The NAI welcomed a variety of international visitors during the last few weeks. The largest project developer in China, VANKE, was a guest of the NAI on Wednesday 23 and Thursday 24 June. In the previous week we had visitors from India: New Mumbai Architects.

VANKE was set up in 1984 by Wang Shi, a famous Chinese mountaineer. The word Vanke means something like ‘ten thousand technologies’. The company visited the Netherlands with a delegation of eight members of staff, including the executive vice-director Charles Ding. The firm has offices in forty Chinese cities and the construction of 60,000 units a year makes it by far the biggest housing developer in China.

VANKE works together with various Dutch firms, but wanted to visit the Netherlands to gain more insight in Dutch work culture. In addition, VANKE was interested in how Dutch housing is developed and was keen to meet small, up and coming firms. The NAI therefore compiled a varied programme for the delegates, including visits to the NAI (Rotterdam), Sonneveld House (Rotterdam), and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (Hilversum), as well as guided architectural tours of Utrecht, Amsterdam and Almere and visits to West 8, KCAP, OMA, OKRA, MVRDV and other firms of architects.

Indian visitors
In the previous week the NAI welcomed a group of architects from India: New Mumbai Architects. This group occupies a central position in an NAI Matchmaking project, a programme that links Dutch expertise with assignments outside the Netherlands, in consultation with local parties.

In connection with the DutchDFA programme for India, the NAI is targeting the urbanisation problems of the city of Mumbai. Those problems are created mainly by the many different contradictions that plague a city of relatively few square kilometres. The NAI guests were Anand Patel, Aravamuthan Srivatsan, Rohan Shivkumar and Shantanu Poredi. They followed a presentation of the Matchmaking programme in the NAI before visiting various firms of architects.

Conference
The NAI and the New Mumbai Architects are preparing an international conference on slum housing to be held in December 2010. Various methods of slum renewal will be discussed at this conference in order to arrive at specific proposals for the situation in Mumbai.

Matchmaking India

With 14 million inhabitants, Mumbai is the largest city in India. The NAI is focusing on the city’s urban issues, primarily those relating to housing. In partnership with Indian architects and the Indian project developer TATA Housing, steps are being taken to design and realise a new model for social housing.
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Matchmaking

In many parts of the world people are struggling with acute spatial challenges ranging from environmental issues and housing shortages to rising water levels. Architecture can play a part in helping to find answers to these problems. The NAI aims to draw attention these issues, prioritising them at national and local level, and addressing them through research and debate. The Matchmaking Programme of the NAI brings expertise and challenges together.
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Debate: Building Together

Lecture/Debat/symposium 27 october 2011 20:00 | Providing high-quality homes for the less affluent classes is one of the pressing tasks within spatial planning in China. This issue was investigated and placed on the agenda by ten architects, five Dutch and five Chinese, and a Chinese project developer in the context of the NAI Matchmaking programme. What does the project actually entail? What results have been achieved so far? What have the participating architects encountered? How do they view the collaboration with the Chinese architects and the project developer? These are just some of the questions that were addressed during the debate: Building Together.
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NAI and VANKE sign low cost housing agreement

The Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) and the Chinese project developer VANKE signed an agreement on 29 August in Beijing to cooperate in the field of social housing. The first specific joint project is the development of a large number of low cost housing units near Beijing by a group of Dutch and Chinese architects.
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Housing with a mission at Shenzhen architecture biennial

Exhibition 08 december 2011  - 10 february 2012 | The Dutch submission for the Shenzhen architecture biennial in 2011 is the exhibition 'Housing with a Mission'. The exhibition displays design solutions for affordable housing that were developed as part of a joint Dutch-Chinese project. The collaboration is interesting for both parties: The Netherlands have the opportunity to share their expertise in housing and China offers challenging work for architects. The designs will be realized next year in Beijing by the Chinese project developer and NAI partner VANKE.
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