The recently established Architecture Archives of the Future group at TU Delft explores new educational formats to activate architectural archives as sources of design knowledge and traditions. To this end, it collaborates with the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, which holds the Dutch national collection of architecture and urban planning. By combining methods of comparative plan analysis and digital VR and XR technologies, students learn how to operationalize historical data and knowledge, curate these, and present them to a larger audience. Two courses serve as examples: one is a history and theory course, and the other is an experimental research and design studio. Through assemblage (the history and theory course) and immersion (the studio), the students learn to synthesize their findings into a critical narrative, assessing data, cultural and social values, and speculative questions about future knowledge and design production.

In 1965, now sixty years ago, the architect of the Gradski Trgovski Centar in Skopje, Živko Popovski, travelled to Rotterdam to work at the famed office of Van den Broek and Bakema for about half a year. I spoke with a former employee, Frans Hooykaas, who worked as a direct assistant to Jaap Bakema including numerous competitions and public presentations. He is now 86 years old: do you remember him? Yes! He was full of energy and enthusiasm. I see his photo on the internet now, and recognize his grey mustache, at the time a well-groomed black line in a very lively face. He moved around as if his limbs, legs and arms were all connected by elastics. But sorry, not so much more. Did he work on the Skopje project? On the design that the Van den Broek and Bakema office submitted to the UN competition after the city was hit by an earthquake? Not sure... But it seems likely since he came from Skopje? Also handy in terms of language. If so, he must have worked with the group of Stokla in the office, who did most of the competitions. We were doing so many competitions in those years, big city schemes: Tel Aviv and Ashdod in Israel, the Pampus plan for Amsterdam, Frankfurt am Main in Germany, the university buildings in Bochum, Plovdiv in Bulgaria, Zurich... The special aspect of Skopje was to work with existing buildings, the remaining constructions after the disaster of the earthquake had to be spared and included. [...]

Developed for the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, this twin exhibition presents around 60 projects by the Berlin-based architectural team Sauerbruch Hutton and allows them to enter into conversation with selected documents of architectural history from the Baukunst Archiv of the Akademie, with projects by key modernist architects including Hans Scharoun, Hugo Häring, Konrad Wachsmann and many more.

On the occasion of the transfer of their advance legacy to the Academy’s Architectural Archives, Louisa Hutton and Matthias Sauerbruch and Tom Geister together with the curator Dirk van den Heuvel (TU Delft) have reconceived their retrospective exhibition “draw love build” and extended it significantly: iconic archival material from the first half of the 20th century generates surprising dialogues with contemporary positions. The approximately 100-year-old views of a rising generation serve as both inspiration and benchmark for an architecture that seeks to process current critical environmental and societal conditions.

Is nature a human invention? It’s hard to imagine that nature conceives of itself as something called ‘nature’. As if there can be anything other than nature, or outside of nature. Only humans seem to be able to distinguish between what belongs to nature and what not, including human behavior itself apparently, with some bits of it designated as natural, others unnatural. These were just some of the impossible thoughts that crossed my mind during a walk along the gardens of the Nieuwe Instituut, Boymans van Beuningen, and the adjacent Museumpark. [...]

The combination of the three terms–architecture, coloniality and modernity– has turned out to be a most productive research field. Among its results it counts a growing library of new and innovative research, which aims to reassess established histories and theories to open the discourse for hitherto unheard and overlooked voices, as well as new conceptual frameworks and methodologies. Scholars in the field know that such reassessment is easier said than done. Despite this productivity, the structures of our institutions are also quite tenacious, even when one can observe signs of change. The struggles around those terms are not just related to power and the control over the discourse. They are particularly sensitive, since they concern issues of historical and archival justice, and who decides about that. Next to identity issues, value systems are brought into the equation; neutrality is neither possible nor accepted. More than before, positionality and relationality have become key aspects of research practices regarding their validity and criticality. [...]

Dutch architect Jaap Bakema (1914-1981) was a central figure within international organisations such as the the avant-gardist CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne) originally founded in 1928, and its successor Team 10. Both organisations can be analysed in terms of networks, with a multiplicity of exchanges between the involved actors. In order to create a picture of the network and explore its connections, an interactive visualisation prototype has been developed on the basis of the correspondence present in the archive of Bakema. The prototype allows visitors to navigate between people, places and archival documents.

'Built Homecoming' presents the house of Aldo and Hannie van Eyck through a series of vitrines. These eight display cases capture special corners of the house, including the objects that populate these places. Through an arrangement of selected films, interior images, archival material, and artefacts from their home archive, the exhibition invites visitors to rediscover their work and ideas, while engaging with the complexities and implications of their approach to architecture and culture, particularly in relation to notions of Westernness and Eurocentricity. The choice of vitrines is crucial in this respect. Vitrines are a classic means of display, but they are also highly ambiguous: paradoxically, they are instruments of isolation and objectification, even as they provide protection and a temporary home for the selected materials. They regulate access and visibility, control the visitor’s gaze and frame the interpretation of the objects, ultimately shaping the narratives that surround them. The exhibition aims to critically rethink this framing, in order to reverse the objectifying gaze and allow for the relativity and reciprocity advocated by the Van Eycks.

The chapter contains a report of the ongoing research into queer voices and architecture at the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, which holds the National Collection of Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning. After introducing the National Collection, the authors critically examine how its internal power dynamics and mechanisms privilege certain voices while marginalizing others, followed by a brief overview of earlier ‘queering’ initiatives. In the second part of this chapter, the authors present a selection from the National Collection of three post-war architects who resisted the sexual norms and expectations of their times: Onno Greiner, Dick van Woerkom and Wim den Boon. Their incomplete histories are told through the traces of queer desires and lifestyles which haunt their archives. By discussing their autobiographical house designs, the authors aim to foreground practices of queer worldmaking in the National Collection that let us imagine queer ways of inhabiting, dwelling, and living, while reassessing the history of Dutch modern architecture and some of its tenets related to transparancy, spatial concepts and interior design.

The digital turn in architecture seems to have displaced the house as a paradigm for architectural theory. Omitting the house, and with it, housing and dwelling as key sites for the reconstitution of the discipline, recent theorisations of the digital in architecture have almost exclusively focused on new methods of production and notions of materiality alongside profound changes to the urban and social dimensions of the built environment. The Covid-19 pandemic has unveiled the multifaceted dimensions of the impact of the new digital technologies on dwelling as private houses transformed into online workspaces. It calls for a reflection on the question of dwelling as formulated by Martin Heidegger in 1951, when he suggested that answers won’t be found in technology and quantitative approaches to the pressing housing urgency of the time, but rather in a rethinking of culture through existentialist philosophy. The question of dwelling after the digital turn leads to scrutiny of the history of the digitisation of the house and the shifting nature of domesticity, and to an exploration of involved motivations and values, oscillating between a techno-utopianism to a techno-capitalism. While the boundaries between real and virtual realms are blurred, the house and dwelling find a reconceptualisation in ecological and relational terms, thereby dissolving the house as a discrete object or entity. Privacy, autonomy, and physicality are in need of a rebalancing.

A critical discussion of contemporary exhibition design in relation to diversity and inclusion policies of museums and heritage institutions, as part of the NWO sponsored Smart Culture project: The Critical Visitor, Intersectional Approaches for Rethinking & Retooling Accessibility and Inclusivity in Heritage Spaces.

Introduction to the proceedings of the tenth annual conference of the Jaap Bakema Study Centre 'Architecture Archives of the Future', including a brief overview of the first decade of the research collaboration between the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam and the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment TU Delft.

This paper examines the case of Jaap Bakema (1914-81) as a precursor to participation and co-creation processes in city planning. Besides his architectural practice and prolific teaching, Dutch architect and Team 10 figurehead Bakema was deeply engaged in creating exhibitions to communicate his ideas to layman audiences. He played a role in de-signing the Dutch pavilions for Expo 1958 in Brussels and the one in Osaka in 1970, as well as in the city reconstruction festivals for Ahoy’ and E55, both in Rotterdam. These public events provided Bakema with opportunities to develop his ideological agenda for urban planning in relation to the large-scale modernization processes of the period and a new Dutch national identity within a Cold War geopolitical context, built on the idea of an open society.

Bespreking van de tentoonstelling en prijsvraag van de Prix de Rome. Met als titel Healing Sites vroeg de jury van de Prix de Rome architectuur 2022 om een reflectie op niets minder dan de rol en medeplichtigheid van de architectuur in de massale vernietiging van ecosystemen als gevolg van kapitalisme, kolonialisme en imperialisme. De finalisten Arna Mačkić, Dividual (Andrea Bit en Maciej Wieczorkowski) , Lesia Topolnyk en Studio KIWI (Kim Kool en Willemijn van Manen) breken alle vier eerst veel af, waarna ze letterlijk op de resten van het verleden hun projecten opbouwen.

This chapter discusses the notion of ‘Open Building’ through its conceptualisations and implementations in the Netherlands since the 1960s until today. It focuses on the place of dwellers’ agency in the development of residential open buildings to investigate the potential of users’ empowerment.

The ‘Open Building’ approach synthesises the principles of Habraken’s theory of ‘Support’ and ‘Infill’ developed as an alternative to post-war mass housing. Through innovations in decision-making and construction technology it promotes user participation and enables flexibility and change. The chapter discusses and compares the cases of Molenvliet, an early Open Building project for the social rental sector, and Superlofts, a series of contemporary ones where the architect and the residents have also become developers. It emphasises the political, and socio-economic context of the Open Building movement and how it has impacted the ability to meet its aims. Although its capacity to disrupt the housing system has remained limited it has expanded housing possibilities in the Netherlands.

A discussion of the ground breaking teaching activities of the Dutch architect Jaap Bakema (1914-1981) at various institutions around the world.

A critical discussion of the historical avant-garde, De Stijl and the work of Theo van Doesburg and its reception and re-interpretations through the years. For the occasion of an art installation at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht by the artist Antonis Pittas.

A discussion of the interrelations between post-war Brutalism and Picturesque revival in the work of Alison and Peter Smithson, in response to the conference question of urban design urgencies of today, most notably the question of city repair.

Introduction text to the conference proceedings laying out the main questions around contemporary research in relation to digital archives, digitizing paper archives and new developments in AI and public outreach (exhibitions, websites and new formats).

A reflection on the impact of the Covid pandemic on architecture and urban spaces.

Contribution to the reader The Turn of the Century, published at the occasion of the exhibition of the architecture office Sauerbruch Hutton, in M9 in Mestre, Venice.