International Visitors ProgrammeInternational Visitors Programme

Caroline Baumann of New York's Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, Edwin Heathcote of London's Financial Times, and Virginia Tassinari of the MAD Faculty in Genk, Belgium, came to the Netherlands at the invitation of Het Nieuwe Instituut to serve on the Rotterdam Design Prize jury. In between deliberations and participation in the award ceremony at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, they followed an extensive visitors' schedule. Heathcote and Tassinari visited Piet Hein Eek in Eindhoven and took an architectural tour of The Hague, while Baumann visited numerous designers in Amsterdam, including Jantje Fleischhut, Wieki Somers and Satyendra Pakhale, who may eventually be represented at Cooper Hewitt.

Caroline Baumann has worked since 2001 at New York's Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, the only museum in the United States devoted to historical and contemporary design. After performing various functions, she became the museum's director in 2013. It reopened in December 2014 after undergoing renovations for several years. Baumann previously worked for the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She has a master's degree in medieval art and a bachelor's degree in art history and French literature.

Edwin Heathcote is the architecture and design critic of the Financial Times, where he has worked since 1999. He is also an architect and designer and the author of around a dozen books, recently including The Meaning of Home and The Architecture of Hope (with Charles Jencks). He sits on the editorial boards of AD Magazine and Icon magazine and contributes regularly to several architecture and design journals. In 2001 he co-founded the design and hardware manufacturer Ize. He Is currently establishing an online archive of critical design writing.

Since her philosophy studies, Virginia Tassinari has been interested in connecting the respective worlds of philosophy and design. Actively engaged in teaching at the MAD Faculty in Genk, Belgium, she works to develop socially relevant projects within her classes and collaborates on various initiatives relating to social innovation and its relationship with philosophy. She also guest-lectures at various institutions, including George Brown College's Institute without Boundaries in Toronto and the Politecnico di Milano. She recently founded a DESIS Lab within her Social Spaces research group at the MAD Faculty. DESIS is an international network of design labs focusing on social innovation and sustainability.