. Gunay Uslu, Secretary of State for Culture and Media, will present the prize, worth ¬40,000, to one of the shortlisted nominees based on the presentation of the projects in the exhibition.

More information about the exhibition: https://prix-de-rome-2022.hetnieuweinstituut.nl

The Prix de Rome is the Netherlands' oldest and most prestigious architecture prize for architects under 35. This year's Architecture Prix de Rome is organised, on behalf of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, by the Mondriaan Fund in collaboration with the Creative Industries Fund NL and Het Nieuwe Instituut. Jap Sam Books will publish the accompanying catalogue.

Het Nieuwe Instituut is the Netherlands' national museum and institute for architecture, design and digital culture. Based in Rotterdam, a global centre for design innovation, the institute's mission is to embrace the power and potential of new thinking, exploring past, present and future ideas in order to imagine, test and enact a better tomorrow. Encouraging visitors of all ages to question, rethink and contribute, the institute's exhibitions, public programmes, research, and wide-reaching national and international initiatives provide a testing ground for collaboration with leading designers, thinkers and diverse audiences, critically addressing the urgent questions of our times.

In addition to housing the National Collection for Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning, the institute manages the 1933 Sonneveld House, a leading example of Dutch Functionalist architecture, as part of its campus in Rotterdam's Museumpark.

In 2022, Het Nieuwe Instituut became the world's first Zoöp, a groundbreaking model through which all areas of the museum's operations and programming are informed by its impact and benefit to other forms of life. The institute also serves as commissioner of the Dutch pavilion at the biannual Venice Architecture Biennale, and in 2023, will act as the Artistic Director of the London Design Biennale. In 2022 Het Nieuwe Instituut curated the official Dutch entry to the Triennale di Milano, winning the exhibition's Golden Bee Award.

For more information, please contact: Robin van Essel, press officer r.vanessel@hetnieuweinstituut.nl / +31 6 3803 9218