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).
ExperimentaDesign Lisboa has announced a call to submit a twenty second (20”) video for you to stand a chance to win special passes to EXD’09 Lisboa. More.
I like the idea of constrained design challenges, often leading to more interesting results as absolutely free choice of media. The demo scene comes to mind, with the inherent need to constrain the demos to minimal filesize (a good introduction would be this video), or artists experimenting with a minimal selection of tools: Steve Reich creating sounds by just cutting and looping (interesting enough performed live again by Peter Aidu in the video below), or Lars von Trier and the dogma movement, who banned effects and illusion, to get back to the essence of movie-making.
For more about the competition and Experimentadesign – Continue reading ‘20 seconds’
The Rotterdam Design Award started its 2009 application period, deadline is 8 of May.
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.
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.
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.
Continue reading ‘If you’ve lost your job, apply to the Jan Van Eyck Academie!’
Every once in a while I am overcome by the feeling that I could have a glimpse of the future. Using Google Earth for the first time, or discovering screen sharing were such moments. As well as looking at Tineye today. Tineye is a web search service, you show it an image and it finds similar versions of it on the web – all the cropped, distorted, color-optimized, compressed, lower- and higher-resolution versions someone created and uploaded.
Read also what the always interesting things magazine has to say about it [excerpt]:
The site does a good job of pulling up a set of differently sized, coloured and scaled versions of the same painting. Maurice de Vlaminck’s Landscape with Red Trees (1906) gives the above set of thumbnails a ripple of difference – admittedly mostly very slight – but noticeable in terms of hue and crop. But what about paintings by the same artist? Or different versions of the same landscape? (Paul Cezanne painting Mont St Victoire, for example). Or even different views painted using the exact same combination of colours? Imagine if it could be set to find works by the same artist working in a similar way? TinEye could not only help research artistic movements, it could uncover potentially hidden works. It could create new movements.
Star Wars: A New Heap. Recommended Read.
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): Continue reading ‘Koolhaas Houselife’
The Dutch Government proves again that they see Architecture as one of NL’s marketing-worthy assets. The Royal Dutch Mint has released 10 and 5 Euro coins displaying the names of important contemporary and historic architects, as well as some of their publications. Not buildings, these seem to be reserved for bills. The decision to focus on theory, not practice, ties in with the generous funding Netherlands supports architecture publications with. The ease to shell out books contributed to the ‘Super-Dutch’ era in the 90ies.
The mill about the coin design:
he Architecture five-euro coin was designed by artist Stani Michiels (b. 1973). The design on the obverse of the coin pays tribute to the history of Dutch architecture, with the portrait of Queen Beatrix being distinctively constructed using the names of important architects from Dutch history. The artist used the internet as a popularity-meter to determine the names’ order of appearance.
The reverse of the Architecture five-euro coin draws attention to the striking fact that many Dutch architects have also included publishing books on architecture in their professional activities. To illustrate this phenomenon, recent books on architecture rise up from the sides of the coin like buildings. Through their careful placement they combine to outline the Netherlands, while birds’ silhouettes suggest the capitals of all the provinces.
You can buy it in the Mint’s coin store.
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.
Continue reading ‘Complexity in American Commercial Space’
Let’s jump right into this: Japan has the absolute best census in the history of my known world. Not only does it include normal things like age, sex, and the height of each of your pets, but it also legitimizes the gossipy question of What Are You Doing Right Now? Japan slapped a bunch of people with notebooks and a sacred Numbers Mission: keep a log of what you do during the day, in fifteen minute intervals. And those people did!
Fascinating. What people really do with their time – in Japan. Go to xoxosoma.com.
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:
Continue reading ‘The sky is no limit’
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…
Continue reading ‘11th Venice Architecture Biennale: The Making of’
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.
The latest exhibition in the temporary location for the Stedelijk Museum CS will be a show curated by Wolfgang Tillmans (b. 1968) which includes his own work situated amongst other artists. The show is entitled, Presence of Mind, and will run through June 20th – September 30th, 2008. While previous works will be included, the show will also include the museum’s recent acquisition, an installation by Tillmans titled, Stedelijk Room.
Continue reading ‘Wolfgang Tillmans at the Stedelijk CS’
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.
Continue reading ‘Get A Flag!’
