Re-set, New wings for architecture. Photo: Rob 't Hart

Exhibition | External location - | 28/08/12-25/11/12

Re-set is the title of the Dutch submission for the International Architecture Exhibition in Venice in 2012. A single visit to the exhibition was not enough. Every five minutes the situation in the pavilion was totally different, and anyone who stays for a while witnessed a visually astounding transformation. With Re-set, Inside Outside / Petra Blaisse demonstrated that architecture possesses the power to start anew. The exhibition was curated by Ole Bouman, Director of the NAI.



An untouched tract of land and a substantial budget were for many years the chief preconditions for fine architecture, but the social issues of this day and age demand different points of departure. Taking advantage of existing potential and the creation of value in places where it seems to be vanishing – the ‘reanimation’ of desolate buildings – is increasingly becoming the architect’s core task.

With Re-set, Inside Outside / Petra Blaisse revealed a whole array of possibilities that an existing structure has to offer, taking the given situation as the starting point. With a mobile, tactile intervention, Petra Blaisse gave an impulse to a building that has stood vacant for 40 years – the Dutch Pavilion is in use for just three months of the year – an impulse that still awaits thousands of other Dutch government buildings.

Re-set as a sequel to Vacant NL
Re-set was the sequel to the Dutch submission to the International Architecture Exhibition in 2010, titled Vacant NL, a presentation by the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) and Rietveld Landscape that shed light on the huge amount and enormous potential of disused buildings in the Netherlands. This presentation became a hot topic – in Venice, in the Netherlands, around the world – and one of the many things it spawned is the creation of an MA course on this very subject in the Netherlands.

> More information on Inside Outside
> More information on the 13th International architecture Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia

Thanks to

Ingredients of intervention; direct daylight, shadow play, orchestrated movement. Re-set, Inside Outside / Petra Blaisse, 2012.

The website ‘Treasures of the NAI’ brings together the finest items from the NAI collection. Walk through the history of Dutch architecture, using the timeline or map as your guide.
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