In response to the Covid-19 crisis, senior curator Hetty Berens is researching hygiene and health in the collection of Het Nieuwe Instituut. Improving health became an important task for architecture from around 1880. This can be seen in commissions for public housing and hospitals. Architects were overloaded with new insights from medical science, and also from social reform movements.

Until the Second World War, contagious diseases such as tuberculosis could be curbed only by hygiene measures. Healthy homes and healthy living, preferably in green areas with plenty of fresh air, light and sunlight, became extremely important. Meanwhile sanatoriums and open-air schools sprang up rapidly. In this session, Hetty Berens takes us through the archive, highlighting various inspiring examples of hygiene and health.

Bente Spigt will start with an introduction of the online programs of Het Nieuwe Instituut and suggest how design can help these days.

It will be interactive, so don't be afraid to ask questions and to discuss this further!

About Het Nieuwe Instituut
Het Nieuwe Instituut stands for the social and innovative value of culture. A visitor to Het Nieuwe Instituut enters, as it were, ‘the museum of the future’. In Het Nieuwe Instituut visitors are provoked and confronted with questions that are maybe not of today, but are certainly of tomorrow.