AE Role: Advisory
Co-Head of Department at Critical Inquiry Lab, Design Academy Eindhoven
Photo: Sabine van der Vooren
Saskia van Stein (she/her) is the artistic and managing Director of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR). Currently, Van Stein also holds the position of co-head of department of the MA program The Critical Inquiry Lab at the Design Academy, Eindhoven. Prior to this, she was the artistic and managing Director of 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 at the intersection of architecture culture, political and human sciences, design, and fine arts.
Over the span of her career, her deep-seated interest in the discourse surrounding the politics of representation developed into experimentation with different exhibition formats, modes of display, and methods of knowledge production, as well as moderating and participating in numerous discursive events. She has often spearheaded topics and themes, in and outside of the confined walls of the institutional realm of the museum, questioning cultural production and the designed environment itself.