Het Nieuwe Instituut is responsible for the National Collection for Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning, but also for the transfer of knowledge about the collection and working methods. In September, a team from the ‘New Town’ Milton Keynes in the UK visited Het Nieuwe Instituut as part of current investigations into how to shape its new city archive.

The National Collection documents the cultural and social significance of Dutch architecture and urban planning. In recent years, the proportion of digitally created archives in the National Collection has been increasing. In order to not only preserve this digital material, but also make it accessible, more knowledge is needed about the specific properties of digital archives and the architectural practice which shapes them. To foster a better understanding of digital architecture, we conducted research into the digitisation of the design process and architectural practice, and what this means for Het Nieuwe Instituut as a collecting and managing institution.

The Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam presents a retrospective of the work of photographer and filmmaker Johan van der Keuken (1938-2001). For this exhibition, Het Nieuwe Instituut has loaned 14 photos from Herman Hertzberger's archive. The architect and the photographer first got to know each other around 1965 and have been working together happily and regularly ever since.

Sunday 19 June marks the opening of the exhibition Re_Making at Foundation B.a.d., about the remarkable and forgotten practices of photography and film. Part of this window exhibition is the project Retake by Brittany Brighouse, Janou Munnik and Eelco Roelsma, digitisation specialists of Het Nieuwe Instituut. Retake shows the 'happy accidents' of the digitisation process.

Via an open call, artists Alice Wong & Simo Tse, Remco Torenbosch and Daria Kiseleva have been selected for the Open Archive 3.0 project. Open Archive focuses on the creative reuse of archival materials. The participants will use the open digital collections of Het Nieuwe Instituut, Sound and Vision and the International Institute of Social History to create a new media work in which artistic research and the creative process are central.

The Bröhan Museum in Berlin is exhibiting a work by the German artist Hannah Höch (1889-1978) from the collection of Het Nieuwe Instituut. Höch is best known for her political and feminist Dadaist collages. Hannah Höch spent several years in the Netherlands, an important period in her personal and professional life. The traces of these relationships can be found in various archives in the collection.

Het Nieuwe Instituut, the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and the International Institute of Social History (IISH) are offering three media makers a six-month residency. During the residency, they will each create a new, autonomous media work that makes use of the open, digital collections of (one or more of) the three institutions.

Het Nieuwe Instituut has acquired a design by Theo van Doesburg for the tiled floor in the De Vonk Holiday Home. Designed by J.J.P. Oud in 1917, the building was one of the first collaborations between members of De Stijl, who strove shortly after the First World War to create a new kind of living environment in which architecture and colour would merge to form a total work of art.