Summary department vision

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Title
Department vision (short version)

Context
The scale of the detail, the furniture, the building, the public space, the city and the landscape

Participation
Individual- and team work

Educational philosophy
The department of inter-architecture at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie trains students to become spatial designers/artists. At the Academie we embrace a broad interpretation of the profession. This means that the outcome of an assignment does not always have to be a building. It can also be an installation, an intervention in public space or a set designed for a dance performance. The whole realm of inter-architecture is discussed: architecture, interior architecture, exhibition and set design, furniture design, design for dance and theatre and designing for public space, where there is regular collaboration with other creative disciplines. After graduation you may use the title Bachelor of Art and Design.

The starting point of a design at our department is always ‘the space’: space with social significance. The urge to create not only beautiful spaces, but also positive spaces, spaces that generate better environments. Designing, reading and analysing of the space is what we call this ‘the choreography of the space’. Characteristics of this ‘choreography’ are: the making of, the experimentation with, the perception and experience of the space. An essential question we ask within our department is what the making process of tangible things teaches us about ourselves.

We train students who are critical and inquisitive. Graduates (after graduation you may use the title Bachelor of Design (BDes) with their own opinions, which confront society and produce work that stands out. For this reason it offers graduates excellent opportunities to undertake further study at a Master’s program in the Netherlands or abroad.

Methodology
Experimenting, making, experiencing and reflecting on this lead to answers. This process of change, consisting of a set of infinite unobserved changes, is different for each student. The starting point is the student as maker, in which craftsmanship, sensory, material, technique, workshop, tools, production and experimentation with these, are key concepts.
The ‘making’ matures, it becomes ingrained through practice, its’ development takes time. Time offers the possibility of reflection and imagination. Not just telling but also showing.

Tutor profile
The following quote from Gilles Deleuze indicates the profile and the type of attitude the tutor must possess: “It is like a research laboratory: you teach about what you are researching, not what you know. It has nothing to do with discussing things. It is hard enough just trying to understand someone’s intent and how they see it. All you should do is explore the problem, play around with the terms, add something to it, relate it to something else, never discuss it.”

Student profile
We seek motivated, talented, creative and active people who can work together and are actually researchers into their surroundings.
The writer Somerset Maugham clarified, in all his directness and simplicity, the attitude we expect from you: “The researcher should not wait for the experience to come to him, but go seek it out himself”.

Henri Snel, head of Inter-Architecture