International Visitors Programme
David Kester (UK), John Bielenberg (GER), Mara Gama (BRA), Masaru Ito and Haruka Yokokawa (JAP) / May 2013
A diverse set of visitors was invited to the Netherlands in conjunction with the What Design Can Do conference on 16 and 17 May 2013. The day before the conference, they visited institutions including the Sandberg Instituut and the Rijksmuseum, where they attended a presentation on the Rijksstudio. David Kester and John Bielenberg, both conference speakers, also met Sabine Wildevuur of Waag Society.
Mara Gama, a Brazilian curator and design journalist for the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, and Masaru Ito and Haruka Yokokawa of Shibaura House Tokyo spent additional time in the Netherlands. Gama co-curated the exhibition My Waste Is Your Waste, which opened on 18 May 2013 at Museum of the Image (MOTI) in the Dutch city of Breda after appearing in São Paulo the previous year. Joanna van der Zanden, the exhibition's curator on behalf of MOTI, co-organised Gama's visit. During her stay, Gama met representatives of firms such as DUS Architects, Droog Design and Bureau Mijksenaar, interviewing the last on their new wayfinding system for the São Paulo airport. She later published articles on the Rijksstudio and Rijksmuseum in Folha and wrote for BlogDesign on subjects including What Design Can Do.
Masaru Ito, director of the Kohkoku Seihan advertising and printing agency, and Haruka Yokokawa, programme director of the agency's Shibaura House, were invited to the Netherlands at the request of the Dutch embassy in Tokyo. The company made part of its building available for cultural events as a way of giving something back to society. In 2012, it founded the Critical Studio, an alternative design course for people seeking to move ahead in the creative industries. Ito and Yokokawa came to the Netherlands to look for guest lecturers to give workshops on urban planning. Het Nieuwe Instituut set up meetings with designers and firms including OMA, MVRDV, Daan Roosegaarde and KesselsKramer and visits to educational institutions such as No Academy and the Sandberg Instituut. The pair also met a representative of the Creative Industries Fund NL. The trip resulted in guest lectures by DUS Architects and Erik Kessels at Shibaura House.