Archival Encounters: Narrating the Landscape of Veenhuizen

About: Design research into the Colony of Belevolence Veenhuizen— a UNESCO World Heritage site in the Netherlands and Belgium, established in the 19th century as part of a social reform project to resettle poor families, orphans, and beggars in agricultural colonies.

Collaboration with: Regional governmental partners. Wendy Schutte and Evelin Alkema (Province of Drenthe), Willem Stohr and Nicole Kuppens (National Prison Museum), Pauline Bezemer and Marja Mentink (Municipality of Noordenveld), Bas Morsink (Nieuwe Rentmeester), Mark Goslinga and Corinne Rodenburg (Drents Archive), Irene Fortuyn (Ketter&Co), and Jan Roelof (PI Veenhuizen).

SI–LAB marked the final phase of the Design Deal — a decade-long collaboration between design researchers, cultural institutions, and regional partners — with the closing event Archival Encounters: Narrating the Landscape of Veenhuizen. Hosted in Veenhuizen, the gathering brought together partners, stakeholders, and local residents to reflect on shared work and present the latest research outcomes.

The programme combined talks, reflections, and presentations exploring how design research can engage with cultural heritage through archives, mapping, performance, and game design. Highlights included the presentation of archival research on Veenhuizen’s layered histories and the activation of two student-developed games translating archival narratives into interactive experiences.

Central to this final phase was a collaboration between SI–LAB research associate and historian Jaïr van Dijk and HKU Game Design students. Drawing on archival research into the multicultural histories of Veenhuizen, the students translated historical findings into playable formats, transforming archival material into interactive experiences. This approach explored how design can act as a mediator between historical knowledge and public engagement, allowing complex histories to be encountered through participation, play, and shared experience.

Design Research and Cultural Heritage

Veenhuizen is a landscape shaped by stories - held in archives, inscribed in its spatial layout, and carried through the lives of those who once trespassed it. This exhibition traces three years of collaboration between Design Academy Eindhoven’s Social Innovation Lab (SI-LAB) and its partners: Province of Drenthe, Municipality of Noordenveld, National Prison Museum, Drents Archief, PI Veenhuizen, Ketter & Co., and De Nieuwe Rentmeester. Together, we explored how cartography, performance, archival research, and game design can open new perspectives on the layered histories of the colony of Benevolence.

When SI-LAB entered the Design Deal in 2023, both DAE and Veenhuizen were undergoing significant transitions. As Veenhuizen received the global stage as a world heritage site, DAE started to position itself as a knowledge institute invested in long-term research trajectories. This shift stems from a wider movement in design research: designers increasingly seek to participate in the contexts where their ideas take shape, and to collaborate across disciplines and stakeholder groups. Their contributions extend beyond producing final outcomes - they mediate between knowledge worlds and help make visible the universal insights emerging from situated design processes.


A Place for Multiple Viewpoints and Disciplines
Across these three years, the work evolved from site-specific mapping to performative encounters to archive-informed game design. Together, the projects reveal Veenhuizen not as a singular narrative but as a layered (and sometimes uncomfortable) landscape where: historical documents intersect with lived experience, archival traces inform interactive media, local knowledge meets new disciplinary perspectives, and personal stories intersect with institutional histories.

It is important to note that this interdisciplinary approach did not unfold without friction: differences in terminology, varying interpretations of concepts, and contrasting disciplinary rhythms all surfaced throughout the process. Yet these frictions are precisely what make the collaboration so rich. They reveal areas of productive tension and signal how much unexplored potential remains. The projects presented in this exhibition demonstrate that narrating Veenhuizen requires multiple methods, voices, and entry points. They invite visitors to look, listen, walk, and play their way into a place whose histories are as complex as they are compelling.

How can we archive complex cultural history?

Three students of Design Academy Eindhoven stayed in Veenhuizen for a prolonged period of time, cooking with residents, interviewing local experts, and investigating archival records. Using cartographic methods, they walked drainage ditches and avenues, traced historical records, filmed conversations, and collected situated observations.

Read more on the cartographic explorations here

How can we experience different points of view of cultural history?

Two alumni of Design Academy Eindhoven expanded the research by engaging with the landscape through performance. Rather than representing Veenhuizen, they engaged with it experientially - through movement, narration, role play, and embodied encounters.

Read more on the Performative Exploration here

How can collaborations between historians and designers contribute with contemporary perspectives on cultural heritage?

Through a collaboration between historian Jaïr van Dijk and HKU Game Design, students were invited to treat the archive as an environment to be navigated, listened to, and translated into interaction.