Collecting

In 2015, Het Nieuwe Instituut acquired the first part of MVRDV’s archive with materials from the practice’s first 400 projects. Because MVRDV has been working digitally since its foundation in 1993, the acquisition of its archive followed an unusual process. Normally, a selection of archival materials is made and arranged in boxes, folders and drawing tubes in Het Nieuwe Instituut’s storage facility. But in this case, in addition to the paper archive, there was also a small box that required special handling and which was crucial to the acquisition: MVRDV’s hard drive with five terabytes of data. Or rather, a copy of the hard drive, since MVRDV is also keeping the materials, which are still frequently consulted and reused for current and future projects.

“Het Nieuwe Instituut has acquired the MVRDV archive because it is an extremely important resource for research into developments in Dutch architecture over the past two decades,” explains Suzanne Mulder, curator at Het Nieuwe Instituut. “Architecture and digital culture are among the main themes in our new collecting policy. MVRDV has played an important role in the development of the computer as a design tool since the 1990s, through the development of its own software, but also through its interdisciplinary approach and design methodology of datascapes: designing new spatial plans based on digital data. In addition to architectural projects, MVRDV is also involved in research projects, books, websites, games, software, exhibitions, multimedia installations and even dance performances, and so these too are reflected in the archive.”

Het Nieuwe Instituut’s collecting policy focuses on the design process. Instead of preserving only the presentation materials for a project, such as final floor plans, sections, views and renderings (architectural visualisations), Het Nieuwe Instituut also aims to preserve the underlying design process that is hidden in digital files such as Rhino models, AutoCAD files and BIM libraries. But digital heritage is endangered. Numerous computer programs from the 1980s, 1990s and even more recent years have fallen into disuse. Some software companies no longer exist, and updates are no longer available for certain operating systems. So how can those files still be opened? The archive does not necessarily contain the old computer equipment on which the files were generated, so Het Nieuwe Instituut is looking for solutions to keep digital archives accessible.

Another issue arises with regard to the design process and digital archives. How was the software used at the time? Even with recent projects, this may be hard to understand because of the speed at which programs supersede one other. Also, different architecture firms use software in different ways. During the workshop, Georg Vrachliotis, Professor Theory of Architecture and Digital Culture at Delft University of Technology, talked about an experimental project he collaborated on at ETH Zurich in which several short films were made of someone working with different software on a computer, allowing the human-machine interaction to be recorded and studied afterwards. Suzanne Mulder added that she has conducted interviews with MVRDV employees and others involved in the design process in order to get an insight into the human stories behind the digital files so that the archive can be made more accessible. She has talked with them about how the digital archive was created and how it is used today. MVRDV itself is the main user of the archive.

A living archive

Dirk van den Heuvel, head of the Jaap Bakema Study Centre, noted that MVRDV’s hard drive actually contains only one version of the archive, frozen in time. As long as MVRDV continues to build, the archive will continue to grow. And old design models, methods and components can end up in the practice’s new designs. Ellen Smit, curator at Het Nieuwe Instituut, remarked that many architects reused and copied their designs before the introduction of the computer. Architects’ archives usually contain several copies of a single design in different formats and with different annotations depending on the context in which they were used. It could be interesting to compare the paper copies and digital copies and study their role in the design process. Georg Vrachliotis posed the question: how can we approach these new ways of continuously copying and sampling theoretically? What is the remixability of the archive? Jan Knikker emphasised that this is mainly practical in nature: by using what is available, MVRDV can work faster and more creatively.

MVRDV sees its collection as an ecosystem or biotope, where countless parts can be preserved in a small device. For MRVDV, it doesn’t really matter how it is stored, as long as it can be used. It does not have to be kept in exactly the same condition in which it was originally created. Indeed, that may not even be possible. Het Nieuwe Instituut, of course, has a different perspective. As a heritage institution, it is a guardian of historical resources, and the collection managers try to stay as close to the original state as possible. Paradoxically, the copy of the archive at the MVRDV office will remain frozen while the copy in the National Collection can be consulted and will therefore undergo an evolution and migration. In this sense, the archive remains alive only in the institute, and not at MVRDV. This workshop made it apparent that there is a growing interest in living archives: archives that can continue to be used and continue to grow. In this context, Dirk van den Heuvel mentioned the tamagotchi of the 1990s: a virtual pet that can only be kept alive through constant attention and interaction.

The concept of the ‘living archive’ could help to further define the meaning of the digital in the National Collection for Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning.