Open Access: Exploring 130 Years of American Design

Van Alen Institute has spent more than 130 years at the intersection of design ambition and civic life. Its archive, comprising thousands of competition boards, jury records, photographs, and correspondence, is one of the most significant collections of American architectural history in existence. Much of it has never been seen by the public.

Open Access: Exploring 130 Years of American Design positions the archive not as a museum piece but as living material, something to be questioned, reinterpreted, and held accountable to the present. It also invites careful reflection on Van Alen’s 130-year influence within the field of design and upon the shaping of American cities.

Van Alen invites emerging designers and creatives of all disciplines to delve into the currently accessible portions of our archive and consider its material through the lens of open and fair access. We are seeking project proposals that provoke deep reflection on how the pursuit of greater access to design can and must progress into the future, both within the profession and as a tool to reckon with society’s greatest challenges.

We welcome a wide range of creative approaches and encourage applicants to propose the medium that best serves their concept—architectural models, drawings, images, projections, video, photography, writing, or other media. Projects can either respond directly to specific materials within the archive, such as competition prompts or submitted drawings, or engage the archive’s content more thematically. Projects that invite direct engagement and interaction are strongly encouraged, as are multi-disciplinary collaborations. Ideas for public programming to enrich your project, such as workshops, talks, or other events, are welcomed (but not required).

Five projects will be selected and all will be displayed together during the Open Access exhibition at Van Alen’s Urban Room, September 28–November 13, 2026. Each project will receive an all-inclusive $3,000 honorarium (please note: production costs must be factored into this total). Selected projects will also receive curatorial and archival support from Van Alen, and access to Materials for the Arts for donated supplies.

Considerations

Van Alen’s archive is a living, active record; one that reflects how this institution has moved through questions of access and design over more than a century. Every competition brief, travel journal, submission, prompt, and departmental structure in it represents someone’s own interpretation of accessibility.

We are drawn to work that opens up conversations on how access has moved through the institution. We seek projects that encourage us to ask:

How have definitions of quality design, along with the way design is taught and practiced, changed over time?
How has the evolution of representing design ideas impacted the way we see and talk about cities?
What challenges facing cities and their inhabitants did Van Alen’s community take up and which problems, perspectives, and narratives were overlooked?
Who was invited into Van Alen’s community to shape space and exchange ideas, and who was left out, despite having valuable ideas and experiences to contribute?
If communities had been centered in design from the beginning, what might our cities look like today? What alternate paths might we have taken throughout history? What futures might have been (and could be) possible?