Het Nieuwe Instituut

Designing the Social is an exhibition exploring 100 years of socially driven, idiosyncratic ideas about living together. Sometimes out of idealism, often out of pure necessity, alternative design strategies were developed in the pursuit of an equal society. Designers, researchers and curators select and (re)interpret pieces from heritage collections and archives in order to tell an assortment of stories about a century of social design.

I visited Het Nieuwe Instituut's clothing industry exhibition with my friends. The weather is good and the mood is good. But after reading it, my mood is no longer relaxed. Several sets of data: 1) a 29 euro T-shirt: 15 euro trade profits; 3.6 euro marketing; 3.5 euro tax; 3.3 Euro material fee, 2.2 Euro transportation fee; 1.2 Euro production factory profits; 0.2 euro wages. 2) A Dutch-designed jeans takes 40,000 kilometers to complete! 3) Clothes produced every year are sold at 30 [%] normal price; 30 [%] reduced price; 40 [%] thrown away! 4) In order to avoid waste, Dutch companies buy discarded or overstocked clothes at very low prices. After recycling and reprocessing, they sell them at NAI Exhibition Hall. A T-shirt costs 70 Euros! I appreciate this effort, but it's too expensive.

Het Nieuwe Instituut is a museum about creative design of electronic culture. Facing Van Bernin is the Het Nieuwe Instituut, which is also said to be the headquarters of the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI). In fact, in 2013, NAI and other three institutions merged into a private institution.

When I was on a business trip, I found NAi out of the window of my hotel and made a pilgrimage before closing the door. It's not so much an exhibition as a modern architecture lesson. I enjoy reading manuscripts, models and notes of architectural firms from all over the world.

Visiting the garment industry exhibition, I learned that Dutch companies bought discarded or overstocked garments at very low prices, recycled and reprocessed, and sold them at NAI Exhibition Hall.