Upcoming Courses

Because of its port and its connections with the rest of the globe, Rotterdam has attracted people from all over the world for many decades. This has led to an urban population that anthropologist Steven Vertovec has started to call ‘Superdiversity.’ Superdiverse cities like Rotterdam bring with them a next stage in the integration process, where ethnicity is no longer the most important let alone the sole factor with which people define themselves. Instead of the old dividing lines of ethnicity or language, superdiversity seems to create new connections. In other words: the simple pie chart of ethnicity becomes mixed up in a fluid composition of overlapping and mixing colours. In this studio, we will  imagine an entirely different development for this area. One that is not based on the investments of financial giants, or the megalomaniacal ideas to realize a Manhattan on the Maas. Instead, we will try to imagine a city that is based on the kaleidoscopic area that lies around it. We will try to imagine a brand-new city center for the South of Rotterdam which is based on the superdiverse conditions of its population. A development that is not based on the middle class image the city council wants to project but on the real identity of the city.

The studio is spread over two subsequent Fridays and Saturdays, filled with lectures, excursions, and conversations, with individual research and one collective Wednesday evening. Regular tickets available for 200 euro. Registration deadline: 10 February 2022. More info here

Climate scientists have predicted that if we continue at the current pace with climate measures, we will still end up on a planet that is between 2° and 3° hotter at the end of this century. The rising temperature will probably cause extreme weather phenomena, a substantial rising of the sea level, biodiversity loss, food insecurity, large migration streams, social upheaval and political reactions. How will our offspring live in these new unmapped circumstances, how will their cities work, how will their life feel? In this studio we will map out the predicted effects of rising temperatures on the Netherlands, on the City of Rotterdam and on a number of very specific places in the city. After exploring these effects, we will use our collective knowledge and that of our guest speakers and scientific literature, to imagine how we can mitigate the negative effects of global climate change and what is needed to make life livable in a city that suffers its consequences.

The studio is spread over two subsequent Fridays and Saturdays, filled with lectures, excursions, and conversations, with individual research and one collective Wednesday evening. Regular tickets: 250 euro. Discounted early bird rate of 200 euro available until 28 February 2023. Registration deadline: 01 March 2022. More info here

In this research and crafts studio with architect and artist Sam Jacob (London, UK) we search the city now that we are on the eve of an unprecedented period of poverty, inequality and climate crisis for the past half century. We research and speculate on which artifacts will define this era hundreds of years from now. We collect fragments, shards and traces of our way of life and turn them into whole artifacts, as we imagine the archaeologists of the future would do. It is an exercise in detachment, in which we, as archaeologists, look back to the past from the future. The result is an imaginary archaeological museum, full of strange artefacts that tell the story of a particularly difficult era. Regular tickets: 200 euro. Discounted early bird rate of 175 euro available until 09 April 2023. Registration deadline 04 May 2023. Get your tickets here. More info soon.