Design CommissionsDesign Commissions

Valentijn Goethals and Tomas Lootens have designed the last three issues of Surprising Finds from the Collection including the exhibition graphics, posters, cards and web covers. They also designed a website for the Dutch contribution to the 2016 London Design Biennale, Design Diorama, which, like the Surprising Finds series, was a collaboration with Studio Makkink & Bey.

For the series _Surprising Finds from the Collection_ archivist Alfred Marks selected extraordinary drawings, photographs, objects and models from the archives of Het Nieuwe Instituut on the basis of a theme. The presentations did not necessarily show the highlights of the Dutch architectural history, but first and foremost showed the richness, diversity and narrative power of the collection. For each edition, Studio Makkink & Bey invited three young designers, artists or architects to relate their practice to the archive.

The exhibition _The Netherlands builds in brick_ modified the assumed triumph of modernism in the period between the two world wars. Drawing on two collections of photographs from the archive, it showed that brick remained a favoured construction material, even for experimentation.

In 2015 the Netherlands commemorated its occupation seventy-five years ago and celebrated its liberation seventy years ago. _Monuments to Peace_ presented both realised and unexecuted designs for war memorials from the archives of Het Nieuwe Instituut.

_Dressed by Architects_ focused on examples of fashion in various architectural drawings from the archives of Het Nieuwe Instituut. Featuring architectural sketches showing elegant ladies parading through the streets, chic gentlemen posing in front of villas and children enjoying an endless summer in front of their summer house.

Het Nieuwe Instituut invited Studio Makkink & Bey to curate and design the contribution to he first edition of the London Design Biennale 2016. As a figurehead of Dutch design, the studio works with a network of talented designers. In its capacity as an informal platform for talented designers, artists and architects, Studio Makkink & Bey used its network-based practice to give form to the biennale's theme: Utopia by Design. The installation _Design Diorama: the Archive as a Utopic Environment _translated Studio Makkink & Bey's international network into a diorama that is an idealised version of the personal salon of the studio's founders, Rianne Makkink and Jurgen Bey.