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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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 –

ExperimentaDesign is an international Biennale dedicated to design, architecture and creativity oscillating between Lisboa and Amsterdam. This year’s theme is “It’s About Time”, it starts on 9th September in Lisboa. EXD has invited me to cover their event as a media collaborator. See you there in September.

From the press release:

20″ EXD VIDEO COMPETITION – CALL FOR ENTRY

ExperimentaDesign launched a worldwide Call for Entry inviting design savvy individuals and groups to submit a twenty second (20”) video to stand a chance to win special passes to EXD’09 Lisboa.

EXD is looking for daring creative work for its first ever Video Competition. Submitted works must reflect the Biennale’s spirit and convey a particular vision of the theme for EXD’09: It’s About Time. The winning video would have also considered the look and feel of the communication for EXD’09 Lisboa created by Creative Director Ian Anderson. And will be featured as part of the EXD’09 communication campaign.

The author(s) of the winning video will be awarded all access passes to the Opening Week of EXD’09 in Lisbon including accommodation. EXD will also shortlist 5 runners-up who will receive all access passes to the biennale.

EXD is inclusive of various creative agents and disciplines presenting a bespoke programme for each edition. In this unique and inclusive spirit, the 20” Video Competition was established. To enhance international participation the competition is open worldwide to professionals and students over 18 years of age. The competition will be judged by Ian Anderson and members of the EXD communication team.

Submission deadline is 10 July 2009.
For detailed information, conditions and rules visit:

http://www.experimentadesign.pt/2009/_download/EXD09_20SEC_RULES.zip

http://www.experimentadesign.pt/2009/_download/EXD09_20SEC_TAGS.zip

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.

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

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):
“You see here two systems colliding: the platonic conception of cleaning and the platonic conception of architecture”.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

In the forthcoming exhibition at the Stedelijk, Tillmans reveals the connections between his own work and that of a number of kindred spirits in the art world. Some, like German artist Isa Genzken, with whom Tillmans has exhibited on a number of occasions, share his free and easy approach to images and materials. Others, like René Daniëls and Daan van Golden, are artists who constantly redeploy their own stock of images in new ways. Tillmans also creates a dialogue between his own experiments with the abstract qualities of the photographic image and the work of Ellsworth Kelly, Morris Louis, Robert Mangold and Niele Toroni. The socially committed, political aspect of his oeuvre is reflected in his selection of Roberto Matta, Peter Hujar and Timur Novikov.

The new installation, Stedelijk Room, will be a collection of his work combining:

[...] abstract images with portraits, landscapes, still lifes and townscapes. Tillmans even includes odd references to Amsterdam/The Netherlands, such as his self-portrait Mosshat (1988), made during a period in Amsterdam in his twenties, and a photograph of a painting of William of Orange. There is also an image that refers to one of the first abstract compositions he ever made, on the occasion of the 1998 From the Corner of the Eye exhibition at the Stedelijk. Iconic works from Tillmans’ oeuvre included in Stedelijk Room are Lutz & Alex, climbing tree (1992), police helicopter (1995), man pissing on chair (1997) and the black-and-white image of an intertwined group of friends Arkadia I (1996). In contrast to these earlier photographs, there are also recent, large-scale abstracts like Freischwimmer 118 (2005) and Silver 50 (2006). Finally, Stedelijk Room includes three tables covered with montages of photographs and cuttings from newspapers and magazines which are in permanent dialogue with the images displayed on the walls.

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

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

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.

Amsterdam’s finest photography museum, FOAM Fotografiemuseum, has what should be an excellent exhibition opening on the 14th March. The new exhibit by Daniel & Geo Fuchs: STASI – Secret Rooms runs until the 4th June 2008, and documents the interior spaces used by the East German Stasi.

From the FOAM press release:

From 14 March 2008 Amsterdam’s photography museum Foam presents STASI – Secret Rooms by the German artist duo Daniel & Geo Fuchs. The exhibition opens up the hidden rooms once used by the STASI, the infamous East German secret service, in a series of monumental photos. While much of the former DDR infrastructure has been destroyed, or given an entirely new function, the clandestine spaces that Daniel and Geo Fuchs photographed are still in their original condition. Offices, cell complexes, bunkers, living quarters and interrogation rooms: everything is exactly the way it was before ‘Die Wende’. The typical East European interiors, with their functional furniture and sober colours seem remarkably stylised in retrospect. Yet above all, what this large, intriguing project shows is the symbiosis of architecture, power and impotence.

In January 2004, the Starke Foundation invited Daniel and Geo Fuchs to participate in an artists-in-residence programme in Berlin. Following their successful Conserving and Famous Eyes projects, it was only now that they discovered the full extent of the DDR’s structural heritage in Berlin. Besides the Palast der Republik (the DDR parliament) this consists primarily of offices of the Ministry of State Security (STASI) in Lichtenberg, Bautzen and Hohenschönhausen. Even today many of these places remain practically untouched.

Daniel and Geo Fuchs researched the historical background of these locations and photographed them meticulously with an large format-camera. They used a strict system, photographing each room from the same perspective. Thanks to the subtle framing, apparently insignificant details acquire a new importance and give each picture an unusual interpretation. A red phone, a large, archaic intercom, typically East German furnishings, a solitary calendar; it all seems as if it were deliberately put in place by a fashion-conscious stylist. That the reality is rather more sinister gives these pictures their typically bitter aftertaste: the places we see here are checkpoints, prison cells, and for example the residence and offices of the former minister of state security. Daniel and Geo Fuchs’s extremely precise pictures gradually draw us into the maelstrom as we realise the awesome absurdity of this most recent chapter of German history.

Advertisement clip for Madrid’s metro. Via my favourite daily blog and source of beauty, monoscope.

Exhibition Poster

Dutch artist Liesbeth Touw and Spanish artist Zigor Barayazarra will exhibit their recent work at the Duende artist-run studios in Rotterdam. Both artists have been working at the studio in the artist’s residency program. The exhibition opening runs between 19.00 and 22.00, Thursday the 20 December at the Duende studios (map).

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.

The New York photographer Taryn Simon shows the unknown and furtive of American society. At first glance with an incredible beauty it turns to a prickling scariness when understanding the content. Her first popular piece of art is about the Body Farm: a forensic institution in Tennessee which analyzes the decay of human bodies for the purpose of criminal research. One of her picture shows a dead body lying in scrub, hidden in the darkness. The boy is still wearing sneakers with legs which look burnt. With this series she provoked a lot of protest and the institute is now strongly observed.

She attempts to access the most secret rooms, landscapes, laboratories, dumps or archives in America. Simon succeeded even to enter the Nuclear Waste Encapsulation and Storage Facility in Hanford (Washington) which preserves 1936 steel capsules of atomic waste with 120 million Curie of radioactivity in total. The cold glow of the rays is overpowering even within the steel capsules, which are several meters thick. There is probably no other place in America which is more polluted. As Simon writes, the core of the project is the “total detachment of expert knowledge and official publicity.”

Sculpture International Rotterdam has just opened this years public art installations, Publiek, showing the work of Ugo Rondinone (CH), Monica Bonvicini (IT/DE) and Germaine Kruip (NL). The work is clustered around Rotterdam’s historic City Hall along the Coolsingel, and activates the city on multiple scales, from the interior space of the recently closed Postkantoor, to the rooftop signage of the Generale Bank, to the doorstep of the City Hall. The outdoor exhibition will be open daily, and is on display until the 18th November, 2007. Above and below Monica’s amazing piece Don’t Miss A Sec, a public toilet made entirely of one-way mirrored glass, causing its user a disconcerting feeling of exhibitionsm or inverse voyeurism.

The Duende (new website) artist-run studio in Rotterdam is one of the city’s finest initiatives. This Saturday, 22nd September, at 17.00 is a vernissage for recent artists working in the studios. Miren Arenzana (ES), Vicky Falconer – personal site (UK) and Saskia Schuler are the three artists presenting their work.

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.

The august break is over, and we’re back at drinking beers in galleries and openings instead of plain bars. We’ll rewire our cultural neurons starting tomorrow at the lecture at the NAI of José Oubrerie about his work with le Corbusier:

The architect José Oubrerie (72) worked for Le Corbusier from 1957 to 1965. In this lecture he will talk about his cooperation with Le Corbusier and in particular about one of his last works, the building of the church of ‘Saint Pierre’ in Firminy, France. This was a long-term project that was only brought to a final conclusion, under Oubrerie’s supervision, last year. “We never stopped fighting for the project,” José Oubrerie comments. “We came back to the work again and again, like an actor who must bring the same freshness to a play even at the 200th performance.”

This Saturday (1st Sep.) you’ll find us at the opening of Riverine, a media installation of my friend Philipp (aka Videogeist – check his website and beautiful work on flickr) from Berlin. The event is hosted by club 11 in Amsterdam, DJ Schege from Tied&Tickled Trio takes care of the music.

In his video-room installation ‘RIVERINE ZONES CONNECTED’, multimedia artist Philipp Geist displays video recordings and video stills from national and international rivers. Using underwater video cameras Geist has filmed the world beneath the surface. It is an attempt to get in touch with our immediate reality; an artistic examination about the ubiquitous element of water. Geist manages to show a part of our reality that is usually hidden from us.

The weekend after the Wereld van Witte de With festival starts featuring heroes as a theme.

Festival De Wereld van Witte de With is traditionally set in the second weekend of September: from Friday the 7th till Sunday the 9th of September 2007. For three days this arts-festival will show you the present art along the Witte de Withstraat and the Museumpark quarter during the opening of the cultural season.
Again you can watch and enjoy fine arts, theatre, photography, film, music, literature, dance, fashion, debate and performances. The festival offers a platform to art-institutions, city-dressers, art-galleries, artists and fashion initiatives to show their work in a different way to their new and existing audience.
In short, the festival is an unique interdisciplinary mixture of art forms, lifestyles and subcultures. Be surprised on the boundaries or similarities of the different disciplines.

And we’re already looking forward to the skyscraper weekend on the 20th to 22nd of September. Learn more about it and the upcoming artpark and the last days of Follydock in our Dysturb Calendar Section!

Rotterdam’s top museum Boijmans van Beuningen gets a archive extension by MVRDV. I especially like the cross-section.

Last week we pointed you to emerging architects and cities to go to, this week archinect interviewed offices about what they value in job applications. Useful. The shift to digital applications is remarkable, but it was about time.

Worth a visit is the recently launched site of REX, with a nice virtual tour through the Museum Plaza Project.

The former employer/partner of Prince-Ramus, Rem Koolhaas, will present the “Al Manakh” publication together with Ole Bouman at Rotterdam’s Nai on 10th of september at 8pm. Details in our calendar. If you can’t attend, you can as well watch your idol doing acrobatic stunts.

The Holcim Foundation started accepting entries for their sustainable construction awards. From their site:

The Holcim Awards competition is now open for entries and will close on February 29, 2008. The competition celebrates innovative, future-oriented and tangible sustainable construction projects from around the globe and provides prize money of USD 2 million per three-year competition cycle.

The Holcim Awards (main category) competition is open to projects at an advanced stage of design with a high probability of execution. To be eligible for entry, the project must not have commenced execution prior to June 1, 2007.

In addition, a “Next Generation” category is open for project visions at a conceptual level, early stage of design or with a low probability of execution. To be eligible for entry, the project author(s) must be less than 35 years of age at February 29, 2008. Please note there is no global phase of the competition for entrants in the “Next Generation” category.

Be it a children’s playground, a flaming roundabout or the scaled up, upside-down toy-train tunnel in a park and former tip-site in Rotterdam: Kronenburg’s ironic public art hits our nerve.

german architecture & theory magazine arch+ put the first three videos or their interview marathon at the documenta online.

yes, its the same format as the serpentine gallery event and yes, its also Koolhaas and Obrist who are interviewing.
The first online videos are with Marie-Luise Scherer, former ‘der spiegel’ reporter (on journalism and writing), Karl Schloegel, historian (on bottom-up europe) and Thomas Schütte, sculptor (on his archi-scultures, life as an artist and many things more).

Unfortunately the interviews are almost completely in german. I didn’t know RK speaks such good german…

Looking forward for many more to come. The complete list should include:

Thomas Bayrle (*1937, Künstler, Frankfurt/Main)
Gottfried Böhm (*1920, Architekt, Köln)
Hannes Böhringer (*1948, Philosoph, Berlin/Braunschweig)
Arno Brandlhuber (*1964, Architekt, Berlin)
Martin Burckhardt (*1957, Autor/Kulturtheoretiker, Berlin)
Harun Farocki (*1944, Filmemacher, Berlin)
Jeremy Gaines (*1958, Publizist, Frankfurt/a.M.)
Manfred Grohmann (*1953, Bauingenieur, Frankfurt/a.M.)
Dieter Hoffmann-Axthelm (*1940, Autor, Berlin)
Sejla Kameric (*1976, Künstlerin, Sarajevo/Berlin)
Eva Meyer-Keller (*1972, Performance Künstlerin, Berlin)
Annette Kelm (*1975, Künstlerin, Berlin)
Friedrich Kittler (*1943, Medientheoretiker, Berlin)
Alexander Kluge (*1932, Filmemacher/Theoretiker, München)
Antje Majewski (*1968, Künstlerin, Berlin)
Jürgen Mayer H. (*1965, Architekt, Berlin)
Isabel Mundry (*1963, Komponistin, Zürich)
Ingo Niermann (*1969, Autor, Berlin)
Marie-Luise Scherer (*1938, Journalistin/Schriftstellerin, Damnatz)
Karl Schloegel (*1948, Historiker, Berlin/Frankfurt Oder)
Eckhard Schulze-Fielitz (*1929, Architekt, Essen/Bregenz)
Thomas Schütte (*1954, Bildhauer, Düsseldorf)
Hito Steyerl (*1966, Filmemacherin, Berlin)
Günter Zamp Kelp (*1941, Architekt, Berlin)

We’ve finally visited MVRDV‘s Didden Village, a roof conversion project in the North of Rotterdam (see also our previous post “MVRDV’s first Rotterdammer“).

The place hosted the mobile exhibition series zwervende tentoonstellingen in the rooms of the wig-maker’s atelier.

The design settled – after struggling with a blobby roof landscape – with the iconic shape of 2 mini-huts, houses on top of a house. The addition is covered in blue resin, in stark contrast to the traditional red bricks of the adjacent buildings, evoking the image of a home in the clouds – or maybe expressing the desire for a blue sky considering the always-grey veil covering the dutch skies.

The two volumes contain the parent’s bedroom and the children’s room – each with a separate staircase access. The stairwells float above the old building, underlining the additive character of the new rooms.

Walking up these stairs you find yourself in the tinted fairy tale landscape, art objects scattered on the roofscape – overwhelmingly blue, a strange lido. The family’s children played between the visiting architects. It was enjoyable to see how laid-back the owners handled the visitors in their appartment.

Not enough blue? Find the full set of pictures on our photo page.

As our dear feed subscribers might have noticed, we’ve been tweaking our feeds (RSS: http://www.dysturb.net/feed/) recently – which led to a lot of double, triple and quadruple posting of the same articles. Sorry for that! We’ve found a solution for these darn special characters. Next in the tweaking queue are the calendar and photo page – expect some improvements soon.

While we’re at it – dysturb readers looking at our feed may also have missed the embedded movie of our recent post of the amazing Berlage master class presentations. Watch their Top-Solid magic here: http://www.dysturb.net/2007/associative-design-berlage/.

If you need some further architainment, why not visit CTTV’s myspace page – or Rem’s. In case you are in the transitional phase like everyone around me and ask yourself grand questions as ‘Which office?’ and ‘What city?’ you could look at wallpaper’s collection of the ‘most exciting architects of the world‘, and decide whether you agree. Then overlap the results with Monocle’s Top 20 liveable cities (login required).

Above photo is by Hiroshi Sugimoto, which I first discovered at the Guggenheim in Bilbao. See his tranquil and pure work at Hirshhorn or his own site. Unfortunately the small thumbnails only convey little of the beauty of his perfectionist imagery.

Of the many end-of-year shows around Rotterdam, we are especially excited for this Thursday’s opening of Knowing Nothing of Agility at the Tent Gallery, Rotterdam. It is the graduating exhibition for Master of Fine Arts students from the Piet Zwart Institute, part of the Willem de Kooning Academie here in Rotterdam.

Opening Event: 12 July 2007 @ 20.00.
Exhibition Runs: 12 July 2007 – 19 August 2007

Students showing: Alexis Blake [US], Jérémie Boyard [FR], Ruth Buchanan [NZ], Angeline Dekker [NL], Deirdre M. Donoghue [FI/IE], Rafael F. Mendieta [PE], Ruth Legg [UK], Lieke Snellen [NL], Niels Vis [NL]

More info for the Tent Events here.

Press Release – Anke Bangma [course director MA Fine Art]:

Knowing Nothing of Agility presents the graduates of the Master of Fine Arts course at the Piet Zwart Institute, the post-graduate course of the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam.

Ruth Legg [UK] deliberately works with artistic materials or ideas that seem exhausted — used up, like a joke that has been told too often. She explores ways of restaging these cliché materials, such as cardboard boxes or newspaper images, and finding potential in their exhausted condition.

Ruth Buchanan [NZ] engages in intimate, often humorous, negotiations with the artistic legacies that also influence her own work and position as an artist. She searches for ways in which the works, documents and characters of a different era can be taken as a point of orientation, and inherited artistic approaches and meanings can be received and reanimated.

Deirdre M. Donoghue [FI/IE] is interested in memory, as an act that unfolds in the here and now of a social encounter. For her video work Becomings, she brought together family members that had not seen each other for over twenty years, and directed a setting that activated a process of remembering and negotiation of personal, collective and official histories, between three remarkable women.

By using different elements from hip-hop culture, such as sampling and breaking, Alexis Blake [US] engages with the ways in which people put forward and experience their selves within the structures of society. Working with hip-hop artists from the Rotterdam HipHopHouse, she explores the paradoxes of how one develops one’s own self-image and creates a space of one’s own in a subculture that has, by now, become commercialised and institutionalised.

The work of Rafael Freyre Mendieta [PE] springs from his experience of being a migrant. Moving between autobiography and fiction, he develops narratives of his journey of transition. There are narratives of nostalgia, where memories of home resonate in the landscape of his new environment, but there are also critical narratives, where Europe appears not to be the promised paradise of a free and nomadic subjectivity.

Over the past year, Jérémie Boyard [FR] has been roaming the city of Rotterdam, gathering a large collection of photographs. Persistently looking down, at the micro-level of the pavement, he finds leftovers, incidents, and accidents, with which he traces the utopian idea of a city under continuous de- and reconstruction, and speaks about its people without ever showing them directly.

Angeline Dekker [NL] sees buildings as organisms, subject to time and change, even to mortality. Often she works with abandoned buildings, wresting doors and floorboards from the already derelict architectural skeleton, with which to create a precarious sense of equilibrium; but she also manages to produce instability in seemingly stable settings, like in TENT..

Lieke Snellen [NL] is concerned with the relationships between the human body and functional objects and environments. She works on location in semi-public spaces, such as a school or an office, setting up exercises involving people and sculptural elements to explore how these spaces choreograph the movement of the people within them. She presents her findings through documentation as well as by translating them into interventions in the exhibition space.

Niels Vis [NL] has been fascinated by the technologies with which we produce images of reality, and by how these technologies expand our experience of time and space. While some of his works have explored the mechanisms of the camera obscura, his recent work is concerned with contemporary virtual spaces, like Second Life. How do we interrelate with physical and fictional spaces when the borders separating them seem to be disappearing?

Update: I have added some pictures of the exhibition to our photo section. Or use the flash Viewer below:

We can play movies in our terminal windows now. Pure beauty.

Imagine to see a movie playing in another Terminal: displayed on an old-school mechanic departure table; the rhythmic clicking of the letters transcoding the movie into yet another cipher.

“Diamonds never lie” Shirley Bassey sang in the opening track of 71′s James Bond movie “Diamonds are forever”. Diamonds – ultimate symbol of class, eternity and truth. It is this notion of truth which Belgian Diamond trade monopolist de Beers is promoting as the essence of the natural diamonds they are mining in Africa. Their business is increasingly endangered by manufactured gems. In the words of Jef Van Royen, official representative of the diamond industry in Belgium:

“If people really love each other, then they give each other the real stone,” he says, during an interview at council headquarters on the Hoveniersstraat in Antwerp. “It is not a symbol of eternal love if it is something that was created last week.” (from “The New Diamond Age”, an amazing article in Wired mag)

Damien Hirst’s work “For the Love of God” isn’t that much about truth and eternity, but rather wealth and power. It is supposed to be the most expensive artwork in the world: “For the Love of God” is a skull cast in platinum encased with 8500 diamonds. Damien says:

“I just want to celebrate life by saying, to hell with death. What better way of saying that by taking the ultimate symbol of death and covering it in the ultimate symbol of luxury, desire and decadence?”

De Beers contacted Vik Muniz, what he’d do with 10 Million Diamonds. His answer: “I thought doing something gross or disgusting would be too obvious, so I did something very glamorous. The idea is that people would buy it as a social experience, since having pictures of diamonds gives people the impression of having diamonds themselves.” So look at the above images again – do you feel it? I think it is quite the opposite – the glam of female movie stars multiplied with the glitz of diamonds results rather in desire than the satisfaction of ownership.

And finally the next layer of falsification and abstraction – images of diamonds which never existed, and the reason why I researched diamond imagery. Darrel and me have been searching for the right visual language for the a101 project at my office. As the project is ultimately about money and power, we wanted an urban plan made of diamonds.

Update: I’ve found some images and a making-of of Damien Hirst’s Diamond skull:

see supertouchblog’s making of and greg’s post on the skull’s costing and the full flickr photo set.

Have a look at London based artist Julian Opie’s work. He is a long time favourite of mine: so simple shapes, yet so much expression.

Ruben Dario is one of Rotterdam’s finest. Currently studying photography at the Willem De Kooning Academie, he’s particularly focused on the role of photography in urbanism. His current show, Gated Conditions, showing recent photographs will be on display within the office of Doll Atelier voor Bouwkunst in Rotterdam. The exhibition will be on from the 3rd May 2007 to 15 June 2007. You can visit the office cum gallery between 09.00 and 17.30 daily – and the visit to see inside the office is also worth it.

via banksy & englishrussia

Chris Jordan’s project “Running the Numbers” hits my weak spot for data visualisation. The artist about his project:

This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 426,000 cell phones retired every day. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs.

See for yourself at www.chrisjordan.com.

I’ve just added a couple of dates to our Calendar page –

First of all, there is tonight's panel at the NAi discussing the state of architecture critique in the Netherlands (language will be dutch, fee is 5e). From their announcement:

Aan de hand van drie introducties van architectuurcritica Angelika Schnell (D), architectuurhistoricus Cor Wagenaar (NL) en docent architectuurkritiek Paul Vermeulen (B) wordt gedebatteerd over de stand van zaken in de architectuurkritiek in Nederland en Vlaanderen. Zij gaan in op de vraag in hoeverre de architectuurkritiek verdrinkt in de verschuiving van tekst- naar beeldcultuur? Hoe reflecteert ons denken over het maatschappelijk belang van de architectuur in de architectuurkritiek? En aan welk type architectuurkritiek is in de huidige tijd behoefte?

Also today the “Nederlands Fotomuseum” opens at Las Palmas – finally. There they’ll have enough room to host their extensive collection of not only photography, but also movies and digital media. The Las Palmas Building housed the Holland-America Line since 1953, but was soon used for other things, among them as a trade station for goods from the Canary Islands, thus the name. Benthem Crouwel Architecten conceived the renovation plans for its new use. The opening exhibitions are “Dutch Eyes’ and ‘Panorama Las Palmas”. See nederlandsfotomuseum.nl to see what else is going on on this opening weekend and after.

On the 26th of April you’ll find us at the Worm – a location we favor anyhow – where the new Yearbook of Dutch Architecture will be presented. It’s free, but you can make sure they’ll let you in at www.naipublishers.nl.

In the night of the 24th of may you’ll be able to behold the results of the eldaplus.org workshop “spelen met licht” (play with light). The selected locations gravitate around the Erasmus bridge. You’ll find a full map soon at www.rotterdam2007.nl, you can also register for the workshop at http://eldaplus.org/691.0.html if yo spare 1140e. Let’s hope that the results are more satisfying as the purplish city of Architecture installations we’ve seen so far at several sites in Rotterdam. The same evening will also be the opening evening for the Rotterdam Biennale of Architecture – which deserves an own post to be fully covered.

For a complete list of what’s going on visit our Calendar page.

On Tuesday, April 10, 2007, Martin Berendse of the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science will officially open the Dutch Electronic Art Festival. The opening will take place at Rotterdam’s new Las Palmas cultural center at 7:00 pm. A performance by the Belgian group Code31 will be the highlight. DEAF, one of the most important international festivals devoted to art, media and technology, is organized every two years by V2_, Institute for the Unstable Media. DEAF07 runs from April 10 to 29, 2007, in Rotterdam.

Varied Schedule
DEAF07 presents a number of landmark works in the area of media, technology and art. A large exhibition of interactive art will serve as its focal point. Part of the festival’s program will be devoted to the network V2_ has built over the past several years in the People’s Republic of China and other parts of Asia. Chinese artists, curators and other key art world players will take part in the festival. Along with a very special night celebrating V2_’s 25th birthday, DEAF07 will host an extensive range of concerts, performances, seminars, workshops and a symposium.

Visit the Exhibition On the Internet
DEAF07′s large international exhibition of interactive art offers an intriguing overview of contemporary interactive art, from cutting-edge and experimental high-tech works to near-classic video pieces. There is work from Europe, the United States, Canada, the People’s Republic of China and Japan, plus a number of pieces realized in collaboration with V2_Lab.

Follow DEAF07 from your sofa through live webcasts and blogs – and MOBI, a mobile robot with a monitor screen and a camera, which you can control via the Internet. Use the robot to take a remote walk through the exhibition and communicate with visitors.

The DEAF07 exhibition take places at the new Las Palmas/LPII cultural center and Pakhuismeesteren in Rotterdam’s Kop van Zuid. DEAF’s other locations are V2_, NAi, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, the Ro Theater, Staal and Arminius.

More information about the Dutch Electronic Art Festival (DEAF07) is available here

copy-pasted from V2_info_int mailing list, subscribe here

cben.net is great, but this definitely beats it.

via gravestmor.

I’ve just added some architecture photography from a little trip to London to our flickr site. See a lot of Foster, some Adjaye, a bit of Alsop and spot the Rogers.

Yesterday evening Olafur Eliasson held a lecture at the NAI, forming part of the “7 pillars of architecture” series (check our calendar for upcoming events!). His narrative was refreshingly engaging, hopping from the reasoning behind his work to early works, from perceptual experiments to the organisation of his studio.
Eliasson (OE on wikipedia) gained world-wide recognition with his ‘the weather project’ installation in the main hall of the modern tate.

“What does it mean to get involved?” is the question OE tries to answer through his work. In the early 90ies, he dropped a bucket of green color into a local river passing through Oslo – thus creating a beautiful and alienating effect, and the adequate alarm of the press. The aesthetic component of the project is not the Eliassons point, though: “It’s not about decoration, it’s about critique and dialogue” he claims.

His research and work then moved on from color perception experiments to shapes generated translating sounds into three-dimensional space. A logical next step was to experiment not only with natural oscillations, but to directly generate shapes via parametric software. His work then developed towards spatial experiments – expandable tents, pavillions, facades.

He states that all his spatial work is about people, and the consequences of the space upon them. Thus he criticises the general loss of faith in the consequences of one’s actions, the lack of experimentality, friction, and purpose. This is also his critique toward’s the architecture: “I talk to architects on a daily basis. And it’s never about why, only about how.”

He hopes that a new field will evolve from the domain of architecture: “A spatial practice about communal and social interaction, to sustain a kind of collective, with responsable criticality.” Asked for his dreams, he answered, “This is so boring, but I dream that content will kill form.” Which sounds unfitting. His entire work, based on perception and interaction, is highly aesthetic. The projects do start with rational experimentation, and this origin resonates in each work – but to let content kill form would probably also kill Olafur’s stunning work.

See also Eliasson’s website (where somo of the pics of this post come from), more pics of the lecture on our flickr page and kunstaspekte (de) for an exhibition calendar.

This summer Eliasson is going to publish a magazine, to be called either “take your time ” or “small spaces of experiments”, which will contain all the little things that don’t get to be built. Stay tuned.

More pictures:

While Rotterdam’s notorious Witte de With Straat is full of new exhibitions in time for the recent Museumnacht, one photo exhibit should not be missed. The MKgalerie shows recent work by Dutch photographer Hans Wilschut. At times the images document architectural processes (construction), they also investigate architectural post-processes (abandonment). They are always engaging and having spoken to the artist about his recent photographic trip into China, we’re dying to see the new work. But that won’t go on show in the Netherlands too soon -the next Chinese exhibit will be in Shanghai, naturally. See it now – until the 25 March, 2007.

The Boijmans van Beuningen proves itself yet again with a soon-to-open retrospective on Kurt Schwitters. From March 3rd to May 28th, 2007 the exhibit showing more than 300 pieces will be on display in Rotterdam. With consistently great shows, the Boijmans again makes its neighbour, the Kunsthal, look like a flabby gallery for pop-culture amateurs.

For those not in the know, Pecha Kucha is an innovative approach to giving presentations that is taking design and architecture circles by storm. This format ensures that presentations last no longer than 6 minutes and 40 seconds as speakers are limited to using 20 slides, each of which is shown for only 20 seconds. These simple rules have resulted in Pecha Kucha nights becoming synonymous with punchy, fast-flowing presentations that keep audiences on their toes.

The Pecha Kucha craze originated in Tokyo among creative professionals as a means to introduce and exchange ideas with peers; and is named after the Japanese onomatopoeic equivalent for chitchat. As it continues to sweep through major cities all over the world, it is quite fitting that Pecha Kucha has made its way to the Embassy of Japan.

more info

send a mail or cell number to GRL megaohmresistor to receive electronic and SMS messages regarding the dates and times of actions in Rotterdam and Amsterdam in early February.