PIN–UP AND THE HET NIEUWE INSTITUUT LAUNCH DESIGN DRAFTS
by PIN–UP
The Het Nieuwe Instituut’s Design Drafts is a collaborative program dedicated to a “growing writing and publishing network dedicated to investigating and drafting what it means to write about design today.” The Rotterdam architectural institute collaborates with different publications to support, incubate, and publish new design writers while expanding contemporary design discourse.
Last year, PIN–UP collaborated with The Het Nieuwe Instituut on the second edition of Design Drafts centered around the theme of MANIFESTATIONS: the open call for up-and-coming and mid-career writers questioned how we can manifest new design vocabularies that exist outside of the canon while “challenging existing narratives around design.” A jury selected five writers, including writer and curator Alfonse Chiu, architectural designer and researcher Angela U. Shyaka, researcher and writer Ibrahim Kombarji, architect and museologist Michael Andrès Forero Parra, writer and indie adult film producer Liara Roux, and architectural designer and researcher Angela U. Shyaka. The participants developed their essays over the summer through multiple drafts, workshop sessions, and one-on-one meetings, exploring topics from the aesthetics of sexual desire to the voices of queer architects from Latin America, plus the colonial idea of “tropical architecture,” sacred spaces in traditional Rwandan homes, and the function of Islamic prayer beads as a design object.
To celebrate their essays’ final print publication in PIN–UP 35, PIN–UP’s Felix Burrichter and Delany Boutkan, Nieuwe Instituut researcher and project manager of Design Drafts, moderated a hybrid in-person and virtual conversation at the Niewe Instituut with the Design Drafts participants on February 1, 2024.
