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 Planungsnetzwerk geo-Innovation of the University of Karlsruhe is organizing its second symposium on the 23rd of april in Karlsruhe. Its all about gis, web 2.0, experiments within urban context with gps and geodata.
Contributors are amongst others the openstreetmap (see also Thomas article openstreetmap) and the unortkataster.

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).

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

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

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

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

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

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

28 October 2008
The Model and Its Architecture
Patrick Healy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

27 January 2009
The Dictionary of Received Ideas
Enrique Walker

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

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

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

But now I see the light…

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s the details:

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

of the well known Rotterdam practice NeutelingsRiedijk

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

Founders of Grafton Architects, Dublin

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you there!

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

The Delft School of Design PhD series ‘Architectural Engineering – Performance, Geometry and Materials’ has been launched. Themes are Complex Geometry Architecture and Performance Based Architecture. See our Calendar for allthe dates.

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

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

More Photos can be found in our photo section.

Ole Bouman: Architecture and Social Change

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

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

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

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

Rem Koolhaas: Dubai in Theory and Practice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark Wigley: Going into the Desert

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As you all might have read, the book is divided into three sections: a) Dubai Guide – edited by Moutamarat, b) Gulf Survey – edited by AMO, and c) Global Agenda – edited by Archis. You can read the introductory excerpts from Ole Bouman and Rem Koolhaas at Archis here.

Section one, Dubai Guide, does set the stage for the project, dealing with issues of publicity and privacy; authenticity and fantasy; social equity and environmental sustainability; growth rates and tourism rates; and looks at the overarching issues and problems facing the Gulf region, and in particular Dubai. The issues are somewhat global in that many cities around the world in emerging economies face the same set of problems due to fast, hard-to-control growth, and too much foreign investment. In some ways, this section comes across as though it was written for an under-educated audience, which is a possibly deliberate technique. Looking at the text, Design in Retail by Tim Greenhalgh, it reads as a “how-to” for retail entrepreneurs and what not to do when designing commercial spaces.

Section two, Gulf Survey, is classic AMO/OMA from the start. While I have not read through the chapter in its entirety, it is full of economic data, images, projects, key players, social statistics, and key history. This chapter covers 62% of the entire book, so it will take you some time to enjoy it. Sections of this have already been printed recently in The Gulf, a fold-out pamphlet outlining the major projects in the Gulf region, and already available in bookstores. This content was also exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2006.

Section three, Global Agenda, is edited by Archis and aims to discuss broader urban and architectural issues. Ole Bouman’s introductory editorial raises the urgent question of “What must be done?”, and he doesn’t shy away from the position that architects and designers are obliged to engage in the shaping of the future and the shaping of our planet.

As he writes, “The To Do list for architecture and design is short. The planetary action list for architects and designers is endless however.” And as a direct hit at the self-satisfying architecture the world over he writes: “[Design] can draw its legitimacy not from making things nice for certain people, but from making things livable for everyone.”

Bouman doesn’t refer to aesthetics alone of course, but to the larger problems of infrastructure, housing, governance, climate change, social resources and so forth. It makes me think back to the first chapter of the book concerning semi-private space in Dubai, totally detached from the continuous public urban environment, with the goal of creating artificial ‘urban experiences’. The point at which we separate a fictional urbanity from a non-fictional urbanity is exactly where we fail in creating a viable future, continuous with the surrounding environments and its history. But of course, the only thing holding back the real from the artificial in Dubai is a row of palm trees and a concrete wall. What’s to stop us from tearing these down in the future? Hopefully the book will stimulate such a thought in the minds of the developers and designers in Dubai.

Here are the facts about the book:

Editors: Ole Bouman, Mitra Khoubrou, Rem Koolhaas
Managing editor: Arjen Oosterman
Design: Irma Boom, Natasha Chandani, Sonja Haller
Format: 24×17, 500 pages
Publisher: Archis Foundation
Distribution: Europe, Asia and USA by Idea Books, IPS Pressevertrieb
Price: EUR 29.90 ISBN: 978-90-77966-12-9

Cross River Park, UK

The Cross River Park is in the immediate neighbourhood of the Barking Riverside development in East London. The approximate size of the park is 350 ha with a distance of roughly 9km to the city centre. The brief for the feasibility study was to bring two communities (Newham and Dagenham) along with the two landscapes on either side of the River in the London Thames Gateway closer together. A new bridge, the Thames Gateway Bridge, with a height of 50m and a length of 600m, will be the missing link between the divided communities and therefore an important element of the park.

The area proposed for CRP features unique opportunities: It is one of the few areas in East London where access to the Thames riverfront is possible. The CRP area is environmentally diverse; it features wetlands and a variety of flora and fauna alongside sites of heavily contaminated land and former industrial land uses. A look on the map of London shows however, that the area is a typical ‘dumping-place’ of all those functions and institutions which are regarded as the most unattractive ones in a city, such as: waste-deposits, Sewage-works, Gas- Works, Logistics, a Jail and an Airport. The site is both smelly and it’s noisy: it is the typical part of a city you would normally never go to without a specific, pragmatic purpose.

The historic evolution of heavy service industries in the area, dating back to the extensions to the Woolwich Arsenal and the 150yr old Sewage and (later) gas works have been significant barriers to integrated planning. Each function is isolated, and the area is difficult to cross; beside a few lines, points and pockets of vegetation, it has few ecological or recreational qualities. The area is the ‘belly’ of East London: It contains those ‘organs’ of the body/city which guarantee its metabolism. Concerning the present debate on ecology, this could be an interesting and stimulating aspect. Incorporating the sewage plant and the waste-deposits as well as the gas-works and the logistics into the park concept could set the park apart. The CRP area experiences strong pressure from current regional developments, including significant areas of housing, sewage works expansion, or the displacement of warehouses due to the Olympic Games.

CRP’s potential to become a High Quality Park for the 21st century will be reached by synchronizing the interests of the different stakeholders, being the logistic buildings, the sewage plant and gas works, and the new or existing populated areas. Therefore, CRP needs strong leadership to gather everybody under the ‘umbrella’ of CRP’s vision and turn them into active partners rather than indifferent neighbours. The opportunities at CRP are therefore both unique and complex, but offer fantastic possibilities to interact with the river and the new bridge, and unlock an intriguing mosaic of hitherto hidden sites and functions of the living city.

Moving forward, the creation of Cross River Park will require political and economic courage. Its success depends an alternative way of acting and doing, rather than planning extensively. The process could and should start immediately by opening the area to the public, and creating small events and interventions.

Masterplan Barking Riverside, UK

This is a masterplan we have been busy with for the last couple of years in London. Barking Riverside is a housing development with a site area of 180ha. Because of its size and the proximity to the city centre of London, the housing development has been chosen by the Greater London Authority (GLA) as one of seven outstanding housing developments in the Greater London area.

Besides our urban proposal there are several large-scale developments along the River Thames. Mostly these involve the regeneration of the former docklands, industrial areas and open brown fields out of use for a long period. In a way, these are the last opportunities within London for such large scale developments of new employment and housing areas for the growth of the London population.

The project consists of 11’000 dwellings (average density 120 dw/ha) with commercial, employment, education, health and sport facilities. The site is located approximately 10km east of London city centre and about 5km form the London City Airport. The extension of the Docklands Light Railway to this project site with 3 stations makes this development possible in the first place.

Our site was originally the location of Coal-Fired Power Plants, once the largest in all of Europe. After the closing of this power plant, and because of its contaminated ground and its isolated location from the city centre of London, this site was neglected for many years. At one point the Borough of “Barking and Dagenham” was rated the tenth worst place in the UK for its contamination of asbestos. But on the other hand, this site has been one of the richest nature reserve area for a wide range of species because of its size and isolation from the surroundings, as well the beautiful scenery along the river.

In this project we had to deal with many different parties. In the usual planning process of a UK housing development you only have to convince the borough to get what they call a “Planning application”. But in the case of this project, we had to convince all the parties in this chart more or less. Actually, there were two previous masterplans for this development; but in both cases, the masterplan was rejected by the borough. Maxwan finally made it to the “planning application” phase in 2006.

The urban design framework (UDF) plan shows the primary and secondary road structure, developable housing areas, trajectories of the 2 major public transport lines, including the position of the stations and stops, major public space, Parks and the conservation area for the nature. And this plan was made with the synthesis of all the constraints of this site such as the exiting overhead electrical lines, nature reserve, topography of the site with flooding issues, and the connections to the surrounding neighbourhood.

After submitting this urban design framework with all the descriptions and guidelines for major public space and main roads, we received the further request from the Greater London Authority for developing the quality and design guidelines of the housing area, in order to show the atmosphere of each neighbourhood in greater detail. The concept of “Design Guidelines” for such a large development was an experimental thing for the city of London at that time. Since their ambition for this project is so high, they have tried very hard to prevent the anarchic development of each plot by the local developers.

The Urban Design Guidelines (UDG) are split-up into two categories: the rules and the guides. The Rules were obligatory in the sense that the architects must stick to them; whereas the guides give an indication of how certain aspects should be dealt with. The realm of work in this phase contains the creation of varied streetscapes, diverse block typologies and specific buildings as well as guidelines for play, sport and recreation areas. The Landscape and ecological guidelines aim to increase existing habitats for animals, as well as creating people zones in the heart of the urban development. Our role as a masterplanner has come to an end, yet maxwan is now involved in selecting the architects for the development.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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)

Yesterday, the Munich based office hildundk.de gave an insight of their work at the Academie van Bouwkunst in Amsterdam. The office composes very individual solutions for each project, avoiding predefined styles. They attempt to catch people’s emotions by using ornaments and specific materials combined with a strong conceptual sensitivity. This “ornamentalism” has its roots in the southern part of Germany which still is influenced by baroque tradition. Hild’s approach is to decontextualize the ornament, effectively tattooing his buildings.
Their functional buildings try to do the opposite: Sleek brutalism and “fashionism”.

Andreas Hild presented the work in a very consistent way by analyzing each project on technology, popularity and academic value. At a quick glance you the most popular projects were the highly technological and ornamentally decorated ones – the minimal “academic” designs were loved mostly by the architects. Compare the images – which side are you on?

This past week I was at the MIPIM Developers Conference in Cannes, France representing a client. With my suit on, business cards ready and a dose of capitalist opportunism in tow, the pavilions and stands became my playground. It was great to see inside the world of top-level decision makers – investors, developers, builders, lawyers, and the like. Of course the highlights are surely the seaside terraces that serve up fine drinks and hors-d’oeuvres. Check out the selection of models on our FLICKR site, some of them will make you barf — especially the Krasnodar Region. Why are they so out of touch?

It turns out that MIPIM had a record number of visitors – 25.000. No doubt, when you see the list of topics, you’ll be very impressed: Property: An asset class / Property: A changing world / Property: A regional focus. What everyone was really after was the Daniel Libeskind keynote lecture… entitled none-other than: “World Architecture Trends”. What to think about this title and his recent work? Perhaps we can deduce: World Architecture is now about commercialism, opportunism, weak theory and getting up all around the world. Sounds so glamorous, no?

see all pictures:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More pictures: