Research
Landscape and Interior
The boundaries between public and private, physical and digital, and culture and nature are becoming blurred. At the same time, new borders continue to develop, and the once clear distinction between inside and outside, known and unknown, and between ourselves and the other, is shifting.
This changing world, which is also recognised in the government's adjusted policy on spatial planning, calls for a new approach to the concept of space. The Landscape and Interior programme explores these shifts and researches how the concept of space can be redefined on the basis of these two extremes.
Influenced by economic developments, a growing obsession with collective security and an ever- expanding digital realm, the private interior is increasingly becoming part of the public space. By contrast, the public space would appear to be increasingly subject to mechanisms that once characterised the private sphere: public parks, for example, are being claimed by business and serving as a venue for private parties. Control and security regimes make us witnesses to a steady process in which the interior looks like becoming the dominant space. 'Public' interiors, such as the shopping mall or the station concourse - may be considered public spaces, but are in fact highly controlled, regulated and privatised environments.
In addition, the classic vision of the city and the landscape as mutually exclusive phenomena is gradually disappearing. Both city and landscape are increasingly becoming intertwined. As a result, functions such as waste management, energy and food production, once reserved for the countryside, are now integrated into hybrid urban landscapes.
Projects developed on this premise and in the context of Landscape and Interior include:
Automated Landscapes
Automated Landscapes is a long-term collaborative research initiative on the implications of automation for the built environment,
Architectures of Security
Drones and Honeycombs is a research project by Malkit Shoshan that investigates the impact of contemporary warfare and the global security apparatus on our environment and our cities. There used to be a clear distinction between war zones and the civilian world. This difference now seems to have disappeared entirely: war has entered the core of the public space. During the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2016 a sequel to this research will be exhibited in the Dutch pavilion, entitled BLUE: Architecture of UN Peacekeeping Missions, in which the peacekeeping mission is regarded as a catalyst of local development.
Architecture of Appropriation
Architecture of Appropriation acknowledges squatting as an architectural practice. The project analyzes six locations in the Netherlands through architectural drawings, interviews, and archival material to build up a record of past and current struggles, spaces, and oral histories, forming the basis for a new acquisition policy for the State Archive for Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning.
Sicco Mansholt
In a long-term research strand around land policy, light is shed on the spatial implications of our food production and the ways in which it is influenced by politics and policy. The exhibition _Sicco Mansholt. A Good European_ was a key element. It demonstrated the drastic changes to the Dutch landscape brought about by modernisation and the accompanying increase in scale in agriculture following the Second World War, as well as examining the inspiring role of Minister of Agriculture Sicco Mansholt. In 2015 the exhibition led to a partnership with Slow Food, including a joint programme in Milan during the World Expo. In 2016 the research dossier was presented to the agricultural ministers of the European Union.
Total Space
The research project _Total Space_ investigates the international dimensions of structuralism and the cross-disciplinary exchange between architecture, urban planning, anthropology and systems theory. The project links the recent history of the twentieth century with speculations on the future of the city in the twenty-first century. This long-term research project was initiated by the Jaap Bakema Study Centre, a joint project of TU Delft and Het Nieuwe Instituut, which forms part of the Global Housing programme of TU Delft.
1:1 Sets
_1:1 Sets _is a series of exhibitions and a parallel programme devoted to specific qualities of the interior as the point where architecture, design and digital culture intersect. Each instalment took the 1:1 model as its point of departure to look at the meaning of representation and particularly exhibition design. The first instalment, 1:1 Sets, addressed the idea of the interior as an expression of the individual; _1:1 Period Rooms_ examined the interior as a model for exhibitions and education.
1.1 Period Rooms
1:1 Period Rooms by Andreas Angelidakis comprised part two of a series on the interior. Het Nieuwe Instituut chose the period room as the point of departure for a programme about exhibition models and the interior as an educational model.
Work, Body, Leisure
WORK, BODY, LEISURE, first conceived as the Dutch contribution to the 16th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, addresses the spatial configurations, modes of living, and notions of the human body engendered by disruptive changes in labor ethos and conditions.
Monument
In the wake of rising nationalisms, critiques of globalism, and ongoing emancipatory struggles around the world, a series that will investigate how monuments have come to play an increasingly significant and contested role in the constitution of identities, be they national, ethnic, communal, or other.
Letters to the Mayor
Letters to the Mayor - Rotterdam invited a select group of local and international architects to write a letter to Mayor Aboutaleb of Rotterdam, articulating some of the pressing issues that, as architects, they believe play an important role in the political dimensions and decisions that drive the making of cities and territories.
Memory and Oblivion
Memory and Oblivion is a long-term research project on ideology, memory and monuments. The project looks at different case studies around the world that epitomize the fight against the specter of fascism, and the demand of a renewed relation between remembering and forgetting.
Geographies of Freedom
_Geographies of Freedom _investigates the ways in which geography, architecture and the law produce, maintain, and spatialise freedom.
Vertical Atlas
Vertical Atlas is a research project aimed at the creation of a new atlas to navigate the complex techno-geographies of the world today.
Beyond the Cover
Beyond the Cover explores the stories behind a selection of seminal buildings. The series invites architects to go beyond the familiar imagery by contextualizing a single building in relation to regulations, finance, and policies, making visible the political, economic, and social relations that constructed architecture embodies.
Architecture and Representation
A collaboration with e-flux Architecture and The Berlage that investigated the power of representation within and beyond the field of architecture.