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Archive for the 'theory + strategy' Category

Berlage 1st Year Studios Final Review

Thomas, Tue 23 Jun 2009
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lecture + review, rotterdam, school tracker, theory + strategy and urbanism

berlage-finals

Ningbo Stu­dents tweak­ing their Pre­sen­ta­tion (photo: Thomas Stellmach)

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.

.

GIS 2.0 Symposium

claudia, Tue 21 Apr 2009
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architecture, lecture + review, process + technique, theory + strategy and urbanism

Analysis of spatial distribution of specific population groups (Cooperation with the city Biberach a.d Riß)

Analy­sis of spa­tial dis­tri­b­u­tion of spe­cific pop­u­la­tion groups (Coop­er­a­tion with the city Bib­er­ach a.d Riß)

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.

net02

Dynamic map of the inner city (Coop­er­a­tion with the city of Mannheim)

Complexity Theory Conference @ TU Delft

Ekim Tan, Sun 5 Apr 2009
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events + super design fun, rotterdam, school tracker, theory + strategy and urbanism

Complexity Theories have come of Age

Com­plex­ity The­o­ries have come of Age

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 com​plex​i​tythe​o​riesofc​i​ties.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. Con­tinue read­ing ‘Complexity Theory Con­fer­ence @ TU Delft’

4th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam – Exploring Urban Futures

Darrel, Sun 22 Mar 2009
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architecture, events + super design fun, rotterdam and theory + strategy

iabr-a

Refuge Urban­ism; © Unknown

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”.
Con­tinue read­ing ’4th Inter­na­tional Archi­tec­ture Bien­nale Rot­ter­dam – Explor­ing Urban Futures’

If you’ve lost your job, apply to the Jan Van Eyck Academie!

Darrel, Wed 18 Feb 2009
2 comments …
architecture, art + media, school tracker and theory + strategy

jve-apply

The highly reputed Jan Van Eyck Acad­e­mie in Maas­tricht, Nether­lands (Map) has sent out it’s call for appli­ca­tions (click on “Applications” on top), to be received by the 15 April, 2009. The research pro­gram mainly reaches out to Artists, The­o­reti­cians and Design­ers, but their open­ness always for diver­sity of stu­dents. If you are one of the unfor­tu­nate former employ­ees of a Dutch office, and want to stick around the Nether­lands, here is a great chance. You can bet that the com­pe­ti­tion to get in will be stiff.
Con­tinue read­ing ‘If you’ve lost your job, apply to the Jan Van Eyck Academie!’

Berlage Now

Thomas, Fri 16 Jan 2009
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rotterdam, school tracker and theory + strategy

Now Accepting Berlage Applications

Now Accept­ing Berlage Applications

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
–

Con­tinue read­ing ‘Berlage Now’

Minimalism, Star Wars, Modernism, and Kubrick

Thomas, Mon 15 Dec 2008
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art + media and theory + strategy

Robert Morris, War (1963) vs. Storm trooper, Star Wars (1977)

Robert Morris, War (1963) vs. Storm trooper, Star Wars (1977)

Star Wars: A New Heap. Rec­om­mended Read.

China According to China

Martin, Sat 15 Nov 2008
1 comment …
architecture, beijing, movies, recordings, and more, process + technique, theory + strategy and urbanism

china according to china (0300tv)

Mov​ingC​i​ties.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.
Con­tinue read­ing ‘China Accord­ing to China’

Complexity in American Commercial Space

Darrel, Thu 30 Oct 2008
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architecture, art + media, theory + strategy and urbanism

“A store in Las Vegas offers gro­ceries, slot machines and voting ter­mi­nals side by side. Early voting has proved pop­u­lar in Nevada”. © Isaac Brekken for The New York Times

I am struck by this image by Isaac Brekken recently pub­lished (arti­cle) along­side an arti­cle about early voting in the US elec­tions by the New York Times. The arti­cle by Jen­nifer Stein­hauer looks at early voting in the US and includes other photos by mul­ti­ple pho­tog­ra­phers. On top of being a fan­tas­tic photo aes­thet­i­cally, the com­plex­ity it shows so clearly is fas­ci­nat­ing.
Con­tinue read­ing ‘Complexity in Amer­i­can Com­mer­cial Space’

Here Comes The Sun

Martin, Tue 21 Oct 2008
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architecture, lecture + review, movies, recordings, and more, process + technique, theory + strategy and urbanism

PS10 solar power tower

PS10 solar power tower

I’ve watched a highly inter­est­ing doc­u­men­tary on the prospects of solar power today. Now an eng­lish ver­sion is avail­able on youtube:
Con­tinue read­ing ‘Here Comes The Sun’

Berlage Lectures Starting!

Martin, Mon 20 Oct 2008
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architecture, lecture + review, process + technique, rotterdam, school tracker and theory + strategy

The Berlage Lec­ture Series 2008/2009 is kick­ing off tomor­row 21 Octo­ber 2008 with:

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

ROB, the robot. courtesy of Gramazio & Kohler

ROB, the robot. Cour­tesy of Gra­mazio & Kohler

Con­tinue read­ing ‘Berlage Lec­tures Starting!’

11th Venice Architecture Biennale: The Making of

szacka, Thu 9 Oct 2008
2 comments …
architecture, art + media, events + super design fun, lecture + review, marketing + pimping, movies, recordings, and more, process + technique, theory + strategy and urbanism

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…
Con­tinue read­ing ’11th Venice Archi­tec­ture Bien­nale: The Making of’

Re-Sampling Ornament at the SAM, Basel

Darrel, Mon 6 Oct 2008
1 comment …
architecture, events + super design fun and theory + strategy

Helioskope, © Evan Douglis Studio LLC; Photo: Darrel Ronald

A small but fan­tas­tic exhi­bi­tion, Re-​Sampling Orna­ment, has just fin­ished at the Schweiser Archi­tec­ture Museum / Swiss Archi­tec­ture Museum (SAM) in Basel. Curated by Oliver Domeisen and Francesca Fer­gu­son, the show fea­tured a selec­tion of con­tem­po­rary projects that inte­grate orna­ment into the design strat­egy in a fun­da­men­tal way, rather than applied. Each of the projects are sit­u­ated within the con­text of their orna­men­tal typolo­gies and shown next to his­tor­i­cal exam­ples con­sid­ered as lin­eage. With the recent fas­ci­na­tion with pat­tern, biol­ogy and mor­pholo­gies in archi­tec­ture, the exhibit is both timely and a smart addi­tion to the cur­rent think­ing about orna­ment as it con­fronts the still pre­dom­i­nant atti­tude of reduc­tion­ist mod­ernism. The magazine-​style cat­a­logue, SAM #5: Re-​Sampling Orna­ment, is equally as good. It’s also worth look­ing at the other SAM cat­a­logues accom­pa­ny­ing the pre­vi­ous exhibitions.

You can see a small selec­tion of photos on either Dys​turb.Net or FlickR.

Responsive City Workshop

Thomas, Mon 4 Aug 2008
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events + super design fun, school tracker, theory + strategy and urbanism

Responsive City Workshop

Gulensu – Almere Haven (© Ekim Tan)

Work­shop announce­ments come in packs. Here is the third one, which I’d like to rec­om­mend espe­cially. The INTI sup­ported mas­ter­class com­pares highly reg­u­lated plan­ning strate­gies in the show­case new­town of the Nether­lands, Almere, with the self-​organised strate­gies employed in Gulensu, a clan­des­tine city exten­sion of Istanbul.

Plan­ning is a messy, time and energy-​consuming busi­ness of trial, error and fail­ure. Suc­cess is not a cer­tainty and even when the result is suc­cess­ful, it is often a sur­prise, not what was actu­ally being sought. Jane Jacobs

THE RESPON­SIVE CITY: ISTAN­BUL – RANDSTAD

Why?
The Respon­sive City: Istanbul-​Randstad* focuses on new approaches to the 21st city. The­o­ries of com­plex­ity and their appli­ca­tion onto the field of urban design and archi­tec­ture form its core. Here, the city is seen as a dynamic open system, con­stantly influ­enced by inter­act­ing bottom up and top down play­ers.
Who?
The Respon­sive City is an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary course offered as an once-only-elective for 16 par­tic­i­pants with diverse back­grounds such as human geog­ra­phy, plan­ning, soci­ol­ogy, archi­tec­ture and urban design.
How?
The course requires a hands-​on approach with two intense on-​site mas­ter­classes in Istan­bul and Almere. Agent-​based map­ping and respon­sive design game are main tools of the course. Knowledge/interest in GIS map­ping, infor­mal city, Istan­bul and/or Almere is highly appreciated.

The Dead­line for Appli­ca­tion is 5th of Sep­tem­ber 2008, Dates are 29 Sep­tem­ber – 3 Octo­ber 2008 in Almere; 27 – 31 Octo­ber 2008 in Istan­bul. The Mas­ter­classes are run by Prof. Arnold Rein­dorp, Prof. Juval Por­tu­gali & ir. Ekim Tan.

More at INTI, and soon at there​spon​sivecity.org.

One Land & Platform Paradise

Thomas, Mon 4 Aug 2008
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amsterdam, school tracker, theory + strategy and urbanism

FAST, a Amsterdam-​based foun­da­tion show­cas­ing and crit­i­cally inves­ti­gat­ing spa­tial con­di­tions of seg­re­ga­tion invites to Ein Hawd (Israel):

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.

Sin Embargo

Thomas, Mon 4 Aug 2008
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barcelona, events + super design fun, school tracker, theory + strategy and urbanism

sin embargo

sine embargo – con embargo

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 sinem​bargo.org.

Get A Flag!

Martin, Tue 18 Mar 2008
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architecture, art + media, design + style, events + super design fun, marketing + pimping, rotterdam and theory + strategy

picture-4.png

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!’

UN data

Thomas, Sun 9 Mar 2008
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theory + strategy

UN data - slums in mtero areas

UN data: slum pop­u­la­tion in met­ro­pol­i­tan areas 2001

“The UN-​system has accu­mu­lated over the past 60 years an impres­sive amount of infor­ma­tion. UNdata, devel­oped by the Sta­tis­tics Divi­sion of DESA, is a new pow­er­ful tool, which will bring this unique and author­i­ta­tive set of data not only to the desks of deci­sion makers and ana­lysts, but also to jour­nal­ists, to stu­dents and to all cit­i­zens of the world, ” says Sha Zukang, Under-Secretary-General for Eco­nomic and Social Affairs.

Since its foun­da­tion, the United Nations system has been col­lect­ing sta­tis­ti­cal infor­ma­tion from member states on a vari­ety of topics. The infor­ma­tion thus col­lected con­sti­tutes a con­sid­er­able infor­ma­tion asset of the orga­ni­za­tion. How­ever, these sta­tis­ti­cal data are often stored in pro­pri­etary data­bases, each with unique dis­sem­i­na­tion and access poli­cies. As a result, users are often unaware of the full array of sta­tis­ti­cal infor­ma­tion that the UN system has in its data libraries. The cur­rent arrange­ment also means that users are required to move from one data­base to another to access dif­fer­ent types of information.

UNdata addresses this prob­lem by pool­ing major UN data­bases and those of sev­eral inter­na­tional into one single inter­net envi­ron­ment. The inno­v­a­tive design allows a user to access a large number of UN data­bases either by brows­ing the data series or through a key­word search.

I love when major organ­i­sa­tions under­stand that open­ing up their knowl­edge to the public is the way to the future. We’ve added the UN data­base to our our list of resources – scroll down to ‘data’.

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