New Head of MA Design Research & Curating: Saskia van Stein

Design Academy Eindhoven appoints Saskia van Stein as Head of Design Research & Curating Van Stein will run the retitled MA programme per 1 September 2019. She succeeds interim co-heads Agata Jaworska and Tamar Shafrir, who have run the two-years Master programme during the current academic year (2018-2019).

Joseph Grima welcomes Van Stein

DAE Creative Director Joseph Grima is looking forward to the arrival of Van Stein: ‘As a master’s course, DR&C (formerly Design Curating and Writing) pursues a high level of quality, criticality, rigour and depth in the act of research. As an evolving discipline situated between design practice, cultural critique, artistic exploration, theoretical discourse, political activism and public engagement, DR&C demands its own ideologies, ethics, methods and research outputs. Saskia’s work has over the years widely explored and embodied these forms of practice, and we are very excited to welcome her into the Design Academy team.’ Saskia van Stein

Curator, writer and educator Saskia van Stein is currently artistic and managing director of Bureau Europa, Platform for Architecture and Design in Maastricht, and was previously a curator at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (currently HNI). Van Stein’s keen interest in exhibition making and the ‘politics of curating’ has led her to explore different formats and methods of knowledge production and performative display. In addition, Van Stein examines contemporary societal urgencies, how they manifest themselves at different scales, how they are analysed, visualized and expressed in the designed environment. Her cultural practice and interests address the intricate relational complex of social, political, economic, psychological and cultural phenomena.

With her strong social and cultural commitment, Saskia van Stein contributes to many debates on art, architecture and design. She has moderated events at, among others, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Dutch Design Week, the Stedelijk Museum, Holland Festival and the LUMA foundation in Arles. In addition to initiating and curating over 60 exhibitions and events, she has sat on numerous committees and juries, including the Prix de Rome, What Design Can Do and Dutch Design Awards. Last year she was a member of the Advisory Committee of the Council for Culture for the Dutch government. Van Stein lectures frequently at educational institutes in the Netherlands and currently teaches at the Royal Academy for the Arts in The Hague.

MA programme Design Research & Curating

Van Stein will take responsibility for the content and quality of the educational programme of the Design Research & Curating department. Her role includes devising and putting together the main elements of the curriculum and accompanying teaching team. This curriculum is not a static entity but is constantly evolving in response to developments in the design discipline, the questions and needs of students and issues relevant in society at large. Design Research & Curating is rooted in the practice, representation and performance of design research. It views researching, materialising, writing and making public as active processes, intertwined and mutually reinforcing, that aim to advance existing discourses and launch new ones.

The DR&C programme situates itself within an expanding and diversifying field of design. Working side by side with peers in the other master’s programmes — Information Design, Social Design and Contextual Design — and as part of the wider DAE community, DR&C searches for new forms of engagement among fellow design researchers, contexts and ideologies. DR&C embraces a broad understanding of curatorial and editorial positions, whereby the development of method, language and context for design research and its mediation, materialisation and publication become the scope of education as defined by the individual and group collective trajectory. DR&C actively questions fixed and standardised formats, and sees the department as a space for prototyping new curatorial and institutional forms and practices.

History of the programme

Design Curating and Writing was initiated in 2014 by the heads of the other Master departments (Jan Boelen, Joost Grootens, Louise Schouwenberg) and lead by writer and curator Justin McGuirk and, later, by writer and educator Alice Twemlow. The main philosophy of the newly formed department was the strength of the growing relevance of critical reflection, editing and curatorial skills within the design domain in general, and the recognition that for a specific group of master students, design research doesn’t necessarily translate into designs for products or systems.