For two months the NAI will organise happenings in and around an installation that the architect Wiel Arets has specially designed for the NAI: Concerts, theatre performances, interactive video projections, debates, dinners and performances. In this architectural construction, compositions of light, sound and video projection enable you to experience the influence that buildings, squares and streets have on your emotions and on how you perceive. The happenings make you aware of the role that you yourself play in experiencing and imagining the city, as well as of the difference that you as a citizen can make.

Imagine a City
Just as architecture is more than just (designing) buildings, a city is more than an ensemble of buildings. How you imagine a city and how you experience that city are determined not just by the buildings which are there, by the infrastructure and the layout of the public space, such as squares and parks. How people in a city behave, which is connected with their identity and the group to which they (would like to) belong, also plays a role in how you perceive that city. And you yourself can influence how you and others experience the city: Do you greet people in the street or do you deliberately avoid contact, do you listen to the street musician or do you just walk on, do you put a tag on a bare wall, or is a tag a source of irritation to you?

Wiel Arets
The Dutch architect Wiel Arets (Heerlen, 1955) designed an installation specially for Gallery 1 of the NAI. Arets rose to international fame with his designs for the Academy of Art in Maastricht (the Netherlands) and the University Library on the Uithof university campus in Utrecht (the Netherlands), as well as his industrial designs in collaboration with such leading companies as Alessi, Quinze & Milan, and Lensvelt. He is currently working on a characteristic, 150-metre tall A' Tower in Amsterdam.

Installation
Thanks to the use of hypermodern glass, which becomes transparent or opaque depending on the lighting conditions, as well as to the light, sound and video compositions that alternate every fifteen minutes, as a visitor to the space you experience it in constantly changing ways. Composers Gosse de Kort and Jochem van Tol, light designers Tom Verheijen, and the designers of ]NI[, under the supervision of Powerboat, subtly manipulate the emotions of visitors to the installation. No space is like it is, but it is constantly changing in mood.

Happening
During the hours that the museum is open, the compositions in and around the installation will be the focus of attention in Gallery I, but in the evenings the light and sound compositions will be turned off and the installation will become the place for a disco, classical concert, or a debate in which the public can influence the discussion via mobile phone and laptop. the Netherlands Architecture Institute is collaborating with clubs, concert venues and cinemas such as ConClub, de Doelen, Worm and Lantaren/Venster to organise happenings for young and old every week from Thursday to Sunday.

Day…
"Happening" has two faces. In the daytime the visitor is the protagonist of the installation. The character of the building will change through light, sound and video projections. In a collective game the visitors be encouraged to view the installation and the space in different ways.

and Night
In the evening, when the museum is closed, the installation will become the stage for the cultural life of the city. Every week from Thursday to Sunday evening there will be dance performances, multimedia debates, concerts of modern and classical music, club evenings, performances, talent hunts, and a fashion show. Cultural organisations, mainly from Rotterdam but also from the rest of the Netherlands and from abroad, will each visualise the city in their own way and get visitors to the happenings to experience the installation in a different manner each time.

Architecture
Wiel Arets Architects describes the object as "Comfortably Strange." Wiel Arets: “Comfortably Strange is a small project that provokes when observed, with a provocation its observers can feel.” The leftovers of the installation are turned into a bar called "BAR Arest" by the young Rotterdam firm of architects 2012Architecten. The philosophy of 2012Architecten is to start out from existing resources, such as waste materials.

Program
01 March 2008
20:00: Opening Happening

02 March 2008
16:00: Cool Media Hot Talkshow: Urban Politics

07 March 2008
20:30: Patterns of Common Understanding

08 March 2008
20:30: Against Architecture

09 March 2008
15:00: Capitalism! Bring it on again - Phase 1
20:30: Les Sylphides (work in progress)

13 March 2008
14:00: Rotterdam Mooier Dan!
20:00: Unsolicited Architecture
21:00: James Benning Trilogy: California 1

14 March 2008
20:30: Hotel Mozambique

15 March 2008
22:30: Lowriders

16 March 2008
21:00: Guy Ben-Ner

20 March 2008
20:00: The Future of Ecological Architecture
21:00: James Benning Trilogy

21 March 2008
20:30: Bram van Sambeekand and Daria van den Bercken 
22:00: Overtollig Vet #1

22 March 2008
23:00: BLOCKBEATZ, WURM

23 March 2008
20:30: Toen wij van Rotterdam vertrokken

27 March 2008
20:00: Contrapolis

28 March 2008
20:30: Against Architecture

29 March 2008
20:30: Worm-happening

30 March 2008
16:00: Cool Media Hot Talkshow on City Life: Multiculturalism

03 April 2008
20:00: Homo Ludens

04 April 2008
21:00: Les Petites Differences Maginales

05 April 2008
22:00: Stöma & Guests

06 April 2008
15:00: Capitalism! Bring it on again - Phase 2

10 - 11 - 12 April 2008
Hotel Mozaique

13 April 2008
17:00: RottPod

17 April 2008
20:00: Post-It City

18 April 2008
20:30: INtrusioni
21:30: Sound Track Stage

19 April 2008
20:00: A Night of Provisional Futures

20 April 2008
16:00: Cool Media Hot Talkshow on City Life: Music and Politics

24 April 2008
20:20: Pecha Kucha Night Rotterdam
23:00: BarCamp

25 April 2008
22:00: Viva la Poze

26 April 2008
22:00: Crime Jazz Extended
22:30: Black Soil presents film "International Hip Hop Film Festival"

27 April 2008
Best Food Design
16:00: Village Kiosk 

01 May 2008
20:00: Networked Cultures

02 May 2008
20:00: Space Time Play

03 May 2008
20:00: Urban Game Show
Strategies of Oppositional Architecture

04 May 2008
16:00: Singing Chairs