Jaap Bakema Study Centre: from experiment to solid cooperation
The Jaap Bakema Study Centre was established as a research collaboration between our faculty and Het Nieuwe Instituut in 2013 and has developed from an experiment into a solid multi-year alliance between a cultural organisation and a knowledge institution. The activities have been broadened and deepened with the international PhD programme Architecture and Democracy, the Dutch Research Council (NWO) project The Critical Visitor and with leading annual conferences such as last year’s Repositioning Architecture in the Digital.
Due to the proven added value, it was recently decided to continue this multi-year collaboration. This collaboration is of particular importance since Het Nieuwe Instituut holds the Dutch National Collection of Architecture and Urban Planning, one of the most prominent architectural collection in the world.
PhD research Architecture and Democracy
The Architecture and Democracy PhD programme investigates how, over the course of the 20th century, architecture and urban planning have played a role in representing, embodying and enabling democracy. An international conference was devoted to urban renewal, populism and the welfare state.
NWO project The Critical Visitor
The Critical Visitor project investigates how cultural heritage institutions can achieve inclusion and accessibility within their organisations, collections and exhibition spaces in order to meet the broad range of demands of today’s “critical visitors”. It comprises two PhD-projects into archival studies and museology, a set of Field Labs and Archival Interactions, and the public Queer Salon series, organised together with Het Nieuwe Instituut. The Critical Visitor project is sponsored by the Dutch Research Council’s Smart Culture programme and is led by Eliza Steinbock (Leiden University), Hester Dibbits (Reinwardt Academy, Erasmus University) and Dirk van den Heuvel (TU Delft, Het Nieuwe Instituut), and includes a consortium of 15 national heritage partners.
Conference Repositioning Architecture in the Digital
Last year’s conference of the Jaap Bakema Study Centre was a first time collaboration with our professor George Vrachliotis. It aimed to critically explore the interplay between architecture and digital culture since the 1970s. How has the emergent data society materialized in architecture? What new typologies have been developed? And what role did architecture play in the emerging discussion about artificial intelligence?
Projects
At the outset, in 2013, the primary focus was on the visibility and use of the National Collection for academic research and public presentations. Among other results, this led to the exhibition Structuralism, jointly curated with Herman Hertzberger, and a contribution to the Venice Architecture Biennale about Jaap Bakema’s propositions for the “open society”.
New projects are developed with international partners, such as the Art on Display 1949-69 exhibition with the Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon.