Saskia van Stein
Saskia van Stein (she/her) is artistic and managing Director of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR). Currently, Van Stein also holds the position as Co-Head of Department, MA The Critical Inquiry Lab at the Design Academy, Eindhoven. Prior to this, she was artistic and managing Director at Bureau Europa, platform for architecture and design, Maastricht, 2013–2019. Van Stein’s curatorial practice started at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (now Nieuwe Instituut) in Rotterdam, 2002–2012, where her first steps were made by programming exhibitions on the intersection of architecture culture, design, fine arts, political and human sciences.
Over the span of her career, her deep-seated interest in the discourse surrounding the politics of representation panned out into experimentations with different exhibition formats, modes of display and methods of knowledge production, as well as moderating and participating in numerous discursive events. She has conceptualized over 70 exhibitions often spearheading societal topics or themes on the periphery of the design discipline, both in The Netherlands as elsewhere, in and outside of the confined walls of the institutional realm of the museum, questioning cultural production and the designed environment itself.
She is committed to contributing to the development of a cultural discourse, and she is chair of several juries and member of advisory committees such as Independent School for the City in Rotterdam, Dutch Design Awards, the architecture journal OASE and member of the advisory council for Culture to the Dutch Government, Contemporary Art and Creative Industries.
Van Stein is presently a PhD candidate at the Curating Research Collective, Architecture and theory department at the Technical University in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
