SASKIA VAN STEIN

Photo: Moniek Wegdam.

Saskia van Stein is a curator, educator, and the Director of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR). Since 2019 she’s been headmaster of the MA The Critical Inquiry Lab at the Design Academy in Eindhoven, a department with artistic (design) research at its core. The course provides an environment for developing a design practice understood as a cultural signifier and an agent of change. She was previously the Director at Bureau Europa, a platform for architecture and design, in Maastricht (2013–2019). Van Stein started her career as a curator at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (now Nieuwe Instituut) in Rotterdam (2003–2012). She contributes to the development of cultural discourse, and she’s a board member of multiple advisory committees, involved in several juries, and was a member of advisory bodies such as The Independent School for the City and the architectural peer-to-peer review journal OASE.

LUCIJA ŠUTEJ: What was your entry into the design world?

SASKIA VAN STEIN: It is very anecdotal (laugh). I am trained as a visual artist and was interested in the power relations manifested in cities. After finishing school at the Royal Academy in The Hague, I was fortunate to have a gallery representation straightaway - where I worked across installations and performances. But somehow, I could never marry the idea of being a singular genius (laugh). I went to New York with only 200 euros in my pocket - very romantically (laugh) - seeking conversations on art, culture, and design. There, I first worked as a bicycle runner, and being rejected from entering the main entrance of a building to deliver a parcel sparked my interest in the role of architecture as a device for segregation. I had thought a lot about cities - from the perspective of their histories, economics, and politics. But I'd never actually felt this rejection from a specific site before. From this experience, I visited all public lectures at Columbia University, where post-structuralism and computation “the blob” were entering the field through figures like Greg Lynn, Zaha Hadid, and others - introducing transdisciplinary thinking, the role of biology, and so forth.

Returning to the Netherlands, I organized Archicases, debates on societal issues, and urban transformations, in the Unie in Rotterdam, which led to an invitation from Aaron Betsky. This experience enabled me to start understanding the context of Dutch culture and its role in architecture. Later on, in 2006, I was invited to become a theory teacher at the Design Academy, despite my initial lack of interest in object-oriented design (laugh). However, I came to appreciate the role of design in relating to people, industry, and material cosmologies. Design has since become a vehicle for understanding and disentangling our world.

LŠ: Can you tell me more about the Critical Inquiry Lab you established at the Design Academy Eindhoven and the conversations you aim to expand beyond the educational platform?

SVS: I was very honored when Joseph Grima invited me to revisit the Department of Design Curating and Writing in 2019. By that point, I had been the director of Bureau Europa in Maastricht (a platform for architecture and design) and my work had gained some public visibility in the sense that - I  was part of the curatorial team at the Venice Biennial twice and the Sao Paulo one alongside different exhibitions all over - but one always thinks that nobody knows what you're doing right (laugh). For the new department, I reflected on the capacities young designers would need to work in different demographics and the pressing topics of our times - considering climate change, colonization, intersectionality, and humanitarian challenges. 

I structured the program to move from the body to the planetary, where incorporating, nurturing, and developing skills is vital - either through the lens of mentors, methodologies, interview techniques, coding or sound architecture workshops and through field trips. Collaboration and understanding one's position were the key. I wanted to create an ethos of care and active feedback sessions, not by reproducing my knowledge but by fostering (and emphasizing this) a collaborative effort of unknowing - and challenging positions in debates. 

Designers rarely work in an isolated reality; they are part of a larger frame and so they collaborate which entails negotiation. Intuition, empathy, and different ways of knowing are essential. The program aims to prepare students for unknown futures through empowerment and small entry points. Since 2020, I co-head the department with Patricia Reed, a Berlin-based writer and artist, which brings a nice balance between praxis and theory to the department. 

Design Academy Eindhoven, Graduation project Eyes and Tongues by Janfer Chung. Photo by Femke Reijerman. 

Graduation project by Maxime Benvenuto: Looking Into The Constructs of Magic Shit Show, Part 018. The Rhinoceral Bodywork of Design History. Photo by Femke Reijerman.

Graduation project by Viktoria Kaslik: Legal Reparation, photo by Iris Rijskamp. 

LŠ:And how are you working with different organizations to implement the gathered research into practice?

SVS: I can answer this question in two layers. My main job is that of director of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR), and we, as an institution, see active movements in architectural culture. For instance, in the Dutch context, we have shifted from showcasing beautiful architectural objects to a conversation on regenerative and biobased buildings. Due to the urgency of climate change, we are in need of a systematic shift, and we need answers that can be implemented in real life, topics such as food sovereignty, water, and heat stress all have special implications. The Biennial as a cultural institution can lead the way and ideally facilitate the implementation of design - which is slightly different than just making cultural projects themselves. 

Regarding your question about the Critical Inquiry Lab - it is balanced between creating a safe space for finding new methodologies, research, experiment, and testing leading to a positionality in the field. It is also a place where all Masters' programmes collaborate - encouraging peer-to-peer learning. However, expanding this to the stakeholder sphere and gaining experience in concrete examples is also important. So, we worked on mental health and financial aspects with the local municipality. With an NGO, Netherlands Food Partnership (NFP), we questioned UN Sustainable Goals like Zero Hunger. Through collaboration with the NFP foundation, looking at how everyone can access sustainable healthy, and affordable food the students faced huge questions. The experts of the NFP network helped enormously - getting knowledge from the ground is crucial. For instance, a sociologist looking at pineapple crops for the last 18 years in Costa Rica mentioned that during transport to the marketplace, 40% of the pineapples would arrive damaged - a straightforward design brief! 

Secondly, it is about questioning the reasons behind the mono-culture and what that says about this community and the landscape. All these different projects provide a sheltered testing environment with mentors for students' first actual assignments and clients.

LŠ: You were previously head of Bureau Europa, a unique institution that is a research lab for complex narratives about cities and surroundings. Bureau Europa was previously part of the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) in Rotterdam, and you redefined it. 

SVS: Yes, the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) was founded in 1993 in Rotterdam, harboring the archives of the Netherlands. Previous director Adam Betskyhas had analyzed how far people would drive to attend an exhibition (laugh) and the ambition was to establish annexes to the NAI in the north and south of the country. The "satellite" in Maastricht, built in 2006, was called Netherlands Architecture Institute Maastricht and aimed to reflect on European identity and the future of archives in that region, which differ in history, nature, and texture from those in for instance Amsterdam and Rotterdam.

However, in 2013, the funding was cut for the institute in Maastricht and that was when I was headhunted for the position. I faced the reality of a reduced subsidy from one million to 300,000 euros per year, sadly leading to the dismissal of staff and the moving of the institute. With only myself and the office manager, Agnes Paulissen, we started rebuilding the organization under the name Bureau Europa - focusing on the future of European identity as the Maastricht treaty was signed here in 1992 consolidating the European Union. A region where populism politics was on the rise, while concurrently the local space has been deeply informed by migrant laborers since at least the 17th century - including Italians working on stucco, and the Spaniards, Turks, and Moroccans working in the coal mines - of course contributing to society and culture. 

In the late 1970s, the mines in the region were also closed, and the idea was to demolish all industrial buildings to erase remnants of the mining history and focus on tourism. Many people stayed and reinvented themselves, transitioning from mining to other fields like restaurants or other services. 

During our current period of rising populism, we also addressed the then-Dutch rhetoric of "The Netherlands is full, no more migrants" - despite having vacant buildings, mainly office spaces, and even a demographic decline. This awareness led us to question the role of culture and we started to program outside our institute's walls. The so-called "Sphinxs Park" is a two-year project, a temporary park in a former industrial zone in Maastricht. It aimed to look at inner city nature as the site to augment biodiversity and simultaneously (re)activate what citizenship could mean in the Netherlands. One could boldly claim we have transitioned from a politics of social democracy to consumerism. 

As in many contexts governments started pushing back responsibilities towards citizens - for instance led to decentralization to local municipalities gaining more power but it was also an austerity measurement - leading to challenges in governance. Despite the austerity measures I had to take at Bureau Europa, the institute became visible and lively due to public interest and numerous collaborations. It was a great way to experiment with new curatorial models such as the democratic principles of co-creating in exhibition making. 

LŠ: Speaking of changing landscapes - I hoped to stop by the exhibition Landscape as a Cult. A Changing View on Our Nature you curated at Bureau Europa in 2019. 

SVS: Historically our landscape is defined by romantic notions fueled by landscape painting and the notion of a horizontal horizon. The show questioned what would happen if we organized our view of nature vertically, so from archaeology to satellite - which landscape would present itself to us. This led me to question the construct and dualism in the man versus nature dichotomy, to consider the decline of biodiversity and microbial life, sovereign food systems, and the emergence of technological aspects or patterns in nature. 

The Netherlands is, for example, one of the biggest exporters of meat and poultry, claiming 70% of the landscape. Still, only responsible for 6% of the GDP - this raised questions about European subsidy structures and the correlation between nature, culture and powerful continents. 

Landscape as Cult: A changing view on our nature, Bureau Europa, 2019/2020. View of the work: Amnesia, Chris Kore, 2019. Photo: Moniek Wegdam.

Installation view of Those lost channels by Arjen de Leeuw, 2019. Photo: Moniek Wegdam

 Teatro Della Terra Alienata, Grandeza Studio, 2019. Photo: Moniek Wegdam

LŠ: Another exhibition, Intensive Care, at Bureau Europa, seems especially relevant in the post-pandemic world. Can you share the background and explain how the research could shape future urban development?

SVS: The Intensive Care exhibition grew from questioning the cultural and societal focus on longevity over quality of life. My fascination for this idea - of the mechanisms behind sanitization, religion, and deep historical roots between illness, architecture, and the city, to name just a few. With technology's rise, it became apparently more interesting to have a patient live long rather than have quality - which was sparked after a visit to Novartis Campus in Basel, with leading architects such as David Chipperfield who built on the site. And I thought how interesting it was that we no longer build cathedrals - and that pharmaceutical companies are lucrative enough and now build our cathedrals (laugh).

Another point is mobility - the car's impact in the 1950s-60s was crucial in pushing undesirable elements like hospitals and polluting industries to the outskirts of  the city - which led to the exploration of segregation, design led by dominant wind flows, and health disparities. "Intensive Care" predicted pandemics like COVID-19, considering our dense global mobility patterns. We also looked at the access to affordable healthcare and resistance was mapped - we looked at YouTube tutorials for self-surgery and initiatives for people with disabilities. The show aimed to create a thought-provoking landscape without moralizing - essentially catalyzing reflection on what is happening and how to change it.

Intensive Care: Architecture and Design in Healthcare, Bureau Europa 2017. Photos: Moniek Wegdam

LŠ: As artistic and general Director of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR), a research biennale bridging research and action - what are the advantages and challenges compared to a traditional biennale model?

SVS: The biennale, founded by Kristin Feireiss and Francine Houben in 2003, initially showcased Dutch talent abroad and brought international design research to the country. Two decades later, when I became director, I wanted to acknowledge the need to move away from a particular kind of design and a singular designer. Inspiration should come from analyzing where we are and proposing new perspectives for a slightly desirable future - to dare set an agenda and help manifest it. 

The emphasis of the institution will be on the planetary and the human, our climate crisis, and considering the roles of designers and architects in that conversation. There is a reappreciation for locality, material culture, and in belonging - but how can this be meaningful without becoming nostalgic? Research and experimentation are crucial to finding the path towards desirable futures (for all and not just a few)) extend our judgment, and search for the greater good.

However, being research-driven is not enough; we must take the complexities around us seriously as we’re truly relational - connected to our fellow humans, biodiversity, and ecologies. Experimentation, storytelling, and different imaginaries become valuable in a time of poly crisis - so, for example, the biennale's theme, "It's About Time," looked at positions and temporalities architects can take through accelerating technology, activism, and ancestral knowledge.

Exhibitions can be meaningful sites for experimentation by fostering conversation and different contributions - in this sense. Culture is shifting towards participation and engagement, together we can search for unorthodox paths across scales, looking  for new spaces for encounter within existing frameworks. 

LŠ: How exactly does the biennale (2024 edition) and its last exhibition: Nature of Hope, introduce its questions and research into the city's fabric - through concrete examples or experiments?

SVS: As IABR we work on multiple levels simultaneously. On an abstract policy level, we have designers visualize the implications of water and soil management policies. We also innitiated traveling exhibitions to engage stakeholders, provinces and activate citizens in different regions.

Also, we program with many local actors in diverse neighborhoods adjacent to the biennale - Bospolder Tussendijken, there we were addressing energy transition through the lens of commons, future housing, and learning and co-create with people from different ethnic backgrounds and the different indigenous knowledges they embody. We value collaborating with local partners such as House of the Future on projects like a mobile wooden oven for Moroccan women to bake bread and foster conversations on (for example) solar roof initiatives with distributed ownership.

As an institution, we want to empower citizens by asking them to be the curators, and part of our team, and in exchange, we are supporting their needs rather than imposing preset ideas - this opens up the democratic potential of cities (though it challenges existing governing systems). People's integral and holistic thinking has been inspiring! Another inspiring project was Panorama Ukraine, where international students redesigned the region around the bombed Kakhovka dam - considering the militarization of architecture. The exchange of knowledge and care significantly impacted showing the value of design thinking in emancipating and supporting people in war-torn situations. We always try to involve different parties, connecting existing initiatives to scale up and implement ideas. While we need ideas at the forefront, we also need to start putting them into practice! 

In our last exhibition Nature of Hope, the 11th Biennale we explored ideas, research, and practices that focused on how architecture can restore ecological balance by taking biodiversity and nature as a starting point. This kind of resilient and regenerative approach will prepare us for unknown futures on the horizon.

Essenburgpark. Photo: Sabine van der Vooren. Courtesy IABR.

Essenburgpark. Photo: Sabine van der Vooren. Courtesy IABR.

Practice Place. Photo: Sabine van der Vooren. Courtesy IABR.