Design Commissions
As art director, Herman Verkerk was responsible for the overarching concept of the design of the _Temporary Fashion Museum _(2015).
Temporary Fashion Museum
The _Temporary Fashion Museum _examined fashion from a socio-cultural perspective, which, says Herman Verkerk, is a very Dutch approach to the phenomenon of fashion. It was also the focus of the exhibition A Speculative History of Dutch Fashion. "The Netherlands has never had a museum about fashion, and the Temporary Fashion Museum hinted at what such an institution might look like," he says. "This experiment contrasted the museum model with that of the fashion world. Fashion is normally presented in a retail environment, evoking associations with luxury, beauty and seduction. The fashion industry wallows in money, while the museum sector faces financial challenges. The Temporary Fashion Museum was a socio-cultural translation of that disparity, using the visual language of retail as a mirror for the museum."
Diverse design disciplines were involved in realising the project. As an architect, Verkerk assumed the mantle of art director. "I mapped out a route through the building and invited a different designer to shape each part of the exhibition. Designing all those different functions and elements that make up a fashion museum made it an exceptionally interesting project." The Temporary Fashion Museum was all about interaction, he emphasises. "That experience began at the entrance, where the visitor was welcomed with a specially designed perfume. Like an antechamber of the museum. The perfume as an ephemeral symbol of the transience of fashion. Next was the cloakroom, where people were ritually divested of their coats, while the foyer resembled a shopping street, offering a kaleidoscope of experiences for the fashion user. Visitors could try on shoes in the Pumporama, make clothes in the Haberdashery and keep pace with the latest trends at The Now, a showcase of the ten most highly-publicised garments of the moment." The collections on display in the large hall of the fashion museum could be touched, tried on, and in some cases, bought. On the second floor, Hacked by Van Slobbe and Van Benthum was both exhibition and shop. "The presentation critiqued fashion's production system, from raw material to design to saleable product. Every aspect of the process was analysed, from the surpluses of fast fashion, the production methods, the creation of the garments on display, and the development of the campaign that launched the brand Hacked by_. The clothes could be tried on and purchased on the spot."
Temporary Fashion Museum was a 1:1 model of a museum. The entire building of Het Nieuwe Instituut was temporarily transformed into a fashion museum. "It was essential that the scenography of the exhibition was logical and organic," says Verkerk. "Hence the simplicity of the design and materials. I often design exhibitions that seem unfinished and improvised. As a proposition, a proposal to the visitor to join the dots, and complete the story. The design of the Temporary Fashion Museum needed to harmonise with its context." The curation, design and realisation of the different exhibitions largely took place in synchrony. "That made it very intensive and rewarding. The process felt very organic to me: transformation was an essential part of the proposal for a fashion museum."
Herman Verkerk
Herman Verkerk trained as an architect at TU Delft and ETH Zürich from 1984-1990. In 1993 he formed EventArchitectuur, a design firm for time- and experience-based architecture. Its projects ranging from a temporary art museum and a series of landscape parks to shop interiors, plus temporary exhibitions and installations on contemporary culture for cultural institutes in the Netherlands and abroad. Verkerk has taught design, exhibition design and architecture at the Design Academy Eindhoven, Hochschule Düsseldorf, TU Delft and Sandberg Institute Amsterdam. Together with architect Rianne Makkink he co-founded Sloom.org, an organisation that operates on slow growth processes. He is currently head of the department for interior architecture and furniture design (IA&FD) at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. He edited a book on the temporary in architecture and twenty five years of EventArchitectuur called EVENTS: Situating the Temporary, published by Birkhauser Verlag in June 2017.