Perfectly in tune with my recent move from Rotterdam to Berlin* I can recommend the Bauhaus exhibition in the Martin Gropius Bau (where else?) in Berlin. The exhibition – the largest on Bauhaus in history – will be open until 4th of October 2009, and focuses on the period 1919 to 1933. It is refreshing and and overwhelming to see this wealth of utopian ideas, especially now.

From the press release:

“Wednesday, the 21 July, the exhibition ‘Bauhaus. A Conceptual Model’ opened in Berlin’s Martin Gropius Bau. On the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the foundation of the Bauhaus and 20 years after the fall of the Berlin wall, the leading Bauhaus research institutions and museums in Germany – the Bauhaus Archive Berlin, the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau and the Klassik Stiftung Weimar – are for the first time jointly presenting an exhibition. With about 1,000 objects it will be the largest Bauhaus exhibition ever. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, cooperating partner in the project, sent 25 objects to Berlin and will present its own exhibition ‘bauhaus 1919 – 1933. Workshops for Modernity’ beginning on 8 November in New York.

Supporting Programme for the Exhibition

A diverse programme of events will be offered to accompany ‘Bauhaus. A Conceptual Model’. It includes a five-day international conference ‘bauhaus global’ (21 – 26 September 2009) supported by the Stiftung Lotto/ Stiftung Deutsche Klassenlotterie Berlin, as well as a lecture series, cinema nights, workshops, architecture tours and book presentations (see overview of supporting events). Public tours are offered on Saturdays and Sundays at 12:00 and 2:00 pm.

The exhibition is supported by the German Federal Cultural Foundation. The primary supporters are HOCHTIEF and the Sparkassen-Kulturfond des Deutschen Sparkassen- und Giroverbands. The Stiftung Deutsche Klassenlotterie Berlin and the ART MENTOR FOUNDATION LUCERNE are sponsors of the exhibition. Media partners are the Radio Berlin-Brandenburg (rbb), the newspapers DIE WELT, and the Berliner Morgenpost, and the Wall AG. The installation in the Lichthof was generously supported by Eternit AG and Thonet GmbH.”

*we still have our man Martin in Rotterdam, though!

The Berlage Institute is holding their final reviews for the first year studios today, from 10 to 21:30 (CEST). If you are quick, you can watch the live video stream here.

The first session is already over (When Economies Become Form: Micro-Economic Models as Spatial Prescriptions in Northeast Brazil, Tina DiCarlo and Markus Miessen). H2OBITAT (Freek Persyn, Laurence Tait, Nico Tillie) starts at 14:00 (CEST), and Bridging Untroubled Waters: The Ningbo Mall as a Quest for Alternative Strategies in Open Space Development (Rients Dijkstra, Thomas Stellmach) is scheduled for 18:30 (CEST). Teaching the latter studio has been one of the reason why it has been so quiet around here the during the last weeks…

The guest critics we’ve invited include Carson Chan, Director of Programs, Berlin; Filip Geerts, Assistant Professor of Architecture, TUDelft; Adrian Hornsby, editor, The Chinese Dream; Jorg Leeser, principal of BeL, Cologne; Hiroki Matsuura, architect, Maxwan, Rotterdam; Marc Ryan, architect, West8; Jan Nauta, researcher, nOffice, Berlin; Ralf Pflugfelder, partner of nOffice, Berlin; Caroline Rovers, Stadshavens Rotterdam; Jaap Wiedenhoff, principal, Arup, Amsterdam.

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The Rotterdam Design Award started its 2009 application period, deadline is 8 of May.

Don’t let the poster mislead you! TU Delft’s U-Lab comes up with a daring conference breaking from its single-disciplinary conservatism. During 3 days from September 24th on mathematicians, physicists, urbanists and designers gather in Delft. They will explore the implications of complexity theories of cities to planning and urban design. Besides hotshot professors Juval Portugali, Bill Hillier, and Mike Batty, gonna-be’s, or maybe wanna-be’s like Egbert and me will take the floor.

The conference has a limited audience capacity, and is first-come, first served! For more information, you may see complexitytheoriesofcities.com, send an email to me and check out the other dates in our calendar of selected Rotterdam Architecture Events.

Three decades of research have established the field of complexity theories of cities as a dominant approach to cities. Now that the field has come of age, it is time to stop for a moment, look back at what has been achieved, with appreciation, but also with sober criticism and then look forward at potentials that have yet to be realized.

As for potentials yet to be realized, this conference will explore the implications of complexity theories of cities to planning and urban design. As examples to what we have in mind consider, firstly, Mike Batty’s (2008) recent observation that “In the past 25 years, our understanding of cities has slowly begun to reflect Jacobs’s message. Cities are no longer regarded as being disordered systems. Beneath the apparent chaos and diversity of physical form, there is strong order …”. Secondly, Portugali’s (2008) criticism that “in their search for statistical data to feed their models practitioners of USM tend to overlook the non-quantifiable urban phenomena” and as a consequence, some of the central questions of 21st Century cities and urbanism”. As for potentials yet to be realized we would like to emphasis in this workshop the implications of CTC to planning and urban design.

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.

Apart from the burning building series, we observe a new trend on dysturb, architecture practices closing down. After the cuts at OMA and EEA’s bancruptcy, we received the link to the video below. It is filmed at Foster+Partners Berlin office on the day the announcement has been made to the team (Fri 13th), 3 days after it was announced to the press. Unfortunately, some of our friends have been working there. More a about the shutdown at bdonline.

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.

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.

From 4th to 8th February Las Palmas Rotterdam hosts the Object Rotterdam Fair for autonomous design. Check our calendar for more dates in Rotterdam.

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.

The Berlage Institute Application Deadline has been announced a few days ago, 27th Feb 2009 (application forms here).

The Institute is renowned for their 2-year postgraduate program, which emphasises on research and knowledge (you can generally recognise a Berlager by his jargon). An interesting addition is their PhD programme in collaboration with TU Delft, which is undergoing some changes at the moment. Candidates completing dissertations include Roemer van Toorn, Peter Trummer and Sasha Zanko.

UPDATE –
The Berlage Institute 2009–2010 Postgraduate Prospectus is now online.
And the call for participation in the City Visions Europe European exchange program is now available for download: City Visions Europe Call for participation
–

The complete Berlage Team as on their site:

The Berlage Institute Research Board, consisting of Ben van Berkel, Winy Maas, Robert E. Somol, Alejandro Zaera-Polo and Elia Zenghelis, establishes the profile of the Institute by identifying new research trajectories. Each member of the Research Board is personally involved in one or more component of the program. Under the directorship of Vedran Mimica, the program is developed in collaboration with the faculty, Pier Vittorio Aureli, Joachim Declerck, Salomon Frausto, Roemer van Toorn and Peter Trummer, and visiting tutors to generate an unparalleled research environment.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

Experimenta Design is an existing festival from Lisbon that has been invited to Amsterdam for the first time starting this September (2008). With a great line-up of events and conferences, the festival is very promising. The Droof Event 2: Urban Play aims to attack the streets of Amsterdam with urban interventions. And of course, any reason to visit Amsterdam is great.

About the festival:

After 4 successful editions in its native Lisbon, ExperimentaDesign, the international Biennale dedicated to design, architecture and contemporary culture, was invited by the City of Amsterdam to branch out to the Dutch Capital. As a result of this, ExperimentaDesign will now take place in alternating years in Lisbon and Amsterdam, each with different programmes.

In 2008, Amsterdam hosts its first edition of the Biennale, from 18 September to 2 November, under the theme Space and Place – Design for the Urban Landscape.

ExperimentaDesign Amsterdam 2008 highlights urban culture as the playground for the global citizen. The world’s cities are not only home to over half of the world’s population, they are also a metaphor for today’s cultures and a testing ground for new forms of conviviality and interaction. Throughout its three core exhibitions, the Biennale turns the spotlight on innovative urban design as a process of social action, exchanges and experiment.

As in previous editions of the Biennale, ExperimentaDesign Amsterdam 2008 promises to set the city’s pulse racing with a challenging, multidisciplinary programme that combines exhibitions, urban interventions, lectures and debates. For over a month and a half, the Dutch Capital will be host to a fresh selection of international talent, buzzing with playfulness, interactivity and creative energy.

During the Opening Week – from 18 to 21 September – Amsterdam is the ultimate place to be, as the Biennale launches with four days of lively exchange of ideas held in emblematic venues throughout the city.

About the theme – Space and Place: Designing for the Urban Landscape:

For the first time in history the earth’s population is more urban than rural. This means that for most people on this planet, the city has become their natural habitat. When in this context we speak of growth and blossom, terrain and flow, or use other natural metaphors, we speak in fact of engineering, architecture and design. We talk about the city as a landscape, that we have created ourselves and continue to shape.

Shaping a place is as much about imagining it as it is about building. Look at a child playing and you can recognize an arch-instinct shared by all living beings. Stepping over an imaginary line, and closing a virtual door behind him, the child says: now I’m in my home. If he has only sticks and stones to play with, he will use these to demarcate the difference between inside and outside, between a place and its surrounding space.

In design for the urban landscape, such symbolism meets the existential needs of the city’s inhabitants, who use it to define their habitat as a place to be. ExperimentaDesign Amsterdam 2008 focuses on the new urgency with which we consider urban public space. We highlight the latest strategies for enhancing public places as theater of public conviviality. From informal – and sometimes illegal – interventions which reclaim the street as the meeting place for independent citizens, to proposals by architects and designers to develop the city’s public space as a playground for social interaction. Plus reflections on how to transform a neutral space into an individual place by an international range of cutting-edge designers.

ExperimentaDesign Amsterdam 2008 invites designers, architects and other creatives from all over the world to meet their audiences in one of the finest urban playgrounds of all: the city of Amsterdam.

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.

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.

From the 28th of August to 7th September, we will finalize the One Land Two Systems project with a series of public events, workshops, and spatial, social and cultural interventions in Ein Hawd. The project aims at exposing the situation of the unrecognized Palestinian villages in Israel, and at the same time finding alternative planning solutions.

Check the Press Release PDF, or read more at www.one-land.org.

Our friends from Supersudaca host an interesting workshop on tourism in post-castro Cuba in September. It’ll set you back 1000€, but scholarships to reduce the fee are available. The objective of the workshop is to find specualtive answers on questions as:

How will Cuba change its tourist branding in a SIN-EMBARGO scenario?
How will it mutate its current spatial segregation strategy between locals and tourist in a SIN-EMBARGO scheme?
What will be the territorial impacts in a Cuba SIN-EMBARGO that admits cruise ship tourism?
Will Cuba become a role model for next generation tourist developments in the Caribbean and worldwide in a SIN-EMBARGO condition?
What is the emerging territorial paradigm of Sun and Beach in the Cuba CON-EMBARGO? Will it change in a SIN-EMBARGO context?
Will the regulation culture and environmental management remain the same in a ‘liberalized’ Cuba SIN-EMBARGO?
How will Cuba react spatially to the opening of the massive market of second residences for American pensioners in a Cuba SIN-EMBARGO?

The inscription period ends on 15th of August. The (slightly disappointing) results of last years sudapan competition will be at display at RAS gallery in Barcelona from 4th September on.

More at sinembargo.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

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.

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.

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

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!

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.

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.

If you were thinking of applying to the Berlage Institute for the 2008-2009 school year (PDF), well, hopefully you’ve done it already. The deadline is for applications is the 29th February, 2008. The prospectus is as good as usual, and if you’re new to Berlage-Institute, it is the best place for post-graduate study in the Netherlands.

For livestyle junkies imm-cologne is a must – from local designers to big international brands it shows the whole range of spic-and-span-new interiour design. Have fun and and hurry up – last day of the design week is 20. January 2008.

More infos by the organisator:

Top-class designer furniture, classic living worlds, trendy accessories: imm cologne provides a comprehensive selection of furniture and furnishings. From “imm pure” to “imm basic,” the product range is clearly structured in segments. This international furnishing show is the global marketplace and meeting place for the international furniture sector — the 2008 fair features more than 1,300 exhibitors from about 60 countries. As the sector’s business event, trend barometer, international communication forum and centre for creative ideas, imm cologne and its full programme of events generate strong momentum for the interior design of tomorrow.

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 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 ;-)

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.

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.

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!

For those who’ve missed the recent day of open doors, here are views from some of the highest of Rotterdam’s rooftops (all courtesy of dakvanrotterdam.nl, © 2006 – Roelof de Vries). Click on the images to get started (quicktime required, ctrl and shift to zoom). The overview map and more panoramic views can be found here.

Power Vision: Winy Maas en Indisem (Power Talk 31 may 2007)
Urban future and the power of the architect. Watch

The Power of Urban Design – from London to Almere (Power Talk 1 june 2007)
Presentations by Peter Bishop, Ken Livingstone and Adri Duijvesteijn. Followed by a discussion with Ole Bouman (head of the Nederlands Architectuur Instituut) Watch

Hyper Power: Keller Easterling about Dubai (Lecture)
Keller Easterling (Yale University School of Architecture): Is Duba the prototype of the city of the 21st century? Watch

Fear in the City: Arjun Appadurai (Lecture 6 june 2007)
Arjun Appadurai (New School New York): What are the consequences of global urbanisation, migration and fear and uncertainty of today’s city dwellers? Watch

In addition to these there are a few dutch lectures (watch here):

• De Nieuwe Nederlandse Stad #2: Design Power
• VPRO Laat – Retopia Bijlmermeer
• VPRO Laat – Detroit come back city
• DNW – Onze Hoofdstad

I’d also like to highlight the 50 minute documentary about Caracas – in dutch, but worth watching:

• Tegenlicht – Carácas: de informele stad (Rob Schröder, 2007)

And the R.A.M. series, not related to the Biennale, but also featured on Holland Doc:

• Daniel Libeskind (Rob Schröder, 2004 – 59 minuten)
  A portrait of Daniel Libeskind, Architect of the Jewish Museum in Berlin and winner of the Ground Zero Competition in New York. Watch
• R.A.M Compilation – Architecture (Gabbi Werner, IJsbrand van Veelen and Allan Smithee, 2004 – 47 minuten) A discussion with Anca Petrescu, Shigeru Ban and Rem Koolhaas about architecture and ethics. Watch
• Koolhaas, Petrescu, Shigeru Ban and Aaron Betsky (VPRO, 2004 – 75 min.) A discussion about Architecture with Rem Koolhaas, Anca Petrescu, Shigeru Ban and Aaron Betsky Watch
• War and (in)security (VPRO, 2003 – 76 min.) The easy-going 90ies have been followed by the unstable 00′s. How do artists and architects cope with catastrophe and terror and the desire for safety? Watch

The International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam announced today that Kees Christiaanse (KCAP) has been appointed as the curator of the next Rotterdam Biennale of Architecture in 2009. The early appointment hopefully avoids the organisational problems which accompanied this years’s biennale. In spite of these problems and the smaller size of the biennale this year (due to funding problems), the press release mentions a 30% increase of visitors from 2005′s biennale, painting an optimistic picture for acquiring funds for the 2009 biennale. The press release:

“Kees Christiaanse appointed curator International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2009

The board of the Biennale has appointed Kees Christiaanse as curator of the 4th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, in 2009.

Prof. Ir. Kees Christiaanse (1953) studied Architecture at the Delft University of Technology. Between 1980 and 1989, Christiaanse worked for the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam, becoming a partner in 1983. In 1989, he started his own firm in Rotterdam, KCAP. In 1990 he founded ASTOC Architects & Planners in Cologne.
KCAP is an internationally operated Dutch design firm specialized in architecture and urbanism. KCAP’s oeuvre is wide in scope and ranges from complex urban transformations and landscape design to architecture and interiors. More than 140 projects have been designed since its founding, of which more than 60 are realized in the Netherlands and Germany. Furthermore, KCAP participates in European and Asian based projects.
From 1996 until 2003 Christiaanse was professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the Berlin University of Technology. He is now professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. He regularly acts as a jury member for international competitions, and is the author of several publications about architecture and urban design.”

And further:

“International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2007 success

On September 2, the 3rd International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam closed its doors. The four main exhibitions –Visionary Power, The New Dutch City, A Better World/Another Power and Form and the City– at the Kunsthal Rotterdam, the Dutch Architecture Institute (NAi) and the Maashavengebouw received 77.500 visitors, an increase of more than 30% compared to 2005.

The Berlage Institute curated this 3rd biennale edition that focused on urbanization and had as its theme: ”POWER – Producing the Contemporary City”.
Every single day over 150,000 people migrate to the city. The need for architects and urban planners to project and think ahead is urgent. This sense of urgency was the ultimate message of a biennale that successfully acted as a platform for young contemporary architects with a plan, with the will to grasp control of the idea of the city again, and respond to a call-to-arms for advocacy and real engagement in the urban process.

Biennale-director George Brugmans is optimistic: “The great success of this edition has resulted in an even stronger support for the future of this research oriented biennale that wants to function as an international platform for all related parties: architects, urban planners, academics, politicians, administrators and market parties. So we’re delighted that Kees Christiaanse has accepted to be the next edition’s curator; he is the ideal choice given our decision to continue to focus on the future of the city and the issues raised by unbridled urbanization.”

Stichting Spangmaker announced a small open competition to link the Rotterdam neighbourhood of Spangen better to the van Nelle ‘Design Factory’ (a gem of modernism, worth a closer look anyhow!). 1st prize: 10.000€, deadline 18th october.

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!

The Tent gallery has another promising exhibition opening next week, Dutch Design Port, that showcases Rotterdam design talent -we are such navel-gazers here. The exhibition was originally curated for the Milk Gallery in New York, including 10 Dutch Designers, and has now come back home from over the ocean.

Dutch Design Port will display the work of Jurgen Bey, Demakersvan, Simon Heijdens, Richard Hutten, Hella Jongerius, Chris Kabel, Joris Laarman, Atelier van Lieshout, Bertjan Pot and Wieki Somers. The Show runs from 7th September until the 28th October, 2007, and the opening night is also the 7th, at 18.00.

Photos from the Milk Gallery show, after party, and more can be found here.

UPDATE: We’ve added pictures from the event to our Photo Page!

Given that my favourite place to shop for Men’s clothes in Rotterdam is at Margreeth Olshoorn on Witte de Withstraat, it was great news to hear that they will launch a new men’s store down the street. It is to be much more than clothes, leaning towards lifestyle, and the launch party for all us Fantastic Men will be from 18.00 to 20.00 on September 6th, 2007, at #39 Witte de Withstraat. Please dress appropriately.

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.

Jaime Salazar :

Why can’t Rotterdam return to the forefront in applying imagination to design and production, and lay the ground work for a truly sustainable architecture?

Angelika Schnell:

No doubt Rotterdam’s wish is to be shameless, modern, radical and metropolitan – the ‘city of architecture’. But the reality is more modest, yet more complex.”

Michael Speaks :

Lloyd Quarter is the result of an approach to city development that treats architecture and the city more like products than producers.”

The Dutch Flyer after the break. Admission for the conference (13:00-18:00, De Doelen, Jurriaanse Zaal, Kruisplein 30, 3012 CC Rotterdam) is 175€, and a more friendly 20€ for students.

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.

Last week I attended the presentations of the associative design 2nd year at the Berlage research studio synthetic vernacular. Led by Peter Trummer and assisted by our fellow dysturb evangelist Martin Sobota, the class investigated traditional chinese building typologies. The principles found in the analysis were used to create a set of rules to create a framework to parametrically derive urban structure and architecture of an exemplary plot in Shanghai: Deus ex Machina.

The research group divided up into for teams, each focussing on different base parameters as FAR, degrees of privacy, climate, internal room organisation, sun trajectories. The formal decisions of the teams also led to varying urban fabrics, from low-rise high-density urban mass not unsimilar to south-american favelas to a styled courtyard & slab network. The results are cutting edge and and visualisations of the process are breath-takingly beautiful. But watch the movie first, then proceed to the review.

The excellent critique acknowledged that the intricacy of the parametric modeling approach has vastly improved of the course of the last years at the Berlage classes. However, the models are still linear in structure, not spanning different scales or relating to larger scale configurations of the environment. From that perspective it was an interesting move to apply the method to an actual, real urban plot – the next task is to push things further, mix scales, create variety. The parameters now well emulate known existing realities and re-create desired qualities. The challenges lies in breaking these limitations, extending the ranges of the parameters to a point where the un-expected can happen, and surprising new qualities are generated. The outside influences, landscape, building limitations, real world effects, could also constitute the troubling element, which would introduce the tension, the catastrophies which the homogeneous plans miss.

Lars Spuybroek remarked that ‘when I studied, my fellow students presented quite similar projects, it was at the end of dutch structuralism. But interestingly, they presented it in a completely different way: the discourse wasn’t about shifting and re-configuring floor plans, but about grass root democracy, human interaction, all the 60′s idealism.’ This is visible when it comes to the eye-level renderings of the displayed projects: spaces of little programmatic definition, where the usual skaters and and happy couples photoshopped in look rather desolate. This is where a 2nd class could pick up the thread and evaluate the generated spaces, find the advantages and shortcomings and tweak the parameters accordingly, thus create a generate-test-feedback loop.

It is remarkable that even after looking at these points which need more investigation in this young methology, the results are convincing – even more so because ‘the market would solve the problem with four high rise towers’ as Zaera Polo noted.

Among the Critics were:

• Theodore Spyropoulos (Theodore is the co-director of the Architectural
  Association Design Research Lab in London)
• Ali Rahim (Ali is Assistant Professor in Pennsylvania, and is design director at C-A-P)
• Lars Spuybroek (of NOX Architects)
• Lawrence Barth (Consultant Urbanist for Zaha Hadid and Senior Lecturer at the AA)
• Alejandro Zaera Polo (Alejandro is head of FOA and former Dean of the Berlage)
• Bing Bu (principal of One Desing Inc.)
• Felix Claus (co-founder of Claus en Kaan)
• Kersten Geers (partner at Kersten Geers David van Severen)
• Jianfei Zhu (teaches at the University of Melbourne)
• Thal Kamener (co-director of 66east)
• Christopher Lee (unit master at the AA)
• Gabriele Mastrigli (architect and critic)
• Bert de Muynck (architect, writer and researcher)

Participants of the studio are: Nana Chen, Weijie Liu, Jiri Pavlicek, Shiyun Qian, Ming-Ying Tsai, Luming Wang, Zhenfei Wang and Sheng-Ming Wu.

Download the movie here: associative-design.mp4 (156MB, right-click to save)

This coming Saturday between 14.00 and 15.00, 14th July, will see the book launch of Archydam: Een Hoopvolle Stad at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi). Archydam is the product of Raise It Up, the brainchild of Rotterdammer Goshia Grubbin. This will especially be a great event for anyone with kids!

It is an educational project for immigrant children between the ages of 7 and 14 living in Rotterdam. Raise It Up first has the kids think about, and study the world around them. And then at the end of this process they developed an urban plan for a fictional city, Archydam, wherein each of them created their own architectural masterpiece. It is a tool for teaching the kids to understand their new environment, in comparison to the world they originally came from.

The Berlage Institute, postgraduate laboratory of architecture in Rotterdam, has installed a new Research Board. Until now, Alejandro Zaera Polo (director of FOA) has been the Dean of the Institute. He has been opening the Berlage to a more international field as to tutors, lecturers and new design strategies. Instead of appointing a single follower, the institute named a board of five established figures: Ben van Berkel, Winy Maas, Robert E. Somol, Elia Zenghelis and Alejandro Zaera Polo himself. Vedran Mimica (now Director of Studies) is named director and will be responsible for the management of the postgraduate program and the implementation of strategic advice provided by the Research Board. The idea is to create a new innovative platform, not so much dependent on a single person. One the one hand this model is very flexible and inspires discussion and critique, on the other hand there is the danger of loosing profile by not having a representative person, a champion. Who is responsible for what? How much time will the board members spend at the institute? Will they find a common course? I am curious to follow how this system works out. The openness of the system speaks for the flexibility of the Berlage Institute as an independent research laboratory.

Read the full press release (Source: Berlage):

“Berlage Institute sets a new course
The Berlage Institute is pleased to announce the installation of a new Research Board to set the future course of the postgraduate laboratory of architecture. This Research Board is composed of five established figures in the world of architecture and urbanism: Ben van Berkel, Winy Maas, Robert E. Somol, Alejandro Zaera Polo and Elia Zenghelis. Together they will strengthen the leading position of the Berlage Institute as a platform for innovative research and debate on architecture, urbanism and landscape. With the ending of Alejandro Zaera Polo’s term as dean, a new and diverse leadership structure is chosen to steer the content of the Berlage Institute. This change in structure is reflective of the wide-ranged research character the institute has acquired under Zaera Polo’s deanship. The Research Board is responsible for setting the general course and profile of the institute and identifying new insights and fields of research. Furthermore, the members of the Research Board will be personally engaged in one or more components of the program. In the coming years, the creation of new alliances between the Berlage Institute and leading universities, renowned and emerging professional practices and other research initiatives will expand the already international network of the institute. In particular, we aim to extend our affiliation with Dutch and European research programs in the fields of sustainability, urbanism and energy intelligent architecture and planning. The composition of the Research Board promotes innovative and experimental methods of research. Ben van Berkel is cofounder and Principal Architect of UN Studio in Amsterdam. He is presently Professor in Conceptual Design at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. Winy Maas is partner of MVRDV in Rotterdam and recently appointed Professor in Architecture and Urbanism at the Delft University of Technology. Robert E. Somol is an architecture theorist, he teaches at Princeton University and is appointed Director of the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Alejandro Zaera Polo is partner in Foreign Office Architects in London, was Dean of the Berlage Institute from 2002-2007 and is Professor at Delft University of Technology (Berlage Chair).Elia Zenghelis is an architect and educator based in Brussels. He currently teaches at the Accademia di Archittetura in Mendrisio, Switzerland. Vedran Mimica is named Director and will be responsible for the management of the postgraduate program and the implementation of strategic advice provided by the Research Board.

Further information can be obtained from Rob Docter, General Director of the Berlage Institute, at +31-10-403 0391.”

De Gasperi Housing development, Italy

The “De Gasperi housing development” was a competition held in 2005 by the city of Naples. After the 2nd phase of the competition, we were awarded first prize and are expecting the start of construction next year. The location of the site is about 6km to the east from Naples city centre, in an adjacent outskirt of Mt. Vesvio. The size of the site is about 5ha and the aim of this project is to regenerate the area, which was built as a high-density post-war residential area in 1950.

The required program for this project is: 114 dwellings for 627 residents with extra facilities such as retail, post office, maternal school and sport facilities. The existing buildings are to be demolished. When we deal with urban plans especially focused on the regeneration of existing neighbourhoods, we normally first investigate the most pressing problems of the current condition. And on the other hand, we also try to include the positive resources of the current condition. This approach helps to focus upon where the majority of money should be spent in the new development.

The first problem is the existing street structure with a lot of cul-de-sac situations. This problem should be solved by fluently opening up the area into the surroundings. The second problem is the layout of housing blocks. The current layout has one orientation to array all the housing blocks along, although the shape of the site is highly irregular and triangular. This means that the grid-like regular building placement creates quite a lot of left-over spaces along the irregular shape of the site boundary.

Our proposal is to align each housing block according to its most prominent adjacent circumstance such as a main street, main public space, a park, buildings in the neighbourhood or a railway track. This treatment results in creating more positively enclosed and shaped public spaces in the middle of neighbourhood. And these should be car-free public spaces, a feature that the current situation completely lacks.
The position of the local centre was easily determined because of the existing commercial street. We proposed a small piazza in combination with the local centre. The position of the maternal school was determined because of the existing large open space.

The housing block unit consists of two building volumes facing each other, with an inside court. The court space serves an opportunity of communal activities such as a safe playground for small children, a meeting place for neighbours, and as a shared landscape/garden. We decided to keep the existing site topography and large pine trees as much as possible.

Masterplan Leidsche Rijn, NL

In 1993 the founder of maxwan, Rients Dijkstra, was working at OMA as a project leader. At the age of 32, he suddenly became a Cinderella boy by getting this enormous masterplanning job.

The masterplan is an extension of the Dutch city, Utrecht, called Leidsche Rijn. It is the largest development site of what is called VINEX, the Fourth Bill on Spatial Planning in the Netherlands, a government bill that promotes the development of 1.1 million new houses by the year 2005.

The new city plan for 75.000 inhabitants is to include: 30.000 housing units in a wide range of densities, two local urban centres and one regional commercial centre; 700.000 m2 office space, 200 ha of business estate, 250 ha of park and landscaping, and numerous schools as well as health care facilities. The masterplan was made in 1994 and now, in 2007, the construction is about to finish.

Anamorfose Revisited, NL

The project “Anarmorfose revisited” is for the interior design of the Westerschelde Tunnel; with a length of 6km, it is the longest in the Netherlands. The tunnel is located at the southern end of the country, near to the border of Belgium.

Originally, Maxwan was asked to be a committee giving suggestions for the selection of the artwork for the interior of the tunnel. But we could not come across any truly interesting art work for this project, so we decided to show what we think is interesting – public art from a driver’s point of view. See the movie (wmv, 10MB).

Nuilding, NL

This 60.000m2 design for a building complex consists of a hotel for computer servers, a power plant, as well as car-showrooms and offices. It is located along the A20 highway in Rotterdam.

An inbuilt 40 MW power plant provides power, excess electricity and heat will be sold to a neighbouring hospital. The functional core with the hotel/box storage/office programme is wrapped in a car-showroom skin.
Cars are often put on display in glass boxes on sites bordering highways. The idea is that passers-by get a good look at the goods behind the curtain wall, but in general the glass reflects more than it lets through. Maxwan’s proposal is a radical mutant of this worn-out typology: the glass façades are not parallel to the highway, but perpendicular to the sightlines of the approaching drivers; the cars are not behind glass, but on balconies; the curtain wall does not drop down vertically, but follows a saw-toothed profile, mirroring down sights of the exposed cars in a peepshow fashion. Higher up, where the servers hum, the saw tooth profile keeps sunlight from entering the overheated interior.

Reality Machine

Design for a travelling exhibition entitled ‘Reality Machines’ that presents an overview of recent Dutch architecture, graphic design, fashion, product design and photography.

The main exhibition hall of the NAi (Netherlands Architecture Institute) in Rotterdam is turned into a bright showroom. Sockets, walls and showcases are avoided. The 120 selected designs hang from the edge of a lowered ceiling in the shape of a huge E. The work hangs from a rail conveyer as used in assembly halls. The exhibits move at the pace of a couple meters per minute, creating a slow parade of items across the hall and beside the long window facing the museum-park.

One could sit still and watch the whole show pass by in an hour. Or one could walk around and be surprised by the continuously changing arrangement and the unexpected combinations of objects. And sometimes, when when they walk slowly keeping pace with a piece, the visitors look like they are part of the object.

I finally managed to update the calendar. Plenty of lectures, debates and events this week. Starting from a picnic at the Sonnenveld House, the last debates in the PowerLounge, 100% Design exhibition at the VanNelle and finally the Rotterdam Day Of Architecture on the 26th.
It looks like this is the final spurt before the summer-holdidays, so get your notebooks ready and enjoy some air-conditioned lecture halls. From July on not too much is happening.

Tthe IABR (3rd International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam) opened it’s doors for the public on Friday. The opening event in OMA’s Kunsthal listed Herman Herzberger, Edi Rama (mayor of Tirana) and Ivo Opstelten (mayor of Rotterdam) among others as speakers.

The audience consisted almost exclusively of architecture professionals, and the optimistic words of the speakers about the importance of the urban planner and architect in our society found an easy target. Despite this year’stheme, ‘Power’ is apparently less easy to talk about than Social Consciousness or Optimism.

After some words of Herzberger on Le Corbusier (featured in an exhibition at the Nai right now) Edi Rama, the mayor of Tirana held the most interesting speech of the day. He described the transformation of Tirana in the advent of capitalism. Tirana went from 1000 cars (in 1999) to 125.000 cars in 5 years, from no commercial space at all to sudden proliferation of little barber shops everywhere.

Rama explained how he asked himself how to deal with this new condition needing urban development, having no budget at all. The cheapest solution was to paint, and see how people would react (pictures).

And when we painted the first building – purple, and orange – I received a call: there are hundreds of people on the street, it is a traffic chaos. And everybody started to talk about colors – it was the first time that people debated about something which was there, instead of debating what the quickest way out of the country is.

Read a text about Tiranas city transformation bei Edi Rama himself after the break. The question remains what the next steps have been after this colorful inception – we did not hear about more sustainable urban development happening now.

More about the Biennale coming up, in the meantime check our pictures of the Biennale at the photo page.

When looking up the word "innovation" in the encyclopaedia Britannica, I found the following interpretation:

Innovation: a) the introduction of something new; b) a new idea, method or device.

A little bit further down a comment attracted my attention. A hyperlinked phrase: “innovation – effect on social change”, was explained as follows:

Some social changes result from the innovations that are adopted in a society. These can include technological inventions, new scientific knowledge, new beliefs, or a new fashion in the sphere of leisure. Diffusion is not automatic but selective; an innovation is adopted only by people who are motivated to do so.

Around the year 2000, some scaffolding appeared on the facade of a living block in Rruga e Durresit in Tirana. A renovation process had earlier involved several governmental buildings in the centre of the city, all of architectural value representing a landmark of rational architecture in Tirana. All buildings were built by Italian architects in the 30's but their facades had degraded after long years of forgetfulness or sporadic rennovation of a "free style", totally disconnected to the original colours of the buildings. However, the rest of the city was still the dull grey of blighted communist architecture, mortar falling apart, windows and balconies changed as people liked and could.

A couple of weeks later, when the scaffolding was removed, some strong, blitheful colours painted in square shapes and different forms, were revealed.

This was the first building painted by Edi Rama, the newly elected mayor of Tirana, and it marked the beginning of his project to transforml the ruined facades of the city into fascinating paintings. In the following days more scaffolding appeared and more squares or colours covered other facades of that street. In the months to come, all the streets of the city centre were one by one covered by scaffolding and then reappearing with new, sparkling colours. Alongside with the painting, at the crossroad at Rruga e Durresit, the first street lights were installed, causing an unusual sensation during the first nights, as no part of the city had never before been fully lit.

On other sides of the city there was an immense amount of rubbish being accu­mulated, as numerous illegal kiosks and barracks that had invaded all the green areas of the city centre (including the main park and the riversides) were being torn down. The remains of this informal city, a safe heaven for informality, shady businesses and drug dealers, was step by step being replaced by a green carpet, making the city brighter and more attractive.

Howeyer, let me go back to my initial point. As one can see from the dictionary, innovationis understood as introduction of something new, a new idea or method. Here one can wonder what is new (read innovative) with making a public garden, or fixing street lights, or even with painting a facade?

Well, it is here that one can get help of the larger definition of the word innovation - seen as a social change: "Some social changes result from the innovations that are adopted in a society, "

When asking how the painting of facades can bring social changes, one must step out of the aesthetic realm of colours and forms and remember that one of the main problems of post communist Albanian society was the loss of collective responsibility towards a shared public space/domain. Private property used to rule; everyone had become very individualistic and refused to take responsibility for whatever existed outside the doorstep of their house. They would go as far as changing everything they could inside their old houses, without bothering at all about how it would affect the outside. This example also reflects the attitude towards public space, which was regarded as a space tor pure personal profits.

As soon as the first colourful compositions had been painted on the facades, people started to react. Some didn't like what was happening, some enjoyed it very much, but most felt unsure and started to talk and discuss the phenomena. For the first time there was a sense of a shared public space, and the feeling of collective responsibility crept out from the historical abyss "here Albanians had condemned it. Besides painting the facades, sidewalks were being repaired, lights were being put up, and the amount of geenery was increased. Instead of only men in leather jackets smoking slim cigarettes, women and children, old people and young couples slowly started to reclaim the space that earlier had been socially denied to them. The sun seemed to shine differently from the reflection on colours and fresh green grass. Tirana started to change.

Mirroring the Change

Albanian organised crime has become a point a/reference for all criminal activity. Everything passes via the Albanians. The road for drugs arms and people -meaning illegal immigrants destined for Europe – is in Albanian hands." (Cattaldo Motta, Italian public prosecutor, 2000)

When the world's media shipped out in 1999, Tirana looked like a huge sink estate with some self-important government buildings in it … Tirana now looks like it has been assembled from giant Liquorice Allsorts. This fresh coat is the work of Tirana's mayor and principal topic of conversation … There is a palpable sense of the rise of a generation that sees what needs to be done as more challenging than the swim to Italy … Albania dind't join the 20th century until 1990. By 1997, it had collapsed into anarchy. Six years later, Tirana is the kind o/place where simple people want to raise their children … I fly home contemplating something which, five days previously would have struck me as utterly risible. One day, I'm going back to Albaija. Of my own accord. On holiday … (Andrew Mueller, the Guardian)

Is there a need to comment on these two different quotes, written only 3 years ago apart from each other? Not longer than a few years ago. Albania was still identified with a country of anarchy, thieves, prostitutes and civil war. Only at the beginning of the second mandate of Rama as mayor of Tirana. more and more journalists started to visit the country, first attracted by and then fascinated with the facade painting project No need to say that the sort of "filter" international media uses to represent different realities was taken away from the scrutinizing binoculars of the journalists. The painting and the greenery was by now functioning not only to fascinate the curious western eyes, but as the quote from the Guardian shows, it was helping the VIsitor to see the reality through the eyes of Albanians. After all, this was not merely an aesthetic gesture, a nice painterly act. It was at the same time a pure political act, a gesture of departure with the past, a gesture of hope, a reflection of the energetic drive of a country striving towards the future. At the same time, jobs ,were being created, more public works being realized, streets were being enlarged and repaved and lights were slowly entering all the dark corners of the city. The project materialized the economic growth of the country. Forgotten group ages, as the elders and children, were increasingly finding more and more public space to inhabit. Afier the inutial scepticism, not only citizens. but also businesses along the painted facades agreed to contribute financially to the repaving and improvement of the shared intrastructure of the city.

Where light lit the streets, shadows withdrew, and Tirana became a safer city to walk through at any our of day and night People started to feel more secure and less sceptical about paying taxes (very unacceptable untill the late 90s), because they felt their money was well invested. The Town Hall managed to raise the tax revenue in 2005, six times compared to year 2000 and as a consequence, increase the number of investments in public development projects. Also, the number of businesses was increased by three times during the period 2000-2005.

Some social changes result from the innovations that are adopted in a society … Diffilsion is not automatic but selective; an innovation is adopted only by people who are motivated to do so.

Topos and Tirana Biennale

The key point is how colours, amongst other things, are helping to change the contact between the people and the city; how you can change a city in which people are condemned to live by destiny into a city of choice. (from Anri Sala's interview with Hans Obrist in the catalogue of Tirana Biennale 2).

Alongside the economic growth, the painting of facades and the enlargement of green areas in the city, Tirana had started to get more and more involved in con­temporary art. In 2003, the second edition of the Tirana Biennale was held in the city, representing works by more than 120 artists from all over the world and collaborating with a number of international curators. It was inevitable that the painted city would catch the attention of the invited collaborators. Thus, an entire section of the Biennial, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and the Albanian artist Anri Sala, was dedicated to the continuation of the facade treatment project.

Inspired by the drive of change that the project had proven, the two curators de­cided to take it out of Rama's hands and give it over to a number of internationally established artists, whose artistic practices express ambitions for social change precisely through the construction of visual or environmental experience.

As artist Carsten Holler pointed out:

The political impact of this project lies in the visualization of signs of change … thereby inducing transformation, the social milieu changes as a result of the 'colourification'. The sign alone can be trigger enough.

As a result of the project, international artists turned whole living blocks in central Tirana into unique works of contemporary art. This turn of the project attracted an immense amount of attention trom the international art scene. And it attracted an ever growing number of local artists too that started to react and make works influenced by or commenting on the social phenomena caused by the colours.

And there's more. The city is now open to taking the project even one step further ahead. A larger number of both Albanian and international artists will be invited to turn blocks of buildings into art works. New ways of involving and working together with the different communities are being prepared.

Tirana is an open source to contemporary art, offering an unprecedented interac­tion between artists and public, attracting an ever growing number of visitors and tourists. As the city continues its strive on the way towards the future, the spectacle of colours, already turned into a political investment for development, unfolds everyday and lies in wait for its continuation.

Back to the Near Future
Is it or is it not worth (read innovative) to reinvent the wheel after all? Well, after having experienced what social changes colours can cause, what improvement of life quality the increased greenery brings, and how hope and security is restored by repared and newly lit roads, I think YES reinventing the wheel CAN BE an innovation, a pure introduction of new ideas and methods that causes significant social changes, and this, must be continued!

(Text: Edi Rama, from the IABR blog)

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.

Cities are as entangled in global competition as companies, and what a TV Ad is for the car manufacturer, a skyscraper is for a metropolis. You can rank them according to the height of their buildings (or is it the extent of their identity crisis?) on www.skyscraperpage.com. Beautiful.

Also worth a look, but updating their databases right now, is www.skyscrapercity.info. They are always on top featuring pictures of recent developments in their unfortunately often very shallow forum discussions.

OMA redesigned their website. No more flash, better structure. And they might be working on a blog…

Ole Bouman became Director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam a couple of days ago. See the press release and read an extensive interview with him at the bldgblog. From the introduction to the interview:

In May 2005, Ole Bouman, Rem Koolhaas, and Mark Wigley co-founded Volume. Volume was meant as both a magazine and a “global idea platform… dedicated to experimentation and the production of new forms of architectural discourse.” [...]
In the following interview, Bouman talks to BLDGBLOG about some of these “spatial challenges,” including the role of “agitation” in architecture; who the real audience for architectural journalism might be; the “politics of the spectacular”; unexpected possible side-effects of long-term investment in China; public space and dialogue in post-conflict cities; and the future of the Netherlands Architecture Institute.