Creative Ecosystem
RAVB architecture students present their vision for Den Haag’s creative future

To celebrate the second year of collaboration between Patch Studios and the Rotterdamsche Academie van Bouwkunst (RAVB), we warmly invite the public, city officials, creative sector professionals, and all those interested in the future of cultural space in Den Haag to the final exhibition of the design studio Creative Ecosystem: Creative Incubators and Transformative Practices.

The RAVB design studio conducted research on how urban design and architecture can enable creative production to take root and gain public visibility in the city. Beginning with a collective urban analysis of Den Haag’s creative ecosystem and its network of broedplaatsen, students went on to develop individual design proposals across the city in different sites in the Binckhorst, Mariahoeve, and Voorburg. Each site has been reimagined and designed as a potential hybrid creative workplace capable of anchoring cultural production within its neighbourhood for the long term.

The design studio is part of a wider two-year NWO research trajectory (2024–2026) titled How to Make Room for the Creative Sector, conducted in collaboration with Fontys, Hanze University, and nine Dutch municipalities. It is the second RAVB studio on this theme developed in partnership with the City of The Hague.

Working collectively throughout the semester, students built a shared toolbox of spatial strategies drawing on frameworks such as commoning, post-growth planning, and the just city, individual proposals that together form a coherent argument for how cities can make structural room for creative work.

The event takes place at Patch Studios, one of Den Haag’s own broedplaatsen and the primary case study of the Studio throughout the year. The choice of venue is itself part of the argument: a working creative incubator as the backdrop for proposals about why such spaces must be protected, expanded, and permanently embedded in the urban fabric.