Collection

Het Nieuwe Instituut preserves archives by Dutch architects and urban planners. We must constantly review which things to preserve and how to do that.The question of what to preserve is situated on the tipping point from a predominantly monographic to a thematic approach, which places greater emphasis on the social context of architecture.

The question as to how we preserve archives is dictated by the nature of the materials that designers produce. These materials are increasingly created, shared and stored as digital files (born digital), whereas the current process of collecting and cataloguing archives and making them accessible to the public is largely directed at analogue materials. These changes, which will lead to a revised acquisitions policy and the creation of an e-depot, call for research, partnerships and knowledge exchange.