Designing ScarcityDesigning Scarcity

The finissage of Het Nieuwe Instituut's exhibition Designing Scarcity will comprise a workshop on 31 August at which participants will disassemble the exhibition structure and use it to build new designs they can take away with them.

Jan Boelen, curator of the exhibition Designing Scarcity, talked with three Rotterdam designers about how scarcity functions as a source of inspiration and creative point of departure for their work and research. Guests were Joep van Lieshout of Atelier Van Lieshout, Césare Peeren of Superuse Studios and Digna Kossen of Foodcurators.

At first glance, scarcity would appear to be a shortage of raw materials or resources. Understood in this way, scarcity primarily demands of designers that they provide more economical and efficient designs. But raw materials and resources are more than just goods that exist in isolation and inevitably run out at some point. They are part of complex networks, in which shortage is largely a relational concept.

Scarcity is the mother of invention. The designLAB, on the Deck of Het Nieuwe Instituut, will challenge visitors (aged 9 and up) to make more out of less. Participants will discover countless possibilities for controlling a game using a limited amount of resources.