This week, Volume’s editorial team will be heading for Venice to attend 2014’s Biennale. The Dutch entry to this year’s Biennale will examine the work and ideas of the architect Jaap Bakema during the exhibition ‘Open: A Bakema Celebration’; a critical reflection on the idea of the open society through Jaap Bakema’s work and research. This Friday at 18:00 the exhibition will be officially opened.

The internationally prominent Dutch architect Jaap Bakema (1914–1981) was active within the international avant-garde movements CIAM and Team 10. His Rotterdam office ‘Van den Broek en Bakema’ was responsible for a number of the Netherlands’ most important postwar projects, including the Rotterdam shopping street ‘Lijnbaan’.

Its archive is housed in the collection of Het Nieuwe Instituut, managing one of the world’s largest architecture collections. Bakema mainly concerned himself with social issues and also worked as a professor of Architecture at Delft University of Technology, internationally esteemed for its notable research in architecture.

Rem Koolhaas, chief curator of the Venice Architecture Biennale, chose the overarching theme ‘Fundamentals: Absorbing Modernity, 1914–2014’. Koolhaas cited the First World War as the beginning of modern globalisation. He asked the curators of all national pavilions to respond to this theme in relation to their respective national identities. Het Nieuwe Instituut views Bakema as a compelling exponent of the Dutch welfare state and the idea of an open society.

The exhibition will constitute one of the first activities of the Jaap Bakema Study Centre, founded in October 2013 by Het Nieuwe Instituut and Delft University of Technology. ‘Open: A Bakema Celebration’ is curated by Guus Beumer, director of Het Nieuwe Instituut, and Dirk van den Heuvel, associate professor at Delft University of Technology and head of the Jaap Bakema Study Centre. The exhibition catalogue, designed by Experimental Jetset, will also be included in Volume’s 41st issue, that will be published later this year.

Click here to attend the opening event on Facebook.