As every 2 years, we have been attending the Venice Architecture Biennal. Find some first impressions below (if you’re reading the RSS feed, these images might not show):

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MikeViktorViktor Architects – a bmtjk presentation from boemtjak on Vimeo.

thank you for the link Melisa!

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).

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.

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.

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;
they look up to cities like Maastricht and go as far as buying mediaeval castles from Belgium at outrageous cost. Envying Amsterdam and Rotterdam, they want to have old warehouses and factories for their ‘creatives’. Inspired by medieval cities, Almere desires a city heart, and just got a brand new city center with a heavy shopping program. At a time when old cities themselves wriggle out of generic and conformist shopping-mall-downtowns, why should Almere be the next sheep in the herd?

Beyond all these hopeless imitation adventures, Almere is the only growing territory of otherwise stagnating country. The ethnically mixed population profile is rather young, which enjoys the fastest internet connection in the country. Just as in a museum for contemporary architecture, beauties of early as well as late O.M.A, MVRDV, of British [Chipperfield, Alsop], French [Christian de Potzamparc] Japanese [Sanaa], and native [Architecten Cie, UN Studio] are all in Almere’s panorama. Further the local government experiments with new urbanism concepts, such as selforganized-city production; here, one can log on to web and start being part of a planning team. Further, by now Almere has her global export products, such as the Big Brother, which was invented on this young soil a decade ago.

There is the moment where new towns turn adolescent from puberty: they become cities. But is Almere there yet?

All Slides of our airplane tour over Almere (if you’re reading the RSS feed, these images might not show):

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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.

After a two-year hiatus, this celebrates the relaunch of Hunch under a new publisher and editorial direction. The event will include introductory remarks by both Rob Docter, general director of the Berlage Institute and Eelco van Welie, director of NAi Publishers; and a presentation of the new editorial direction and the contents of Hunch 12 by Salomon Frausto, editor of Hunch and head of architectural broadcasting at the Berlage Institute.

About Hunch #12: Bureaucracy
Architecture is contingent on the reality of satisfying a client, meeting building codes, acquiring funding, and gaining political support in order to be realized. Twelve thought-provoking contributions by leading and emerging architects, critics, and scholars that explore the role of bureaucracy in shaping contemporary architecture. Subjects range from governmental regulations and new organizational models for professional practice to contrasting forms of urbanism and divergent interpretations of economic value in relation to cultural capital. The authors focus on how select determinants affect the built environment. At the same time they offer architectural speculations, critical observations, and historical perspectives to rethink these processes in order to influence the buildings and cities of today and tomorrow. Along with these topical contributions—which are supplemented by marginalia of short stories, annotations, terminologies, and inventories—four 1,000-word texts and a visual essay complement the issue to reflect on broader theoretical aspects of architecture culture.

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?

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.

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”.

Many events are planned between now and throughout the exhibition, one of which just passed in Zurich at the ETH, The Open City symposium. The AIR Foundation will also be holding a series of Urban Meetings. Also to be exhibited are the results from the international competition, Gotong Royong City – Envisioning the Future of Jakarta, where the registration period is unfortunately already closed. There are lots of events to keep track of, and we will follow-up in the coming months, as well as integrate the events into our Dysturb.Net Calendar.

The Mission Statement from the curatorial team:

IABR Exploring Urban Futures
The International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) is an international urban research biennale founded in 2001 on the conviction that architecture is a public concern. It is an international festival of exhibitions, conferences, lectures and other activities devoted to themes in the field of architecture and urbanism.

Linking the contemporary Dutch agenda to the international context, the IABR invites the design disciplines to examine an urgent social issue in relation to a particular urban condition.

The IABR serves as a platform, a catalyst and a mediator between local and global cultures, thus advocating an international exchange of ideas and encouraging public discussion among designers, researchers, academics, artists, politicians, public authorities, real estate developers and other investors, social organizations and the public at large, at home and abroad.

Why Cities Matter
Our futures will unfold predominantly in cities. Urban dwellers now comprise more than half the world’s population. What we call the countryside will soon be home to less than a third of humanity. Urban regions are the hubs of the global economy and the producers of culture and welfare, yet they are also the source of immeasurable environmental damage. They are the locus of consumers and slum dwellers alike, of globally operating media and financial networks, of crime and tourism. As they absorb the growth of the world’s population, cities struggle to provide adequate and sustainable living conditions for their inhabitants. The most significant challenge for architecture therefore lies in addressing urban problems.

The curator’s biography – Kees Christiaanse:

Kees Christiaanse (1953) is internationally recognized among today’s foremost researchers and practitioners in the fields of urban design and architecture. He studied architecture and urban design at Delft University of Technology. From 1980-1989 he was a partner at OMA in Rotterdam and consequently founded KCAP Architects & Planners with offices in Rotterdam and Zürich.
From 1996-2003 he was Professor of Architecture & Urban Design at the Technical University Berlin; since 2003 he has been Head of the Institute of Urban Design at the Network City-Landscape of the ETH in Zürich. In addition he is a visiting Professor in the Cities Program of the London School of Economics.

Having successfully combined practical intervention and scientific research in diverse urban conditions, Christiaanse is highly qualified to curate the next Biennale, and to structure and intensify its network with research institutions. He is actively involved in concrete urban projects such as the revitalization of port-areas in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Hamburg. In addition, for the Olympic Legacy Masterplan in London, he is designing an “urban breeding grounds” with delicate systems of public spaces on which interactive cultures of mixed use can unfold, catalyzing the redevelopment of the surrounding city. Furthermore, Christiaanse is actively researching, lecturing, and publishing on the theme of the Open City, and has cultivated an impressive international network of colleagues working on similar conditions.

The biennale runs from the 24th September 2009 to the 10th January 2010. It takes place throughout Rotterdam, most notably at the NAi, but with smaller exhibitions at the Rotterdam Academy of Architecture and Urban Design and a tie-in exhibit in Amsterdam. The Berlage Institute will also be planning a Master Class linked to this year’s theme.

Further Information Link: PDF launch document.

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.

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.

Since the devastating fire that consumed the notorious architecture faculty at the TU Delft in 2008, the architectural community in the Netherlands has been holding their breadth to find out what their new faculty would look like. The open international ideas competition has recently closed, and the TU Delft is planning to launch the project winners at the NAi in the coming weeks.

On March 14th at the NAi, the award winners and mentions will be announced and a debate held to discuss the work. The museum will simultaneous open an exhibition documenting the work that will run until the 7th June 2009. In total 466 entries came from 50 countries, and the competition organizers will publish a monograph of the work this May.

The highly reputed Jan Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, Netherlands (Map) has sent out it’s call for applications (click on “Applications” on top), to be received by the 15 April, 2009. The research program mainly reaches out to Artists, Theoreticians and Designers, but their openness always for diversity of students. If you are one of the unfortunate former employees of a Dutch office, and want to stick around the Netherlands, here is a great chance. You can bet that the competition to get in will be stiff.

The Jan van Eyck Academie is an institute for research and production in the fields of fine art, design and theory. Every year, 48 international researchers realise their individual or collective projects in the artistic and critical environment that is the Jan van Eyck. In doing so, they are advised by a team of artists, designers and theoreticians who have won their spurs globally. All in all, the Jan van Eyck offers artists, designers and theoreticians time and space to do research and realise productions, either about topics of their own choosing or as part of a project formulated by the institute itself.

Multi-Disciplinary Research
Artists, designers and theoreticians at the Jan van Eyck Academie work alongside each other and establish cross-disciplinary exchange. The academy is not led by predetermined leitmotivs. Artists, designers and theoreticians can submit independently formulated proposals for research and/or production in the departments of Fine Art, Design and Theory. They can also participate in research projects formulated by the departments: After 1968. What is the political?; Circle for Lacanian ideology Critique; Design Negation; ExtraStateCraft; Imaginary Property; The Cross-Cultural and the Counter-Modern. The result is a very heterogeneous programme of research topics. The miscellaneous nature of its research projects and productions make the Jan van Eyck a multi-disciplinary institute. The crosslinks which can exist between individual and/or collective projects and the exchange between researchers with different cultural and intellectual interests result in a creative and challe nging working environment.

Programme
The multi-disciplinary research projects are the basis for the Jan van Eyck programme. Researchers, departments and the institute organise various weekly activities, to which special speakers are invited: lectures, seminars, workshops, screenings, exhibitions, discussions, … These activities are announced on the website and via email.

Since the Jan van Eyck also aims to initiate the debate on art, design and theory and make it public, some activities are regularly organised with partners on regional, national and international venues, such as galleries, museums, academies, universities, …

Departments

Fine Art
The Fine Art department offers a unique space for experimentation, production, reflection and debate. Fine Art researchers conduct high-quality research in an environment that encourages the questioning of the assumptions, forms, meanings and contexts that are tied in with the practice of making art today. The fine arts department welcomes artists, individuals and groups, without stipulating conditions regarding form, content and media.

Advising researchers:
Orla Barry, Hans-Christian Dany, Hinrich Sachs, Imogen Stidworthy, Nasrin Tabatabai & Babak Afrassiabi

Design
The Design department focuses on design as research, discourse and publishing. It initiates and supports research projects in the areas of cultural and corporate identity, mapping, print and new media publishing, urban and regional identity, and book design.

The department expressly solicits individual designers to propose and carry out their own research in exchange with the institute’s array of events and presentations. While, formerly, the department used to focus on graphic and communication design, it has since widened its scope to include spatial, product and service design.

Advising researchers:
Keller Easterling, Florian Schneider, Daniel van der Velden

Theory
The Theory department is an international platform for reflection and research. Its mission is to create the opportunity for outstanding researchers to explore alternative ways of shaping their intellectual horizons by providing a stimulating environment for critical inquiry and intense debate. The Theory department welcomes applications from researchers of unusual promise who pursue their artistic and/or intellectual view of the interface of critical theory, philosophy, aesthetics and psychoanalysis with the visual arts.

Advising researchers:
Katja Diefenbach, Dominiek Hoens, Kobena Mercer

I just found out that the office worked at in 2001 in Barcelona updated its website, finally (spanish architects often don’t consider it necessary to be present on the web).

Josep Mias (Mias Arquitectes) emerged as talented young architect from the school of Mirailles and founded his own office in 2001 after the death of Mirailles (see EMBT). I also made that transition from Mirailles to Mias while working there as an intern.

more pictures @ movingcities.org

thanks to: 太阳太阳太阳
we’re talking local Beijing time.

1:07爆料User has marked vehicles, are safe to go home, thanks to the concern of everyone, thank you for the support of this report! Hope that all people in the fire Ping’an home! Wishes the injured a speedy recovery! To pay tribute to the brave fire fighters! ! !

1:07 on the road there are a number of taxi cars and more

1:05 There are fire engines and vehicles to the scene of the fire towards.

1:03 only east-west direction along the bus in the walk outside the security line there are still many people, Yuanwang smoke in the building.

At present, the main road 1:02 Sanhuan roads are still closed, have not seen the car, armed police have access to Chaoyang Theater

User claimed 0:59 withdrawal on the road, passing the police station呼家楼, brightly lit inside, there are 7-8 police on standby in the hall. Area where a pedestrian can not see, about 20-30% of the homes also亮着灯.

0:56 blockade pull very long way to evacuate User claimed but in the complex where to wear to wear.

0:53 watch from a distance, there are still open flame, the building enveloped in a touch of smoke.

爆料0:52 in front of friends is moving away from the core area of the evacuation, along the tight police guard.

Netizen 0:46 at the scene said a large open flame has been extinguished, there are several small open flame should be extinguished slowly, on-site masses gradually go back. The reported serious thank you friends, especially at the scene reported that users of this support.

0:29 Building, the west side of 8-9 layers found in a large open flame.

0:28 watch from a distance, the building at the top layer is probably 5-6 more serious damage

0:27 there are still hundreds of people gathered

0:27 came a bus, police have open-circuit

0:25 from the scene of the fire roaring in a 999 ambulance exit.

0:22 at the bottom of the current building open flame has been extinguished the flames at the top of the already very weak.

0:15 has been the discharge of the current period, the building caught fire in place of 500 meters and the sound of fireworks.

0:14 arrived at the scene of a gas vehicle, it is estimated that natural gas pipeline is to be examined.

0:10 have now passed 12 o’clock midnight, the end of the period set off firecrackers, the sound of fireworks outside down finally cease.

0:06 roof open flame continued to burn, flame out into an even channeling

0:05 Building, the external walls of the basic well-preserved glass.

0:04 Building燃火upper point has been extinguished, some from the top down several 10-story about how a new fire up the points.

0:01 爆料Netizen’s site is the first site

23:57 main building is still relatively strong, there is no sign of collapse.

23:56 to see the building outside of the steel frame moldings some bending deformation, but overall relatively stable

23:51 Police began a new round of clearance.

23:50 at the scene to continue to burn in open fires, smoke began to变淡.

23:49 [the people interviewed at the scene] at the top of the building around about 8:30 to start smoking

23:47 onlookers at the scene of the masses is the burning building to take photographs as the background.

23:46 According to today’s atmosphere is the lowest forecast -2 degrees

23:45 We also see that several of the Beijing Emergency Center of vehicles have changed over the

23:43 at the top of the fire with the wind, but also a bit bigger; smoke floating in the north, but almost nothing on the ground feeling the wind

23:42 smoky scene of the fire is still engaged in the construction of the netizens said that there are open fires, he said that if it is white there is no open flame, and generally steam.

Although 23:41 approaching 24 points, but masses still around a lot.

23:39 engaging in the construction of the netizens said that if the floor is completed, there will be self-rescue equipment, water pressure turbocharger, spray top in time to fight the fire, but because the House did not fully completed, speculation may be related to the fire set not complete

23:38 Building, there are open fires in the upper part of combustion, users engage in construction, said the fire point is the building space above the North and the South permeability

23:35 has a similar air burning hair焦糊味Road

23:34 Netizen’s site, the site of the tent has been ignited, but fortunately was timely Fight

23:33 the fire near the ground covered with silver-white film-like material, onlookers at the scene inside the person has engaged in construction, the wall铝扣板is the decoration used in the external walls of buildings, high temperature combustion of this material will melt, the formation of spherical objects falling to the wind, landed after the formation of silver foil-like material

23:19 Building, at the top, there are open fires in central

23:17 police at the scene ambulance fire engines a mastered

23:16 at the scene have a strong pungent smell of smoke

23:15 爆料Netizen site where the wall has become a temporary cordon, the police non-users to observe the fire site

23:14, Chaoyang Road, armed police have come out, wearing a military uniform photographers also work to

23:11 and 4-5 ambulances entered the scene of the fire, medical personnel entering the scene, N cars that read, “Chaoyang sanitation” of the sprinkler at the scene

23:11 smoke in the main building structure is clearly visible

23:06 Building, at the top continue to smoke billowing smoke

23:04 burning building at the scene after the ground has fallen residues, dust, etc.

23:03 2 black and white police cars under the guidance and entered the train, may be leading from the scene command

23:02 Workers at the scene said the fire is from the west side of the building began burning, spread to the eastern side of the

22:59 on the north side of the burning building, has a 15-story residential buildings, according to the fire about 150 meters

22:59 It is regrettable that at a distance of 300 meters of the building place, there are still people in the discharge of fireworks

22:57 According to the workers near the site said the fire is caused by discharge of fireworks, the fire first of all start from the upper part of the building; from the upper part of the burning building until the fire, about half an hour between the time.

22:56 British scene with one digital camera, photos look him is to get the camera onto the flames

22:52 express the users, it should be 10 points or more earlier MTR began broadcast Say Let all get off at the International Trade

22:50 from the subway users, said on the 10th line Guomao station closed, passengers were evacuated

22:48 engineering vehicles to provide an elevated

22:47 Xiaoyun Road, about 200 meters south of the framework of a flashing lights.

22:43 standby firemen boarded the fire engine, it seems that in the rotation

22:43 left open flame 1,2 Department of

22:41 the fire on the north side, 200 meters around the construction site is still normal

22:36, a fire may fire injuries and was taken away from the ambulance at the scene

22:32 According to the vicinity of the masses, said the fire was caused by fireworks was discharged, the building caught fire on the officers have been transferred.

22:31 user is away from the scene of the fire not far from the site of the Agency

22:30 is not too much wind at the scene, smoke was dissipated

22:30 at the scene could hear the sound of firecrackers

22:29 Number of Road white searchlight, playing in the Building

22:28 Police cordon still expanding, the fire continued

22:25 building is still burning in the allocation of flats, about 3-4 layers

22:23 building a smoke to cover up

22:22 netizens changed locations and found that the upper part of the building there are two ignition points, feeling the fire was under control, there is no just so ferocious

22:16 爆料the request of friends in the police back 50 meters, I feel the police to prevent building collapse affected onlookers

22:15 Building the edge of the 6-storey flats to continue burning their 4-5 layer

22:13, about a platoon of armed police cordon at the scene pulled

22:12 The fire has taken control of

22:11 in the burning building to allow

22:10 Jingguang Bridge has become a police car temporary car parks,呼家楼East Bus Rapid Transit stations, a dozen fire engines lined up in standby

22:07 User: 15 of the moon hidden in smoke when the time is now

[Please Abstract] the evening of February 9 to about 9:00, CCTV, deputy floor on fire, the fire rising from the west side, with the continuous spread of fire, on the west side almost destroyed. Then, by the impact of wind, and everyone spread to the east side, and the scope has expanded, and then a lot of fire engines arrived and failed to immediately control the fire, smoke rising.

22:06 爆料Netizen visual distance of the fire about 300 meters

22:05 a lot of people armed with cameras cameras in shooting

22:04 Have the ambulance at the scene, casualties unknown

22:04 Building, towering flames, thick smoke from the very long-distance can be clearly seen near the traffic has been blocked, cell phone signal disturbance.

22:04 Building has internal flashing lights, the suspect is the staff are crying for help. Night about 9:30, the disappearance of internal flash, it is estimated that staff have the basic evacuation. At this moment, from the building above the fire had been caused by the lower spread.

Review of CCTV, deputy floor on fire, the fire rising from the west side, with the continuous spread of fire, the eastern side of the almost destroyed. Then, by the impact of wind, and everyone spread to the east side, and the scope has expanded!

21:59 CCTV building has been smoke cover.

21:58 user is near the scene claimed the fire

21:56 Police have sealed off the region

21:51 feeling a burning building on the eastern side has been almost

21:50 occurred once or twice a fierce explosion

21:49 just heard the explosion, I feel some inclination Floor

21:48 site has dozens of fire engines

21:47 roof intense burning, black smoke in the gold particles

21:46 According to onlookers at the scene, the fire started from 8:30 significant.

21:40 Up to now, the fire is still burning, the dust billowing smoke, near the district residents have felt very choked.

21:30 in the three-ring near the main road, has gathered thousands of the masses.

21:10 not near a phone signal in the region have limited transportation, have a lot of people gathered nearby, television reporter filming. Fire floor, CCTV is not the main building (big pants), is the edge of the CCTV, deputy floor.

Is said to be in the yard fireworks lit the fire started from the third floor and then, has been up.

Today is the Lantern Festival, Beijing, fireworks going off very enthusiastic.

update: done a bit of research now. 2 interesting things: apparently the FIRE was set off by fireworks that are set off for hours on yuanxiao jie, the last day of spring festival.
It is also reported that “huge chunks are falling off”
via toomanytribbles
The flames are bigger than any I’ve ever seen on a building:

the second thing is that it was first reported by eye witnesses on twitter, sending text messages and mobile phone images. via: building.co.uk

videos HERE

This picture was posted about 15:30 today
It is happening NOW.

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.

Read on for more pictures and the press release of the OMA design.

OMA to build Taipei Performing Arts Centre

Rotterdam/Beijing, 27 January 2009 – The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) has been awarded the first prize in the design competition to build the Taipei Performing Arts Centre. The design, led by OMA partners Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren, was selected from over 135 entries from 24 countries by an international jury.

The scheme includes a 1,500 seat theatre and two 800 seat theatres which plug into a central cube, clad in corrugated glass, that combines the stage accommodations of the three theatres in a single whole. Each theatre can be used independently or in combination with the other theatres. Connecting the different theatres offers new and experimental theatrical possibilities. A public trajectory inside the cube exposes parts of the backstage areas otherwise hidden in typical theatres. The cube is placed on a socle preserving the existing lively local food market.

OMA will collaborate with local architect Artech Inc. to build the 40,000m2 theater complex. The stage design is being developed with Ducks Sceno and the engineering is being provided by Arup. The centre is scheduled to be completed in 2013 with a budget of 3.8 billion Taiwan dollars (90 million Euro). The Taipei city council expects the centre to further facilitate the development of local performing groups and add to Taipei’s image as an international cultural hub.

The project is led by OMA partners Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren. The competition team included associate André Schmidt and architects Adam Frampton and Mariano Sagasta, amongst many others. Koolhaas’s and Scheeren’s previous collaborations include the CCTV Headquarters and TVCC Cultural Centre in Beijing, as well as Prada Epicentre Stores in New York and Los Angeles.

Via cobouw.

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):

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.

From the Europan Site:

Schedule
Launching : 19 01 2009
End of registrations: 29 05 2009
Entries: 29 06 2009
Results: 18 01 2009
[...]

Questions on the sites via the internet forum
Closing date for submitting questions about the sites
Friday, May 1, 2009
Closing date for grouped answers about the sites
Friday, May 15, 2009

Questions on the rules via the internet forum
Closing date for submitting questions on the rules
Friday, May 29, 2009
Closing date for grouped answers on the rules
Friday, June 12, 2009

Submission of entries
Closing date for submitting or sending entries
Monday, June 29, 2009
Closing date for receipt of entries sent on June 29, 2009 by express delivery or by post
Monday, July 20, 2009

Selection
Shortlisting of entries by the national juries
September-October 2009
Comparative European analysis by the committee of the shortlisted project ideas, followed by the Cities and Juries Forum based on this analysis
November 2009
Final selection of entries by the national juries
December 2009 – January 2010

Results
Announcement of results
Monday, January 18, 2010
International presentation of results
May/June 2010

“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.

A new exhibition at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Actions: What You Can Do With The City, explores the thousands of examples around the globe of people reclaiming urban space through Do-It-Yourself (DIY) actions in order to humanize the failed urban realities around them. While urban action has become a hot subject over the recent years, the CCA has approached the subject from a broad critique that mixes 99 Actions done by artists, architects, designers, politicians, activists, athletes and most importantly average citizens. In many cases the actual museum artifact didn’t exist, thus giving the museum the chance to create the work.

The show has been curated by Mirko Zardini, CCA Director and Chief Curator (curatorial essay); and Giovanna Borasi, CCA Curator for Contemporary Architecture (curatorial essay). The show runs until the 19th April, 2009 in Montréal.

For many designers and artists, they will already be familiar with some of the work. And for many of us, we’ve already been involved with our own DIY actions for many years. In this regard, the exhibition is especially important in its presentation of these largely hidden actions to the greater public. In compiling the 99 works together under themes such as: Excess, Choice, Frictions, Guerrilla, Planning Smarter and Sharing; the public finds their own worlds recontextualized through an optic of change and imagination. This is hugely important to society, that an attitude of DIY permeates throughout or collective conscious so that our daily lives become more creative. In essence, this is a contemporary stimulation of the inner tendencies that many avant-garde urban utopias, such as Constant’s New Babylon (images) project, and the Situationist‘s Dérive championed. His work, based on theories of Homo Ludens, now finds itself in nearly all urban exhibits around the world, most recently in Amsterdam (related article).

But many of the actions are political and economic, with actions started by local civic groups, city councilors and mayors, as well as urban transport engineers. Many of these are the most interesting, because it signifies non-designers encroaching into design territory. Speaking with Mirko Zardini at the press opening, he signals a loss of faith in current city planning and urbanism practice. Citizens and users/stakeholders (ie. the public) are rarely the centre of design and planning decisions. It is therefore an intention of the show to stimulate the debate as to what we need as a society within our societies, and how can we get there. Perhaps it isn’t through the design practices that we actually arrive at a user-oriented, accessible and mutable urban environment.

But could there be such a thing as a pluralist approach to urban design where a sort of long-tail of urban activities can be integrated into the built shared built environment? Or is everyday life left to the citizenry and the urban design is merely the placeholder and facilitator of action. This question was exactly the goal behind a project by Maxwan a+u in Rotterdam. For the Port of Rotterdam, they proposed a “harbour park” throughout the unused strips woven between the enormous network of port activities. [Full disclosure: I worked on the project.]

From the Press Release:

The exhibition and its accompanying publication present specific projects by a diverse group of activists whose personal involvement has initiated vital transformation in today’s cities. These human motors of change include architects, engineers, university professors, students, children, pastors, artists, skateboarders, cyclists, pedestrians, municipal employees, and many others who address the question of how to improve the urban experience. Their actions push against accepted norms of behaviour in cities, at times even challenging legal limitations. The individuals and groups presented in the exhibition employ a range of approaches, from skating and parkour to dumpster diving and urban foraging. Some engage architecture directly by finding new uses for abandoned buildings, while others create tools for guerilla gardening. In their individual critiques of urban modes of production and consumption, these actors share a conviction that the traditional processes of top-down civic planning are insufficient, and new approaches and tools must be developed from the ground level upwards.

Actions: What You Can Do With the City features international contemporary architectural projects, design concepts, and research conveyed through a range of materials including architectural drawings, photographs, videos, publications, artefacts, and websites. The 97 distinct actions presented in the exhibition are drawn from a larger number identified by the curators. They include projects related to the production of food and urban agriculture; the planning and creation of public spaces to strengthen community interactions; the recycling of abandoned buildings for new purposes; the appropriation of urban sites into terrain for play, such as soccer, climbing, skateboarding, or parkour; the alternate use of roads for walking or rail lines as park space; the design of clothing to circumvent urban barriers against loitering or resting on benches; and many others. The exhibition places particular emphasis on the activists’ tools, which comprise unusual materials ranging from large-scale inflatables and fruit-collecting dresses to seed-bomb rocket launchers and wheelbarrow-bicycle hybrids. Included are masks disguising children as horses, or sneakers customised for sliding along railings.

Over the past couple years, the CCA (Youtube Channel) has made a greater effort to extend itself publicly through digital media and it is working, with the quality of work and method improving with each new exhibition. An interesting website has been created, CCA-ACTIONS, and they’ve produced a promo-video (below).

Another fascinating example of Actions in the city is the recent snowboard video (below), Forum or Against’em, from Forum. The just released video especially documents urban riding in Montréal and Québec City last year when we had a near record snowfall which left the city under meters of snow, turning the concrete and steel environments into an endless snowpark.

UN Studio has recently finished up the Star Place luxury shopping centre in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. FlickR user Hiroshiken has uploaded some photos and videos recently. The best video details the Lighting Installation at night.

Below is the project information and photos from UN Studio (unless otherwise stated):

Project history
Before UNStudio was engaged on the project the architectural firm of Dynasty Design Corp and HCF Architects had already made a design for the location, of which the outlines and main structure were preserved. Consequently, the main structure and volume of the current building were predetermined. Within this framework UNStudio made some important alterations. Within the existing structure, the characteristic integration of program and construction that UNStudio strives for, resulting in the typical column-free spaces normally produced by the architects, was not possible. Therefore, in order to achieve the visual and spatial effects of free-flowing unobstructed spaces by other means, a public void was introduced that brings daylight to the floor spaces and establishes visual connections between the different floor levels.

Architectural design UNStudio
Positioned at an urban plaza with a roundabout, the building occupies a triangular lot, giving it a wide and open frontage. Curving inwardly, the building embraces this position and opens itself fully to the city. For UNStudio the question of the building began with the façade as an urban manifestation. However the chosen solution of a ‘deep’ front elevation, with a prominent pattern made by the application of protruding elements, was immediately reconnected to the internal arrangement of the spaces around the atrium, the circulation through the atrium and the views from the inside to the outside. As a result, the project now consists of a tight package of inside-outside relations.

Internal Circulation Diagram, Photo © UNStudio

Void
The 12-floor deep void is placed beside the façade, rather than deeper inside the building, in order to facilitate such inside-outside relations. This void forms the main connecting element within the building, with three panorama elevators and two sets of escalators forming the vertical circulation. The void consists of a straight, circular opening which optically appears to slant and twist. This optical effect is generated by the way in which escalators have been positioned inside the atrium space. At each floor level the position of the escalators rotates by ten degrees, resulting in a 110 degree rotation from ground level to the roof.

Circulation View, Photo © UNStudio

Surrounding the void, an open circulation space provides direct access to the shops, through doors in the glazed circulation walls.
Each floor can house two to seven units, which operate completely independently. Thus, in contrast to a department store, the shop floors can be seen as individual stacked units, with the atrium functioning as a vertical shop window.

The detailing of the circulation space emphasizes the relation of the inside and the outside; interior floor tiles, arranged in the same patterns which are also found on the sidewalk outside the shopping center, reflect the radiating pattern of the façade. The fire shutters, which are positioned around the central space, roll out horizontally from the columns, along rails which are integrated within recessed lighting rings in the ceiling.

Circulation View, Photo © UNStudio

Façade
The open and transparent glass façade is patterned with projecting horizontal, aluminum-faced lamellas and vertical glass fins that together form a swirling pattern. This pattern breaks up the scale of the building, which, from the outside has no legible floor heights as a result of the one-meter spacing between the horizontal lamellas. Ostensibly, the pattern of lamellas and fins acts as a sunscreen and weather barrier, but in reality the combination of the wish to make a ‘deep’ façade while preserving the internal floor space was behind the choice to apply a pattern to the outside frontage.

The pattern generates a strong urban effect, but has been modified on the basis of internal, functional demands. The vertical fins are for instance shallower and fewer towards the top of the building, where the restaurant is situated, allowing for higher transparency and better views towards the park opposite the building.

Circulation View, Photo CC Hiroshiken on FlickR

The fins are made of laminated, low-iron glass for extra clarity. A ‘frit’ (dot pattern) has been printed on both sides of the glass, so that the fins appear white by day. Thus they seem to be made of the same material as the horizontal lamellas, resulting in the visual illusion of a unified façade pattern. But from the inside, the glass fins offer uninterrupted views to the outside, as the dots are not apparent from the inside, just like net curtains. The production of the fins, which all have different dimensions, was facilitated by parametric design and production techniques.
The façade pattern wraps around the complete building, thus providing the closed rear facade with the same identity, but in a more simplified design.

Exterior Night View, Photo © UNStudio

At night, colored lighting replaces the optical effects produced by the depth embedded in the façade motif, with a fluid layer of changing hues and tones. The dots on the laminated glass fins pick up the colors distributed by LED-lights which are integrated at the bases of the fins. The minimized light fittings contribute to the luxurious appearance of the façade. The night-time appearance of the building is important in Taiwan, which has a tradition of late-night shopping and all-night markets.

Feng shui
The façade pattern was developed using animation software. A series of images was generated, which the client studied with the aid of a feng shui consultant. The final pattern was chosen because it represents a red phoenix.

Project information
12 floors, including 2 basement floor
GFA: 25.500 m2 excl. parking levels
Building-footprint: 2.035 m2
height of facade: 51.30m / total height incl. Elevator machinery: 58.53m

Project Credits
Star Place, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, 2006 – 2008
Client: President Group, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Location: Kaohsiung
Program: Luxurious shopping center
Design of exterior: Façades and lighting, related exterior spaces
Design of Interior: Circulation zones and Public spaces
Building surface: 25.500 m2 + 11.100 m2 for parking levels
Building volume: 135.000 m3 + 38.000 m3 for parking levels
Building site: 28050 m2
Status/Phase: Realization

UNStudio Credits
Ben van Berkel, Caroline Bos, Astrid Piber with Ger Gijzen, Christian Veddeler, Mirko Bergmann, Albert Gnodde, Sebastian Schott, Freddy Koelemeijer, Katja Groeger, Jirka Bars, Andreas Brink, Simon Kortemeier, Shu Yan Chan

Lighting design: Unstudio, Arup Lighting, Amsterdam
Façade animation content: UNStudio, Litelife (Cologne,Germany), Alliance Optotek Corporation (Hsinchu, Taiwan)

Executive Architects:
HCF Architects, Planners & Associates, Taipei, Taiwan
Interior Design: Dynasty Design Corp, Taipei, Taiwan
Design Coordination: Mulberry Planning and Design, Taipei, Taiwan
Lighting execution: Alliance Optotek Corporation, Hsinchu, Taiwan

I just stumbled over the website of koolhaas houselife, a movie about OMA’s villa Floriac in Boredaux (flickr images):

This is realized through the stories and daily chores of Guadalupe Acedo, the home’s caretaker and housekeeper, and the other people who look after the building. Following and interacting with Guadalupe, blooms an unusual and unpredictable look at the spaces and structure of the building.

This approach is in stark contrast to the usual clinical clutter-free and people-less depiction of architecture on the one hand. On the other hand it shows us a building not in it’s new (idealised) state, but after some years of use, when small adaptations have been made, some details proved to work well and others fail: the design is confronted with human use, the structure became a home. In Koolhaas words (video after the break):
“You see here two systems colliding: the platonic conception of cleaning and the platonic conception of architecture”.

MovingCities.org has published the fith and last part of a wonderful documentary on China. Each part is about 6 minutes and covers different themes.
The documentary is a mix of very quiet, long shots of remarkable sites and thoughts of five local architects to the respective theme.

‘China According to China’ is initiated, developed and shot by Diego Grass Puga from 0300TV, a web channel for architectural broadcasting. It was completely filmed before 2008’s Beijing Olympics and edited right after its ending.

It isn’t an effort to portrait a certain scene [the profiles of each character are quite diverse] but to establish four issues that every Chinese architect has to deal with in today’s practice [opening-up, speed, agriculture & education] all of which may set the parameters of future development for Chinese architecture –and this is no prophecy: power has always proven to be Architecture’s most diligent ally.

Instead of branding/promoting individual genius, this is a story of how an [almost] obsolete discipline struggles to follow the pace of China –just like everyone else, everywhere.

“CHINA ACCORDING TO CHINA” presents a set of thoughts by five local architects on China’s current situation and history. Foreword by MovingCities.
Ai Wei Wei [FAKE design], Jiang Jun [Urban China], Yu Kongjian [Turenscape], Wang Shu [Amateur Architecture Studio] and Ma Qingyun [MADA s.p.a.m.] are in charge of defining the issues that every Chinese architect has to deal with in today’s practice, all of which may set the parameters of future development for Chinese architecture.

China According to China / Part 1: opening-up from 0300TV on Vimeo.

“What is exactly happening here?” [Bert de Muynck, movingcities.org]
We might never know. We neither speak nor read mandarin; and above all: it seems that we’ve forgotten the existence of any kind of Chinese Architecture before the [overexposed] Bird’s Nest. So, we choose five local architects who were willing to share their experience from the inside.

China According to China / Part 2: speed from 0300TV on Vimeo.

Speed [in design and construction]: It isn’t only matter of opportunities and good reflexes: it’s also an issue of control and power. How does Chinese Architecture deals with this form of speed?

China According to China / Part 3: agriculture from 0300TV on Vimeo.

Agriculture: 30 years of fast-placed industrialization and urbanization cannot erase more than 9000 years of agri-culture. Is this destruction/construction cycle about erasing everything? Or is it just another manifestation of China’s agricultural intelligence?

China According to China / Part 4: education from 0300TV on Vimeo.

Education: This five architects we’ve chosen are all part of an extremely wide international network of influences, deeply rooted to the most relevant academic centres [Harvard, MIT] and close to the most renowned architects [Koolhaas, Herzog & De Meuron].
But what’s in it for the average Chinese architect? What about the thousands of students who’re not part of the 12 top Chinese architecture schools [Tsinghua, Tongji and South East to name a few] linked to the West? Are they pursuing individual genius or a mass of skilled workers?

China According to China / Part 5: architecture from 0300TV on Vimeo.

Architecture: 2008, China the discipline has started to shift from a quest for a certain local identity [mid 1990’s – early 2000’s] into acknowledging the social power of Architecture.
In the context of an over-accelerated market, 10.000.000 years of History and an outdated educational system, is there any formula of how to do things right? What can we expect from Chinese Architecture? Ai Weiwei [FAKE Design] has something to say about it. Featuring images of Three Shadows Photography Art Centre and Red Brick Art Galleries [Chaochangdi Village, Beijing].
The End.

Check out more of MovingCities.org here. It is a Beijing-based think-thank investigating the role that architecture and urbanism play in shaping the contemporary city. Established in 2007 by Bert de Muynck (BE) and Mónica Carriço (PT), living and working in Beijing since 2006, MovingCities publishes, collaborates, research, interacts, talks and walks, and operate as embedded architects.

Once a gigantic high-performance machinery, daily output of 8,500 tons of coke, as well as ammoniac, bitumen, and benzene, workplace for 1,000 people. Since 1999 open to the public. Today development area for the next building stage on the World Heritage Site.

The coking plant development concept has been presented by ASTOC , the cologne based office for which I am working. It is the basis for future land-use plan. Tenor: The coking plant should become an animated area, whilst maintaining its industrial structures. An urban space for culture and work. Varied, self-dynamic, but easily comprehensible and generating an identity.

The “blue axis” along the row of coke ovens which simultaneously marks the boundary between the black and the white side*1, is assigned a special meaning . It is the entrance, showpiece and – due to its location at the row of the ovens – reception room of the monument coking plant.

The sieving plant in the centre of the “blue axis” will be the knowledge-oriented entry towards the coking plant as well as bridge towards the surrounding. Info point, access to the history of the coking plant, educational institution, conference room. Link to “Nordsternpark” in Gelsenkirchen and to Emscher Landscape Park ( see also Thomas’ article “Emscherpark – Industrial Heritage Done Right”) in the entire northern Ruhr area.

Fundamental ideas of the development concept: Preservation of the existing structures, moderate additions, conversion, settlement. Primarily enterprises from the cultural industry and the service sector. New development areas adjoin the west. Fixed within the development line between the monument and adjacent forest. Variable regarding the division of plots. *2

*1
black side: production of coke
white side: further processing to gas

*2
Extracts from the Entwicklungsgesellschaft Zollverein

Montréal’s Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), in collaboration with the Cities Programme of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), will host this year’s James Stirling Memorial Lecture on The City this coming Thursday, 13 Nov. 2008 (7pm) at the museum; admission is free. In it’s 3rd year, the international competition intends to “promote innovative approaches to urban phenomena, and to reposition architecture at the centre of debates on the city of the 21st century.”

This year’s lecture is by Robert Mangurian and Mary-Ann Ray of Studio Works (Los Angeles) and will present Beijing Inside Out: Caochangdi.

Research Project

Caochangdi, one of more than 300 urban villages in the city of Beijing, tells a specific story about itself and its mostly illegal residents (including farmers, floaters, taxi drivers, and world-class artists). Also embedded within it are both the problems and the possibilities of a new urban space that is redefining the city of Beijing at this pivotal point in human history when cities make up half of the world’s population. The lecturers, who live and work in Caochangdi, dissect the multiple phenomena that form this dynamic urban condition.

Robert Mangurian and Mary-Ann Ray’s winning proposal opens up an original discussion of issues of development in China, going beyond a concern with extreme densification, and addressing a dynamic urban context in a way that is both historically-informed and clearly oriented to emerging social, political and cultural processes.

Robert Mangurian and Mary-Ann Ray, principals at Studio Works in Los Angeles, were selected from 43 applicants from 15 countries, ranging from senior scholars and practitioners to emerging voices.

This year’s jury included:
James Corner (Founder and Director of Field Operations, New York; Chair and Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Design), Ann Pendleton-Jullian (Associate professor of Architecture, MIT School of Architecture and Planning, Boston), Matthias Sauerbruch (Architect, Sauerbruch Hutton Architects, Berlin and London), Fran Tonkiss (Associate Director, Cities Programme, the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)) and Mirko Zardini (Architect, Urban Theorist, and Director of the CCA).

MVRDV and co-architect ADEPT have just released images of their winning entry for the Rødovre Skyscraper Competition in Denmark. The tower reaches to 116m and is a mixed-use programme of appartments, hotel, retail and offices. We are aiming for more images very soon.

(Rødovre – Copenhagen, November 3rd, 2008) The municipality of Rødovre, an independent municipality of Copenhagen, Denmark, announced today MVRDV and co-architect ADEPT winner of the design competition of the Rødovre Skyscraper. The 116 meter tall tower accommodates apartments, a hotel, retail and offices. A public park and a plaza are also part of the privately funded scheme.

The new skyscraper with a total surface of 21,688 m2 will be located at Roskildevej, a major artery East of the centre of Copenhagen. It is after the Frøsilos MVRDV’s second project in Copenhagen. The skyscraper’s shape reflects Copenhagen’s historical spire and present day high-rise blending in the skyline of the city, it further combines the two distinctive typologies of Rødovre, the single family home and the skyscraper in a vertical village. Consideration of these local characteristics leads to Copenhagen’s first contemporary high-rise.

Responding to unstable markets the design is based on a flexible grid, allowing alteration of the program by re-designating units. These ‘pixels’ are each 60m2 square and arranged around the central core of the building, which for flexibility consists of three bundled cores allowing separate access to the different program segments.

On the lower floors the volume is slim to create space for the surrounding public plaza with retail and restaurants; the lower part of the high rise consists of offices, the middle part leans north in order to create a variety of sky gardens that are terraced along the south side. This creates a stacked neighbourhood, a Sky Village. From this south orientation the apartments are benefitting. The top of the building will be occupied by a hotel enjoying the view towards Copenhagen city centre. The constellation of the pixels allows flexibility in function; the building can be transformed by market forces, however at this moment it is foreseen to include 970m2 retail, 15,800m2 offices, 3,650m2 housing and 2,000m2 hotel and a basement of 13,600m2 containing parking and storage.

Flexibility for adaptation is one of the best sustainable characteristics of a building. Besides this the Sky Village will also integrate the latest technologies according to the progressive Danish environmental standards. Furthermore the plans include a greywater circuit, the use of 40% recycled concrete in the foundation and a variety of energy producing devices on the façade.

A public park adjacent to the Sky Village is part of the project and will be refurbished with additional vegetation and the construction of a ‘superbench’, a meandering public path and bench. A playground, picnic area and exercise areas for elderly citizens are also part of the plan.

Lead architect MVRDV and co-architect ADEPT Architects won the competition from BIG, Behnisch and MAD. Winy Maas and Jacob van Rijs present the plan today in Copenhagen together with Anders Lonka and Martin Krogh from local office Adept Architects, Dutch engineering firm ABT and Søren Jenssen act as consultants for the project. Earlier MVRDV realised the Frøsilos / Gemini Residence in the port of Copenhagen: a residential project marking a new way in refurbishment of old silo’s which was highly acclaimed and received international awards.

I am struck by this image by Isaac Brekken recently published (article) alongside an article about early voting in the US elections by the New York Times. The article by Jennifer Steinhauer looks at early voting in the US and includes other photos by multiple photographers. On top of being a fantastic photo aesthetically, the complexity it shows so clearly is fascinating.

What it seems to reveal is the at times blunt pairing of capitalism, materialism and democracy in the United States. In the same space you can shop, cast your early vote, and then step over to the slot machines to try your luck. It is of course in Las Vegas, which has a distinct legal and commercial environment, but it forces so many questions to the surface about the culture of this place and the United States in general. Is this what we want in our societies? That democracy and the right to vote becomes a banality only facilitated through commercial space? It highlights that for many people, the idea of a public, civic space that guides a democratic and political process has been completely eroded. The government no longer has widespread representation through architecture and urban space, but rather is hidden within the vast network of privatized and commercialized environments sprawling across the country. Without a White House, and the state legislature buildings, what would be left of civic space?

It is worth looking at Brekken’s other images. He is based in Las Vegas and covers the (what one could consider superficial) things that absorb the city.

I’ve watched a highly interesting documentary on the prospects of solar power today. Now an english version is available on youtube:

Also highly interesting: The Car of the Future. Featuring Opel P-1 experimental, a car that ran 375miles on one Gallon. That’s about 160 km per liter or less than 1 liter per 100 km….

Here is an article (again in dutch) that describes the way it worked (back in 1959).
Apparently, just as some other inventions, they were patented by shell and never got into further development. How come?

Digital Materiality by Fabio Gramazio and Matthias Kohler
You may have seen their work at the Biennale this year. They did the installation at the Swiss Pavilion, using ETH’s famous brick laying robot. They also just published Digital Materiality in Architecture

Robots build! At their program in architecture and digital production at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich), the architects Gramazio and Kohler have installed a research facility that is unique in the world. It is based on a computer-controlled industrial robot that produces construction elements directly from design data. The robot works flexibly with a tremendous range of tools and materials. In this way Gramaio and Kohler probe the exciting potential of digital design, construction, and manufacturing techniques for architecture. In their projects they incorporate insights and discoveries from the field of computer-aided production into the architectonic design process, using computers to develop innovative construction techniques and architecture. First structures using robots have already been built, for exampe the much noted Gantenbein vineyard in Fläsch (CH) or the installation at the Swiss Pavilion at the 11th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice.

We’ve added the further lectures to our calendar, to which you can subscribe here

28 October 2008
The Model and Its Architecture
Patrick Healy

04 November 2008
Proposals for Decolonizing Architecture
Sandi Hilal, Alessandro Petti

18 November 2008
Architecture Model Shop
Vincent de Rijk
(also check out our previous post on Vincent de Rijk here)

25 November 2008
Towards a General Theory of the Building Envelope
Alejandro Zaera-Polo (you can see a previous lecture of AZP with a draft of the ‘envelope theory’ here)

02 December 2008
Visual Experience in Painting and Cinema
Hubert Damisch, Teri Wehn-Damisch

09 December 2008
This stands as a sketch for the future: Muriel Cooper and the Visual Language Workshop
David Reinfurt

16 December 2008
Heroes and Losers: Resolution and Definition in Architecture
Hans Werlemann

20 January 2009
Open-Source Urbanism and the Language of the Global Polis
Nader Vossoughian

27 January 2009
The Dictionary of Received Ideas
Enrique Walker

03 February 2009
Contemporary Architecture and the Question of (Architectural) History
Alan Colquhoun, Mary McLeod

Last week my friends Bob and Christian gave a new silhouette to cologne, by means of illuminating the television tower with a spectacular lighten moved dress.

Up to the 1980s the construction of a television tower was a matter of course for many German cities to underline their urban character. Cologne is no exception: The local Colonius was designed by Erwin Heinle and was finished in 1981. With a height of 266 meters it is not only the highest television tower in Nordrhine-Westfalia, but also a striking landmark that is visible from far. As such, it is an inherent part of Cologne’s skyline by day and night. Unfortunately its significance as a tourist destination has been lost since the closure of the observation platform several years ago.
The architects Christian Dieckmann and Robert Wetzels want to re-raise the awareness for the significance of the distinctive building for the cityscape of Cologne:

An exhibition in the elevated ground level documents the development of the television tower and gives extensive background information. Moreover the panorama view that would be visible from the observation platform (when open to the public) is replicated by means of printable film on the basement windows, and selected architecture and urban development projects are explicated in the “Schaufenster zur Stadt”. At “Liegen unterm Turm” at the bottom of the Colonius visitors can savour coffee and cake and enjoy the television tower from a distinct angle. But the most spectacular event is the artful illumination of the tower. By illuminating its column the Colonius is transformed into a giant sculpture that is thus promoted to a highlight of Cologne’s nightly skyline during plan08.

Dieckmann’s and Wetzels’s and vision is to establish a competition in the future: the Colonius Award. International artist and designers shall be asked yearly to hand in their proposal for an illumination of the Colonius. The illumination of the television tower during plan08 is made possible by Stadt Köln, Deutsche Funkturm GmbH and Deutsche Telekom AG.

I was also in Venice for the inauguration of the 11th Venice Architecture Biennale. Unlike the other members of Dysturb, this was the fourth time I have attended the opening of the biennale (in 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008). So, for me, it was difficult not to compare Aaron Betsky’s work at the Arsenale to the work that had been done by the previous international curators (Burdett, Foster, or Sudjic) of the other biennales. On top of this, the Venice Biennale is the main case study for my PhD thesis: the 1st Venice Architecture Biennale.

I have to say that when I left the Arsenale after seeing the exhibition, my enthusiasm was lukewarm: on the one hand I thought, as Darrel did, that the theme chosen by Betsky was loaded with intellectual potential and openness of interpretation and that overall, the show was well curated due to the compactness of the manifesto format. (In the past years the Arsenale’s bombarded the visitors with an overload of images, information, texts, and so forth.) But at the same time, many of the installations and accompanying manifestos remained obscure and slightly too artistic for my own tastes, and likely for the taste of many architects.

But now I see the light…

It was partly because I was curious and all together critical about the idea, and partly because I thought that maybe I could found out something that I did not already know about the Architecture Biennale, that I decided to buy “The Making of the Biennale” with Aaron Betsky. It is a DVD on sale for 15 Euros at the Biennale wherein Betsky explains his ideas for the exhibition while walking through each of the 20 installations of the Arsenale’s exhibition.

I finally understand what the Coop Himmelb(l)au machine is for, or what the Zaha Hadid sculpture represents. I also realised that the Peneznic and Rogina installation is made of moving parts, or that the Philippe Rahm piece simulat a miniaturized gulf stream made of hot and cold poles. I even realised that I missed the last installation by the Gustafson Porter group, the Towards Paradise garden, a piece referring to Voltaire’s last phrase in Candide: Il faut cultiver notre jardin.

If there is still time, I recommend you have a look at this video before visiting the Biennale; because even if we don’t like to admit it, there are times when we need a bit of didactics.

The German architecture magazine, BauNetz, has added a short, but smart interview with Tim Edler from Realities:United. Realities:United is by far the leader in media surfaces integrated to architecture, and the short interview articulates how Edler sees their work in relation to architecture and what projects are meaningful to him. He states that in some cases: “Media facades are also a symptom of weak architecture.” Talking about the integration of media in European architecture, he argues that: “Communication media in architecture is often motivated by an image of modernity” and that it stems from our reading of Asian cities or from science-fiction films. The video also highlights a collaboration with Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos from Spain, as featured in the Re-Sampling Ornament exhibition. One of the office’s exciting new projects, the ECB building in Frankfurt, aims “To shift technical systems to an aesthetic role” and proposes the total control of the lighting system at night for a massively orchestrated 3-dimensional sculpted light show.

The video is presented as part of BauNetz TV’s Crystal Talk series, which includes other recognized architects and designers such as Delugan Meissl. Other BauNetz videos can be found at their You Tube subscription page.

A small but fantastic exhibition, Re-Sampling Ornament, has just finished at the Schweiser Architecture Museum / Swiss Architecture Museum (SAM) in Basel. Curated by Oliver Domeisen and Francesca Ferguson, the show featured a selection of contemporary projects that integrate ornament into the design strategy in a fundamental way, rather than applied. Each of the projects are situated within the context of their ornamental typologies and shown next to historical examples considered as lineage. With the recent fascination with pattern, biology and morphologies in architecture, the exhibit is both timely and a smart addition to the current thinking about ornament as it confronts the still predominant attitude of reductionist modernism. The magazine-style catalogue, SAM #5: Re-Sampling Ornament, is equally as good. It’s also worth looking at the other SAM catalogues accompanying the previous exhibitions.

You can see a small selection of photos on either Dysturb.Net or FlickR.

Rotterdam’s Air Foundation has a promising lineup of debates as part of their Urban Meetings series of public dialogues. I would especially love to see the debate questioning, “Are cities more important than countries?”
Download the English Pamphlet (pdf).

Urban Meetings
With over half of the world’s population now living in cities, and up to two-thirds by the middle of the century, the issue of how to run a city is becoming increasingly important. Rapid urbanization is having a strong impact on communities, cities, economies, urban ecologies and policies.

How to develop and run a city as an engine for for balanced, inclusive and sustainable growth?? How to connect the challenges of managing and of designing a city in order to further that urban sustainability?

In the context of its 50th anniversary the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS) has teamed up with the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) and the Architecture Institute Rotterdam (AIR), to present a series of Urban Meetings to explore the outlines of an Urban Agenda for the 21st century.

By juxtaposing the global with the local perspective, and by triggering an exchange between urban managers and developers, and urban designers and architects, the series of Urban Meetings hopes to shed light on where our cities may be heading if headed right.

Among the speakers are Jan Pronk (former Dutch Minister of Development Cooperation and former Minister of the Environment), Anthony Williams (former mayor of Washington DC), Ivo Opstelten (current mayor of Rotterdam), Jaime Lerner (architect and former mayor of Curitiba, Brazil), Vedran Mimica (Director of the Berlage Institute, Rotterdam and curator of the 3rd International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam) en Kees Christiaanse (architect, and curator of the 4th IABR).

Urban Meetings:
Wednesday 8 oktober – Are cities more important than countries?
Tuesday 14 oktober – Sustainable cities
Tuesday 28 oktober – Leading cities
Thursday 13 november – Safe cities
Thursday 20 november – Inclusive cities
Wednesday 26 november – My city

The Urban Meetings will be moderated by Felix Rottenberg and will take place in Zaal Staal, in the World Trade Center Rotterdam (Beursplein 33).

They are free of admission and will be held in English. We do recommend that you make reservations: info@airfoundation.nl. Please state your name, the name of your organization, the date of the meeting you wish to attend and how many people will accompany you.

Upon arriving in Venice for this year’s 11th Venice Architecture Biennale, the Dysturb.Net team was so sick that we didn’t know what to do. But when we began to see this year’s freebie-hipster-cotton-bags that have become a standard give-away from the pavilions, we started to feel better. These bags are the absolute best way to self-promote the individual pavilions, other than offering free drinks, which we also support. On top of this, they can be beautiful, and a great reminder from year-to-year of the best pavilions and their graphic design campaigns. So we said to ourselves, let’s collect them and vote for the best bags…. what a great way to go “beyond building“! To all you future curators of your country’s pavilions, take note = give away some wickedly designed hipster bags and everyone will come!

Click on the photos for a complete high-res shot!

Please comment on which bag you think is the best, and if you have more to submit we would be happy to post them.

The official catalogue came at a price though, 50 Euros for press, 70 for visitors. We hope someone builds a Pavilion out of these plastic shells holding the books together.

This neon-orange-glow bag was handed out at the opening ceremony – we missed to get this one while sick at home. We photographed this dude on the 2G Vaporetto Party – he’s lucky we didn’t jump him for it!

This is only the Australian back-up bag, the larger one was already out of stock. The nice booklet with an overview of all the exhibited models was a separate purchase.

The cliché stays true, black is the most common color.

The Danish bag was one of the most spotted ones – due to its size, and the nice handle.

We received this bag of the easy-to-miss Portugese Pavillion, which is worth a visit due to Souto de Moura’s mirror installation. The bag came with a really nice book on the piece.

Spin the bag fast enough and you get the Swiss flag.

Excitement for the idea – Potential of the idea

What happened to the biennale was the main question running through my head the whole time inside the main pavilions this year. The theme, Out There: Architecture Beyond Building, is loaded with intellectual potential and openness of interpretation, and yet did not seem to unite the chosen content exhibited. It is possible that the theme developed by Aaron Betsky was too broad and not accurately defined, or that it was too ambitious without the right resources.

While the biennale is somewhat desynchronised every year –due to the individual country pavilions running with their own themes- this only emphasizes the need for strong curation of the main exhibition pavilions. The Arsenale Pavilion overall read more as a who’s-who list of architects than an intentional presentation of relevant work. Add to this the fact that many pieces of the exhibition where older, well-known works, they were unable to inspire surprise.

Dysturb.Link: For a full set of photographs from the Venice Architecture Biennale 2008, visit our Dysturb.Net FlickR Set

While the Arsenale had a number of well-executed pieces, the overall sequence of the exhibition seemed broken and detached. Within the Arsenale was a sub-exhibit entitled Roma Interrotta / Rome Interrupted, a fantastic set of original urban plan drawings originally produced in 1978 for one of the “International Art Meetings” conceived by the architect Piero Sartogo. The beauty of the plans are not overshadowed by any hype, and the spatial experience is completely discontinuous to the next room, Uneternal City. The experiential contrast of the two rooms, even though the theme is continuous, asks the simple question “Is the Uneternal City more hype than content?” There is a small project by BIG Architects in Uneternal City that proposes a “Pizza Plan” for Rome. While it is funny, it is only that, it doesn’t go further.

The Padiglione Italia within the Giardini felt more successful. The pavilion was tightly organized and the overall sequence was more fluid and continuous. There was more play within the source of content and the type of representation. Photo-collages, installations, sculptures, videos, models and drawings are all put at the service of what each architect/office has been investigating. There is less burden of trying to “go beyond” while still playing with the theme itself.

The theme in its context

When the theme was originally announced, I questioned the theme in a previous post. The uncanny similarity to themes already investigated by Volume magazine are in the least humourous, but also question the originality of the curating. To quote Betsky’s text from the exhibition catalogue:

Out There: Architecture Beyond Building
The 11th Architecture Biennale, entitlted Out There: Architecture Beyond Building, points the way to a beautiful and critical architecture arising out of the tomb of building. It starts out by pointing out what should be an obvious fact: architecture is not building. Buildings are objects and the act of construction leads to such objects, but architecture is how we think and talk about buildings., how we represent them, and how we build them. More generally, architecture is a way of representing, shaping and offering critical alternatives to the built environment. In a tangible sense, architecture is that which allows us to be at home in the world. In our society, buildings are too often the residue of the desire to make another world -a better world, open to possibilities beyond the everyday.

This year’s theme seems uncannily similar to the manifesto of Volume magazine, published by Archis:

About Volume
Volume is an independent quarterly magazine that sets the agenda for design. With going beyond architecture’s definition of ‘making buildings’ it reaches out for global views on designing environments, advocates broader attitudes to social structures, and reclaims the cultural and political significance of architecture. Created as a global idea platform to voice architecture any way, anywhere, anytime, it represents the expansion of architectural territories and the new mandate for design.

We are architects = Are we architects?

I applaud this theme absolutely, and hope that the idea resonates for a long period within the discipline, and within the public. It is obviously a theme that is widely felt within the Netherlands, especially because of the work of offices such as AMO. Their work literally goes beyond the architecture of buildings, but it is important to remember that AMO is often filled with people that have mixed experiences, with backgrounds often more broad than architecture.

Nonetheless, the larger debate about how architects and architecture can go “beyond architecture” is not so widely established within the discipline, and such an exhibition could do well to help establish a strong theoretical and strategic understanding of just what an architect can do in society if it is not building. For this reason, Volume magazine is an enormous contribution to architects opening our vision towards a broader implication in the world.

One danger to taking architects out of our domain is that our talent seems to be neutralized and even made somewhat banal. There are pieces in the exhibit that seem to only reproduce ideas already explored in other fields. One such example is MVRDV’s Skycar City that appears to be a terrible remake (not remix) of what Science Fiction artists have been imagining for over 100 years.

Our Favourite Pavilions!

Poland Pavilion
One of the best projects from the biennale is in fact a series of photo-collages produced in collaboration by two photographers (not architects), Nicolas Grospierre and Kobas Laksa for the Poland Pavilion (no link). The work takes existing photos from well-known buildings in Poland and reimagines the same project in 50 years. The images portray both utopia and dystopia for future urban scenarios. The projection of utopia and dystopia permeates the biennale overall.

Swiss Pavilion
Some of the most “revolutionary” work (if such a thing exists today) was shown in the Swiss Pavilion. The research at the ETH Zurich in the DFAB unit in collaboration with Gramazio & Kohler Architects proves a totally reinvention of how to build architecture by employing industrial robots. If something isn’t more revolutionary in terms of building construction methods, economics and social norms, I don’t know what is. The swiss have also compiled the work, Design Explorations, into a very beautiful book and useful website.

Japan Pavilion
The Japanese pavilion exhibits the very subtle and sensitive work of Junya Ishigami. He has been recognized for his inventive recent project, the Kait Workshop on the campus of the Kanagawa Institute of Technology in Japan. For the exhibition, 20 students meticulously hand-drew plans and landscapes onto the gallery walls in pencil. The work is quite magnificent, and a small installation behind the pavilion resembles the Kait Workshop.

Danish Pavilion
Curated by the Danish Architecture Centre, the Danish Pavilion has created Ecotopedia, a broad initiative to educate people about environmental initiatives. While I’m sure that many people are either overwhelmed or underwhelmed by the constant debate on environmentalism and sustainability, the Danish pavilion is very ambitious and they deserve credit for taking the pavilion exhibit to another level. While the exhibit is full of data and interactive programs, almost no one has the time and energy to spend reading and absorbing the content. On the other hand, the content is online and preserved for future reference. In the 2006 biennale, Denmark also created a fantastic exhibit, showing the ambition of the country in design. How about a trip to Copenhagen?

Dysturb.Link: For a full set of photographs from the Venice Architecture Biennale 2008, visit our Dysturb.Net FlickR Set

Dysturb has spent the opening press weekend at the 11th Venice Architecture Biennale. This year’s theme, Out There: Architecture Beyond Building, was curated by Aaron Betsky, the former director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute, and now director of the Cincinatti Art Museum (previous article here).

As we start to process the event, we have first uploaded our best images for all of you to see: Dysturb or FlickR. Coming soon will be more detailed articles. To find out more about the individual country pavilions both within the Giardini and around Venice, their listing and links can be found here.

See all pictures here:

I am wrapping things up here at maxwan architects & urbanists, as tomorrow is going to be my last day. I will be teaching urbanism at a private university in Aleppo (google maps) in a week.

We have achieved quite a bit recently – not only did we launch our new maxwan website, but we also won the competition for the design of 2009′s Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam (IABR). The motto of next year’s Biennale is ‘Open City’, a term Kees Christiaanse (the Biennale’s Curator) has been working with for a while. Maxwan translates this idea spatially by turning the NAi inside out.

A more direct access to the main large exhibition hall turns it into a multi-functional lobby/conference-hall/exhibition space, directly exposed to the public space instead of being tucked away in the belly of the building.

Maxwan’s new website stays true to maxwan’s excel-driven soul, providing quite complete data on the projects including high-resolution images. Check out what I have been working on recently – supervising the Barking Riverside masterplan and previously developing a new vision for Rotterdam’s Harbour.

Archinect has just published a short interview with Vincent de Rijk, arguably the Netherlands most well-known and admired physical model builder. He has made a large contribution to the aesthetics of contemporary Dutch architecture with his models. Most of us have seen his models in exhibitions, but unfortunately he has no (known) website that covers his work completely. We have also published an early model of de Rijk’s in The Dawn of Contemporary Dutch Architecture.

Now in its 4th issue, PIN-UP: Magazine for Architectural Entertainment has proven to be a great magazine that has lasted past its first few issues to be a hopefully lasting review on architectural and design culture. Having first seen issue #2 back in the summer of 2007 at the Pro qm bookstore installation at Documenta in Kassel, the magazine has been notoriously hard-to-find throughout Europe and North America. Released by Bruil in the Netherlands, the magazine apparently shares similar roots as our other preferred review, Fantastic Man.

Felix Burrichter, PIN-UPs founder and editor was invited to write a short blog post in the New York Times in order to explain his idea behind issue #4 of the inventive review. In addition, he has posted numerous articles on The Moment through the New York Times. The magazine takes a fascinating perspective on the world of architecture and its by-products. The discipline is set within the larger context of design production and the cultural place that architecture plays in society. The articles are great tangents, the fashion coverage is brilliant, the interviews varied and the layout is excellent. If you’re in Montréal, swing by the Canadian Centre for Architecture to pick up your copy.

With the attention on Beijing, the New York Times has prepared a small but interesting interactive map showing the creation and destruction of Beijing over the recent years. Three sections of the map highlight the new Olympic venues, the urban change of Beijing as well as new architectural projects.

You might have also seen a previous post on Dysturb.Net about associative design and the typology of Chinese housing studied by the Berlage Institute (Rotterdam) that is also fascinating.

OMA distributed a press release including the above picture (click for XXL) today that the facade developed in collaboration with ARUP has been completed. Just in time for the opening of the Olympic Games for an harmonious skyline, we might add. In that context: the extruded pagoda on the right is the Zhong Fu Tower.

XML is a contemporary cultural practice specialized in Architecture, Research and Urbanism. From its base in Amsterdam XML is involved in worldwide cross-disciplinary projects with an emphasis on cultural analysis. XML’s projects are fuelled by a reflection on the contemporary city as source of cultural production. The work has been rewarded several prizes amongst which most recently the first prize in the Europan 9 competition Almere.

We currently invite people to apply for a position as trainee in our office in amsterdam. Candidates should have finished at least two years of relevant design education. Further requirements include:

- excellent model-making, drawing and render skills
- strong graphic and design talent
- willing to actively contribute to the rapid growth of our young office

Applicants for this vacancy should send their cv, motivation letter and portfolio(pdf) to hr@x-m-l.org.

The final presentations of the 1st and 2nd year Berlage Institute students are scheduled at the school this coming week and next. All of the presentations are open to the public, and are without entry cost. On the 24th June, the 1st year students will present two studios, Rethinking the All-Inclusive, and the Saemanquem Project; while on the 1st July two other studios, Associative Design: Urban Ecologies, and Capital Cities, The limits of the City: A Strategic Project for Seoul will be presented.

You may also watch the Livestream Broadcasts online.

2007–2008 Second-year final presentations

Associative Design Research Program
Urban Ecologies

There is an ecology of bad ideas, just as there is an ecology of weeds.
——Felix Guattari

In the Three Ecologies the French psychologist Felix Guattari states that now, more then ever, nature cannot be separated from culture. He argues for a politics of “ecosphy”—or the interrelationship of social, mental and environmental ecologies. Based on this thesis, this research studio has hypothesized the forms of urbanization that can be actualized within the various environmental ecologies of Phoenix, Arizona.

The studio has been studying the region’s specific social, economic, political, climatic and material environments with the aim of presenting serious alternatives to the contemporary housing production surrounding Phoenix. Located in a wide valley that has allowed for low-density urbanization with few limitations, the region has maintained rapid and sustained growth since the end of World War II. Pro-growth civic policies have helped fuel an economy that, along with the region’s natural amenities, has attracted many new residents. This growth has resulted in the need for more water, much of it now coming from the Colorado River. This has also created regional and sectorial conflicts between Arizona and its neighboring states as well as between agricultural and urban land uses. Demand for electricity, especially for air conditioning, continues to escalate. An abundance of motor vehicles, but lack of highway infrastructure, has led to increased air pollution and traffic congestion. These specific site circumstances, and limited natural resources, have made Phoenix an environmental ecology between growth and supply.

In opposition to the conventions of typical American subdivision development, the studio is presenting neighborhood models that generate an urban environment. Instead of establishing a predetermined master plan, these growth models follow potential decision-making processes in order to react to various changes within the economic market and the development of complimentary programs according to of inhabitation or demand. They also are actualized in relation to the ecological constraints set by Phoenix desert.

Five projects will be presented that argue that new forms of housing neighborhoods must learn from site-specific circumstances. Each project is structured in four phases, taking a quarter mile section of the Phoenix desert as a case study. From the local vegetation ecology and radiation production to the effects of flooding in relation to the economic value of the raw desert, these projects unfold specific and intensive characteristics of the desert. Additionally, two projects will demonstrate the desert’s potential as an urban growth model of one possible decisionmaking process.

This studio is part of the Associative Design Research Program, headed by Peter Trummer, which investigates the potential and design of new site-specific housing environments by applying associative techniques to all scales of a design process to increase its relevance to the architectural discipline.

Tutor: Peter Trummer
Participants: Tsung-Jen Chang, Botsung Chiu, Daewon Kwak, Tzu-En Hsu, Kyo Suk Lee, Chia-Ying Lin, Fairuz Razali, and Mika Watanabe.
Guest Critics: Lawrence Barth, Christophe Cornubert, Aris Georges, Christopher Lee, Lars Lerup, and Matthew Moore.

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Capital Cities Research Program
The Limits of the City: A Strategic Project for Seoul

We have almost succeeded in leveling all human activities to the common denominator of securing the necessities of life and providing for their abundance.
——Hannah Arendt

The studio focuses on the relationship between forms of metropolitan labor and the possibility of political life. As one of the most physically dense, socially complex, and technologically advanced cities in Asia, Seoul is the ideal site to test how economy affects a city’s political life.

It is generally assumed that our contemporary civilization is a post-industrial one, shaped by the emergence and the hegemony of immaterial labor over the production of goods. The studio argues that the place of this process of production is the metropolis.

The metropolis brings these processes outside of their canonical space —the factory— and disseminates them through all aspects of urban life. If we assume that industrialism is not simply the process of production of goods, but a way to make anything economically productive —from the human body to the human mind— then we can presume that we are still part of the industrial civilization where urbanity itself is the ultimate factory. Confronting this scenario, the critical issue this studio explored is what kind of cityness can be imagined in the contemporary metropolis, where production seems to be sustained by economics.

The site of research and design is the conceptual border between the city as a locus of production and the city as locus of political life. The studio attempted to answer how an architectural intervention can consciously frame prototypical forms of density, shared facilities, and living and workspaces. An overall urban strategy for Seoul, consisting of 11 punctual and prototypical urban design interventions, will be presented. In their exemplarity, these interventions are capable of transforming the geography of the entire region. They are mainly concerned with the proposal of living typologies of space that can limit the expansion of the built environment, the proliferation of scattered settlements, and that can foster the creation of places of encounter and sharing that are different from the living and working patterns imposed by economic exploitation.

This studio is part of the Capital Cities Research Program, headed by Pier Vittorio Aureli, which aims to redefine the idea of the city as a political institution by focusing on the relations between architectural form, political theory and urban history by means of large-scale critical urban projects.

Tutors: Pier Vittorio Aureli, Martino Tattara, and Elia Zenghelis.
Participants: Julica Grzybowski, Seung Jeong Hong, Eun Kyung Lee, Alejandro Martinez, German Ramirez, and Tsai-Ching Tsai.
Guest Critics: Christopher Lee, Lars Lerup, Gabriele Mastrigli, and Andreas Ruby.

——————————————————————————–
Program Tuesday, 1 July 2008

10:30am Welcome by Rob Docter, General Director
Introduction by Vedran Mimica, Director
10:45am Final presentations of the Associative Design Research Program
studio entitled “Urban Ecologies”
12:00pm Comments by guest critics and faculty
12:30pm Round-table discussion with guest critics
Moderated by Peter Trummer, Head of the Associative Design Research Program
1:30pm Complimentary lunch
2:30pm Final presentations of the Capital Cities Research Program
studio entitled “The Limits of the City: A Strategic Project for Seoul”
4:00pm Comments by guest critics and faculty
4:30pm Round-table discussion with guest critics
Moderated by Pier Vittorio Aureli, Head of the Capital Cities Research Program
6:00pm End-of-year exhibition opening and reception
7:00pm Graduation ceremony

——————————————————————————–
Graduating participants:

Tsung-Jen Chang, Taiwan
Botsung Chiu, Taiwan
Julica Grzybowski, Germany
Seung Jeong Hong, Korea
Tzu-en Hsu, Taiwan
Dae-Won Kwak, Korea
Eun Kyung Lee, Korea
Kyo Suk Lee, Korea
Chia-Ying Lin, Taiwan
Alejandro Martinez, Dominican Republic
German Ramirez, Colombia
Fairuz Reza Razali, Malaysia
Tsai-Ching Tsai, Taiwan
Mika Watanabe, Japan

——————————————————————————–
Guest critics:

Lawrence Barth, Senior Lecturer in Urbanism, Architectural Association, London
Christophe Cornubert, Architect, Los Angeles
Aris Georges, Dean, Taliesin, the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, Scottsdale, Arizona, USA
Christopher Lee, Principal, Serie Architects, London
Lars Lerup, Dean and the William Ward Watkin Professor of Architecture, School of Architecture, Rice University, Houston
Gabriele Mastrigli, Architectural Historian, Rome
Matthew Moore, Visual Artist, Phoenix
Andreas Ruby, Architecture Critic and Theorist, Berlin

——————————————————————————–
Institute faculty:

Vedran Mimica, Director
Pier Vittorio Aureli, Head of the Capital Cities Research Program
Joachim Declerck, Centre for Architectural Research and Development
Salomon Frausto, Head of Architectural Broadcasting
Roemer van Toorn, Head of the Projective Theory Program
Peter Trummer, Head of the Associative Design Research Program

In a few days – on the 20th of June – the London Festival of Architecture starts and will go on for a month. The program is overwhelming (including events/hubs/themes/tours/projects..), I will write more after I’ve seen it. Go and check their site: http://www.lfa2008.org!

This morning the Faculty of Architecture of the Delft University of Technology caught fire.
The building was evacuated immediately, there were no injured.

The probable cause of the fire was a short-circuiting in a coffee-machine on the 6th floor of the northern wing of the building, resulting from water leakage. The fire spread to the upper floors and later to the southern wing. Due to the height of the building, the fierceness of the fire and possible collapsing of the building firemen had to retreat and continue their work from the ground.

According to the fire department the building by Van den Broek and Bakema is to be considered lost entirely and could even collapse due to severe damage done to it’s structure.

Images here (Nu.nl) and here (NOS.nl). Movies after the break.

And see the building going down (dumpert.nl).

Amendment: Original design drawings and history of the building on the nai site.

Fellow dysturber, Darrel Ronald, founded Open Form Architecture in Montréal (Canada) with colleagues Maxime Moreau and Maurice Martel. We were recently invited to participate in the Pecha Kucha Montréal as our first public presentation. Following our 20 slides / 20 seconds at the special edition of Pecha Kucha Montréal as part of the Portes Ouverts Design Montréal festival, we have made the slides, as well as video available online.

The title of our presentation is, Simple Rules, Complex Behaviour, and illustrates a limited selection of our work over the past years dealing with generative design, cellular automata, simple programming and complexity. We have been particularly influenced by the work of Steven Wolfram and his book, A New Kind of Science. Having participated in two of his NKS Summer Schools, we’ve been fortunate to collaborate with him and a team of mathematicians and programmers in the United States using Mathematica software.

The presentation is bilingual French and English, just like our favourite city! Unfortunately the first words are cut off, and they are: WE ARE OPEN FORM, and WE LOVE OPEN FORM! We hope you enjoy! Below are our 20 slides, that accompany the video.

Emap, a Business-to-Business media group (from their website), hosts the first World Architecture Festival in Barcelona. Architects are invited to put their buildings up for competition (entry fee a smacking 950€), and among the exhibited projects the best will be awarded. The interesting jury (to name a few: Will Alsop, Cecil Balmond, Stefan Behnisch, Richard Burdett, Luis M. Mansilla, Richard Meier, Sir Peter Cook, Neil Denari, Norman Foster, Massimiliano Fuksas, Zaha Hadid, Michel Rojkind, Michael Sorkin, Francine Houben, Robert Stern, Christoph Ingenhoven, Charles Jencks) might redeem the commercial/artificial flair the event exudes. We’ll keep our final judgement to ourselves until we know more about the event.

also check Jeff Han‘s presentation @ TED two years ago:

well be standing at drawingboards again!
Thanks for the link Alex!

This friday at 16:30 an interesting exhibition opens @ the Casla in Almere. It will feature the winning projects of the Eenvoud Competition, the third edition for an experimetal neighbourhood in Almere. Its predecessors, “De Fantasie” and “De Realiteit”, ‘Fantasy’ and ‘Reality’ were held back in the eighties and their results are still worth an excursion. More information on that below.

“De Éénvoud” or ‘Simplicity ‘is the result of a competition held in 2006. The brief was to design a freestanding and simple low-cost house, expressing their own wishes and ideas for dwelling. The winners got the possibility to build their design on a beautiful open spot in the woodland of Noorderplassen-West.

The twelve winning projects, amongst which an ornithologist’s house, a rubber house, a convertible house and a scaled version of the Unité d’Habitation were submitted from The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Portugal and Sweden. The houses will have a permanent character, with a minimum of building regulations. Some of the projects will be built by the designers themselves; nine projects are still open for clients to join in.

The Exhibition “De Éénvoud” opens the 28th of march and will run until 10th of may 2008 @ Architectuurcentrum CASLa, Weerwaterplein 3, 1324 EE Almere Stad
Open Tuesday to Saturday between 12.00-17.00

The Predecessors
“De Fantasie” and “De Realiteit” were meant to stay only for five years, but as always with experimental projects, they usually last longer than permanent houses. The houses are used either for permanent living, as holiday homes or studios.
They are part of a number of special residential neighbourhoods in Almere, amongst which such ridiculosities as The Regenboogwijk (Rainbow Quarter), Stedenwijk (City Quarter), Muziekwijk (Music Quarter), Filmwijk (Movie Quarter), Parkwijk (Park Quarter). De Realiteit and De Fantasie have arguably yielded the most striking architecture. De Realiteit comprises seventeen projects on the Noorderplassen lakes, while nine houses make up De Fantasie on Weerwater.

De Fantasie
De Fantasie has developed into a beautiful and tranquil neighborhood on the southwest shore of the Weerwater. Because of the involvement of the people in this area it has the feel of a holiday resort. The intention was to build homes which were to be demolished after five years. However, due to the project’s success, the houses are still standing. A striking design in this quarter is ‘Hard Glass’, by architect Jan Benthem of famous dutch office Benthem Crouwel. It was one of their first projects, now they are building every major train station, airport etc. This project, ‘Hard Glass’ is a glass, cubic villa which has been lifted off the ground by a construction of steel tubes. The living quarters inside the cube resemble an aquarium. The type of doors also used on ships divide the villa’s rooms.
The VVV (the local tourist information office) in Almere has a CASla route description through De Fantasie which you can enjoy without a guide.

De Realiteit
The ‘temporary character’ is also reflected in the much talked-about quarter De Realiteit. Here too the houses are still standing, as they are a resounding success. De Realiteit lies in a fairly remote area, which has resulted in a surprising ambience. The seventeen houses differ in the materials used and the construction, but mainly in shape. The house created by Dick Bruijne and Gerard Koppelman is a striking design which stands out. ‘A bird is flying underneath our house’ is suspended five meters above the ground in a steel frame. The house itself is a small, two-storied wooden cube. The surface area of the house is small in proportion to the steel frame.
You probably also come across ‘Markies’ a house which unfold from a trailer. I guess you won’t see it there though since its constantly on the road.
De Realiteit is situated on the Noorderplassen and the VVV also has a route description on this one.
Check out the website for more details on the houses.
More photos also here

A new documentary film, archiCULTURE, is in the works about the lives of student architects and the culture surrounding the daily life of design students. The film (trailer) is a grassroots project currently seeking money to finance the project.

The Film Synopsis:

Archiculture is a feature length documentary that examines contemporary issues surrounding the realm of architecture through the perspective of university students during their final thesis semester. The film follows the protagonists through the evolution of their respective senior thesis projects and the internal and external conflicts each student faces during this intense year-long process. Interviews with family, friends, significant others, industry professionals, architects, and design professors are woven throughout the film to create a story that builds an intimate connection between the characters and the audience. The emotional storyline will reveal a breadth of experiences ranging from the 4AM deadline dash, to the fulfilling sensation of graduation. The film provides viewers with an in-depth look into the creative yet competitive process of architectural education while also depicting current issues such as the role of architecture in society, the disproportion of gender and race within the profession, and environmentally conscious design. The story is structured in a way that chronologically follows the students’ development of their theses and continually builds suspense as the final critique looms. The film concludes at the students’ final thesis presentation as they find themselves on the brink of their adult and professional lives, and the closure of their adolescence.

June 11th the first Museum entirely dedicated to Graphic Design will be opened by our Queen Beatrix in Breda.
For the opening my friend Teun Castelein will make his graphic statement out of concieved content from 250 participants. Everybody is welcome to design its own flag and mail it to flag@graphicdesignmuseum.com. All designs will be printed on unique flags and put against the building. The result will be an explosion of information. A colourful art piece at the old baroque building of the supermodern Graphic Design Museum.
Really a piece of art that makes people think about modern visual communication, about the position of musea in the contemporary image-culture and the fact that everybody is a designer/ image-maker nowadays.

So invest some 250 €, add another line to your CV and be part of the opening exhibition. You can upload your images here.
It seems to be selling quite well and I’m sure it will look amazing.

Teun did a similar spectacular work of art inspired by the famous website ‘www.milliondollarhomepage.com‘ in 2005. He sold the façade of his Alma Mater, the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam to more than 300 companies, organisations and individuals.

They added logos and trademarks, images of art, poetry and lovenotes. The façade consists of more than 16,000 tiles [35x29cm], each of which is supplied with its own individual printed plastic plate. The result is an overwhelming mosaic of colour and information – a project that seeks to push the boundaries between commerce and art, society and the movements of the market, the private sector and public space. The Sandberg Institute is located on the Amsterdam ring road in the Zuidas district, the city’s new economic centre.

Teun Castelein, who is actually the first man in real size on the web, graduated in 2002 at the Art Academy of Utrecht with a research on Dutch suburban town Hoogvliet, just outside Rotterdam.
This ghetto town had a very negative image, so he decided to start a feel good branding campaign for its citizens as part of the WIMBY! project. One of his proposals was a Hollywood sign of ‘HOOGVLIET’ [which was implemented in a park design by FAT architects]. With this icon of Hollywood he wanted to give the people something to believe in, that you can be somebody! By giving Hoogvliet a bit of Hollywood allure, he made its inhabitants the stars.

So, go get your creativity boiling, convince your boss to spend those Euros and put something more on it than just your average company logo!

You can download Podcasts and archives of the show at the Métropolitains site.

This sunday i went to see the exhibition of swiss artist duo Fischli & Weiss in Milan,Italy, organized by the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi. Get the first impression by a video on youtube. It runs until the 16th of march, but afterwards it will move to Hamburg (18. April until 31. August in the Deichtorhallen Hamburg). The exhibition space is the beautiful Palazzo Litta, the perfect frame for their work. They are dealing with a wide range of means: multimedia installations, photography and sculptures.Their most famous piece of work is the movie titled “Der Lauf der Dinge” (How things go), from 1987, at the documenta 8. Their basic principle is to pick up objects and situations of daily life and transforming them into a new context. What do they exactly aim at? Do they try to find answers on the philosophical and theoretical questions of life is their irony and also tremendous humour a notion to cheer up in a complex world?
One extract of a Super 8 movie shows Fischli & Weiss, dressed as a bear and a rat, strolling through Hollywood, questioning life.The bears’ comment ( in “the least resistance”): ” I hate this chaos in the world. Nothing works. Everything is hopeless and sad.”

See also art-magazin and artipedia.

From 22nd February to 18th March 2008, The Architectural Association in London present DRL TEN.

DRL actually stands for Design Research Lab, a research unit started at the AA in 1997. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of DRL, the AA have decide to organise an exhibition, build a temporary pavilion in Bedford Square, and publish DRL TEN: A Design Research Compendium.

The pavilion, designed by DRL graduates Alan Dempsey and Alvin Huang is not yet ready. Its opening is announced for Friday 29th of February Thursday 13th of March (6.30pm – 8.30pm) while the show at the AA gallery opened yesterday night.

The book will be launch Thursday 13th of March (6pm-8pm) and will documents the activities of the DRL from 1997 to 2007.

The exhibition DRL Ten is featuring ten years of work by the DRL’S staff and former students. The coordinators of DRL TEN invited a group of selected graduates of the program (called the ‘Young Punks’) to present their work since graduation. Some of them have now started their own offices, while others are working for some of the big starchitects (Zaha Hadid Architects, Future Systems, OMA, and so forth).

Yesterday’s opening at 36 Bedford Square was painfully congested: Visitors had to queue for about twenty minutes in order to enter the exhibition, as the ‘one in, one out’ rule seemed to be of primary importance for the DRL TEN’s organizers.

The Beijing Opera House, the first of the Fantastic Four new “Grands Projets” of the 21st Century China, completed last September and open to the public last December, is under a lot of controversy.

Differently than the other three projects (National Swimming Center, by PTW, Bird’s Nest, by H&M and CCTV Tower by OMA), the Opera was built at the southwestern area of the Forbidden City, few steps to the west of the Tiananmen Square. The project by the airport-design specialist Paul Andreu is still the center of all attentions in Chinese news.

The feelings are ambiguous. In one hand, the proud government opens the building as a sign of great interest in culture, right in the heart of the city. Criticism comes when a) specialists believe that the project doesn’t seem to respond to the spirit of the Chinese architecture and the history of the city and b) people realize that the building is too distant and feel scared in front of the agoraphobic water spaces around the titanium shell.

The cost of the opera, 336 million U.S. dollars, was also one of the main controversies. However, after the opening it seems that everyone involved in the Opera, from art director to musicians are happy with one of the best acoustics you could find in Asia.

The entrances for the concerts cost between 3 and 200 euros. I can’t imagine how different your position inside the theatre can be to pay almost 100 times more than other people, but this is also the new China, where it’s all about status and to be in the right spot, even if perhaps only 10% of the audience really understands what an opera presentation is.

The flowers are killing the atmosphere, but they are almost inevitable in contemporary China (did you see Rem’s shovel few posts ago?).

Personally I can’t understand the ceiling of this music performance hall. Using the roof for a bright relief behind the lightening system seems quite ackward, giving a sense of unfinished that doesn’t match the rest of the interior (over designed).

Where are the baggage claim counters?

While we have to wait very short time to see the other 3 shiny new stars of the booming icons. CCTV towers are connected, the Swimming Center is cladded and the Bird’s Nest structure is finished.

Meanwhile, the eyes of China and the world are already put into the design of Shanghai’s 2010 Expo.

I only hope that shortly after the Olympic Games the energy will be focused into the housing problems of China. In the next 15 years, specialists believe that China needs to build new housing for 300 million immigrants from the countryside. T-H-A-T is scary.

There are countless conversations among architects about pay, and how architecture is (apparently) poorly paid. Now there’s some good proof. An awesome online survey and searchable database was shown to me today, assembled by Coroflot. You can view the datasets here, sort by country as well as occupation and job title. The few graphics are great too. It isn’t surprising that among the design professions (graphic, fashion, interactive media, and so forth), architecture has one of the lower ceilings.

Archinect has had a salary poll running for quite some time, and it has always been a fascinating read. But it has always been incomplete, has no sortable databases, and didn’t offer a comparative analysis. In comparison, the Coroflot survey boasts 4250 respondents from 73 countries. What is clear is that in most design fields the incomes are rising nicely. On top of this, you’re best paid as a consultant. Nonetheless there are some hard-to-explain anomolies that stick out. It turns out that designers in India are some of the worlds best-paid, up there with Americans and Australians. Hmm.

My dear friend Alex Thomass of 5elf recently sent me images of his latest project, the smallest permanent pneumatic roof of the world.

‘5elf Berlin found an economic solution to roof a penthouse terrace with a pneumatical construction.The highly light-transmisive ETFE foil enables a weather protection without darkening the area which is closed on three sides.Thus the view to the sky is free and the roof with its easiness goes completely in the background.

All required technical cables are completely integrated into the statically optimized steel construction and are not visible.To save energy costs and to minimize noise of the air supply a medical membrane pump has been applied.’

I find it a pretty amazing project. The frame is almost non-existent, which makes it basically a valve floating in the air.

Check the 5elf website for a little animation of the inflation and additional text and images. You can find the project under ‘housing’ and the cushion-logo. (Always so impossible to link to these fancy flash-sites ;-)

My journey as a teacher to Syria is also a journey back to the architectural roots of modernism. The students here are innocent when it comes to history, so It was back to school for myself: I reverted to study Mies & Corbusier again, in order to pass on the knowledge. This is why I was excited by this find:

At auction house Jeschke, Hauff & Auvermann in Berlin, on November 13th 2007 is an auction of 123 photographs from the prewar ouevre of Mies van der Rohe. Now my understanding is that Mies was notoriously restrictrive about images of his work being distributed and published, so these are a real find. But their provenance is debatable, and their origins unknown.

Read on on Kosmograd.

Kosmograd tediously collected the auction’s images in a flickr-set. Among them pictures of the original (!) Barcelona Pavillion, The Weissenhof Siedlung and Haus Tugendhat. Thank you.

The swiss architect Peter Zumthor built an art museum around the wreckage of the parish church St.Kolumba. commissioned by Cardinal Meisner (lately in the news with his comment of “Entartete Kunst” on Gerhard Richter’s design for the window Koelner Dom) , the won competition in 1997 was finally realized 10 years later.The museum is an archaic castle for religious art of 2000 years sycamore culture as well for modern installations.

Kolumba consists of several periods in architecture history: starting with the late Gothic church St.Kolumba, the chapel “Madonna in den Trümmern” ( “Madonna in ruins” ) was buillt in 1950. Interestingly enough, the architect of this little chapel, Gottfried Böhm, made now the very controversial discussed design for the Zentralmoschee Köln Cologne Mosque Project. Continuing 1973-1976 with the archaeological excavation, finalized by Zumthor’s new design.

Entering the building, I am moved by the fact, that architecture is able to create such an unique atmosphere of spirit.”A museum, which lives from light and which shows, how the darkness and brightness are brother and sister” (Benedikt Loderer). One extreme is the “black room”, absolute darkness, with the glimmer of the relics.

Brightness enters the upper part of the museum with precise, big openings to the surrounding (view to the banal after-war buildings as well on the dome).

Zumthor created a calm place to stay with an extreme exclusiveness by using pure detail and materiality. He is known as a extreme control freak, there is no little error in the whole building (trust me, I searched for them). It is a master piece, worth its 43,5 M Euros, given that it manages to be an international religious landmark for Cologne beside the cathedral.

That was quick: The Shenzhen Stock Exchange has broken ground. OMA won the competition just a year ago, now has moved a team of architects to Shenzen and starts building.

SSE consists of a central tower with an elevated box raised off the ground to provide a canopy for a public plaza beneath.

There was a rather controversial discussion on dezeen when the competition result was announced. I have to say that I still buy the simplicity story. Icons that are able to talk to other icons and are not autistic. Whether that public plaza will ever be used in the intended way? Time will tell. However, Lina BoBardi’s Museum of Art in Sao Paolo is a great place.
What is also nice is the reference to Mies’ Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. That building together with Jenny Holzers Installation was really amazing. Here we go again:

more pics & snippets from the press release:

“Lifting the base in the air vastly increases its exposure,” says Koolhaas. “In its elevated position, it can ‘broadcast’ the activities of the stock market to the entire city.

“The essence of the stock market is speculation: it is based on capital, not gravity,” he continues. “In the case of Shenzhen’s almost virtual stock market, the role of symbolism exceeds that of the program – it is a building that has to represent the stock market, more than physically accommodate it.”

The premise of OMA’s design is based on the essence of the stock market as speculation and the desire to create a building that is beyond symbolism for an almost virtual stock market.

For millennia the solid building has stood on a solid base which anchors the structure and connects it emphatically to the ground. In the SSE building the traditional base is lifted up the tower to become a floating platform to broadcast the economic information of the virtual market and in turn liberate the space on the ground for public space and events.

Facts: Site: 132,000m2 land in the downtown area of Shenzhen
Program: Total 175, 000m2: Rental office 86,000 m2; Registration & clearing house 20,000 m2; Accessory area 15,000 m2; Securities information company 15,000 m2; SSE office area 14,500 m2; Trading floor 14,500 m2; Technical operations area10,000 m2. Height 200m

Design:
OMA Rotterdam
Partner in charge: Rem Koolhaas
Associate in charge: Shohei Shigematsu
Team: Anna Little, Christin Svensson, Jason Long, Carlos Garcia Gonzales, Joao Bravo da Costa, Mauro Parravicini, Mariano Sagasta, Bart Schoonderbeek, Konstantin August, Klaas Kresse, Kengo Skorick, Katharina Gerlach, Mendel Robbers, Hong Yong Sook, Beatriz MInguez de Molina, Martti Kalliala, Andrea Bertassi, Daniel Ostrowski, Yuanzhen Ou,

AMO
Todd Reisz, Brendan McGetrick

OMA Beijing
Partner in charge: Ole Scheeren
Team: Dongmei Yao, Hiromasa Shirai, Anu Leinonen, Tieying Fang, Pei Feng, Xinyuan Wang

News from Madrid: The developer’s panel in charge of the building has decided to fire the architect claiming delays and budget problems. The comission of the building has been handled according to spanish regulations via an open competition, with the result of an 80 million euro contract being adjudicated.

After the international competition in 2000, Navarro made it to the final and won the contract for designing the building, a representative theatre complex in the center of madrid called Teatro Canal, a 35.000 sqm choreography and dance center. It was going to be one of the most emblematic oeuvres of the then president of the community Alberto Ruiz Gallardon. With an overbudget of 25% (100M euros in total – not that much considering the scale of the works) and a delay of two years, the new president Esperanza Aguirre has decided to ditch Baldeweg from the direction of the building.

It is an open secret that differences between Gallardon (now mayor of Madrid) and Aguirre played a role here. So far the international media has not written anything about it (as far as I know) so the links are mostly in spanish:

The spanish architectural comunnity has been calling for support to Navarro – ‘Aguirre “despide” a Navarro Baldeweg’ (edgargonzalez.com)
William J.R. Curtis in ‘El Pais’: Maestro de la luz
And a whole list of prominent artist and architects is protesting against the decision – ‘Arquitectos y artistas declaran la guerra a Esperanza Aguirre’

Back in 1992, the young and aggressive Dutch architects that we know so well today, came together to work on a large project in Amsterdam. The Ruimtelijk Scenario Y-Oevers Amsterdam (Translation: Spatial Scenarios for the Y-Waterfront Amsterdam) shows a long list of heavy-hitting architects and urbanists that now largely control the European architecture debate.

The project was carried out by the teams of: OMA, Neutelings, van Berkel & Bos (now UN Studio), Christiaanse (now KCAP) and West8. The model was built by De Rijk Parthesius (including Vincent de Rijk). Even more impressive was the line-up of the teams and to see where each of the members went on to. At times, they started their own offices, as with the case of Alejandro Zaera (Foreign Office Architects), Winy Maas (MVRDV) and Rients Dijkstra (Maxwan). The final booklet for the project reads as a whos-who of contemporary Dutch architecture, and the designs and presentation methods within are absolute precursors to the styles developed by each of the offices throughout the rest of the 1990s until today. You can almost tell which architects worked on which drawings, it’s an amazing period just prior to the launch of the many offices we see today in Rotterdam.

It is one of the most impressive architect lists in the history or contemporary Dutch architecture.

Munich´s Haus der Kunst is turning 70. After being inaugurated by no other than Adolf Hitler in 1937 this building is more than its neoclassical architectural expression of fascist ideology. What makes this building, designed by Ludwig Troost, so intriguing is that its steel frame construction actually brings it closer to American 20^th century hotels and banks and the concept of fake fassade than to the solidity of its appearance. The current director Chris Dercons` genuine approach of `critically dismantling` the post war veiling of the buildings` symmetry and scale in order to enable a confrontation rather than a diminutive of its original architectural state is also profiting from this almost exculpatory secret.

What also makes this building so intriguing, as remarked by Koolhaas at the symposium `Gebaute Ideologie` held at Haus der Kunst last week, is that it worked just as well for the propagandist shows of the Nazi era as it does for recent shows of contemporary art and design.

The symposium addressing the history and the future of the building was held in the reconstructed middle hall, formerly known as the Ehrenhalle, now ´Shifted Room`, which through its critical reconstruction has regained its original size of 800 m². The middle hall has recently also received new elements – the book shop designed by Munich´s favourite Konstantin Grcic as well as the recently installed curtain by Petra Blaisse/InsideOutside, who is also currently showing her projects in the middle hall. The curtain leaves the open space free, while providing for the multifunctional demands regarding acoustics, projections, etc.

After a short film by Alexander Kluge and an introduction into built ideology in Munich as Hauptstadt der Bewegung (capital of the movement) by Winfried Nerdinger, Jong Myong Ho, chief architect at the architectural academy in Pjongjang, North Korea, takes the floor and (in short) proclaims an architecture whose urban staging and inherent monumentality confer visitors to straighten their clothes as well as their posture. Jong Myong Ho was invited by a42.org of the art academy in Nuremberg to work with the master students of Arno Brandlhubers studio on the topic of architecture and ideology see also Akademie der bildenden Künste.

Followed by Brazilian architectural historian and curator Lauro Cavalcanti who talked about Oscar Niemeyers buildings for Brazilia and Rio in comparison to other ideologically driven architectural pieces of that era. Final speakers were Jaques Herzog elaborating on the exceptional political decision of Munich to rebuild the destroyed city after the war vs. Frankfurt, which is today considering to re-erect its historical city for location factors and Rem Koolhaas, presenting the hermitage project and part of his research on preservation at GSD. The two had not only been invited by Dercon to speak, but also to collaborate on a concept for the future of the building. Both of their offices have already exhibited in Haus der Kunst -AMO with the Europe exhibition in 2004 and HdeMs work show `No. 250` last summer, where the facade temporarily took on the original Allianz Arena neon sign borrowed from the stadium. On the podium with Mark Wigley, the discussion raised the question if the soon to be vacant west wing which previously hosted a theatre were to be used commercially or as further exhibition space and exactly what the difference would imply. While Koolhaas considers the infamous P1 night club accommodated in the building as an ´ignorant and energetic prototype` for further more commercial uses of the space, Herzog proclaimed a more contextual approach to the building as an entrance to the English Garden and in relation to the partly tunnelled Prinzregentenstrasse. As collaborations between Koolhaas and Herzog have supposedly failed so far, it will be interesting to await the outcome of this one.

I just got news about the Berlage Institute’s lecture series this term. It’s starting rather late, but as always impresses with a highly profiled list of speakers. It’s the pattern we all know and love: A few well known names mixed with a bunch of people maybe less known but definitely worth noticing.

Here’s the details:

Practicing architect and Associate Professor at Ohio State University. Author of ‘Small Buildings’ and ‘Strange Details’, a ‘lively and unconventional appreciation of pivotal buildings by Carlo Scarpa, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe, and Louis Kahn that reveals enough idiosyncrasies and conceits to make any rationalist shudder’ (MIT Press)

of the well known Rotterdam practice NeutelingsRiedijk

Founders of Mansilla + Tuñón Arquitectos, Madrid (check their design for the Museum of Automotion)

Founders of Grafton Architects, Dublin

of Abalos Herreros, Madrid. May we call him the thinker of this office? (No offense, Juan!)

of BevkPerovic, Ljubljana. One of the most interesting offices in balkan Switzerland.

Do we even have to link to UN Studio? Anyway, it will be interesting to hear what his idea of the future Berlage Institute is, now that he’s part of academias new boygroup.

Well, to be honest, I don’t know… Wikipedia list him as an American banker who served as the 70th United States Secretary of the Treasury during both the first and second Clinton Administrations. Apparently that same Robert Rubin has bought the Maison de Verre in Paris by Pierre Chareau and has renovated it in painstaking effort. Might be him….

Sorry for Wikipedia again: ‘Weiss/Manfredi, is an architectural firm headquartered in New York City, founded by Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi. Weiss currently teaches at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design.’

We’ll find out more when the official poster including lecture titles will be out. Please note that this program is preliminary…
Lectures will usually start at 19:00.
For reservation contact Lenny at the reception one day before under: +31 (0) 104030399

See you there!

ps: the dates are corrected and now also in the calendar: subsrcibe your iCal to this.

Supersudaca, a befriended south-american think-tank has launched Sudapan – Endless(s)trips, an international competition about the urban potentials of mass-tourism in the Caribbean. The competition focuses on the 140km resorts-strip of Riviera Maya, on the Mexican coast.

The competition tries to put forward of the key territorial issues of Latin America and the Caribbean for their inclusion in the contemporary global agenda. Endless(s)trips is a competition of ideas about the urbanism potential of the massive beach tourism in the Caribbean.

Endless(s)trips is a space of reflection an proposals for rethinking the relation between the local elements, the tourists, the environment, tourism managers, the State, the infrastructure and the landscape. It is an opportunity to imagine other cities, other territories and other ways of tourism management.

Due to its size, dynamism and complexity, the Mayan Riviera is an intense and urgent case of great potential, an urbanism laboratory in the Caribbean coast.

Endless(s)trips is supported of the IAAC (Advanced Architecture Institute of Catalunya) and sponsored by Prins Claus Fonds.

* Tourist strips are the mono functional strips of tourism activity developed along the coast line.

Jury

Vicente Guallart (Valencia, Spain, 1963)
Winy Maas (Schijndel, The Netherlands, 1959)
Prof. Carel Weeber (Nijmegen,The Netherlands, 1937)
José Castillo (Mexico)
Bruno Stagno (Santiago, Chile)

Full explanation is available at www.sudapan.org. Feel free to contact info@supersudaca.org for more information. Anyway, make sure you check out their slideshow on the type of ‘urbanism’, created by all-inclusive tourism.

Since the fog is holding Rotterdam hostage since a few days (my wonderful theory burst into pieces…) you’ll be happy to hear that next weekend (Oct. 11th to 14th) we’ll have the architectur film festival in town.

Reservations are possible since a few days so get to the phone (010) 411 5300 and make sure you get to see a few delicacies.

Our preliminary tips would be:

• De Grootste Architect Van Nederland (to be translated as either the tallest or the greatest architect of the netherlands, which might both be true…), a documentary on Huig Maaskant as a walk-in movie in Hotel New York. details
• Radiant City, the opening movie ‘Suburbia: Politicians call it growth. Developers call it business. The Moss family call it home.’ details (You should get to see it on Thursday, cause then its playing in the amazing, cantilevering auditorium of the Schipvaarts & Transport College by NeutelingsRiedijk.)
• LA Plays Itself, three hour ‘essay’ by New York Filmmaker Encke King on the cast of the city in different movies. details
• Site Specific, Olivo Barbieri’s semi-blurred helicopter shots across urban landscapes that look like marquettes. (If you haven’t seen it in the NAi’s Spectacular City show last year). details
• Building the Gherkin, well… needless to explain I guess. details
• and, I guess you won’t miss it anyway: Rem Koolhaas, A Kind Of Architect, OMA’s press officer: ‘we are extremely happy, it is a good film’ details

You’ll find a summarized program in our calendar, for further details check www.affr.nl
Enjoy and let us know what you liked!

UN Studio and MVRDV (in collaboration with the spanish office GRAS) have recently sent us their competiton entries for the Ciudad del Motor in Spain, which has been won by the widely published, but less interesting fish-shaped design by Foster.

UN Studio’s design is a continuous dynamic form, a structure ducking to the ground with a motor-sport aesthetic, reminding of the visual language of an BMW ad. MVRDV’s proposal is a group of buildings – blocks breaking from the ground in a sandy desert, creating an ensemble of squares. Where UN Studio’s design is a new object in the landscape, MVRDV’s design forms part of it. More of a place, less of an object. You can download MVRDV’s project PDF, complete with sections and plans (Thank you, Oana!) here:

UN Studio’s project description:

The building is organized as a continuous loop with two crossing points, offering multiple visitor experiences all related to thetopic of speed and movement. Like a real city, the design for the Ciudad del Motor contains and facilitates multiple programmatic elements, such as a shopping mall, experience centre, museum of movement, a multifunctional hall, a hotel and housing towers. The design of the building is based on the generation of a maximum interaction with the surroundings, especially the tracks, with the Grand Stand accessed via a programmed bridge.

From MVRDV’s project description:

The combination of the racing activities and the dry, arid landscape gives the new Alcaniz race track area a distinct character. Its development can be easily compared with Las Vegas. But can we learn from Vegas again? More ecology? Less gambling? More leisure based on the powers of the landscape?
Maybe instead of an artificial new icon, that specific contradiction, this specific situation itself can lead to an outstandingly remarkable development and approach. Each of the different programs have there own timing, size and character. By positioning them close to each other, they can share their parking, they can create a climatic pocket and they can share a collective plaza. And the rest of the grounds can be used in the future… It gives a compact settlement that enlarges the possibility for remarkability in the vast landscape.
By covering the undeniably huge roofs of the program with the found material (red sand, stones, small plants, vegetation), the buildings can obtain a heavy roof that can act as temperature buffer for the program. The buildings gain a more ecological and natural character. They “blend” in with the landscape.

In related news, Ben van Berkel & Caroline Bos have been awarded the Charles Jencks Award, which is presented annually to the individual who has recently made a major contribution both to the theory and practice of architecture. As the winner of this international award, Ben van Berkel will be giving a lecture at RIBA, in Jarvis Hall at 18:30 pm on 16th October. Other recent projects of UN Studio include the Waldschlösschen bridge in Dresden, which features the typical fluidity of the UN Studio’s project, but surprises with minimal fragility in the elevation.

UN Studio about the bridge:

The design for the Waldschlösschen bridge in Dresden creates an infrastructural connection that spans a length of 800 meters accross the widest parts of the unique and beautiful Elb flood plain, forming an integral part of this landscape. From the banks of the surrounding area, wide transitions taper to establish an interconnecting network for the continuous flows of the diverse users. The asymmetric and topographic shape of the bridge evolves from its inherent conditions, whilst simultaneously integrating the bridge into the outlines of the undulating landscape.

I recently had the chance to visit the not very widely published OMA project “Dutch House” in Holten (NL), constructed in 1993.

It was a refreshing change to for once see an architectural masterpiece not in its virginal state (on OMA’s site) on topping out day nor dressed up for an exhibition – but after 14 years of living in it and using it. And the project kept it’s promise. This is also because it is one of the (few?) projects, where OMA cared a lot about the details, and the design comission extended to the choice of furniture and interior arrangements.

See all the pictures in the viewer below or on our photo page.

OMA on the project:

Challenged by highly uneven topography and a 4m height restriction, OMA designed this private residence to occupy space both above and below ground. The embedded design accommodates a maximal program — four bedrooms, kitchen, living room, study and two terraces — while making a minimal formal gesture.

Marking the termination and final frontier of the ice-age, an endmorene remains as a Dutch hill, about 50m above sea level. The 5000m2 site is located here, in a forest of pine on fine golden “beachsand”. Aside from the unstable ground conditions, specific site requirements include height restrictions of 4 m from adjacent road and excessive limitation of buildable area. Literal interpretations of these given dictate a frame of total length and roof height.
Manipulations of terrain became subsequent. A drive-through path was carved out to ensure efficiency of access and exit.

The program consists of facilities for two permanent residents – the parents – and for three grown-up daughters, visitors at most. To fade the presence of their absence, a programmatic split was introduced, materialized by the slab, held by one house holding the other.

How to translate the two different conditions of occupation related to specific site and ground, autonomously and with moments of interaction, became our focus. Further, to compress maximum program into a minimal amount of formal gestures.

At zero level, one wrapping wall is defining a continuity of inside areas and patios for the daughters “motel”, introverted and grounded.
The floating deck supports a crystallized container of parents program. One hingpoint, the pivoting bridge/horizontal door feeds both bedroom unit with patio above/service entry below. The content of wall itself is dictating, but leaving surrounding space free within the glass-box. Physically detached, but visually inclusive of site. Various treatments of glass and shadings are manipulating this mutual relationship, according to program and orientation.

The node of the house is a central ramp, providing visual and functional connection between the two counterparts.

Paradoxically this physical cut is where reconcilation is found.

The Cincinnati Art Museum’s press release:

CINCINNATI (Sept. 27, 2007)–The Board of the Cincinnati Art Museum today announced the selection of Neutelings Riedijk Architects as the architecture firm that will redesign the Museum’s multi-phase campus renovation and expansion in the city’s Eden Park. Neutelings Riedijk is internationally known for its architectural design projects; the Cincinnati Art Museum project is the firm’s first project in the United States.

Based in Rotterdam, Neutelings Riedijk is recognized for its demonstrated ability to respond with exceptional sensitivity and ingenuity to historic buildings, their surroundings, and complex existing layouts. Their recent projects include the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (2006), the STUK Performing Arts Center in Belgium (2002), and several distinguished social housing and campus buildings around the world.

The Cincinnati Art Museum was founded in 1881, and during its 126-year-history has grown from a single building to a complex of seven individual, interconnected structures. These various wings were designed by a series of architects in a variety of styles. Neutelings Riedijk will work with the Cincinnati Art Museum to develop a master architectural design for the institution that will integrate the disparate structures into a unified, cohesive whole and will combine a thoughtful and liberating reuse of the Museum’s existing spaces with an innovative expansion.

“We were impressed with Neutelings Riedijk’s inventive ideas, which will allow us to intelligently reuse space and spectacularly reimagine our facility,” said Aaron Betsky, director of the Cincinnati Art Museum. “The project will enable the Museum to present more of the extraordinary works in our collection, fulfill our educational mission, and better serve our community and travelers to the region.”

When completed, the new Cincinnati Art Museum will provide visitors with a more intuitive, welcoming, and engaging experience and path through the Museum and will allow for significantly more efficient operational systems. The Museum will be able to present more of its outstanding collection, and will feature increased space for special exhibitions, and enhanced facilities for public programming and education activities.

Although the master design is in its early stages with Neutelings Riedijk, and will continue to progress over the coming months, the Art Museum anticipates the project will add a minimum of 50,000 square feet of new construction, and remodel nearly all of the existing buildings, except those that have been recently renovated. The project budget, which will include funds both to complete renovation and construction and to increase the Museum’s endowment, will be developed as planning progresses.

The project will be completed in phases, with the first phase focused on the renovation of the Art Academy Building and innovative re-use of the Museum’s existing spaces. This will include restoring former galleries–now housing administrative functions–to exhibition spaces and spaces for public and educational programming. Subsequent phases of the project will include new construction. The new design will be unveiled in early 2008, when work on the renovation and re-use phase of the project is scheduled to begin.

“Milestones such as the renovation of the Asian galleries and the soon to be renovated antiquities gallery, as well as free admission, have already demonstrated the Art Museum’s commitment to fulfilling our community’s needs and desires,” said Larry Sheakley, president of the board of trustees of the Cincinnati Art Museum. “Now, Neutelings Riedijk will help us continue to progress, and the entire board is excited to be part of a project that will contribute so much to the advancement of Cincinnati’s arts community nationally and internationally.”

Neutelings Riedijk’s other projects include The City Museum of Antwerp in Belgium featuring a design that leads visitors to the top of the building in a journey through the history of Antwerp and panoramic views of the city. The firm is also in the midst of completing a strong icon for the Northern gate to Paris, the Périphérique at Porte de la Villette, which will feature a landmark hotel and shopping center. Among Neutelings Riedijk’s other recent projects are the opera house Kolizej Centre in Ljubljana (Slovenia), the Eemhuis Culture Centre in Amersfoort (Netherlands), and the Holland Casino in Utrecht (Netherlands).

MIMOA (MI MOdern Architecture), the community driven architecture project database, has been launched officialy this weekend in Amsterdam. Architecture 2.0, I hear you say. But this time it is a useful, well-designed project. The overall contribution quality is high, and we can only hope that the word spreads and the database fills up – not only with the well-known and published, but also with obscure gems. Interesting in that respect is the collaboration with A10, an interesting projects on it’s own. A10 magazine will add projects they publish to the Mimoa database.

MIMOA about MIMOA:

What is MIMOA
It is the best source of information for your city trip in Europe with all Modern Architecture in one view. MIMOA shows Europe’s Modern Architecture on a map with the address and all additional information you need to actually find and visit interiors, parks, public places, buildings and bridges.
MIMOA is free and open for everyone to contribute: publish your projects, posts comments and ratings, define your personal favorites and keep track of the projects you’ve visited. All this personal information, reviews and opinions, define the current trends in architectural Europe.
MIMOA is intended for anyone interested in Modern Architecture, design, culture, photography, cities, Europe, travelling, visiting buildings, knowing how to get there, whether the project is public and what the opening hours are. You can make your own personal convenient architecture guide.

Manifesto
The last few years we have seen an extraordinary shift in the way we live, travel, work and vacation. Now that budget airlines fly through all of Europe and internet has brought all kind of information handy, the world has shrunk and we can enjoy it every weekend. It seems everything is published, reviewed and read, so, checking out cities or basking on a beach are only two of many choices to make on a Thursday evening.
And yet there is still so much more to discover, invent and admire. With architecture as our mutual obsession, there is a wealth of new talent to hunt down and architectural treasures to be unearthed in countries whose borders have recently been opened. Creativity and technology are running forward. And it is this forward-looking mentality that excites us at MIMOA.
In 2007 Rotterdam is the architectural-capital of Europe, London regards the Creative Industry to be the largest growth factor in its economy and the city-council of Berlin considers Culture as the only source of development for the next fifty to hundred years. Trendy neighbourhoods in Barcelona draw inhabitants (and entrepreneurs!) from far across the Spanish border, in all of Europe, old cities sprout and draw attention with new marvelous designs by the latest Superstar-Architect. For European cities the Architectural Energy has become the foremost monitor for cultural and economic prosperity.
But really, the all-too-familiar big names and big buildings are not that difficult to trace. We want to get close to those creative spurts that you can only find when accidentaly stumbled upon. Where are the small pearls, the yet to be discovered talents, the buildings only locals know about?
Therefore we have dedicated ourselves to bring this local Modern Architecture closer to YOU. YOUR Modern Architecture, assembled, compiled and completed, synoptic, swift and always up-to-date. Architecture for everyone to be added, searched, visited and re-viewed, MY Modern Architecture: MIMOA.

Via dezeen.

The NAi (new website) hosted the book launch and discussion featuring Rem Koolhaas, Mark Wigley and Ole Bouman Monday night in Rotterdam (10-09-2007).

The three presenters first outlined their positions about the gulf region context, before sitting down to take questions about the book. As a possible strategy to diffuse the potential early judgments and criticisms of the crowd, Bouman asked the question, “Who has been to Dubai [or gulf] and seen it first hand?” Roughly not even 10% of the crowd raised their hands, and only half-heartedly at that. It reflects one of the weaker themes of the evening that ‘we should not judge’ the situation in the gulf region, especially in the UAE. When it came to the questions at the end of the evening, the presenters were at times defensive, and repeated numerous times that the books aims to suspend judgment and rather present a detached overview/reading of the situation. But this is not to say the evening wasn’t full of great ideas, polemics galore, and of course, the exciting subject of Dubai and the Gulf Region itself.

More Photos can be found in our photo section.

Ole Bouman: Architecture and Social Change

Ole Bouman presented the most aggressive position of the evening, arguing quite easily that Dubai and the other wealthy emirates are surrounded by the “ring of pain” extending from Africa to the Middle East, to Central and South-East Asia. Encircling this pocket of extreme wealth is the misery and hardship of internal and external wars, civil strife, infrastructure collapse, environmental destruction and a bottoming-out of healthy conditions for society. In a very powerful way, he toured the surrounding region showing the utter destruction of certain countries listing:

• 9 o’clock Darfur
• 10 o’clock Palestine
• 12 o’clock Baghdad
• 12 o’clock Basrah
• 1 o’clock Asfahan, Iran
• 2 o’clock refugee camps in Afghanistan
• 2 o’clock Pakistan
• 3 o’clock slums of Mumbai
• 4 o’clock Sri Lanka (Civil War)
• 5 o’clock Indian Ocean (Tsunami)

Understanding the scale and intensity of the strife and destruction is the turning point for Ole. Architecture, knowing these terrible things, should think hard about the problems, and the often simple ways to remedy the larger problems. He didn’t argue that architects were to tackle the larger problems, given the “absurdity” of the task, but rather engage with the everyday solutions to very real human problems. As an example, he showed a winning project for the 2007 Agha Khan design awards. The success, he says of the Samir Kassir Square in Beirut, Lebanon, is because of its meaning within the context. The simple public space with its trees, is a complete contrast to the grey concrete and at times destroyed city surrounding it.

While Bouman certainly declared the urgency and necessity of architects to engage with this dilemma, he seemed to receive a perhaps unflattering title of preacher, and proclaiming a messianic mission, especially by Wigley. It was as if Wigley ridiculed the task Bouman believed in, suggesting an absurdity to his whole mission to improve the world.

Rem Koolhaas: Dubai in Theory and Practice

Enter Rem Koolhaas, and his attempts to give a bit more of an introduction to the book and region itself, as a counter to Ole’s more general global perspective. In many ways, Koolhaas’ lecture was fragmented, developing a number of interesting themes, that didn’t always connect. Starting with an interpretation of globalization and its economics, he then went onto the “earnest” history of architecture and urbanism in the UAE. He further aimed a refusal of Mike Davis’ position that Dubai is an “Evil Paradise”, and continued with a declaration of the already or imminent “collapse of iconography”. The last treat were photos of Rem interviewed on Al Jazeera -and the audience was clearly pleased with this.

This theme concerning the transfer of financial control from the established markets to the emerging markets was by far the most interesting. It especially concerns the idea of semi-democratic countries beginning to invest in established democracies. Traditionally, while the developed western countries of Europe and North America have largely had the greatest financial stakes in the rest of the world, this is reversing. It is a story you can read about in nearly every issue of The Economist and The Financial Times. The above slide illustrates the wealth of individual nations and their democratic status. It of course concerns the west, and our ability to control our own resources, companies, and markets when large stakes are bought-up by either dictatorship-controlled or semi-democratic nations.

In the book, AMO aims to highlight the early period of the extremely compressed history of architectural and urban design in the UAE. In contrast, they argue that it was western architects and urbanists that have recently contributed to the current situation of hyperbolic, iconic, and often kitsch projects. Can we perhaps interpret this to be such offices as Atkins Middle East -well documented in Al Manakh? The two above images are particular favourites of Koolhaas, showing the apparent seriousness and earnestness of understanding the urban issues and problems. Other references to back the argument of seeking design excellence in the gulf region from the period of the 1970s onwards leads to projects by respected western designers such as Alison and Peter Smithson, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, and also the Japanese architect Kenzo Tange. Of course the book goes into full details. In many ways there is strong grounds to argue that the region developed through its first “modernization” during the 1970s and 1980s with a seriousness of task. The unanswered question then, is how did Dubai design today arrive at spectacle and commercial hype?

In the most polemical part of Koolhaas’ talk is the refutal of Mike Davis‘ claim that Dubai is creating a condition of slavery for the workers, thereby creating an illegitimate condition, an evil paradise. This is a very sticky subject, and I do not want to get caught in-between the arguments. There is truth in what both Davis and Koolhaas is saying. The worker’s housing photograph was taken by AMO (or a local surrogate) when visiting a housing district. Koolhaas argues that the conditions are not that of slavery. He also claims that “we were the first to enter these areas” which might or might not be true. Koolhaas also argues that these housing conditions are typical of Asian situations, and that to “read this as slavery, is to misread the Asian condition.”

This is an argument which will always be balanced between the two sides, depending upon what standards we set. If we expect that the Dubai workers should receive the same standards as Posh Spice and David Beckham who own beach property in Dubai (Dubai World?) then clearly there is a problem. If however, we only expect “Asian conditions” for the workers who inevitably all filter into Dubai from the “Ring of Pain” surrounding the region, then everything is fine.

Koolhaas then jumped to the familiar subject of the “collapse of the icon” in Dubai. This has been presented world-wide, from Moscow to Montreal, and is not worth commenting on. The biggest criticism most people have is that the very notion of the “starchitect” is useless. Perhaps there is no legitimacy to “Starchitecture” at all.

Also presented were sketch masterplans of Dubai. They were beautiful plans that speculated what could happen in the desert region beyond the current developments. One massive oversight is the obvious fact that nobody builds in the desert now, and is unlikely to anytime soon. The current idea of Dubai completely revolves around water (a psychological element of survival). The OMA plans are obviously speculative, and served to show the size of what is possible -fitting London, Paris, Barcelona and many other cities into the vast desert. It is not a convincing future of Dubai -can we imagine many developers willing to extend Dubai into the sea of sand?

During the question period, one of the audience members pointed out that Koolhaas “let the cat out of the bag” in terms of his critique of Dubai. In the plan, states Koolhaas, we can see that “there is still hope for Dubai”. According to Rem, today’s practice of creating -at the hand of foreign architects- “enormous developments that focus on the tourism” and “creating endless coastal loops of resorts” is “utterly unsustainable”. The hope for Dubai is also that a new period of design will emerge. This is exemplified, Koolhaas adds, by the recent plan of Sir Norman Foster’s zero emission urban plan.

Clearly the biggest crowd-pleaser was the photo of Rem presenting Al Manakh on Al Jazeera television. You could feel his sense of pride.

Mark Wigley: Going into the Desert

Mark Wigley won the award for rubbing the audience the wrong way. While admitting “never having gone to Dubai”, he was happy to say that he “sends many people there.” He also wins the award for being the most defensive of the three speakers. At nearly each question he attempted to accuse the questioner of being judgmental. Repeatedly he argued that the book was not created to pass judgment on Dubai. It became utterly banal and boring. He states that, “The purpose of the book is not to dictate a path, but to open possibilities for the intelligent reader.”

One appreciated argument from Wigley was that it was the architects in Dubai, and not Dubai that was off course. This however seems like judgment. The rest of his talk focuses on a free-flow discourse about the desert and our perception of it. The desert represents the void of spatial definition, something that – in the West – we feel a need to attack and conquer.

It has been a while since Dutch architecture has needed a make-over. You can also read the autumn 2005 issue of OASE (link) titled: After the Party:

Half-consciously, but not explicitly, the ‘young’ Dutch architecture [of the 90ies - ed.] reflected the silent consensus of the enlightened neo-liberalism of the period. Conflicts of interest were not resolved, but laconically presented. The complications of building and the shoddy standards of the industries involved were not avoided, but displayed with hardly disguised pleasure. Whereas earlier generations of architects had tried to find balances between vested and public interests, or – in the ‘critical’ 1970s had formulated alternatives to the dominant culture, the SuperDutch architecture was pragmatic, self-confident and frighteningly contemporary. The provocative statement was an important style figure, but its direction remained unclear.

Four years of economic decline and a succession of populist and Christian-conservative politics have brought the post-ideological party of the 1990s to an end. Debates on immigration and the common values of a secularised society have acquired a sharp edge; appeals against political and other ‘elites’ have become commonplace statements on the hymn sheets of a new class of rulers who emerged from the populist revolt that transformed the country, like others in Western Europe, after the millennium. The privatisation of the public sphere – a process that started in the economic crisis in the 1980s and continued without much protest – has accelerated. Cutting subsidies for cultural institutions and wilfully dismantling the system of regional planning, this new regime offers a clear vision of a society that has shaken off what was left of the arrangements of post-war collective planning and cultural politics, replacing it with the disciplinary force of the market.

So Dutch architecture will presumably join the rest of the technology world with a symposium scheduled for November, launching this new theme: Architecture 2.0? Clearly it stems from the O’Reilly Media term Web 2.0 – which is now passé. So Architecture is trying one more time to jump on the bandwagon of a hype, but unfortunately arriving late. The website announcing the conference is very Web 1.0, too: a static, non-community oriented and non-database driven site for starters. But more importantly – will the conference address these issues – communities, communication, bottom-up planning structures, open-source architecture?

The conference participants is a nice list of NL Architectuur 1.0 favs: Wiel Arets, Ben van Berkel, Francine Houben, Rem Koolhaas, Winy Maas and Willem Jan Neutelings. The moderator is Ole Bouman, while Ivo Opstelten and Mels Crouwel will also make opening and closing comments respectively. This raises the question then, who is the next generation of Dutch architects, or foreign architects operating in the Netherlands? Or is architecture version 2.0 the same architects as 1.0 but with some new tricks?

With the subtitle, The Destiny of Architecture, and almost no explanation of the theme, we don’t really know what to expect, other than many grand ideas, perhaps great, perhaps not. But if you’re up for a conference, hopefully you have 350 euros (excl. BTW) to burn, because this is an expensive one. Otherwise, if you’re student, it’s nearly free at 20 euros (incl. BTW).

We’ve all talked about Lego and architecture and growing up with the fantastic toy… Perhaps someone, somewhere, should write about the correlation between Lego and architects. Now BIG (Denmark) is going to exhibit an urban model using 220.000 Lego pieces at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in NYCity. It is fun to watch their video of the project being built in the studio.

Convergence towards movie architecture and science fiction stage sets. Read more about it at dezeen, see all hi-res images at spaceportamerica.

UK based Designer Paul Hollingworth has created a beautiful Flickr-Set of surreal photo collages. His photoshopped visions are architecture with a graphic designer’s approach, never meant to be built (not unlike most architect’s projects). Click on the images to see a higher resolution version of them.