Nieuwe Instituut
Nieuwe Instituut

Sonneveld House

Realitiesⁿ: Shifting Dimensions of the Built World

9 October 2025 - 25 October 2025

With Realitiesⁿ, AFFR’s inaugural immersive media programme, the film festival explores how technologies like AR, VR and XR are reshaping architectural imagination. Realitiesⁿ takes place at Nieuwe Instituut, the main location of AFFR 2025's immersive media programme.

AFFR 2022. Photo Sander van Wettum.

Realitiesⁿ is AFFR’s inaugural immersive media programme, marking a significant expansion of the festival’s scope. Bringing together projects across diverse media and formats, the exhibition explores how AR, VR and XR technologies transform how we conceptualise, narrate, and experience space. Immersive media continues a lineage of architectural tools of representation, from perspective drawings, axonometrics, and parametric volumes.

Realitiesⁿ presents immersive media not as a novelty, but as a natural evolution in the architect’s toolbox, a set of technologies that offer unprecedented modes of storytelling, embodiment, and empathy. The exhibition unfolds in two sections: Traces, which engages with real-world sites and histories through documentation and reconstruction, and Encounters, where speculative narratives invite reflection on memory, identity and belonging.

Installations

Energeia (Ugo Arsac, 2022), Address Unknown: Fukushima Now (Arif Khan, 2024), Lagares do Alvará (Pedro Gil Farias & Hugo Pilate, 2024), 21-22 China & 21-22 USA (Thierry Loa, 2023), The Tent (Rory Mitchell, 2024), Now I Live Here (Hannah Kersten, 2024) and Capital City (Elian Somers, 2022).

Visit the exhibition

Realitiesⁿ takes place between 10 and 26 October at Nieuwe Instituut, the main location of AFFR 2025's immersive media programme. The exhibition can be visited with an AFFR ticket or as a regular visitor to Nieuwe Instituut. The film festival itself will take place between 8 and 12 October at LantarenVenster and Theater Rotterdam.

Nieuwsbrief

Ontvang als eerste uitnodigingen voor onze events en blijf op de hoogte van komende tentoonstellingen.