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.

On October 12, 2019, the exhibition I See That I See What You Don't See and the installations Animal Encounters and Spirits in the Material World will open in Het Nieuwe Instituut. At the outset of the cultural year, Het Nieuwe Instituut selects a range of possible perspectives on architecture, design and digital culture that are rich in content and never predictable.

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 24 February, Pjotr Gonggrijp and Frits Palmboom will be talking about their work based on the material on show in the exhibition.

Hadas Steiner (University at Buffalo, NY) will give a lecture about the history of ecological thinking in architecture and urban planning. She will talk about how this concept entered the architectural discourse through the biological sciences, and how the understanding of these terms changed throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s as they were variously reinterpreted and employed by architects like Alison and Peter Smithson or John McHale. Among other topics, she will discuss the ornithological architecture of Cedric Price, who designed the aviary for the London Zoo. 

As part of the discursive programme accompanying Habitat: Expanding Architecture, Alessandra Ponte will give a lecture about the concept of ‘total environment’ and how this relates to energy landscapes and megastructures in Canada. She will focus on mining in a region on the border of Labrador and Quebec. Developed after World War II, it includes a model town with a megastructure regulating its climate.

On Thursday 18 October three new exhibitions open to the public. Speculative Design Archive, Habitat: Expanding Architecture and Prix de Rome Architecture 2018, each examine the remains of our material and spatial design culture from a different perspective.

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.