“The Architecture of Staged Realities” — Saskia van Stein (International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam)

Photo by Rodolphe Escher

“The Architecture of Staged Realities” looks at Walt Disney’s legacy as a mirror of contemporary society and its cultural production, both in terms of identity construction, infrastructures of implicatedness and the architectures this generated. In her talk creative practitioner Saskia van Stein will merge topics of interest from the perspective of her role as artistic and general Director of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR), her role as co-head of the MA Critical Inquiry Lab at the Design Academy with her extensive research into what designers aiming to address global challenges, can learn from the Disney universe. Time, worlding, hope, and the capacity of design to project alternative realities as ways to navigate implicatedness, will be at the core of her talk. Although the world of Disney is largely built on nostalgia, it is also the incubator of major cinematographic innovations, at the genesis of urban design principles and boosted the culture of technological research.

Saskia van Stein is artistic and managing Director of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR). Currently Van Stein also holds the position as Head of Department, The Critical Inquiry Lab MA at the Design Academy, Eindhoven. Over the span of her carrier, she has curated numerous (traveling) exhibitions, biennales, given lectures, spoken at or moderated symposia, juries, advisory committees and contributed to other cultural events both in the Netherlands and abroad. Her curatorial practice began while working at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (now Nieuwe Instituut) in Rotterdam (2002–2012), where she programmed exhibitions on the intersection of architecture, culture, political and human sciences, design and fine arts. Van Stein examines issues related to contemporary societal urgencies and the role culture plays in addressing these issues. Her transdisciplinary practice aims to convey the intricate way in which the social, the political, the economic, and the psychological are entangled and interdependent, questioning the ways in which these are analyzed, visualized and expressed through cultural production in the designed environment. She is committed to contributing to the development of a cultural discourse, and she is chair of several juries and member of advisory committees such as Independent School for the City in Rotterdam, Dutch Design Awards, the architecture journal OASE and member of the advisory council for Culture to the Dutch Government, Contemporary Art and Creative Industries. Van Stein is presently a PhD candidate at the Curating Research Collective, Architecture and theory department at the Technical University in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.