Het Nieuwe Instituut

Location

Rotterdam (NL)

Genre

Archive
Research

Tags

Urban Planning
Reflection
Architecture

Through its activities, Het Nieuwe Instituut aims to increase the appreciation of the cultural and social significance of architecture, design and digital culture and to strengthen the interaction between these disciplines. In a period characterized by radical change, Het Nieuwe Instituut wants to moderate, stimulate and facilitate debate about architecture, design and digital culture through research and a public programme. The broadening and deepening of the public’s appreciation will be fundamental starting points.

WORK, BODY, PLEASURE @Venice Architecture Biennial, 2018. Photo: Daria Scagliola
WORK, BODY, PLEASURE, 2018. Photo: Daria Scagliola
Het Nieuwe Instituut

Het Nieuwe Instituut stands for the social and innovative value of culture. A visitor to Het Nieuwe Instituut enters, as it were, ‘the museum of the future’. In Het Nieuwe Instituut visitors are provoked and confronted with questions that are maybe not of today, but are certainly of tomorrow. In other words, Het Nieuwe Instituut is true to its name: what it shows is ‘new’ and will eventually be picked up by other national and international organisations. Het Nieuwe Instituut is unrivalled among cultural institutions, both in terms of content and organisation, in its ability to point to urgent issues and approach them in a flexible, innovative way.

Erotic Space, 1971
Erotic Space, 1971
Happening, 1973
Happening, 1973

Constant

A quote from New Babylon, revisited by Mark Wigley*:
“Artist Constant Nieuwenhuys attempted to resolve the dichotomy between work and leisure. In his seminal project New Babylon (1956–74) – an architectural paradigm of free space and time afforded by automation – society would devote its energy to creativity and play. By robotizing labor, Constant demanded the right to not labor, and visualized the imminent post-labor world. And yet, as his oeuvre evolved, this optimistic vision gradually gave way to a more conflictual perspective. Violence would not be eradicated by the new technological order mobilized to satisfy society’s immediate needs; rather, it would be revealed as an intrinsic part of such order: an architecture founded on the exploitation and invisibility of working bodies, conceived as automated machines. Would New Babylon be possible without the work of the other?”      

*One of the projects of Work, Body, Leisure, the Dutch contribution to the 16th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Marina Otero Verzie

Labyrismen 06, 1968
Labyrismen 06, 1968