This year’s Jaap Bakema Study Centre conference aims to critically explore the interplay between architecture and digital culture since the 1970s. How has the emergent data society materialised in architecture? What new typologies have been developed? And what role did architecture play in the emerging discussion about artificial intelligence?

Esra Akcan is the keynote speaker for the Jaap Bakema Study Centre conference 2019 Architecture and Democracy 1965-1989: Urban Renewal, Populism and the Welfare State. Akcan’s research explores the concept of ‘open architecture’ through the thorough investigation of the urban renewal of Kreuzberg, Berlin’s immigrant neighbourhood, in the 1980s.

Giovanni Bellotti and Alessandra Covini of Studio Ossidiana talk about the Animal Encounters installation and their research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht. Afterwards, they discuss architecture, ecology and cross-species exchange with Dirk van den Heuvel.

Het Nieuwe Instituut is offering an exclusive opportunity for Members to attend the Lisbon Architecture Triennale and the Art on Display 1949-69 exhibition opening at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon on 8 and 9 November 2019. 

A spatial installation by Studio Ossidiana explores how architecture might mediate between all sorts of creatures, making room for a variety of encounters and setting the stage for interactions between humans and non-humans. The installation is an environment occupied by drawings, diagrams and architectural models – creature-like objects – that address issues of proximity, scale and cross-species politics.

On Thursday 7 March, Georg Vrachliotis (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) will deliver the final lecture in the discursive programme of Habitat: Expanding Architecture. Vrachliotis will talk about the influence of systems theory on architecture and planning, with particular attention to the case of Swiss architect Fritz Haller, who created one of the most enigmatic visions regarding total urban systems.

In February, the Jaap Bakema Study Centre organises archive conversations with and about the authors of the archive material that is on show at Habitat: Expanding Architecture. Sunday 3 February, the members of the Tanthof Working Group that were responsible for the Delft expansion Tanthof in the 1970s. Frans Hooykaas, Peter Lüthi, Joost Váhl, Hiwe Groenewolt and Anneloes Groenewolt-van den Berg will share their memories of this process using material from the exhibition.

Céline Condorelli delivered the keynote lecture for The Irritant Principle of Renewal: 100 Years Aldo & Hannie van Eyck, the 2018 iteration of the annual conference organised by the Jaap Bakema Study Centre.

In collaboration with TU Delft, the Jaap Bakema Study Centre is organizing a research and archive seminar with Leonardo Zuccaro Marchi and Elisa Dainese. On this occasion, the new PhD programme, Architecture and Democracy, will also be announced.

Habitat: Expanding Architecture is a research installation which captures a key moment in the history of architecture and urban planning: the tenth CIAM conference at Dubrovnik in 1956. Here the concept 'habitat' was a central theme: a broader understanding of architecture through a new ecological approach viewing architecture less as an autonomous discipline than as part of larger, dynamic whole.

Following on from 2016’s Queering Architecture seminar, the Jaap Bakema Study Centre is organizing another event around the theme. On this occasion Joel Sanders, architect and professor at Yale University, will give a lecture about diversity and inclusivity in architecture, based on the notion of the ‘noncompliant body’.

On March 18, the Jaap Bakema Study Centre and Archis/Volume will host the presentation of the book Jaap Bakema and the Open Society, the first extensive publication on the Dutch architect Jaap Bakema, his ideas and ideals for society at large. With Dirk van den Heuvel, Brita Bakema, Arnold Reijndorp, Dick van Gameren, Frans Hooykaas, and Herman Hertzberger.

From Vitruvius and Villard de Honnecourt up till Building Information Modeling (BIM), the art of architectural design has been propelled by an ongoing process of division of labor within the building industry. In his lecture, Michiel Riedijk investigated what this process implies for both practice and education in architecture.

On June 29, an exhibition of dismantled building components of the former building of the Ministry of Social Affairs was held in situ during the final review of Studio Rotor: Deconstruction. The session marked the end of an intensive ten-week workshop programme with TU Delft Visiting Professors Lionel Devlieger and Maarten Gielen of the Brussels-based office Rotor. The programme combined an international conference at TU Delft and archival seminars at Het Nieuwe Instituut, with analyses of case studies, site visits, and radical redesign.

On June 16 2017 the Jaap Bakema Study Centre convened a symposium on the pressing issue of affordable housing, its architecture and planning. The symposium was part of the International Social Housing Festival 2017 and brought together a range of international scholars and designers: Kenny Cupers, Anne Kockelkorn, Jörg Stollmann, René Boer, Mirjana Milanovic, and Dick van Gameren. 

The symposium Crossovers brought together a vibrant network of Ph.D. researchers, professional, and experts to discuss from diverse perspectives current issues affecting the built environment: circularity, informality, and digital craftsmanship. They reflected on the state of the art of doctoral research in the Netherlands on the fields of architecture, history, theory, urbanism, real estate and building technology. With short presentations by Ph.D. researchers, talks and responses by Janneke van Kersen, Siebe Bakker, Ton Bastein, Alex Jachnow, Marta-Malé Alemany, and a keynote lecture by Dietmar Offenhuber.

What exactly is an architectural drawing today? How are authorship and originality re-conceptualised in an age of electronic reproduction? From beautiful BIM to the immortal quality of the hand-drawn. In collaboration with the Jaap Bakema Study Centre. With architect and artist Will Alsop.

By ‘queering’ the discipline of architecture, we sought to discuss new ways to arrive at an inclusive approach to architecture and urban planning from the LGBT perspective. Speakers included Jasmine Rault, who wrote a book on Eileen Gray and Sapphic modernity; Henry Urbach, who organized the exhibition Queer Space in New York in 1994; Wolfgang Voigt, who is preparing a book publication on gay architects together with Uwe Bresan; and Riëtte van der Werff who is building a project for LGBT-seniors in Amsterdam.

Maarten Gielens' lecture was the closing event of the two-day conference 'Research on Display. The Architecture Exhibition as a Model for Knowledge Production' organised by the Jaap Bakema Study Centre together with TU Delft. 

The Jaap Bakema Study Centre organised the second Total Space research workshop on November 2nd in Het Nieuwe Instituut. The research workshop was part of the research project into structuralism, and is part of the preparations for an exhibition at Het Nieuwe Instituut in 2017. The workshop aimed to explore current developments in the digital realm and their impact on city planning and architecture.

The Jaap Bakema Study Centre organised the first Total Space research workshop on June 8 in Het Nieuwe Instituut. The research workshop was part of the research project into structuralism, and is part of the preparations for an exhibition at Het Nieuwe Instituut in the period 2017-2020. The workshop focused on the historical developments in architecture and planning around structuralism.

The Jaap Bakema Study Centre organized a special conference on the work of Jaap Bakema (1914-1981) and his idea to build towards an open society. Speakers included professor Tom Avermaete, professor Carola Hein (both TU Delft), professor Mark Swenarton (University of Liverpool) and Christoph Grafe, director of the Flemish Architecture Institute (VAi). The conference acted as a conclusion to the Dutch presentation for this year's Venice Biennale Open: A Bakema Celebration.

On 28 October, Het Nieuwe Instituut and the Jaap Bakema Study Centre organised in cooperation with the Van Eesteren-Fluck & Van Lohuizen Foundation (EFL) and the Archives of the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta) at the ETH Zurich a symposium on the occasion of the publication of the Atlas of the Functional City. 

A series of weekly conversations, held in the Structuralism exhibition, between contemporaries, architects, critics, researchers, building occupants and building clients. The audience can also join in.

Whereas the Dutch show at the 2014 Venice Biennale of Architecture highlighted the public facets of the architect Jaap Bakema (1914-1981), in Rotterdam the attention was turned towards the private life of Bakema and his creative collaboration with his wife and artist Sia Bakema (1919-2006).