Aric Chen is general and artistic director of the Het Nieuwe Instituut, the Dutch national museum for architecture, design and digital culture in Rotterdam. 

During one of those careers that makes you wonder what on earth you’ve been doing with your time, he has also been creative director of Beijing Design Week, lead curator for design and architecture at M+ in Hong Kong, curatorial director of the Design Miami fairs in Miami Beach and Basel, and professor and founding director of the Curatorial Lab at the College of Design and Innovation at Tongji University in Shanghai.

As a result, he has a genuinely global perspective of the design industry. 

In this episode we talk about: the Instituut’s new show that looks at design and energy; issues around decarbonising the grid; his problem with design manifestos; how the Instituut is becoming a ‘Zoop’ and giving non-humans a voice (you read that right); providing agency to microbes; making new ideas visible; why he didn’t become an architect; his first job in PR; the relationship between journalism and curating; the similarities between the US and China; and how the Instituut will curate next year’s London Design Biennale. (For various reasons – mainly to do with microphones being held up in EU customs – the sound on this episode isn't up to our usually quality. Apologies but, frankly, I'm blaming Brexit.)