Roosmarijn Hompe: Can you describe in one or two sentences your practice and your research practice?

Niels Schrader: I run my own design studio in Amsterdam focused on information design. Next to that I have my educational practice at the KABK, and which entails two days a week giving guidance to the MA program and half a day a week of teaching. I also write for Grafikmagazin. Most of my research concerns the digital world, because I believe that’s a domain where we face a lot of challenges that we are not yet aware of. I might develop software or explore the unexposed data sets of the iPhone or, as in the case of my project with the Design Lectorate Research Group, the effects of our digital infrastructure on the physical environment.

I also conduct research through education. I believe, for example, that the extensive collaborations we initiate through the MA Non Linear Narrative every year are a form of research.

We collaborate with NGOs, museums and institutions that are socially or politically or culturally involved in practices that I see as connected to what we do as designers. The research includes exploring how to design collaborations, how to connect education to a practical, embedded experience, and how to provide the framework of research to help students conduct their own research. There’s no blueprint for this, given the fact that every collaborator has different goals and ambitions.

Alice Twemlow: What kind of adjectives might you use to describe the type of research you do?

NS: I always find it incredibly difficult to frame it properly. As an information designer, I think what attracts my attention is the exchange of information by digital means. I think there’s a lot to explore there, because it’s about exposing what’s hidden – the hidden infrastructures of information exchange, which of course, have been moving very much to the digital realm.

RH: How did your project develop in the Design Lectorate Research Group?

NS: The idea existed before that, but through the Design Lectorate Research Group I was able to condense it into a very specific research question which focused on the extent to which the exponentially increasing amounts of data that we save is having an effect on our physical environment.

I entered the Research Group with a hunch and came out with a question! The Group gave me a really fantastic opportunity to exchange thoughts but also to learn some very concrete methods.

AT: I think yours is a good example of a project that lived on beyond the group. You presented your work in progress at the Fault Lines Research Forum 2018, then we put together the Fault Lines exhibition in 2019. You published on Open!, Platform for Art, Culture and the Public Domain. And what am I missing?

NS: It definitely lives on. I’m currently developing a book about it, titled, Acid Clouds with nai010, an architectural publisher in Rotterdam, that will be published at the end of this year. The project was also part of the Waag’s “Expedition: Future Technology Festival”, during which I did some guided walking tours of the data towers in Amsterdam. It was even published in the newspapers NRC and Trouw. I think that why it has lasted so long is firstly because it’s a very emergent topic and it impacts so many aspects of society, but also because, for me, it grew so gradually. With every step I would discover, oh, there’s even more behind, right?

When Roel Backaert and I first started photographing data centres here and there, little did we know that this would grow into a project of documenting 200 buildings all around the country.

AT: This collaboration is key to the project, right?

NS: To make these investigations actually happen you need to have expertise at hand that goes beyond what the graphic design discipline can do. I believe collaboration is the essence of the research I’m doing. Otherwise, I would just probably just circle around in my own bubble. But, seriously, an essential step to get outside of your practice is to really collaborate.

RH: What about sources of funding beyond the 0,1FTE you received for participation in the Research Group – I guess you also applied for other funds to continue the research?

NS: That’s probably the most disappointing thing to talk about because research is not supported in this country. Despite having really very clear goals and budget planning, the funding bodies don’t seem to support practice-based research. Sometimes we get it for a concrete thing, like to pay an author to write the text for a book. But we never would get the budget for an open-ended research project.

It’s the same here at the KABK. We need research to be structurally supported. Because if you are going to put it on the side of your building that this is a place to conduct research, then you need to actually make that happen.

AT: When you were co-head of BA Graphic Design, how did you attempt to seed research within the curriculum?

NS: We considered research to be an essential part of the design process, and therefore an essential part of the program, and that thinking was implemented in all facets of the course. Our definition of graphic design was centred on communication, on helping students figure out what they wanted to say and how best to do that, and I think we managed pretty well. We have a nice legacy of students and teaching and practicing in all corners of the world.

AT: Did you have to hire different kinds of tutors to fulfil these aims?

NS: We hired a lot of faculty with research practices. But I also think we had a nice balance of people who were very much practitioners, people who were very theoretical and people who would combine these two practices nicely. Somebody like Lauren Alexander is a good example, someone who approaches research from a practice-based perspective.

AT: So, when you and Roosje Klap started Non Linear Narrative I can imagine that it was such an exciting moment for you because you got a blank canvas to work with. And here the whole program is based on research. So how did you go about designing that MA?

NS: We both believed in a practice that is socially and politically engaged, because we didn’t see the perpetuation of systems of exploitative practices could have any future. And then we wrote an extensive plan. The name Non Linear Narrative combines the idea of technology along with the idea of the stories that need to be told.

Together with all the other three masters, we managed to get this umbrella of the MA Art and Design. And we, of course, had our knowledge from the bachelor program from which we could extrapolate. At first we thought that the BA students would continue into the MA, but actually we get more international applicants.

AT: And in terms of teaching research in Non Linear Narrative?

NS: We have so-called “labs”, which are sort of very materialand skill-based courses, then there are theory and philosophy courses, and there are the design courses, which are in fact the connection between these two. We still consider research to be part of the design process. And within their design projects, students also have the time to conduct research.

AT: Can you imagine this approach applied to other master’s programs at the KABK or is this distinctive and specific to Non Linear Narrative and would never work anywhere else?

NS: I think each department has its own unique approach. But we are also starting to look across the programs carefully and together to see what might be transferable. We did this for the recent accreditation process, and we found we have quite a bit in common, which we want to build on.

RH: How do you experience the research culture at the KABK? Do you think it has changed since 2017 and if so could you describe the change?

NS: A lot of kudos to Alice. I think that she has managed incredibly well to bring a systematic approach to what research is at the KABK. It has also become much more visible. I think the Design Lectorate is really trying to connect these different departments on a very high level and trying to inject these seeds wherever possible. I believe what the KABK misses is more structural support for this kind of work.

Looking forward, I’d like the next director to work on collaboration with external partners, because if you think of ArtScience, and how innovative it can be when you bring together two different methods of thinking, I think that’s something that should also be happening elsewhere – let’s say, for example, we could do that with the Leiden School of Law, or other institutes.