OMA distributed a press release including the above picture (click for XXL) today that the facade developed in collaboration with ARUP has been completed. Just in time for the opening of the Olympic Games for an harmonious skyline, we might add. In that context: the extruded pagoda on the right is the Zhong Fu Tower.
My friends at XML need some help, and asked me for support. They are looking for interns for a period of 3 to 6 months, starting from september. They’re young, small and interesting, and can only offer a minimum salary. Here’s their advert:
XML is a contemporary cultural practice specialized in Architecture, Research and Urbanism. From its base in Amsterdam XML is involved in worldwide cross-disciplinary projects with an emphasis on cultural analysis. XML’s projects are fuelled by a reflection on the contemporary city as source of cultural production. The work has been rewarded several prizes amongst which most recently the first prize in the Europan 9 competition Almere.
We currently invite people to apply for a position as trainee in our office in amsterdam. Candidates should have finished at least two years of relevant design education. Further requirements include:
- excellent model-making, drawing and render skills
- strong graphic and design talent
- willing to actively contribute to the rapid growth of our young officeApplicants for this vacancy should send their cv, motivation letter and portfolio(pdf) to hr@x-m-l.org.
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.
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.
Our friends from Supersudaca host an interesting workshop on tourism in post-castro Cuba in September. It’ll set you back 1000€, but scholarships to reduce the fee are available. The objective of the workshop is to find specualtive answers on questions as:
How will Cuba change its tourist branding in a SIN-EMBARGO scenario?
How will it mutate its current spatial segregation strategy between locals and tourist in a SIN-EMBARGO scheme?
What will be the territorial impacts in a Cuba SIN-EMBARGO that admits cruise ship tourism?
Will Cuba become a role model for next generation tourist developments in the Caribbean and worldwide in a SIN-EMBARGO condition?
What is the emerging territorial paradigm of Sun and Beach in the Cuba CON-EMBARGO? Will it change in a SIN-EMBARGO context?
Will the regulation culture and environmental management remain the same in a ‘liberalized’ Cuba SIN-EMBARGO?
How will Cuba react spatially to the opening of the massive market of second residences for American pensioners in a Cuba SIN-EMBARGO?
The inscription period ends on 15th of August. The (slightly disappointing) results of last years sudapan competition will be at display at RAS gallery in Barcelona from 4th September on.
More at sinembargo.org.
The final presentations of the 1st and 2nd year Berlage Institute students are scheduled at the school this coming week and next. All of the presentations are open to the public, and are without entry cost. On the 24th June, the 1st year students will present two studios, Rethinking the All-Inclusive, and the Saemanquem Project; while on the 1st July two other studios, Associative Design: Urban Ecologies, and Capital Cities, The limits of the City: A Strategic Project for Seoul will be presented.
You may also watch the Livestream Broadcasts online.
Continue reading ‘Final Presentations at the Berlage Institute - Watch Live’
The latest exhibition in the temporary location for the Stedelijk Museum CS will be a show curated by Wolfgang Tillmans (b. 1968) which includes his own work situated amongst other artists. The show is entitled, Presence of Mind, and will run through June 20th - September 30th, 2008. While previous works will be included, the show will also include the museum’s recent acquisition, an installation by Tillmans titled, Stedelijk Room.
Continue reading ‘Wolfgang Tillmans at the Stedelijk CS’
In a few days - on the 20th of June - the London Festival of Architecture starts and will go on for a month. The program is overwhelming (including events/hubs/themes/tours/projects..), I will write more after I’ve seen it. Go and check their site: http://www.lfa2008.org!
This morning the Faculty of Architecture of the Delft University of Technology caught fire.
The building was evacuated immediately, there were no injured.
The probable cause of the fire was a short-circuiting in a coffee-machine on the 6th floor of the northern wing of the building, resulting from water leakage. The fire spread to the upper floors and later to the southern wing. Due to the height of the building, the fierceness of the fire and possible collapsing of the building firemen had to retreat and continue their work from the ground.
According to the fire department the building by Van den Broek and Bakema is to be considered lost entirely and could even collapse due to severe damage done to it’s structure.
Images here (Nu.nl) and here (NOS.nl). Movies after the break.
Fellow dysturber, Darrel Ronald, founded Open Form Architecture in Montréal (Canada) with colleagues Maxime Moreau and Maurice Martel. We were recently invited to participate in the Pecha Kucha Montréal as our first public presentation. Following our 20 slides / 20 seconds at the special edition of Pecha Kucha Montréal as part of the Portes Ouverts Design Montréal festival, we have made the slides, as well as video available online.
The title of our presentation is, Simple Rules, Complex Behaviour, and illustrates a limited selection of our work over the past years dealing with generative design, cellular automata, simple programming and complexity. We have been particularly influenced by the work of Steven Wolfram and his book, A New Kind of Science. Having participated in two of his NKS Summer Schools, we’ve been fortunate to collaborate with him and a team of mathematicians and programmers in the United States using Mathematica software.
The presentation is bilingual French and English, just like our favourite city! Unfortunately the first words are cut off, and they are: WE ARE OPEN FORM, and WE LOVE OPEN FORM! We hope you enjoy! Below are our 20 slides, that accompany the video.
Continue reading ‘Open Form Architecture @ Pecha Kucha, Montreal’
Emap, a Business-to-Business media group (from their website), hosts the first World Architecture Festival in Barcelona. Architects are invited to put their buildings up for competition (entry fee a smacking 950€), and among the exhibited projects the best will be awarded. The interesting jury (to name a few: Will Alsop, Cecil Balmond, Stefan Behnisch, Richard Burdett, Luis M. Mansilla, Richard Meier, Sir Peter Cook, Neil Denari, Norman Foster, Massimiliano Fuksas, Zaha Hadid, Michel Rojkind, Michael Sorkin, Francine Houben, Robert Stern, Christoph Ingenhoven, Charles Jencks) might redeem the commercial/artificial flair the event exudes. We’ll keep our final judgement to ourselves until we know more about the event.
This friday at 16:30 an interesting exhibition opens @ the Casla in Almere. It will feature the winning projects of the Eenvoud Competition, the third edition for an experimetal neighbourhood in Almere. Its predecessors, “De Fantasie” and “De Realiteit”, ‘Fantasy’ and ‘Reality’ were held back in the eighties and their results are still worth an excursion. More information on that below.
“De Éénvoud†or ‘Simplicity ‘is the result of a competition held in 2006. The brief was to design a freestanding and simple low-cost house, expressing their own wishes and ideas for dwelling. The winners got the possibility to build their design on a beautiful open spot in the woodland of Noorderplassen-West.
Continue reading ‘De Eenvoud - Simplicity’
A new documentary film, archiCULTURE, is in the works about the lives of student architects and the culture surrounding the daily life of design students. The film (trailer) is a grassroots project currently seeking money to finance the project.
Continue reading ‘archiCULTURE: The Film’
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!’
I recently discovered a radio program that is broadcast by Radio France Culture every Wednesday from 10 to 11 am. Called Métropolitains, this show existed since 1999 and is hosted by the architectural critic François Chaslin. Métropolitans is a program about architecture and the city. With a smooth voice, François Chaslin and his guests talks about several subjects from landscape architecture to design, lighting, scenography, exhibitions, the city and - of course - its buildings. For example the show of February 27 was entirely dedicated to the British architect Richard Rogers, who is presently presenting a monographic show at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Also have a look at the 5th of March show, which was dedicated to the philosopher and architect Wittgenstein. Celine Poisson, specialist of the Wittgenstein house and professor of design at the Université du Québec à Montréal, was guest of the show. On the 20th of February the roles were reversed: various architects and historians challenged François Chaslin on issues regarding the actual status of architecture.
You can download Podcasts and archives of the show at the Métropolitains site.
This sunday i went to see the exhibition of swiss artist duo Fischli & Weiss in Milan,Italy, organized by the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi. Get the first impression by a video on youtube. It runs until the 16th of march, but afterwards it will move to Hamburg (18. April until 31. August in the Deichtorhallen Hamburg). The exhibition space is the beautiful Palazzo Litta, the perfect frame for their work. They are dealing with a wide range of means: multimedia installations, photography and sculptures.Their most famous piece of work is the movie titled “Der Lauf der Dinge” (How things go), from 1987, at the documenta 8. Their basic principle is to pick up objects and situations of daily life and transforming them into a new context. What do they exactly aim at? Do they try to find answers on the philosophical and theoretical questions of life is their irony and also tremendous humour a notion to cheer up in a complex world?
One extract of a Super 8 movie shows Fischli & Weiss, dressed as a bear and a rat, strolling through Hollywood, questioning life.The bears’ comment ( in “the least resistance”): ” I hate this chaos in the world. Nothing works. Everything is hopeless and sad.” Continue reading ‘Questions & Flowers - a Retrospective by Fischli & Weiss’
Amsterdam’s finest photography museum, FOAM Fotografiemuseum, has what should be an excellent exhibition opening on the 14th March. The new exhibit by Daniel & Geo Fuchs: STASI – Secret Rooms runs until the 4th June 2008, and documents the interior spaces used by the East German Stasi.
Continue reading ‘Stasi Spaces @ FOAM, Amsterdam’
