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Raphael Coutin has worked on several projects for Het Nieuwe Instituut. He devised the spatial design for the exhibition Hacked by Van Slobbe and Van Benthum, which was part of the Temporary Fashion Museum (2015), WORK, BODY, LEISURE (2016), and Neuhaus (2019)

Visitors entering the Dutch pavilion during the 2018 Venice Biennale stepped into an orange locker room. Raphael Coutin points out that, when he was approached to work on the spatial design of the pavilion, the locker room idea was already in place. His contribution consisted mainly in the material choices and scenography for the exhibition concept.

The final design is a response to the architecture of the pavilion designed by Rietveld. The locker room was placed as a closed block in the light-filled space of the pavilion. "The changing room is an intermediate zone between work and leisure," Coutin explains. "It questions our position as individuals in those different settings. Work and leisure settings are no longer clearly defined, now that we can now work from our bed, for example. And conversely, can a work setting be completely free of people? The locker room seemed the perfect place to raise questions of this kind."

In Venice, the changing room becomes the transitional zone between the world outside and the exhibition indoors.The ground plan of the Rietveld pavilion is a perfect square in which three partitions separate the different areas. The locker room was positioned right in the middle of the pavilion, connecting with the partitions, resulting in four closed spaces. The locker room contained around 400 lockers, 70 of which could be opened to give access to one of the presentations or to provide information about the projects on display. "The large number of doors and the fact that visitors did not know what was behind them created a certain playfulness," Coutin explains. It was a welcome bonus that the exhibition designers had not foreseen.

There were no texts hanging in the spaces where the projects were displayed. Visitors could view them without any additional information. Afterwards there was an opportunity to delve further into the content through the texts that were located behind the locker doors. Visitors had to search for them, enabling them to determine how much further they wanted to go. The daylight for which the pavilion is famous illuminated the four white exhibition spaces, while only indirect, diffuse light entered the locker room. The colour orange was not a patriotic choice, Coutin says. It arose from the desire to create a certain atmosphere, a sort of 'Blade Runner atmosphere', as he terms it. The orange colour gave the claustrophobic space an unreal appearance. He chose the colour fairly intuitively, he adds: "At a certain moment, we came to the end of the day in the pavilion. Outside, dusk began to fall and suddenly it was the blue hour. The effect of that blue light outside and the orange room inside was terrific."

The exhibition _WORK, BODY, LEISURE_ was the official contribution of the Netherlands, by Het Nieuwe Instituut, to the 16th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venetian Biennale in 2018. The exhibition in the Dutch pavilion was curated by Marina Otero Verzier (head of Research & Development at Het Nieuwe Instituut) and included contributions by a group of architects, artists, designers, historians, musicians and theoreticians selected by the curator and through a number of open calls. WORK, BODY, LEISURE explores not only changing ideas about the human body, but also spatial configurations and environmental conditions that are the result of current shifts in the field of work ethos and working conditions. Against the background of emerging automation technologies, the project is intended to stimulate new forms of creativity and involvement.

The exhibition Hacked by Van Slobbe and Van Benthum made use of the layout from the previous show, GLASS. Coutin added a new layer to the existing construction, thus giving it a new meaning. _Hacked _was designed as a hybrid of museum exhibition and shop, with changing rooms for visitors to try on the garments on display. This design was realised in black and white and as clear and simple as possible. Experimental Jetset designed graphic elements featuring dots that continued the black and white theme. Florentijn Boddendijk and Remco de Jong developed a soundscape for the exhibition, with a special composition for the fitting rooms. "_Hacked _was the first time I worked on such a large assignment," says Coutin. "It was intense, but the collaboration with fashion designers Alexander van Slobbe and Francisco van Benthum went smoothly, so everything soon fell into place. The result was generous, vibrant and chic - a bit like Chanel."

The _Hacked _project by fashion designers Alexander van Slobbe and Francisco van Benthum is a commentary on today's fast fashion phenomenon: cheap clothes sold in a rapid succession of collections. By appropriating and upcycling the remnants from this industry of overproduction, Van Slobbe and Van Benthum transform themselves from product designers into process designers who see waste as their material. Hacked is not only a critique of the effects of the contemporary fashion industry but also an exploration of possible new roles for the fashion designer in the design and production process.

The design process for _Neuhaus _started with a simple idea: a sequence of classrooms arranged around an auditorium As the design process progressed, a more organic arrangement of similar but distinctly designed spaces emerged, which could be approached and traversed from different sides. Each "classroom" had its own form and finish, created in response to the contents shown in each space. The materials' different textures were in response to the more-than-human knowledge acquired in the animal and plant world.

"We dispensed with the traditional, solemn entrance to a museum exhibition," says Coutin. "Instead, the visitor entered through the back, via a storage space permeated with the aroma of freshly mown grass. There was a carpeted archive room, whose design referred to a study, with covered walls, showcases, and tables to examine the displayed material. The layout evoked an Italian theatre set, where the architecture in condensed into a small space using accelerated perspective. Adjacent to this was a black box - a dark, enclosed space - that displayed a micro world. In contrast, the education room had a very open design, resembling a laboratory, with a rubber floor and a large work table. The information boards were always arranged the same way to provide a unifying element and point of reference for visitors."

_Neuhaus _challenged Coutin to grasp quickly a complex concept that was still in development. As a designer, he enjoys flexibly dealing with the different aspects of an exhibition's composition and organisation. His positive collaboration with Het Nieuwe Instituut's construction team supported this approach.

100 years after the foundation of Bauhaus, Het Nieuwe Instituut transforms into _Neuhaus_, a temporary transdisciplinary academy for more-than-human knowledge. For a period of four months, this ever-evolving learning environment takes over the institution, occupying and transforming its existing building and facilities, adding new ones, and opening them up - to co-create, co-own, share, and perform the _Neuhaus _programme of more-than-human knowledge.

The design studio of Raphael Coutin operates at the intersection of design and architecture. He studied sculpture at the ENSAAMA in Paris and social design at the Design Academy Eindhoven. Working on the principle that projects always arise in a specific social and geographical context, he aims at a dialogue between the design, the surroundings and the concept. Coutin sees design as a means of creating connections and of transforming ideas, ideals and a vision or reflection into a comprehensible, tangible result. He is a member of the board of the ,'and one of the founders of the Fictional Collective, a network of designers, writers, curators and researchers who create exhibitions, interventions and publications.

Website Raphael Coutin