Architecture on Display
Spatial choreography between public access and institutional authority in the Netherlands Architecture Institute
L.C. Gijrath (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
J.S. Zeinstra – Mentor (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
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Abstract
This thesis examines how the architectural design of the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi) in Rotterdam (1993), by Jo Coenen, constructs a spatial choreography between public accessibility and institutional authority. Rather than treating the building as a neutral container, it approaches it as a sequence of spaces that organises movement, frames experience, and gives architecture cultural meaning.
Set within the Dutch 1990s—when architecture gained unusual public and political visibility—the NAi was tasked not only with housing exhibitions, research, and archives, but also with representing architecture itself. Through an analysis of plans, drawings, photographs, and spatial sequences, this thesis argues that Coenen responds to this challenge by carefully staging access. The building guides visitors from the city into a layered interior, moving from open public spaces toward more controlled domains, such as exhibition areas and the archive.
In this way, the NAi organises not only functions, but also importance. It presents architecture as a public cultural field while simultaneously framing it institutionally. The thesis shows that the building mediates between openness and authority not by removing hierarchy, but by deliberately designing it.