Nieuwe Instituut
Nieuwe Instituut

Sonneveld House

WORK, BODY, LEISURE

20 December 2018 - 9 March 2019

Home

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. The exhibition was on show in Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam from December 2018 to March 2019.

Dutch Pavilion WORK, BODY, LEISURE. 16th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, FREESPACE. Photo: Daria Scagliola

Dutch Pavilion WORK, BODY, LEISURE. 16th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, FREESPACE. Photo: Daria Scagliola

Dutch Pavilion WORK, BODY, LEISURE. 16th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, FREESPACE. Photo: Daria Scagliola

Safety Measures, Simone C. Niquille. Dutch Pavilion WORK, BODY, LEISURE. 16th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, FREESPACE. Photo: Daria Scagliola

Beatriz Colomina interviewing Winy Maas. Dutch Pavilion WORK, BODY, LEISURE. 16th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, FREESPACE. Photo: Daria Scagliola

#OFFICE, Marten Kuijpers, Víctor Muñoz Sanz. Dutch Pavilion WORK, BODY, LEISURE. 16th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, FREESPACE. Photo: Daria Scagliola

Renderlands installation, Liam Young. Dutch Pavilion WORK, BODY, LEISURE. 16th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, FREESPACE. Photo: Daria Scagliola

New Babylon, revisited by Mark Wigley. Dutch Pavilion WORK, BODY, LEISURE. 16th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, FREESPACE. Photo: Daria Scagliola

WORK, BODY, LEISURE charts a journey through a series of architectures in the Netherlands and beyond in which bodies are categorized and transformed: offices, playgrounds, farms, factories and virtual spaces, windows, beds, and doors. Scenarios that look familiar--if rarely accessible or seemingly banal--but are nevertheless at the epicenter of the transformation of labor.

WORK, BODY, LEISURE

The project was envisioned as a collaborative research endeavor and has, over the course of 2018, gathered a network of contributors that developed a transnational research program and an ongoing exchange. This network, which brings together the expertise of architects, designers, knowledge institutions and the private sector, tests and disseminates outcomes before, during, and beyond the exhibition timeframe and venues of both the Biennale Architettura 2018 and Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. The curator, Rotterdam-based architect and researcher Marina Otero Verzier, Director of Research at Het Nieuwe Instituut, acting as the instigator and creative mediator of the multiple contributions.

The collaborative endeavor seeks to foster new forms of creativity and responsibility within the architectural field in response to emerging technologies of automation. A domain of research and innovation that, despite its ongoing transformation of the built environment and bodies that inhabit it, is still largely devoid of a critical spatial perspective. Next to the exhibition and programmes in Venice and Rotterdam, the project has seen manifestations in publications, podcasts, performances, new research initiatives, exhibitions and long-term collaborations.

Trouble in Paradise

In response to WORK, BODY, LEISURE, Chief Government Architect Floris Alkemade wrote the essay Trouble in Paradise_. _In the essay, Alkemade reflects upon Constant Nieuwenhuys' New Babylon project, while discussing the far-reaching implications of automation technologies for the future of labor. "On the road from uselessness to freedom, creativity becomes the main issue, the only way to be independent."

LED lighting, Koppert Cress. Photo: Jan van Berkel

Entrée du Labyrinthe, 1972. Constant (1920 - 2005). Oil on linen. 165,1 x 175,2 cm. Photo: Tom Haartsen. Gemeentemuseum Den Haag ©Constant / Fondation Constant c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2017

Foodora deliverers in the Vondelpark, Amsterdam, 2018. Photo: Johannes Schwartz.

OMA, Timmerhuis, Rotterdam, 2015. Photo: Sebastian van Damme.

Maasvlakte II Rotterdam, 2016. Photo: Victor Muñoz Sanz

Scale model of the human figure, ca. 1960. Lida Licht-Lankelma. Collection Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam.

Insight: interiors of window brothels (Amsterdam: Red Light Secrets, 2015). Photo: Tess Jungblut.

The Door of No Return, Gorée Island, Senegal, 2004. Photo: Lela Jefferson Fagan.

Head of a Realbotix sex robot, 2017. Photo: Realbotix.

Comissioned projects and open calls

Details of selected commissioned exhibitors and projects for the extended program of the Dutch Pavilion can be found in the Jury Report, and an overview of all those involved in the programme on the Team page of this web magazine. In addition the teams of the Belgian, Dutch and Spanish pavilions launched a joint Open Call entitled Outside the Box for a spatial intervention and action in the outdoor space in front of the three adjoining pavilions, and during the official opening day of the event.

Nieuwsbrief

Ontvang als eerste uitnodigingen voor onze events en blijf op de hoogte van komende tentoonstellingen.