Category
Institution & Curatorship
Year
2001 – 2019
Location
Hasselt, Belgium
When Jan Boelen founded Z33, his goal was not to create another traditional museum. Instead, he wanted to build a platform for questions, not a collection of answers, a space without a permanent collection, agile enough to respond to the urgencies of society .
This decision was a risk. But it also brought freedom, the freedom to turn the institution into a laboratory for social and ecological imagination. Under Boelen’s leadership, Z33 moved away from being a project-based exhibition maker to becoming a research-based institution
Images 1 & 2: Z33 – House for Contemporary Art Mind the System, Find the Gap
Images 3, 4 & 5: Leon Vranken – Paper-Scissors-Stone Flowing Line
The real transformation began in 2013 with the launch of Z33 Research. Describing this shift, Boelen stated that for him, there is a clear distinction between what we call “Critical Design” and what we call “Speculative Design,” and he is interested in those practices that have the power to fundamentally change the pragmatic, solution-driven role of design itself . This critical approach became the engine of Z33.
Image 6: Atelier à Habiter Studio Makkink & Bey – PROOFFLab at Home. Work at Home #3
Image 7: Atelier à Habiter Rotor – Opalis
Image 8: Atelier à Habiter Daniela Dossi – CO-TERIJEN
Boelen created three thematic studios: Studio Time, Studio Work, and Studio Space; to accumulate practice-based and academic research into an evolving body of knowledge. As he explained in an interview, giving designers tools to come up with new strategies and methodologies is essential to avoid creating the same solutions that created the problems we face today . For Boelen, Z33 was never just an exhibition space; it was an educational ecosystem, deeply connected to his work as head of the Master Social Design at the Design Academy Eindhoven.
Images 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 & 15: Numen / For Use TAPE
Traditional museums focus on the object. Boelen wanted Z33 to focus on the experience. When discussing the architecture of the new Z33 extension, he emphasized that “a multitude of experiential possibilities is paramount. It is a very sensitive, subtle and tactile concept. A concept that fits Z33 perfectly” .
This obsession with the sensorial and the experiential was a tool to engage visitors emotionally and intellectually, regardless of their background, opening up new questions rather than providing clear answers.
Images 16, 17 & 18: pit: a Z-OUT project of Z33. Gijs Van Vaerenbergh – Reading Between the Lines
Images 19, 20 & 21: pit: a Z-OUT project of Z33. Dré Wapenaar – Tranendreef
The ideas developed at Z33 directly influenced the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, which Boelen curated under the title “A School of Schools.” In a rapidly changing world with an uncertain future, we cannot anticipate what skills we will need. Instead, we need to develop “learning as an attitude” to constantly deal with change.
For Boelen, design has become a form of inquiry, power, and agency. The question that drove his work at Z33, and continues to drive his practice today, is this: if we can change the way designers think about their own practice, then we can change the way design impacts the world. Z33 was his first and most fundamental attempt to answer that question.
Images 22, 23, 24, 25, 26 & 27: De Unie Hasselt/Genk Felice Varini – Trois ellipses ouvertes en désordre