New Head of MA Social Design at Design Academy Eindhoven

The Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE) has announced Marina Otero Verzier as the new head of MA Social Design. As of September 1, Otero will replace the current head Jan Boelen. Marina Otero Verzier is an architect based in Rotterdam who studied at TU Delft, Columbia University GSAPP and in 2016, Otero received her PhD at ETSA Madrid. Currently, she is also the Director of Research at Het Nieuwe Instituut.

Before moving to Rotterdam, Otero was based in New York where she was Director of Global Network Programming at Studio-X. Now as the Director of Research at Het Nieuwe Instituut, Otero works to acknowledge and give visibility to research projects, practices, and initiatives that challenge established modes of thinking. In this light, she has led projects such as ‘Automated Landscapes’ which focused on the emerging architecture of automated labour and 'Burn-Out' that aimed to instigate other forms of coexistence, sensibility and care for multispecies, collective bodies. In addition to her role at Het Nieuwe Instituut, Otero was a member of the Artistic Team for Manifesta 13, and the curator of 'Work, Body, Leisure' at the Dutch Pavilion at the Venice International Architecture Biennale in 2018.

For the occasion of her appointment as head, Otero told interviewer Nadine Botha about her vision for the Master of Social Design itself, ''The Master will be a space for weaving structures of creativity and solidarity, a place where we won’t be looking for solutions but for higher resolutions through which to rethink what society is and could be."

Photos: courtesy of Design Academy Eindhoven, credited to Boudewijn Bollmann