016. Inception

It is not just the question of having witty ideas. It is important how exactly to pursue the things. But you do not have to be alone on your way. Offices like Coop Himmelblau or Peter Cook's Archigram did follow the path of certain heroes of the 20th century, for example Charles and Ray Eames, Frank Gehry, Gunnar Asplund.

They make up an odd list but they do have something in common. All of them have turned their obsessions into a perfect working method that not only leaves us in no doubt about the intentions but also in no doubt at all about the sustained intensity of the working process and the clarity of eventual product.

To turn your obsessions into working method! 

Inception - The Movie - happening twice a day on the Berlage Brug in Amsterdam

015. Association and Imagination - a strategy

What you see is not enough. 

There simply must be something more down there.

The world is full of missing things. The only place that stores them is the imagination. It stores the missing images. 

014. Three black customized wipeouts

Wipeout 1 - Lamp - a source of artificial light obscured

Wipeout 2 - Military base - a piece of land obscured

Wipeout 3 - Human - obscured. A black fabric, almost like a piece of clothing

013. A Lesson

You should be happy and proud of what you design. Are you happy, are you proud?
Imola Berczi

012. Housing is turning us on again

Housing has been for years one of the most abandoned issues in the contemporary architectural discourse. Recent explosion of the bubble vows for immediate "reality check" of how we live and sustain. Let's meet John Kormeling for whom this topic has been central for years. 

Proposal for the Tilburg roundabout is amazing because it is clean and funny but cannot be summed by one single header. In the same time it undertakes serious urban issues like dominance of car-oriented infrastructure, place for a single family house in an urban area, the urban wastelands - How else could you call the big green circle within the circumference of the roundabout. I can imagine that piece of land being an optimal place for a colony of houses that would organically grow within the infrastructure until the point when they would blow the ring away! 

John Kormeling produced many projects where his houses landed in different venues and spots round the city. A house built on top of a shopping mall, a Happy Street in Shanghai that is fairly happy. This is it! A great provocation for our happy Eastern European Kulturkreis where single family houses continue to give us illusions of freedom. 

Housing is a beautiful topic of many challenges. You have to be investigative, socialy sensitive and precise with economics of solutions. But you don't have to be so much innovative in the first place. Is this the reason why UNStudio doesn't want to really design housing projects? As opposed to their strategies John Komerling with his modesty, wittness and sharpness rises to the position of a personal role model. 

011. Rotterdam woont or Networking maybe isn't bullshit

Our activity is essentially researching on how housing developed in Rotterdam during last 150 years. We are currently looking into fifty housing estates but the number will eventually go to two hundred and fifty. On the one hand we are interested in setting up a data base that will cover raw information about the way people used to live, square meters per person, proportion between public space and private space, costs of utilities etc. On the over every information will be presented with necessary historical, social and economic background, the whole context has to be understood. Apart from texts of course essential will be also the plans and sections.

This Saturday I attended a pretty much interesting seminary about Gerit Rietveld together with the exhibition at the local Centraal Museum of Utrecht. To my surprise in the seminary programme the same amount of time was devoted to the core as to the coffee or lunch breaks. Initially I thought this meeting was just a perfect excuse for the white hair society to chat and laugh! But when drinking and eating I met and talked to a couple of fairly young but important heads: Ole Bouman, the director of the NAI, Pippo Ciorra, chief curator at the Maxxi Roma and Lucas van Zuijlen, who runs the project Rotterdam woont

Firstly I thought that what Gall and me are trying to acheive with the Superhighway project could be a sort of a data base that will have its own methodology and will gather interesting information about the Shared Heritage. All the phenomena that are felt by heart need to be justified with more perceivable and commonly acceptable data.

Secondly, if there is a data base it has to have a practical purpose. Why collect something and store it on shelves? Therefore what could be developed is a sort of Pattern Language, a series of spacial and aesthetic solutions for contemporary housing and architecture that would embrace the topic of Shared Heritage. Documentation of the past with translation to the contemporary and strong focus on implementation. In layman's language let's just imagine a Polish German house finally with forms and meanings mingling together.

What we learn from Lucas van Zuijlen is the practical approach. In his project he doesn't count anymore on public funding that has been increasingly shorten in recent years although he does everything under auspices of Delft university and other institutions. Yet the money comes from private investors, developers who are interested in having and using thorough data, understanding the tendencies in housing in the past and to use them creatively in the future.

This is something that has been attracting me since I had in my hands an issue of the Purpose Magazine: working intellectually and practically, to change the world and possibly to earn an honest penny. With all the attention that has now shifted to the regional architecture it's probable that we can succeed also with the concept of Shared Heritage. More to come!

010. Feet or Fiets

First bike - 40 euros, stolen after 8 hours;
Second bike - Sparta - 40 euros, still here;
Third bike - bought from Ramon for 50 euros, broken after 4 days
Fourth bike - 30 euros, stolen after 6 days.

Learning from mistakes. Options:
- Snatch a bike on your own
- Buy a folding bike, 30 euros, to keep it always with you
- Move back to Amsterdam, use your feet

009. The Beauty of the Blur

008. Preparations

In the end of February I will have the opportunity to conduct an interview with Ben van Berkel. Before this happens the blog has to expand. The weight of the prominent guest will be so huge that the quality and the number of posts has to rise just to try to give a small counterbalance.

To shed a light on Van Berkel

Also all good interviews have to start with you being curious about your guest. If not necessity, curiosity is the driving force of all the progress. I am so much eager knowing about very many things about my boss. The first thing would be "why is he always away?" I have seen him in the Studio only a couple of times so far. Does he start his week by waking up in Shanghai, then strolls somewhere around in Dubai and gets an evening drink on Fridays in NY? From the various insiders I heard about how Rem Koolhaas works. People in his studio often know him only from the sketches he faxes or mails from airports and hotel rooms. Isn't this bullshit? Let's stick to the facts, Myth Busters!

There are many elements that constitute a good interview. One of them is to reveal the truths that have not been written so far. Therefore one just has to dig into possibly all interesting content that is already available to see if there are some questions missing. During the research not only knowledge is being collected but also a certain vision of a person emerges. It is in the competence of a journalist to actually create such a person according to own beliefs, to predict the answers, to give the right questions:

Current:

Design and Management - What is the new role of Ben van Berkel in the UNStudio?

Decentralization and Trust - How does the network type of organization affect the quality of design?

Innovation and Identity - How do you now understand this term when the studio is well-developed into a corporation? Tired of Innovation?

Common

Who were your teachers? Did you pick them up, did they pick up you?

How do you think you were influenced by the cultural cityscapes of the Netherlands?

The stages of the development of the studio.

The influence of a strong theory on the everyday practice. A disjunction or continuity between the two?

Specific

Raffles, St. Petersburg, Hundred and twenty projects ongoing. Sixty minutes to learn it all.

007. A Pavilion, a House, a City

In one of her lectures Caroline Bos said that concept of a house is not central any more in the contemporary architectural discourse.

Reportedly, dwelling was an architectural issue a couple of decades ago when Europe and the world was rebuilding itself after the WWII. Many new housing concepts had to surface out to cover the increasing demand for square meters. On the one hand new housing typologies had to meet the prescribed requirements of planned economies of walfare states and uniformistic cultures. On the other gradually in the chain of cause and effect they conditioned the rise of todays neoliberal diverse and atomized societies. Now, according to Bos, it's time to bring back people together, to restore the feeling of a community. The best typology to serve us here is a temporary pavillion.

I remained incited by Bos's words for long. I am not suspicious about the pavilion itself. I have a profound feeling though that as a typology pavilion and a house should be a system that would work together for the good cause. The process of restoring an abstract community should be started by putting emphasis on the smallest of all communities but very concrete one - the family. The moment when it just seems that there is nothing left of an ideal at all is also the one when the swing starts coming back. Will people soon again readily organize their lives with family being in the focus? If you try to numerate the trend the data would show that the age when young adults leave their family household rises, the age of women when giving birth to first child is stable in countries and the number stable relationships (marriage or not) is also rising.

As dealing with statistical numbers may be sleek there is a number of architectural issues which concern dwelling that are fascinating on their own. First of all there is a house itself. A Modern Vernacular House, a house with a view, a house in a landscape, a theoretical and practical house a reflection on the mundane, an infinity by repetition. Then there is the issue of re-populating or re-colonizing the city centers which suddenly became empty without real inhabitants being only service areas for everybody else. How would then look an experimental Single Family House in a Dense Urban Context and could it become an agent in the process of re-populating? Then there is an issue of Urban Villages small entities within larger metropolis being created by people who perceive and understand their urban neighborhood as a fully natural environment. Like pidgeons. Could here to this formula a pavilion be applied?

Sou Fujimoto, Tokyo House, Dezeen

Somehow as I am writing this text I am starting also finally understand the idea of a city in a proper way. A city which is not a political idea but which is a simple home to people. Not a theory of life but practice. And if one would like to numerate it the only factor that counts is density. Let's be specific, let's not generalize. Let's get to work.

006. Radio Nederlanden

Today I was listening to a broadcast on Radio Nederlanden.

The main issue which was mentioned is concerning the whole Randstad agglomeration but most of all Rotterdam itself. If the sea level will continue to rise as expected either the Port of Rotterdam or the city would have to adapt to new conditions. The first option is to wall off the area from the rising water but then the port would not have access to the open sea anymore. Therefore there should be build a new port further into the sea. The second option is to maintain the port in its place but in the same time resettle into inland some 1.200.000 people. 

A civil engineer was speaking, presumably one of the highest officials on national level responsible for the maintenance of the flood-control system.

"In the same way the water is dangerous for us as it is life supporting. The people of Netherlands have lived under such conditions ever since they decided to settle here in the early days. Therefore we will continue to live on water and with water and we will ensure that our children will have a safe future."

005. History in the making

Pantheon of Rome



Abandoned house in the outskirts of Warsaw

Open organic forms made out of modular elements.
Neverending possibilities for renewal

004. Homeland Afterthoughts

- Czy ten autobus jedzie do Paryża?
- Do Amsterdamu.
- A nie mógłbym się z wami zabrać po drodze do Paryża?

Pola pokryte śniegiem są jak biała kartka, na której wyraźniej widać zapisane elementy. Widać pojedyncze domy, zagrody, osiedla i jakieś wsie. Patrzymy na krajobraz, krajobraz patrzy na nas.

Organiczność struktur, warstwa nakładana przez człowieka, warstwa budownictwa wernakularnego jest niczym żywa, spleciona tkanka, która w jednym miejscu obumiera, ale w drugim miejscu się odradza na nowo. Tak jakby była aktywowana punktowymi impulsami elektrycznymi pobudzającymi do życia. Jedne domy rodzą się, wypełniają treścią, inne tracą swoje znaczenie i obumierają. Polski krajobraz pod tym względem jest pełen życia i śmierci. Polska w budowie.

Niby to banalna uwaga, bo być może znaczy dokładnie tyle samo na całym świecie. Ale w jakimś stopniu Amsterdam jest inny. Tam wszystko jest w podobnym stanie zadbania, tak jakby wszystko się wywodziło z podobnego okresu historycznego. Albo jakby w domach żyli ludzie tylko w jednym wieku, na przykład średnim. Oczywiście miasta Holandii także są organiczne (co to pojęcie właściwie znaczy?), ale wymiar i odczucie czasoprzestrzeni jest zupełnie inne. Czuje się więcej kontynuacji i dziejowej ciągłości zapisanej w ceglanych i szarych, zrównoważonych murach miast.

Organiczność dotyczy zarówno całych osiedli jak i samych domów. Wyglądają one jakby były rozwijającymi sie w czasie strukturami. Na planie fluktuujące, stale rozszerzające swój obrys. Dobudówki, szopki, ganki. Tutaj cegła, tam gazobeton. Architekci zawsze korzystali z tego, co akurat było pod ręką, Wybór materiałów charakteryzuje różnorodność a pomysły rozwiązań architektonicznych - jakaś zagmatwana złożoność. Jak oddać tę polską organiczność za pomocą środków architektonicznych? Estetyka mozaiki, zaprogramowana mieszanka środków, połączenie cegły, klinkieru, odkrytego gazobetonu, fragmentów tynku, farby w dwóch odcieniach. Polska jest taką mozaiką, która pod płaszczem jednorodności, pod takim korzuchem jak na ciepłym mleku, kryje nie jednorodne białko, tylko multiwitaminowy sok z wielu składników. Nasza architektura musi się przewartościować, zyskać samoświadomości i pewność siebie.