thank you for the link Melisa!
Experimenta Design Lisboa Locations
As mentioned below, EXD09 is going to kick off soon.
I am especially looking forward to the talks with Alejandro Aravena and Julien de Smedt on 9th September and Konstantin Grcic and Giulio Cappellini on the 12th. I’ll also have a closer look at the public space project at Jardim de Santos and the project towards a new criticism in design and architecture ‘Stop & Think’ – read more on that in the EXD’09 Detailed Program (pdf).
Work model for the memorial for the “March Heroes” by Walter Gropius, 1921, Klassik Stiftung Weimar © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2009
Perfectly in tune with my recent move from Rotterdam to Berlin* I can recommend the Bauhaus exhibition in the Martin Gropius Bau (where else?) in Berlin. The exhibition – the largest on Bauhaus in history – will be open until 4th of October 2009, and focuses on the period 1919 to 1933. It is refreshing and and overwhelming to see this wealth of utopian ideas, especially now.
Marcel Breuer’s Lady’s dressing-table from the Bauhaus experimental house “Am Horn”, Weimar, 1923
Amazing flashmob in front of my one of my favourite public buildings/squares: Peter Celsings Kulturhuset in Stockholm (1966-1971).
You could call Centre Pompidous (1972-1976) programmatic qualities a mere copy of it. In my opinion Kulturhuset works even better, the lowered square connects different pedestrian routes and tunnels them under a major street.
The initial design also marks all the functions by lettering them on the facade: OMA’s diagrams of the 90’s.
you and experimentadesign
ExperimentaDesign Lisboa has announced a call to submit a twenty second (20”) video for you to stand a chance to win special passes to EXD’09 Lisboa. More.
I like the idea of constrained design challenges, often leading to more interesting results as absolutely free choice of media. The demo scene comes to mind, with the inherent need to constrain the demos to minimal filesize (a good introduction would be this video), or artists experimenting with a minimal selection of tools: Steve Reich creating sounds by just cutting and looping (interesting enough performed live again by Peter Aidu in the video below), or Lars von Trier and the dogma movement, who banned effects and illusion, to get back to the essence of movie-making.
Steve Reich – Piano Phase (performed by Peter Aidu)
For more about the competition and Experimentadesign – Continue reading ‘20 seconds’
Ningbo Students tweaking their Presentation (photo: Thomas Stellmach)
The Berlage Institute is holding their final reviews for the first year studios today, from 10 to 21:30 (CEST). If you are quick, you can watch the live video stream here.
The first session is already over (When Economies Become Form: Micro-Economic Models as Spatial Prescriptions in Northeast Brazil, Tina DiCarlo and Markus Miessen). H2OBITAT (Freek Persyn, Laurence Tait, Nico Tillie) starts at 14:00 (CEST), and Bridging Untroubled Waters: The Ningbo Mall as a Quest for Alternative Strategies in Open Space Development (Rients Dijkstra, Thomas Stellmach) is scheduled for 18:30 (CEST). Teaching the latter studio has been one of the reason why it has been so quiet around here the during the last weeks…
The guest critics we’ve invited include Carson Chan, Director of Programs, Berlin; Filip Geerts, Assistant Professor of Architecture, TUDelft; Adrian Hornsby, editor, The Chinese Dream; Jorg Leeser, principal of BeL, Cologne; Hiroki Matsuura, architect, Maxwan, Rotterdam; Marc Ryan, architect, West8; Jan Nauta, researcher, nOffice, Berlin; Ralf Pflugfelder, partner of nOffice, Berlin; Caroline Rovers, Stadshavens Rotterdam; Jaap Wiedenhoff, principal, Arup, Amsterdam.
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Analysis of spatial distribution of specific population groups (Cooperation with the city Biberach a.d Riß)
The Planungsnetzwerk geo-Innovation of the University of Karlsruhe is organizing its second symposium on the 23rd of april in Karlsruhe. Its all about gis, web 2.0, experiments within urban context with gps and geodata.
Contributors are amongst others the openstreetmap (see also Thomas article openstreetmap) and the unortkataster.
Dynamic map of the inner city (Cooperation with the city of Mannheim)
The Rotterdam Design Award started its 2009 application period, deadline is 8 of May.
Autodesk’s Survey on AutoCAD on OS X
I have always been a sucker for consistent and smart graphical user interfaces, and work as such mostly on OS X. But I am even more of an efficiency, as in shortcuts, advocate. There are very few applications which balance the rather mouse oriented OS X interface with a smart shortcut system – Aperture being a positive example. Diametrically opposed to the Mac approach is Autodesk’s Autocad application, a technocratic and absurd mess of an application full of inconsistencies due to heritage, which still has a nerdy 1984 feel to it. Nonetheless, I love it. All comments are accessible via a command line, which enables you to just draw on a icon-free black canvas with the mouse hand, while the other hand rests on the keyboard typing out commands (we have discussed the notorious maxwan autocad shortcut system before). Purity. Zen.
This week Autodesk put up a survey on their site asking Acad/Mac users what features they would like to see most (and first) in a AutoCAD on OS X version. The survey is detailed enough to suggest that Autodesk really means it: Acad on OS X would eliminate one of the last reasons to ever boot into Windows again, and make me happy enough to jump around. It seems to be a chance to throw all that legacy ballast over board and give us a lean Autocad. But this will most probably stay a dream, and we’ll probably get another layer of weirdness added to Autocad. But we’re enthusiastic about Acad on a Mac nonetheless, and thus urge you all to participate in the survey to give it some momentum.
Complexity Theories have come of Age
Don’t let the poster mislead you! TU Delft’s U-Lab comes up with a daring conference breaking from its single-disciplinary conservatism. During 3 days from September 24th on mathematicians, physicists, urbanists and designers gather in Delft. They will explore the implications of complexity theories of cities to planning and urban design. Besides hotshot professors Juval Portugali, Bill Hillier, and Mike Batty, gonna-be’s, or maybe wanna-be’s like Egbert and me will take the floor.
The conference has a limited audience capacity, and is first-come, first served! For more information, you may see complexitytheoriesofcities.com, send an email to me and check out the other dates in our calendar of selected Rotterdam Architecture Events.
Three decades of research have established the field of complexity theories of cities as a dominant approach to cities. Now that the field has come of age, it is time to stop for a moment, look back at what has been achieved, with appreciation, but also with sober criticism and then look forward at potentials that have yet to be realized. Continue reading ‘Complexity Theory Conference @ TU Delft’
NL’s ugliest place? (photo: Ekim Tan)
Lately the readers of Volkskrant selected 30 year old Almere the ugliest place in the Netherlands; average Dutch associates Almere with bourgeois, boredom and absence of culture. Almere’s city officers are desperate; Continue reading ‘Is Almere There Yet?’
After a couple years without publishing, the latest issue of Hunch #12 will be relaunched in collaboration with NAi Publishers at the Berlage Institute, Rotterdam. The event takes place this coming Tuesday, the 31st March, at 19:00 within the school itself.
Continue reading ‘Hunch 12: Bureaucracy – Launch Event’
Arcam Architecture Centre, Amsterdam
Google Maps recently updated various cities within Europe, including Amsterdam and Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Of course, Europe being much more dense, has caused privacy problems for Google as seen in a row exposed by the BBC News in the UK. While I’ve snooped through some of my favourite spots in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, I’ve yet to explore the limits of what Google has made available online. It seems that some of the secondary cities such as Utrecht and Maastricht still lack the service. Given that the cameras are placed high above a moving truck, there are few (or no) views of pedestrian streets; and perhaps Google should think about capturing Amsterdam by boat?
Kunsthal, Rotterdam
UPDATE: I’ve added a map with the cities where street view is available. The recently added Oxford, London (Millenium Dome), Rotterdam (Ben van Berkel’s Erasmus bridge) and Amsterdam (Mirailles, West8 & Co. at Borneo) are not yet on it. Even more recent are the additions of Cannes, Zaragoza and the Amalfi Coast. Whatever Google’s criteria for inclusion are, we agree with them.
Availability of Google Street View in Europe
Refuge Urbanism; © Unknown
The website for this year’s 4th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2009 is fully online and operational. Rotterdam architect Kees Christiaanse will curate the program, and has developed the theme: Exploring Urban Futures. He will be working in association with a team in Zurich at the ETH, where he also teaches urban design. In Rotterdam, Christiaanse runs his own office, KCAP, which is recognized for work in both architecture and urban design. Being the 4th biennale, expectations are high following what many perceived as a decline in the scale and quality of the last, 3rd Biennale entitled “Power”.
Continue reading ‘4th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam – Exploring Urban Futures’
Construction of the Prada Transformer Pavillion (from prada-transformer.com)
Have a look at OMA’s most recent project for Prada, the ‘Prada Transformer‘. The project has it’s own proper website, featuring Rem presenting, plans and renderings as well as a construction time lapse in progress.
Visualisation of OSM edits in 2008 (by ItoWorld)
I’d like to point the german-speaking among you to the ChaosRadio Podcast Issue on Open Street Map. The Open Street Map (wikipedia entry) project is a collaborative effort to create maps without many of the licensing restrictions of other, proprietary, sources (OSM uses the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 license). Even though the map is the most visible feature of the project, it is mainly a data-collection effort. Additional information, as in the case of a road data like the amount of lanes, driving direction or speed limits can also be stored in the OSM database. This data can than be rendered in a multitude of ways and styles, like in other GIS systems. In contrast to these systems which cover the professional market, open street map has a more comprehensible interface. At this time about 70.000 people have registered at the project site.
Tracing in Open Street Map
The community is most active in central and northern Europe, and that is reflected in the amount of data and layers you have in the maps. Whereas in areas with an active community the data set is quite detailed, as for example in Berlin, other areas are blank – depending where the focus of the participating community lies. So in some spots you have information down to public phone booths, post boxes and bus stops, whereas in other regions even names of main streets are missing. In that respect the project is comparable to the early wikipedia, and might well grow to similar importance. Continue reading ‘Open Street Map’
Wonderland Magazine #3 “Going Public” available now
Wonderland, a young architects network initiated by a group of former Berlagers, is now offering their Wonderland Magazine as a free PDF download. ‘Getting Started’, ‘Making Mistakes’, and now ‘Going Public’ – the titles of the first issues speak for themselves. The magazine is a refreshing hands on manual for young practices and gives some insight into the situation of architecture startups in Europe.
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Apart from the burning building series, we observe a new trend on dysturb, architecture practices closing down. After the cuts at OMA and EEA’s bancruptcy, we received the link to the video below. It is filmed at Foster+Partners Berlin office on the day the announcement has been made to the team (Fri 13th), 3 days after it was announced to the press. Unfortunately, some of our friends have been working there. More a about the shutdown at bdonline.