Tyrrenian Sea (© Hiroshi Sugimoto)
As our dear feed subscribers might have noticed, we’ve been tweaking our feeds (RSS: http://www.dysturb.net/feed/) recently – which led to a lot of double, triple and quadruple posting of the same articles. Sorry for that! We’ve found a solution for these darn special characters. Next in the tweaking queue are the calendar and photo page – expect some improvements soon.
While we’re at it – dysturb readers looking at our feed may also have missed the embedded movie of our recent post of the amazing Berlage master class presentations. Watch their Top-Solid magic here: http://www.dysturb.net/2007/associative-design-berlage/.
If you need some further architainment, why not visit CTTV’s myspace page – or Rem’s. In case you are in the transitional phase like everyone around me and ask yourself grand questions as ‘Which office?’ and ‘What city?’ you could look at wallpaper’s collection of the ‘most exciting architects of the world‘, and decide whether you agree. Then overlap the results with Monocle’s Top 20 liveable cities (login required).
Above photo is by Hiroshi Sugimoto, which I first discovered at the Guggenheim in Bilbao. See his tranquil and pure work at Hirshhorn or his own site. Unfortunately the small thumbnails only convey little of the beauty of his perfectionist imagery.
associative design III – berlage institute second year studio (requires
quicktime, turn sound on)
Last week I attended the presentations of the associative design 2nd year at the Berlage research studio synthetic vernacular. Led by Peter Trummer and assisted by our fellow dysturb evangelist Martin Sobota, the class investigated traditional chinese building typologies. The principles found in the analysis were used to create a set of rules to create a framework to parametrically derive urban structure and architecture of an exemplary plot in Shanghai: Deus ex Machina.
The research group divided up into for teams, each focussing on different base parameters as FAR, degrees of privacy, climate, internal room organisation, sun trajectories. The formal decisions of the teams also led to varying urban fabrics, from low-rise high-density urban mass not unsimilar to south-american favelas to a styled courtyard & slab network. The results are cutting edge and and visualisations of the process are breath-takingly beautiful. But watch the movie first, then proceed to the review.
Continue reading ‘Associative Design @ Berlage’
Power To the House cover, source: Powerhouse Company
The emerging Rotterdam architecture and urbanism office, The Powerhouse Company, has just published their first “autobiographical magazine”, Power to the House. The magazine is an exciting overview of their work over the past couple years, and features architectural and urban projects, buildings under construction, competitions, and research.
The Powerhouse Company is run by Nanne de Ru in Rotterdam, and Charles Bessard in Copenhagen. The two-year old office is off to a good start with their strategy of working across Europe. The young architects have split their office in two cities from the start and exploit free online tools and cheap long-distance networking tools such as Skype, Gmail, You Send It, Lulu and Transavia. They represent a new generation of ambitious architects that know how to exploit the tools of globalisation to get things done.
The magazine is self-published, and can be either downloaded digitally for free, or bought and delivered to you in print form, from Lulu online publishing.
Continue reading ‘Now Published: Power to the House – Powerhouse Company’
Archydam Plan, source: Raise It Up
This coming Saturday between 14.00 and 15.00, 14th July, will see the book launch of Archydam: Een Hoopvolle Stad at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi). Archydam is the product of Raise It Up, the brainchild of Rotterdammer Goshia Grubbin. This will especially be a great event for anyone with kids!
It is an educational project for immigrant children between the ages of 7 and 14 living in Rotterdam. Raise It Up first has the kids think about, and study the world around them. And then at the end of this process they developed an urban plan for a fictional city, Archydam, wherein each of them created their own architectural masterpiece. It is a tool for teaching the kids to understand their new environment, in comparison to the world they originally came from.
© Jeremie Boyard, A sense of déjà vu, 2007, courtesy of Tent Gallery
Of the many end-of-year shows around Rotterdam, we are especially excited for this Thursday’s opening of Knowing Nothing of Agility at the Tent Gallery, Rotterdam. It is the graduating exhibition for Master of Fine Arts students from the Piet Zwart Institute, part of the Willem de Kooning Academie here in Rotterdam.
Opening Event: 12 July 2007 @ 20.00.
Exhibition Runs: 12 July 2007 – 19 August 2007
Students showing: Alexis Blake [US], Jérémie Boyard [FR], Ruth Buchanan [NZ], Angeline Dekker [NL], Deirdre M. Donoghue [FI/IE], Rafael F. Mendieta [PE], Ruth Legg [UK], Lieke Snellen [NL], Niels Vis [NL]
Continue reading ‘Knowing Nothing of Agility: The PZI end-of-year show @ Tent Gallery’
Some TU Delft students we know present their diploma projects tomorrow, Friday the 6th of July. Among them Michiel van Raij, author of Eikonographia. See his invitation.
“Alejandro Zaera-Polo, former dean of the Berlage Institute is now part of the Research Board”
The Berlage Institute, postgraduate laboratory of architecture in Rotterdam, has installed a new Research Board. Until now, Alejandro Zaera Polo (director of FOA) has been the Dean of the Institute. He has been opening the Berlage to a more international field as to tutors, lecturers and new design strategies. Instead of appointing a single follower, the institute named a board of five established figures: Ben van Berkel, Winy Maas, Robert E. Somol, Elia Zenghelis and Alejandro Zaera Polo himself. Vedran Mimica (now Director of Studies) is named director and will be responsible for the management of the postgraduate program and the implementation of strategic advice provided by the Research Board. The idea is to create a new innovative platform, not so much dependent on a single person. One the one hand this model is very flexible and inspires discussion and critique, on the other hand there is the danger of loosing profile by not having a representative person, a champion. Who is responsible for what? How much time will the board members spend at the institute? Will they find a common course? I am curious to follow how this system works out. The openness of the system speaks for the flexibility of the Berlage Institute as an independent research laboratory.
Continue reading ‘Berlage Institute sets new Research Board’
From May 30th to June 5th 2007 Hiroki Matsuura (maxwan a+u) held a workshop on “public space” in the famous chocolate factory “Red October” in Moscow. The workshop was accompanied by a lecture featuring some of the office’s projects. A summary follows.
De Gasperi Housing development, Italy
“Masterplan “De Gasperi Housing development”
The “De Gasperi housing development” was a competition held in 2005 by the city of Naples. After the 2nd phase of the competition, we were awarded first prize and are expecting the start of construction next year. The location of the site is about 6km to the east from Naples city centre, in an adjacent outskirt of Mt. Vesvio. The size of the site is about 5ha and the aim of this project is to regenerate the area, which was built as a high-density post-war residential area in 1950.
Continue reading ‘Hiroki Matsuura at the chocolate factory’
