June 11th the first Museum entirely dedicated to Graphic Design will be opened by our Queen Beatrix in Breda.
For the opening my friend Teun Castelein will make his graphic statement out of concieved content from 250 participants. Everybody is welcome to design its own flag and mail it to flag@graphicdesignmuseum.com. All designs will be printed on unique flags and put against the building. The result will be an explosion of information. A colourful art piece at the old baroque building of the supermodern Graphic Design Museum.
Really a piece of art that makes people think about modern visual communication, about the position of musea in the contemporary image-culture and the fact that everybody is a designer/ image-maker nowadays.
Continue reading ‘Get A Flag!’
Advertisement clip for Madrid’s metro. Via my favourite daily blog and source of beauty, monoscope.
© Coroflot
There are countless conversations among architects about pay, and how architecture is (apparently) poorly paid. Now there’s some good proof. An awesome online survey and searchable database was shown to me today, assembled by Coroflot. You can view the datasets here, sort by country as well as occupation and job title. The few graphics are great too. It isn’t surprising that among the design professions (graphic, fashion, interactive media, and so forth), architecture has one of the lower ceilings.
Archinect has had a salary poll running for quite some time, and it has always been a fascinating read. But it has always been incomplete, has no sortable databases, and didn’t offer a comparative analysis. In comparison, the Coroflot survey boasts 4250 respondents from 73 countries. What is clear is that in most design fields the incomes are rising nicely. On top of this, you’re best paid as a consultant. Nonetheless there are some hard-to-explain anomolies that stick out. It turns out that designers in India are some of the worlds best-paid, up there with Americans and Australians. Hmm.
Cover, photo: Darrel Ronald
Since first seeing the AMO Gulf Cities study presented at the 2006 Venice Architecture Biennale, most of us have been anxious to hear more about the region, and get an in-depth look at the economic processes at work. And so the wait is over with the release of Al Manakh, released throughout the Netherlands this past week, and is widely available, including at the NAi.
While the book was first released for the attendants at the May 2007 International Design Forum (IDF) conference in Dubai, it has been notoriously hard to get ahold of until now. The 495 page book was largely organised by Moutamarat, a recently-established private body that aims to “create business knowledge for the Arab world.”
Al Manakh serves as a barometer for the changes taking place in the region, and translated, the title means “the climate”. As Koolhaas writes in the opening, the book is a form of “critical participation”. But when he writes that “The Gulf is not just reconfiguring itself; it’s reconfiguring the world”, I find it hard to believe this is entirely special. Can we not say this about China? How about New York and London?
If you have already heard, both Koolhaas and Bouman will present the book at the NAi on September 10th at 20.00. If you haven’t reserved tickets yet, you are probably out-of-luck, since it has been sold out for some time. I don’t usually see scalpers at the doors either.
Continue reading ‘Al Manakh - A First Look’
The German architecture portal baunetz.de has published their quarterly ranking of offices.
Their rankings are based on the number of publications in the past 24 months from a selection of architectural magazines (Bauwelt, Detail, Architectural Review, a+u, architektur.aktuell, L’architecture d’aujourd’hui, Werk Bauen und Wohnen, domus - a little bit germany-heavy, but that’s where baunetz comes from). The traditional top 3 order is H&M, OMA, Zaha. But this has been mixed up, OMA comes out on top, Zaha scores second and Herzog & DeMeuron come out third. Is this good - I doubt it. But does it matter? Not really.
London comes out on top as a city, with 14 practices among the top 100. Rotterdam features OMA, MVRDV and, interestingly Kempe Thill. See the list after the break.
Continue reading ‘We ♥ Rankings’
Plot outlines and highway (for maxwan a&u, artist: Harm te Velde)
“Diamonds never lie” Shirley Bassey sang in the opening track of 71’s James Bond movie “Diamonds are forever”. Diamonds - ultimate symbol of class, eternity and truth. It is this notion of truth which Belgian Diamond trade monopolist de Beers is promoting as the essence of the natural diamonds they are mining in Africa. Their business is increasingly endangered by manufactured gems. In the words of Jef Van Royen, official representative of the diamond industry in Belgium: Continue reading ‘Diamonds never lie’
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?
Continue reading ‘MIPIM Developers Conference… Suits, Alcohol, Yachts & some terrible other things’
On March 14 (2007) the Berlage Institute (Rotterdam) hosted two lectures with the title “Instant City: The Rise of Dubai”. Kees Christiaanse (Architect, Rotterdam) and George Katodrytis (Architect, Dubai) gave presentations while Roemer van Toorn moderated the event. Marc Angélil unfortunately was stuck at the Zurich airport because of the infamous Swiss weather.
Dubai is a gated community. What can we do about it? And can architecture politically engage a global market-driven power structure?
Kees answered, that Dubai is dominated by “gatedness”, “sameness”, “fadedness” and “maleness”.
Continue reading ‘Instant City: The Rise of Dubai’
The new Nissan Qashqai marketing campaign has been skating through the streets - and now landed on a temp skatepark along the A20 at the Giessenbrug crossing in one of Rotterdam’s notoriously horrible industrial areas - the Spaanse Polder. The video can be seen through none other than GooTube here. Clearly, the video kills the installation.
