Archive for the 'books + mags' Category

Hunch 12: Bureaucracy – Launch Event

hunch12_cover_website

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.
Con­tinue read­ing ‘Hunch 12: Bureau­cracy – Launch Event’

Wonderland Magazine

going public

Won­der­land Mag­a­zine #3 “Going Public” avail­able now

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.

Al Manakh Second Edition

Abu Dhabi’s Plan­ning Coun­cil and the Dutch Archi­tec­ture Insti­tute agreed a few days ago to coop­er­ate on deliv­er­ing the second volume of Al Manakh. As in the last issue, OMA will be involved in the research work, as well as Pink­tank and Archis.

The issue is sched­uled for 2010 and will focus on actual and (what did you expect?) sus­tain­able devel­op­ments in the Gulf.

via: architectenweb.

PIN-UP: Enjoy Architectural Entertainment

PIN-​UP #4 – Cover

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.
Con­tinue read­ing ‘PIN-UP: Enjoy Archi­tec­tural Entertainment’

Favourite Books of Archinecters

archinect rat literature

A little follow-​up to the 010 pub­li­ca­tions: some Archinect edi­tors share their favorite book titles of year of the pig: see their selec­tion here.

The Best of 010’s Upcoming Publications

010 publishers

For the last 25 years, Rotterdam’s 010 Pub­lish­ers (Uit­gev­erij 010) has con­tributed to the larger debate about design both within and with­out the Nether­lands. There are three books that stand out from the mix of forth­com­ing titles, to be pub­lished this spring and summer:

Con­tinue read­ing ‘The Best of 010’s Upcom­ing Publications’

MIMOA – community architecture guide

mimoa

MIMOA screenshot

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.

Con­tinue read­ing ‘MIMOA – com­mu­nity archi­tec­ture guide’

Al Manakh – Listen to the Koolhaas, Wigley & Bouman Debate @ NAi

Wigley-Bouman-Koolhaas

Left to right: Mark Wigley, Ole Bouman, Rem Koolhaas

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.

[display_​podcast]

More Photos can be found in our photo section.

Con­tinue read­ing ‘Al Manakh – Listen to the Kool­haas, Wigley & Bouman Debate @ NAi’

Al Manakh – A First Look

Al Manakh 01

Cover, photo: Darrel Ronald

Since first seeing the AMO Gulf Cities study pre­sented at the 2006 Venice Archi­tec­ture Bien­nale, most of us have been anx­ious to hear more about the region, and get an in-​depth look at the eco­nomic processes at work. And so the wait is over with the release of Al Manakh, released through­out the Nether­lands this past week, and is widely avail­able, includ­ing at the NAi.

While the book was first released for the atten­dants at the May 2007 Inter­na­tional Design Forum (IDF) con­fer­ence in Dubai, it has been noto­ri­ously hard to get ahold of until now. The 495 page book was largely organ­ised by Mouta­ma­rat, a recently-​established pri­vate body that aims to “create busi­ness knowl­edge for the Arab world.”

Al Manakh serves as a barom­e­ter for the changes taking place in the region, and trans­lated, the title means “the climate”. As Kool­haas writes in the open­ing, the book is a form of “critical participation”. But when he writes that “The Gulf is not just recon­fig­ur­ing itself; it’s recon­fig­ur­ing the world”, I find it hard to believe this is entirely spe­cial. Can we not say this about China? How about New York and London?

If you have already heard, both Kool­haas and Bouman will present the book at the NAi on Sep­tem­ber 10th at 20.00. If you haven’t reserved tick­ets yet, you are prob­a­bly out-of-luck, since it has been sold out for some time. I don’t usu­ally see scalpers at the doors either.

Con­tinue read­ing ‘Al Manakh – A First Look’

documenta interview marathon

mini-marathon.jpg

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) Con­tinue read­ing ‘documenta inter­view marathon’

Now Published: Power to the House – Powerhouse Company

Power To The House
Power To the House cover, source: Pow­er­house Company

The emerg­ing Rot­ter­dam archi­tec­ture and urban­ism office, The Pow­er­house Com­pany, has just pub­lished their first “autobiographical magazine”, Power to the House. The mag­a­zine is an excit­ing overview of their work over the past couple years, and fea­tures archi­tec­tural and urban projects, build­ings under con­struc­tion, com­pe­ti­tions, and research.

The Pow­er­house Com­pany is run by Nanne de Ru in Rot­ter­dam, and Charles Bessard in Copen­hagen. The two-​year old office is off to a good start with their strat­egy of work­ing across Europe. The young archi­tects have split their office in two cities from the start and exploit free online tools and cheap long-​distance net­work­ing tools such as Skype, Gmail, You Send It, Lulu and Transavia. They rep­re­sent a new gen­er­a­tion of ambi­tious archi­tects that know how to exploit the tools of glob­al­i­sa­tion to get things done.

The mag­a­zine is self-​published, and can be either down­loaded dig­i­tally for free, or bought and deliv­ered to you in print form, from Lulu online publishing.

Con­tinue read­ing ‘Now Pub­lished: Power to the House – Pow­er­house Company’