ARCHITECTURE OF APPROPRIATION – a exhibition on squatting movement in Netherlands HNI, Rotterdam | w/ Het Nieuwe Institut, TU/e students | 2016
Squatting emerged as a vital social force in the Netherlands’ poorly maintained city centres in the 1970s and 1980s, when empty houses, commercial properties and industrial sites were occupied without the owner’s permission. What if the right to affordable housing, working and living rather than property rights were made the priority of urban transformation? Since the 1960s squatters, with this idea in mind, have made an important contribution to the development of the city, appropriating parts of the city and changing it from the inside out. This practice is explored in the exhibition Architecture of Appropriation. The exhibition presents the first results of a long-term research project by the Research and Development department at Het Nieuwe Instituut with partners in the Netherlands and abroad. Architecture of Appropriation is on show from 27 January until 25 June 2017. In a period of renewed interest in a programmatic approach to the city, Het Nieuwe Instituut is conducting research into squatting as an architecture of appropriation. Architecture of Appropriation is a research project that examines how squatters have appropriated urban spaces using radical improvisation techniques, and how this has influenced the way we think about the contemporary city. ZUS [Zones Urbaines Sensibles] designed the spatial installation in which the research is presented. (HNI, 2017)
