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.

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

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

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

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

The website for this year’s 4th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2009 is fully online and operational. Rotterdam architect Kees Christiaanse will curate the program, and has developed the theme: Exploring Urban Futures. He will be working in association with a team in Zurich at the ETH, where he also teaches urban design. In Rotterdam, Christiaanse runs his own office, KCAP, which is recognized for work in both architecture and urban design. Being the 4th biennale, expectations are high following what many perceived as a decline in the scale and quality of the last, 3rd Biennale entitled “Power”.

Many events are planned between now and throughout the exhibition, one of which just passed in Zurich at the ETH, The Open City symposium. The AIR Foundation will also be holding a series of Urban Meetings. Also to be exhibited are the results from the international competition, Gotong Royong City – Envisioning the Future of Jakarta, where the registration period is unfortunately already closed. There are lots of events to keep track of, and we will follow-up in the coming months, as well as integrate the events into our Dysturb.Net Calendar.

The Mission Statement from the curatorial team:

IABR Exploring Urban Futures
The International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) is an international urban research biennale founded in 2001 on the conviction that architecture is a public concern. It is an international festival of exhibitions, conferences, lectures and other activities devoted to themes in the field of architecture and urbanism.

Linking the contemporary Dutch agenda to the international context, the IABR invites the design disciplines to examine an urgent social issue in relation to a particular urban condition.

The IABR serves as a platform, a catalyst and a mediator between local and global cultures, thus advocating an international exchange of ideas and encouraging public discussion among designers, researchers, academics, artists, politicians, public authorities, real estate developers and other investors, social organizations and the public at large, at home and abroad.

Why Cities Matter
Our futures will unfold predominantly in cities. Urban dwellers now comprise more than half the world’s population. What we call the countryside will soon be home to less than a third of humanity. Urban regions are the hubs of the global economy and the producers of culture and welfare, yet they are also the source of immeasurable environmental damage. They are the locus of consumers and slum dwellers alike, of globally operating media and financial networks, of crime and tourism. As they absorb the growth of the world’s population, cities struggle to provide adequate and sustainable living conditions for their inhabitants. The most significant challenge for architecture therefore lies in addressing urban problems.

The curator’s biography – Kees Christiaanse:

Kees Christiaanse (1953) is internationally recognized among today’s foremost researchers and practitioners in the fields of urban design and architecture. He studied architecture and urban design at Delft University of Technology. From 1980-1989 he was a partner at OMA in Rotterdam and consequently founded KCAP Architects & Planners with offices in Rotterdam and Zürich.
From 1996-2003 he was Professor of Architecture & Urban Design at the Technical University Berlin; since 2003 he has been Head of the Institute of Urban Design at the Network City-Landscape of the ETH in Zürich. In addition he is a visiting Professor in the Cities Program of the London School of Economics.

Having successfully combined practical intervention and scientific research in diverse urban conditions, Christiaanse is highly qualified to curate the next Biennale, and to structure and intensify its network with research institutions. He is actively involved in concrete urban projects such as the revitalization of port-areas in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Hamburg. In addition, for the Olympic Legacy Masterplan in London, he is designing an “urban breeding grounds” with delicate systems of public spaces on which interactive cultures of mixed use can unfold, catalyzing the redevelopment of the surrounding city. Furthermore, Christiaanse is actively researching, lecturing, and publishing on the theme of the Open City, and has cultivated an impressive international network of colleagues working on similar conditions.

The biennale runs from the 24th September 2009 to the 10th January 2010. It takes place throughout Rotterdam, most notably at the NAi, but with smaller exhibitions at the Rotterdam Academy of Architecture and Urban Design and a tie-in exhibit in Amsterdam. The Berlage Institute will also be planning a Master Class linked to this year’s theme.

Further Information Link: PDF launch document.

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.

The Jan van Eyck Academie is an institute for research and production in the fields of fine art, design and theory. Every year, 48 international researchers realise their individual or collective projects in the artistic and critical environment that is the Jan van Eyck. In doing so, they are advised by a team of artists, designers and theoreticians who have won their spurs globally. All in all, the Jan van Eyck offers artists, designers and theoreticians time and space to do research and realise productions, either about topics of their own choosing or as part of a project formulated by the institute itself.

Multi-Disciplinary Research
Artists, designers and theoreticians at the Jan van Eyck Academie work alongside each other and establish cross-disciplinary exchange. The academy is not led by predetermined leitmotivs. Artists, designers and theoreticians can submit independently formulated proposals for research and/or production in the departments of Fine Art, Design and Theory. They can also participate in research projects formulated by the departments: After 1968. What is the political?; Circle for Lacanian ideology Critique; Design Negation; ExtraStateCraft; Imaginary Property; The Cross-Cultural and the Counter-Modern. The result is a very heterogeneous programme of research topics. The miscellaneous nature of its research projects and productions make the Jan van Eyck a multi-disciplinary institute. The crosslinks which can exist between individual and/or collective projects and the exchange between researchers with different cultural and intellectual interests result in a creative and challe nging working environment.

Programme
The multi-disciplinary research projects are the basis for the Jan van Eyck programme. Researchers, departments and the institute organise various weekly activities, to which special speakers are invited: lectures, seminars, workshops, screenings, exhibitions, discussions, … These activities are announced on the website and via email.

Since the Jan van Eyck also aims to initiate the debate on art, design and theory and make it public, some activities are regularly organised with partners on regional, national and international venues, such as galleries, museums, academies, universities, …

Departments

Fine Art
The Fine Art department offers a unique space for experimentation, production, reflection and debate. Fine Art researchers conduct high-quality research in an environment that encourages the questioning of the assumptions, forms, meanings and contexts that are tied in with the practice of making art today. The fine arts department welcomes artists, individuals and groups, without stipulating conditions regarding form, content and media.

Advising researchers:
Orla Barry, Hans-Christian Dany, Hinrich Sachs, Imogen Stidworthy, Nasrin Tabatabai & Babak Afrassiabi

Design
The Design department focuses on design as research, discourse and publishing. It initiates and supports research projects in the areas of cultural and corporate identity, mapping, print and new media publishing, urban and regional identity, and book design.

The department expressly solicits individual designers to propose and carry out their own research in exchange with the institute’s array of events and presentations. While, formerly, the department used to focus on graphic and communication design, it has since widened its scope to include spatial, product and service design.

Advising researchers:
Keller Easterling, Florian Schneider, Daniel van der Velden

Theory
The Theory department is an international platform for reflection and research. Its mission is to create the opportunity for outstanding researchers to explore alternative ways of shaping their intellectual horizons by providing a stimulating environment for critical inquiry and intense debate. The Theory department welcomes applications from researchers of unusual promise who pursue their artistic and/or intellectual view of the interface of critical theory, philosophy, aesthetics and psychoanalysis with the visual arts.

Advising researchers:
Katja Diefenbach, Dominiek Hoens, Kobena Mercer

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
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The complete Berlage Team as on their site:

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

Star Wars: A New Heap. Recommended Read.

MovingCities.org has published the fith and last part of a wonderful documentary on China. Each part is about 6 minutes and covers different themes.
The documentary is a mix of very quiet, long shots of remarkable sites and thoughts of five local architects to the respective theme.

‘China According to China’ is initiated, developed and shot by Diego Grass Puga from 0300TV, a web channel for architectural broadcasting. It was completely filmed before 2008’s Beijing Olympics and edited right after its ending.

It isn’t an effort to portrait a certain scene [the profiles of each character are quite diverse] but to establish four issues that every Chinese architect has to deal with in today’s practice [opening-up, speed, agriculture & education] all of which may set the parameters of future development for Chinese architecture –and this is no prophecy: power has always proven to be Architecture’s most diligent ally.

Instead of branding/promoting individual genius, this is a story of how an [almost] obsolete discipline struggles to follow the pace of China –just like everyone else, everywhere.

“CHINA ACCORDING TO CHINA” presents a set of thoughts by five local architects on China’s current situation and history. Foreword by MovingCities.
Ai Wei Wei [FAKE design], Jiang Jun [Urban China], Yu Kongjian [Turenscape], Wang Shu [Amateur Architecture Studio] and Ma Qingyun [MADA s.p.a.m.] are in charge of defining the issues that every Chinese architect has to deal with in today’s practice, all of which may set the parameters of future development for Chinese architecture.

China According to China / Part 1: opening-up from 0300TV on Vimeo.

“What is exactly happening here?” [Bert de Muynck, movingcities.org]
We might never know. We neither speak nor read mandarin; and above all: it seems that we’ve forgotten the existence of any kind of Chinese Architecture before the [overexposed] Bird’s Nest. So, we choose five local architects who were willing to share their experience from the inside.

China According to China / Part 2: speed from 0300TV on Vimeo.

Speed [in design and construction]: It isn’t only matter of opportunities and good reflexes: it’s also an issue of control and power. How does Chinese Architecture deals with this form of speed?

China According to China / Part 3: agriculture from 0300TV on Vimeo.

Agriculture: 30 years of fast-placed industrialization and urbanization cannot erase more than 9000 years of agri-culture. Is this destruction/construction cycle about erasing everything? Or is it just another manifestation of China’s agricultural intelligence?

China According to China / Part 4: education from 0300TV on Vimeo.

Education: This five architects we’ve chosen are all part of an extremely wide international network of influences, deeply rooted to the most relevant academic centres [Harvard, MIT] and close to the most renowned architects [Koolhaas, Herzog & De Meuron].
But what’s in it for the average Chinese architect? What about the thousands of students who’re not part of the 12 top Chinese architecture schools [Tsinghua, Tongji and South East to name a few] linked to the West? Are they pursuing individual genius or a mass of skilled workers?

China According to China / Part 5: architecture from 0300TV on Vimeo.

Architecture: 2008, China the discipline has started to shift from a quest for a certain local identity [mid 1990’s – early 2000’s] into acknowledging the social power of Architecture.
In the context of an over-accelerated market, 10.000.000 years of History and an outdated educational system, is there any formula of how to do things right? What can we expect from Chinese Architecture? Ai Weiwei [FAKE Design] has something to say about it. Featuring images of Three Shadows Photography Art Centre and Red Brick Art Galleries [Chaochangdi Village, Beijing].
The End.

Check out more of MovingCities.org here. It is a Beijing-based think-thank investigating the role that architecture and urbanism play in shaping the contemporary city. Established in 2007 by Bert de Muynck (BE) and Mónica Carriço (PT), living and working in Beijing since 2006, MovingCities publishes, collaborates, research, interacts, talks and walks, and operate as embedded architects.

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.

What it seems to reveal is the at times blunt pairing of capitalism, materialism and democracy in the United States. In the same space you can shop, cast your early vote, and then step over to the slot machines to try your luck. It is of course in Las Vegas, which has a distinct legal and commercial environment, but it forces so many questions to the surface about the culture of this place and the United States in general. Is this what we want in our societies? That democracy and the right to vote becomes a banality only facilitated through commercial space? It highlights that for many people, the idea of a public, civic space that guides a democratic and political process has been completely eroded. The government no longer has widespread representation through architecture and urban space, but rather is hidden within the vast network of privatized and commercialized environments sprawling across the country. Without a White House, and the state legislature buildings, what would be left of civic space?

It is worth looking at Brekken’s other images. He is based in Las Vegas and covers the (what one could consider superficial) things that absorb the city.

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.

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 Dysturb.Net or FlickR.

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 theresponsivecity.org.

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

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

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

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

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

More at sinembargo.org.

June 11th the first Museum entirely dedicated to Graphic Design will be opened by our Queen Beatrix in Breda.
For the opening my friend Teun Castelein will make his graphic statement out of concieved content from 250 participants. Everybody is welcome to design its own flag and mail it to flag@graphicdesignmuseum.com. All designs will be printed on unique flags and put against the building. The result will be an explosion of information. A colourful art piece at the old baroque building of the supermodern Graphic Design Museum.
Really a piece of art that makes people think about modern visual communication, about the position of musea in the contemporary image-culture and the fact that everybody is a designer/ image-maker nowadays.

So invest some 250 €, add another line to your CV and be part of the opening exhibition. You can upload your images here.
It seems to be selling quite well and I’m sure it will look amazing.

Teun did a similar spectacular work of art inspired by the famous website ‘www.milliondollarhomepage.com‘ in 2005. He sold the façade of his Alma Mater, the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam to more than 300 companies, organisations and individuals.

They added logos and trademarks, images of art, poetry and lovenotes. The façade consists of more than 16,000 tiles [35x29cm], each of which is supplied with its own individual printed plastic plate. The result is an overwhelming mosaic of colour and information – a project that seeks to push the boundaries between commerce and art, society and the movements of the market, the private sector and public space. The Sandberg Institute is located on the Amsterdam ring road in the Zuidas district, the city’s new economic centre.

Teun Castelein, who is actually the first man in real size on the web, graduated in 2002 at the Art Academy of Utrecht with a research on Dutch suburban town Hoogvliet, just outside Rotterdam.
This ghetto town had a very negative image, so he decided to start a feel good branding campaign for its citizens as part of the WIMBY! project. One of his proposals was a Hollywood sign of ‘HOOGVLIET’ [which was implemented in a park design by FAT architects]. With this icon of Hollywood he wanted to give the people something to believe in, that you can be somebody! By giving Hoogvliet a bit of Hollywood allure, he made its inhabitants the stars.

So, go get your creativity boiling, convince your boss to spend those Euros and put something more on it than just your average company logo!

“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’.

Ahhh, the Venice Architecture Biennale is coming again in 2008! The exhibition runs from the 14 September to the 24 November and I’m totally stoked for another visit to the magical city.

This year’s 11th International Architecture Exhibition will be curated by Aaron Betsky, the former director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute and now director of the Cincinnati Art Museum. You can find an interesting interview from 10.2004 between Archinect and Betsky here.

This year’s theme will be:

Out There: Architecture Beyond Building

These days –in Betsky’s vision– buildings are not enough, or too much, to answer to the call of making ourselves at home in our modern world. We must be willing to use all forms, shapes, images and tactics to help us frame, figure out and order a world that is continually changing.

The worlds of art, interiors, landscapes, projected media and literature can and must be mined for such elements. We must not let buildings be the tombs of architecture, but must make an architecture that helps us to feel at home in, figure out and represent the world we live in.

This year’s theme seems uncannily similar to the manifesto of Volume magazine, published by Archis:

About Volume
Volume is an independent quarterly magazine that sets the agenda for design. With going beyond architecture’s definition of ‘making buildings’ it reaches out for global views on designing environments, advocates broader attitudes to social structures, and reclaims the cultural and political significance of architecture. Created as a global idea platform to voice architecture any way, anywhere, anytime, it represents the expansion of architectural territories and the new mandate for design.

And the official Aaron Betsky biography published through the biennale:

Aaron Betsky

Born in Missoula (Montana, USA) in 1958, Aaron Betsky trained in the Netherlands and the United States. Betsky brings vast and varied experience as curator, manager, historian, critic and in creating architecture exhibitions to the Biennale di Venezia.

Director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) of Rotterdam –one of the most important architecture museums and centres in the world– from 2001 to 2006, for three editions (2002, 2004, 2006) he held the post of Commissioner for the Dutch Pavilion at the Biennale di Venezia’s International Architecture Exhibition. At the 8th International Architecture Exhibition (2002), the Dutch Pavilion, curated by Aaron Betsky, won the Golden Lion for best foreign pavilion.

After finishing his secondary education in the Netherlands, Betsky graduated from the Yale School of Architecture (USA) and gained a Ph.D. in the History of Architecture from the Technical University in Delft (Netherlands).He is currently Director of the Cincinnati Art Museum (since 2006), one of the most important and oldest (125 years) in the United States. Before this, between 1995 and 2001, he was Curator for architecture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Betsky is a prolific writer and journalist and the author of a dozen books and numerous articles with leading international specialised periodicals. He has written for the “Los Angeles Times” (1991-1994), and amongst the many other newspapers and periodicals he has contributed to, the “New York Times”, “The Village Voice”, “Domus”, “Elle” and “Metropolitan Home”.

He has held the Eero Saarinen chair in architecture at the University of Michigan and has been Visiting Professor at some leading US universities: at Columbia University in New York, at the California College of Arts in San Francisco, at the School of Architecture in Houston, and at the Southern California Institute of Santa Monica. He is an honorary member of the British Institute of Architects (2004) and has won an award from the American Institute of Architects (2001). From 1985 to 1987, he worked with Frank O. Gehry Associates, Inc. (Venice, California).

Among his books are What is Modernism (Phaidon Press, to be published in autumn 2008) and The United Nations Building (Thames & Hudson, 2006).

You can follow these links to see photos from the 10th biennale in 2006 from Darrel Ronald and Thomas Stellmach.

Supersudaca, a befriended south-american think-tank has launched Sudapan – Endless(s)trips, an international competition about the urban potentials of mass-tourism in the Caribbean. The competition focuses on the 140km resorts-strip of Riviera Maya, on the Mexican coast.

The competition tries to put forward of the key territorial issues of Latin America and the Caribbean for their inclusion in the contemporary global agenda. Endless(s)trips is a competition of ideas about the urbanism potential of the massive beach tourism in the Caribbean.

Endless(s)trips is a space of reflection an proposals for rethinking the relation between the local elements, the tourists, the environment, tourism managers, the State, the infrastructure and the landscape. It is an opportunity to imagine other cities, other territories and other ways of tourism management.

Due to its size, dynamism and complexity, the Mayan Riviera is an intense and urgent case of great potential, an urbanism laboratory in the Caribbean coast.

Endless(s)trips is supported of the IAAC (Advanced Architecture Institute of Catalunya) and sponsored by Prins Claus Fonds.

* Tourist strips are the mono functional strips of tourism activity developed along the coast line.

Jury

Vicente Guallart (Valencia, Spain, 1963)
Winy Maas (Schijndel, The Netherlands, 1959)
Prof. Carel Weeber (Nijmegen,The Netherlands, 1937)
José Castillo (Mexico)
Bruno Stagno (Santiago, Chile)

Full explanation is available at www.sudapan.org. Feel free to contact info@supersudaca.org for more information. Anyway, make sure you check out their slideshow on the type of ‘urbanism’, created by all-inclusive tourism.

The Delft School of Design at TU Delft will hold another conference on urbanism following on the heels of the first. Permacity is an international conference on the 27th and 28th November in Delft. The conference theme concerns “the sustainability of urban environments and urban societies under the conditions of globalization and ongoing urbanization.”

The conference applies Permaculture to urbanism and urban design as a position for creating sustainable cities. It should be great for anyone interested in Landscape Urbanism and who feels that designers share responsibility for the future of civilization.

The TU Delft Faculty of Architecture will soon host the 4th International Seminar on Urbanism and Urbanization, with professors from around the the world discussing the theme of: The European Tradition in Urbanism -and its Future. From the 24th to 26th September, many participants will be at the school addressing issues of permanence and change, and conformitites and differences within urban practices within both a European and non-European context.

The main speakers will be: Bernardo Secchi, Joaquim Sabate, Marcel Smets, Zdenek Zavrel, Heng Chye Kiang, Jurgen Rosemann, Christine Boyer and Han Meyer. This is mainly a conference for PhD students, other scientists, and professionals in the field of urbanism; and is jointly organized with KU Leuven, UPC Barcelona and IUAV Venice.

One of the main events will be a round table discussion concerning Urbanism after the Welfare State, and is probably quite important for contexts such as the Netherlands, which has over the past 10 years totally shifted public policy concerning the housing corporations. I know, it sounds quite dry, but this is urban planning-speak. I can imagine that the heart of the matter can be good content. As for the future of (European) Urbanism, the task of urbanists in general is to make the profession much more user-friendly, ugh.

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

Jaime Salazar :

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

Angelika Schnell:

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

Michael Speaks :

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

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

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.

I am a sucker for data. I have collected some useful, some beautiful sources for demographic and political data I’d like to share. Let the statistics surprise you.

First of all there is IBM’s Many Eyes Project ( found via edgargonzales). It is a bet on the power of human visual intelligence to find patterns. Our goal is to “democratize” visualization and to enable a new social kind of data analysis. (from their website) The community driven site lets users upload data and display it with different graphical engines – with informative and visually stunning results.

the Human Development Report, which also offer their entire dataset as a downloadable pdf. The Human Development Index has the goal of putting people back at the center of the development process in terms of economic debate, policy and advocacy. The goal was both massive and simple, with far-ranging implications – going beyond income to assess the level of people’s long-term well-being. (from their website).

Worldmapper is a collection of maps, stretched according to the statistical data of interest.

Worldprocessor is a similar project by Ingo Günther, marrying data with art by painting maps on countless of plastic globes.

With 82 years Japan has the highest life expectancy. All 35 countries at the bottom of this list are located in sub-Saharan Africa; their citizen’s average life expectancy is between 52 and 39 years.

The data for the above globe originates from the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development) Statistics Portal where you can find data, well, about anything – including full reports and excel data dumps.

The same holds true for Eurostat, the European Union’s Statistics portal. The data is restricted to the EU – but more in depth, down to the regional level. The quite technical interface offers you to create your own comparison charts – and nowhere else would you find the total length of motorways per country.

A comprehensive collection of world country information is The World Fact Book by the CIA. Also available as a download for offline use (factbook.zip 44.5MB).

You’ll find all of the above links in our link archive. Check it out.

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)

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

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

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

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

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

Among the Critics were:

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

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

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

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)

Hunch #11 from the Berlage Institute came out the past month. The annual books current theme is Rethinking Representation. Google Maps +

Hunch #11 – Berlage Institute
Editor: Penelope Dean
Published in February 2007
176 pages, 16.5 cm x 30 cm

The editor writes:
“This issue of hunch expands on the recent proliferation of the term ‘representation’ by distilling ten terms – figure, logo, image, icon, diagram, apply, enlarge, practice, politics and work – from the ten commissioned essays.

Peter Eisenman begins the anthology with an essay outlining his move away from the ‘index’ toward the ‘post-indexical, or the production of figures, which he finds necessary for today’s revised subjects and readers. In a reply to Eisenman’s question ‘How do you teach green dots?’ R. E. Somol puts forward the case for performative architecture, graphic expediency, and the logo.

Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos revisit the role of image and offer the alternate concept of ‘after-image’ as a disciplinary means for architecture to continue its function as art.
In an essay excerpted from his recent book accompanied by the drawings of Madelon Vrisendorp, Charles Jencks lays out the case for the iconic building. John McMorrough historically recalls the architectural coverage of paint through 1960s Supergraphics.

Penelope Dean compares two Alessi Tea and Coffee moments, exposing emblematic episodes in the mobile relationships between architecture and design, representation and discipline.

Jeffrey Kipnis returns to the role of the diagram and its effect of re-origination as the basis for all medium specificity. Roemer van Toorn defines a ‘politics of aesthetics’ through the work of Gerrit Rietveld and Wiel Arets Architects. Sylvia Lavin calls for a shift away from representation and a return to building, promoting the ‘pet rock’ as a viable analogy for the return to practice.

Finally, in the closing essay, Stan Allen discards contemporary discussions of the critical and projective, representation and performance, to state that one’s focus can be on practices themselves, in other words on doing.

Despite the various positions and arguments implied in this issue – declarations either for or against contemporary modes of representation, claims that representation should not be about that but rather about this, or deployments of representation as simply the straw man for something else – hunch 11 stands as a demonstration of the topic’s ongoing resilience and centrality to architectural discourse. It’s simply the thing we’ll never get over.”