Portfolio | Design as Politics

New Publication: Bedside Manners

Click on image to open publication Here it is: a brand new Design as Politics publication ‘Bedside Manners’ about the extramuralization of healthcare in the Netherlands. In this publication –originally written for MacGuffin magazine – Wouter Vanstiphout explains how the Dutch health care system is currently shifting from large government controlled institutions to a system in which the amount of care given inside large facilities is being minimized, making sure that people can stay at home longer. Big institutions built to house the old and infirm are making way for healthcare new style with hospitals that resemble towns and homes fitted… Read More

Design as Politics MSc2 Studio! We Care a Lot!

Great news! We have an amazing new studio starting in September 2015, and lasting untill January. It’s a MSc2 studio within the Architecture Master, focusing on the transformation of Dutch neighborhoods through the overhaul of the Healthcare system. In this studio we will be working for the Office of the Chief government Architect of the Netherlands (Atelier Rjjksbouwmeester), with the International New Town Institute, and three fantastic architectural practices, on real locations, with real clients, and real results. Students can sign up from early May. We’ll keep you posted with updates. Click here for more info

New Design as Politics Electives start in April!

We are very happy to announce that coming April we will again start the Design as Politics elective lecture series: The New Town – From Welfare City to Neoliberal Utopia (AR0023). This course is organized in collaboration with the International New Town Institute and contains of 9 public lectures on the planning and (re)design of New Towns all over the world and their social, cultural, political and economic context. Together with (guest) lecturers from different disciplines, we will follow the evolution of New Towns from the first experiments in the pre-war period with utopian and communal living, explore how… Read More

Stadmakerscongres 2014

Image by Fred Ernst A Couple of weeks ago, our Design as Politics students took part in the 2014 Stadsmakerscongres (City Makers Congress), organized by the Rotterdam Architecture Foundation. The event was concentrated around the central theme of ‘connectivity’ – a crucial issue in an age in which ‘city making’ is not only done by formal and institutional actors, but more and more also by entrepreneurs, activist and citizens. The Stadmakerscongres 2014 brought these parties and their practices together, investigated its potential and explored how it already works in Rotterdam. Our students took part in the Tours & Stories program,… Read More

Workshop by Ton Matton

On the 16 of September we took our students to the city of Almere for a workshop with urban planner and artist Ton Matton, who positions his own work somewhere between object-design, society-shape, ecological urban planning and artist-actionismus. Matton received us at the building site of his Type EW58/08 house – a replica of a very simple GDR working class dwelling – which is currently being constructed in one of Almere’s new neighbourhoods. In an improvised outdoor lecture room, with chairs made from cargo pallets and a white minivan functioning as a projection screen, he gave an inspiring lecture explaining… Read More

Scotland, Veneto and Catalonia

A couple of weeks ago we took our students to the Venice Architecture Biennale to take part in the Swiss Summer School Program: Lucius Burckhardt and Cedric Price – A stroll through a fun palace. On invitation of its curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, they spent a week in the Swiss pavilion in order to explore ‘decentralization’ – the cross-cutting theme of this years’ design as politics studio. Inspired by the Scottish referendum, the Catalan call for independence and being in the Veneto region -which also has a strong desire of autonomy– we took the opportunity to take a closer look… Read More

The Double Death of Welfare and the Nation State

Invited by it’s curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, we took over the Swiss pavilion this week as part of the Swiss Summer School program “Lucius Burckhardt and Cedric Price – A stroll through a fun palace” Every week, from the opening of the Biennale until October 2014, another institution is invited to spend a week in the Pavilion, bringing their research on some of the most interesting changes that are happening worldwide to the landscape. At the end of the week, the institutes will leave behind the work they have developed, which will be used as a toolbox for subsequent visiting… Read More

NEW! Graduation Studio 2014/2015

The Design as politics team is very proud to announce our 2014/2015 TU Delft Master graduation Studio: New Utopias on the Ruins of the Welfare State. During this studio, we will try to find the utopian thinking that comes up when old orders collapse. We are living in an age where nation states seem to become weaker and weaker, under the influence of privatisation, localism but also of globalisation and supra-national politics like that of the European Union. Countries seem to be both falling apart in small fragments as well as being dissolved into huge global networks. Architecture and Urbanism have… Read More

The New Town- From Welfare City to Neoliberal Utopia

New Towns are Politics! That’s why, at the end of this month we will start a public lecture series organized in collaboration with the International New Town Institute carrying the title ‘The New Town– From Welfare City to Neoliberal Utopia.’ The lectures will follow a chronological story on new town planning in the 20th century, explaining how the design of New Towns was based on experiments in the pre-war period with utopian, communal living, was then discovered by national governments as ways to further their very diverse political agendas, later became a symbol of modernization and progress in the postwar… Read More

Follow The Money Student Work

By now, our graduation studio Follow the Money – Finance, Architecture and the city is already up and running for around half a year. The midterm review is behind us, and this week we will have another pin-up presentation. This means: time for the first results! Check out what our students are up to by clicking on the links below: Donatas Baltrusaitis – Soviet Object as signs of identity-Vilnius Emilia Bruck – Activating Frampol Bart de Hartog Yuhui Jin – Vitalize Lingang New Harbor City Mikas Kauzonas – Local Potential Pepe Niemeijer – Humanizing the world of banking in the… Read More