Love Bag Ted Noten (by Rob Koudijs)
From 4th to 8th February Las Palmas Rotterdam hosts the Object Rotterdam Fair for autonomous design. Check our calendar for more dates in Rotterdam.
Archive for January, 2009
OMA doorbell (© r.wiesenberger, may 2008, see original)
OMA announced on Tuesday that 50 of their 300 employees have to leave. Business Director van de Chijs comments that he expects OMA to survive the economical crisis as business is going well. But as they intend to be “terribly careful” the diceded on the lay-offs.
In related news OMA announces the same day that they won the competition to build the Taipei Performing Arts Centre (as widely reported). Have also a look at the very interesting runner-up by Abalos+Sentkiewicz.
Taipei Performing Arts Centre by OMA (click to see original size)
Read on for more pictures and the press release of the OMA design. Continue reading ‘OMA fires 50, wins Taipei competition’
Gerhard Richter’s Leserin in various croppings, marquees and hues
Every once in a while I am overcome by the feeling that I could have a glimpse of the future. Using Google Earth for the first time, or discovering screen sharing were such moments. As well as looking at Tineye today. Tineye is a web search service, you show it an image and it finds similar versions of it on the web – all the cropped, distorted, color-optimized, compressed, lower- and higher-resolution versions someone created and uploaded.
Read also what the always interesting things magazine has to say about it [excerpt]:
The site does a good job of pulling up a set of differently sized, coloured and scaled versions of the same painting. Maurice de Vlaminck’s Landscape with Red Trees (1906) gives the above set of thumbnails a ripple of difference – admittedly mostly very slight – but noticeable in terms of hue and crop. But what about paintings by the same artist? Or different versions of the same landscape? (Paul Cezanne painting Mont St Victoire, for example). Or even different views painted using the exact same combination of colours? Imagine if it could be set to find works by the same artist working in a similar way? TinEye could not only help research artistic movements, it could uncover potentially hidden works. It could create new movements.
EEA‘s law office announced today that Egeraat’s practice is bancrupt. EEA has offices in Rotterdam, Budapest, Prag and London and until now we considered the practice’s output mediocre but successful. Apparently the credit crisis arrived to show visible effects on architecture practices. Details, anyone?
Via cobouw.
Abu Dhabi’s Planning Council and the Dutch Architecture Institute agreed a few days ago to cooperate on delivering the second volume of Al Manakh. As in the last issue, OMA will be involved in the research work, as well as Pinktank and Archis.
The issue is scheduled for 2010 and will focus on actual and (what did you expect?) sustainable developments in the Gulf.
via: architectenweb.
Europan 10 launched
Indeed, the ultimate aim of the European vision of the city is to make society, in other words to bring together people of all conditions and origins. However, the dominant trend towards individualisation, the quest for autonomy, cannot be ignored. This is precisely the contradiction that Europan addresses: on the one hand wanting the city – i.e animation, communal life, people – and on the other side wanting intimacy, privacy, home and the immediate circle.
Europan launched the tenth session of their young architects’ competition series yesterday. This year’s topic is inventing urbanity : regeneration, revitalization, colonization.
Whereas the subtopics make sense, the title appears to be far-fetched. Do we need to ‘invent’ urbanity? The principles of urban life are well understood since the first criticism of modern planning had been advanced.
On the other hand I welcome that the recent Europan sessions (‘European Urbanity: Sustainable City and New Public Space’) are much more concerned with density and the urban condition than earlier issues (‘New Housing Landscape’, ‘In-between Cities’). This year’s brief emphasizes equally social and ecological issues.
Participation is limited to the young (i. e. under 40) architect who has 62 competition sites to choose from – 12.000€ for the winner, 6.000€ for the runner-up. The sites are grouped into 3 subtopics –
those that must undergo a strong transformation (regeneration), those that must both keep their identity and redynamise their programme (revitalization) and those that must undergo a development (colonization).
UPDATE: I have put together an overview table of all the competition sites for easy comparison (pdf):
Europan Projects
UPDATE II: Check out the hard-to-find page with the registration statistics. Typical diploma projects come out on top, as of 8th of march 101 registrations for Dunkerque, a harbour pier transformation.
“I would not like to live in a cublicle house. [...] I would rather live on a bench in Hyde Park.”
Snippets from an 1959 interview with Mies van der RoheSound from the BBC Sound Archive – listen here. Via urbanophil.
Now Accepting Berlage Applications
The Berlage Institute Application Deadline has been announced a few days ago, 27th Feb 2009 (application forms here).
The Institute is renowned for their 2-year postgraduate program, which emphasises on research and knowledge (you can generally recognise a Berlager by his jargon). An interesting addition is their PhD programme in collaboration with TU Delft, which is undergoing some changes at the moment. Candidates completing dissertations include Roemer van Toorn, Peter Trummer and Sasha Zanko.
UPDATE –
The Berlage Institute 2009–2010 Postgraduate Prospectus is now online.
And the call for participation in the City Visions Europe European exchange program is now available for download: City Visions Europe Call for participation
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