B 54/06
Colofon Bnieuws Volume 54 Issue 06 June 2021 Contact Room BG.Midden.140 Julianalaan 134 2628 BL Delft bnieuws-bk@tudelft.nl Editorial Team Federico Ruiz Inez Margaux Spaargaren Robert van Overveld Oliwia Jackowska Jonas Althuis Alessandro Rognoni
CONTENTS 04
Local Liability
08
The INDESEM Archive
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Follow Up
12 Stay 14
I am the Datascape
Contributors placebolder
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A Short Story of Bnieuws
Cover Editorial Team
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Like It's Normal
Printed by Druk. Tan Heck
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Interview Jan Dierckx: 10 Minutes with an Architect
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The Design Process
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A Recap of INDESEM.21
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Optimist Pessimist
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Artefact: INDESEM.21 Team
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Editorial Continued
© All rights reserved. Although all content is treated with great care, errors may occur.
Bnieuws.nl
Editorial
OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM Let us begin with an anecdote. It starts with renowned Italian architectural magazine Domus. Every year, Domus has a guest editor; a working architect, typically rather successful and innovative at that moment. The role of the guest editor is to pose the important questions and frame the important discussions of that year. In 2020, David Chipperfield was guest editor. The central question that defined the October 2020 edition was “Will technology save us?”, an introspective question that triggers visions of dystopian futures. In his editorial for this edition, Chipperfield explores this question, scrutinizing the role of architects in modern society, especially in the context of the current challenges we face; the climate crisis, social inequalities across the world, the COVID-19 pandemic, and many more. Responses to Chipperfield's question and editorial were decidedly polar. On one side there was Swiss architect Jacques Herzog (of Herzog & de Meuron), who writes soberly that the role of the architect has rarely influenced society in a meaningful way, instead simply adjusting to existing societal trends. On the other side came a reply from Italian architect Carlo Ratti and Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde, who plead for architects to be colloborative and pro-active in designing and co-designing to serve humanity. The underlying philosophy in these responses is clear: Herzog is skeptical; Pessimism. Ratti and Roosegaarde are hopeful; Optimism. The duality in these two sides is the theme of this edition: Optimism and Pessimism. A theme that, thanks to myriad popular idioms, we've likely all thought about before. It's a theme that is close to the soul, representing something deep inside of us; how we perceive the world and how we approach the challenges that we encounter. In fact, this theme was chosen by you, readers of Bnieuws, through a poll on Instagram. Maybe it's a theme that many of us are thinking about these days. This time around, we've collaborated with the INDESEM.21 team, asking them to reflect on a year of rigorous planning leading up this year's edition of the event. INDESEM, or International Design Seminar, is a week of workshops, lectures, activities and of course a design competition. Read about the history of INDESEM (pg. 8), this year's theme (pg. 14), an interview with design technologist Jan Dierckx (pg. 20) and a reflection on the year of planning leading up to the event (pg. 26). Besides INDESEM, read about the dynamic between locals and international students (pg. 4), the difficult question of whether or not to return home once studies are complete (pg. 12), the ups and downs of the design process (pg. 24), an unexpected adventure that definitely happened (pg. 16), an investigation into the idea of 'normal' (pg. 18) and much more! This edition's extended editorial continues on page 32!
#Bnieuwd
To watch / Winy Maas - Under tomorrow's sky Architect and urban planner Winy Maas sees it as his mission to think up solutions for the city of the future. The Close Up documentary 'Winy Maas - Under tomorrow's sky' shows how he launches innovative designs in the Netherlands and Asia and, with his think tank 'The Why Factory', thinks about how we can keep cities compact and liveable. Released: 2.06.2021 Stream: www.npostart.nl/close-up/
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To go / RAUM der Lusten The exhibition RAUM of Delights shows a new and exciting alternative in our public squares and parks. The concept is inspired by the well-known 15th century work the "Garden of Earthly Delights" by Hieronymus Bosch. In this landscape, new possibilities for reflection, behavior and perhaps even strange encounters arise. 30.04.2021 - 29.08.2021 Location: CityLab RAUM Berlijnplein 520, Utrecht
To listen / BK TALKS: RAISING AWARENESS. DISSECTING DIVERSITY IN DESIGN We may all look different, but why are most of our experiences or journeys into the design world so similar? Is design becoming or championing an exclusive environment? How does diversity play a role in this? The aim of this BK Talks event is to assess our current position in design and explore future projections of how designers can tackle diversity within the design of the built environment. 24.06.2021 18:00 T/M 20:00 Location: ONLINE
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#Bnieuwd
To read / Architecture in the Netherlands For over 30 years Architecture in the Netherlands has provided an indispensable overview of Dutch architecture for everyone with a professional or more general interest in the subject. The Yearbook is the international showcase for Dutch architecture. This publication also contains a survey of the most important awards, competitions, exhibitions and publications of the past year. The editors used the experiences of the past - exceptional year to critically examine the new crop of buildings. What form of urbanity and public life should architecture make possible (or continue to make possible) in the future? Pubilshed: 26.05.2021 Publisher: nai010
BK
Expo Open call for contents
To do / Expo BK-city The faculty’s new BK Expo space in the Oostserre will host this first exhibition where staff, faculty and students are welcome to participate. What have we learned? is a chance to catch up with your fellow students, teachers and colleagues. Therefore, we invite everyone to share their experiences and contribute to the faculty-broad exhibition by means of an open call. Fall 2021/2022 Location: the Oostserre
The faculty’s new BK Expo space in the Oostserre will host this first exhibition where staff, faculty and students are welcome to participate. What have we learned? is a chance to catch up with your fellow students, teachers and colleagues. Therefore, we invite everyone to share their experiences and contribute to the faculty-broad exhibition by means of an open call.
What have we learned? will be on display during the month of September 2021. Contents will be showcased on the newly designed mobile exhibition walls in the Oostserre. Everyone wishing to contribute is welcome to send in their ideas by May, 17th, 2021. Our intention is to accommodate a wide range of contents representing the creative BK community. Different media supports, such as imagery, video or textual content, are thus accepted. Applicants are not required to use a strict format, so please feel free to be creative.
Latest / INSTAGRAM Keep updated on our recommendations on upcoming events through our instagram account. Don’t forget that our voice is also yours, so send us or tag us with anything you’d like to share For the content of the exhibition, the theme What have we learned? can be applied to the different aspects of online with our followers. Feel free to contact us via instagram or facebook! versus offline life. For example: - Education - Social life - Public space - Life at the coffee machine
Open call procedure
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Please write a +/- 200-word statement about why and how you would like to contribute to the exhibition. Add a list of materials needed to display the
@bnieuws on Instagram / search Bnieuws on Facebook.
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From the editors
LOCAL LIABILITY Words Alessandro Rognoni
In my early years as an international student, I held the conviction that, wherever I went, I would contribute to making my environment more diverse. My attitude, as I realised over the years, might have been overly-optimistic.
Five years ago, before stepping onto Dutch soil, I went to London to study architecture. Many were the motivations to move, the strongest of which was a personal desire to be an international student, within an established trans-national environment like the EU (of course... the UK case turned out to be a scam!).
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The now established position of the international student, still very much a privileged one but improbable a few decades ago, was to me alluring as an unmissable chance to gain a mature understanding of the complexities of our (built) environment. When making my move, I was also convinced that I could positively engage with a foreign habitat, contributing to the increasingly multicultural reality of a city like London, and bringing with me the set of diverse knowledge and benevolence which I had gained in an Italian high school. Soon enough, I found myself reassessing my optimistic thinking. When looking for a place to live, I decided to move with two friends in a former council-owned estate (public housing in British terms) in Church street, a decades-old marketplace squeezed between the higher end quarters of Marylebone and Maida Vale. Around the market, an established Arab community had lived in council blocks since the 60’s and 70’s. What was offered to us by CityWest Homes (a private real estate company providing services for the Westminster council) was a place in a fairly central position, close to our academic premises, but with a rental price still acceptable in London standards. As we moved in, the former tenants of the flat were packing up their last boxes. They revealed to us that, following semi-privatization, they couldn’t afford the rent. As I later found out, other long lasting tenants were forced to move out in favour of new occupants who, like us, were in need of short rental contracts. The block was in fact set for demolition, in favour of a new development providing a high percentage of private housing (together with the typical “affordable” counterpart). As I assessed my ignorance, and realised what kind of system I was feeding into, I began to think differently of my positive impact as an international student.
Church Street Market, London. Image from https://www.thisispaddington.com
Now, my testimony is not intended as a lecture on how to sensibly choose where to live (the forces of real estate are often too boundless to be individually fought against). Instead, it is a pretext to reveal a case of ignorance shared by many international students: the conviction that we always contribute to diversifying, and somehow enriching, the environment in which we step in. The reality is that other diversities are to be taken into account, to which our unique cultural background alone cannot compensate. While income is an obvious instance, this is also the case of how diverse is the set of actions (and interactions) that we are willing to bring to the city. This is especially significant when coexisting with people that have taken the responsibility to settle in a place around daily rituals. In truth, the fact that many international students tend to live “efficiently” (consuming what is immediate to us because we are both too busy and too lazy) would often contribute to making our environment more conformed, homogeneous and dull. Being a “busy-but-lazy” student myself, I recently started reflecting on what kind of urban rituals I’m able to contribute to. Can I actively diversify the environment around me by bringing new original routines? Can I ever escape my cappuccino lifestyle, by going beyond what is directly “offered” to me as an international student? Back in the UK, for example, my tendency to always take a walk after lunch, which comes from the Italian tradition of the passeggiata digestiva (digestive stroll), met my
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newly-found excitement for the British high street, which is not necessarily perceived as a place where to walk end-to-end with no intent to shop. The routine of the passeggiata eventually made me a participant of a culture of on-street shopping that is slowly disappearing in favour of e-commerce (a way of shopping closely affiliated to “efficient” and “affluent” lifestyles). That said, does the same debate on diversification apply also to how a foreign student relates to his academic environment, especially in the context of architectural education? To this day, my sentiments on this topic remain in a state of ambivalence. While we undoubtedly bring depth in the general academic discourse on architecture, sometimes I can’t help to think that the internationalization of a faculty can also lead to certain degrees of conventionality. Too often I found myself working in groups on a Dutch scale, and somehow slowing down things, preventing ideas from reaching their latent profundity (not necessarily due to a lack of knowledge, but of experience). I realised that conversations on the needs of local and national realities are somehow oversimplified to accommodate common practices and languages to which everyone can contribute.
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This realisation made me increasingly pessimistic. But is such inexpertness just a small price to pay when compared to the set of different knowledge that are brought to the faculty by foreign students? That is still my opinion, which might stem from the fact that, after all these years, I remain a fierce internationalist. The difference is that I don't take the contribution of internationals for granted anymore, including myself. My position derives, instead, from a belief that both international institutions and students hold particular responsibilities, and that we are still a long way to a conception of global education which takes into account how we can learn not simply by finding common grounds, but also from understanding our differences.
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'Analog Screenshot', a scene we've all become familiar with, captured not digitally, but with pencil and paper. A tribute to the online learning of the past year, where my mixed feelings about this novel form of teaching are reflected in the stoic faces of my classmates. Made by Jonas Althuis.
Bnieuws x INDESEM
THE INDESEM ARCHIVE Words Inez Margaux Spaargaren
Be inspired by a selection of INDESEM’s early editions! We went for the old editions, because we thought they really deserve some light and attention. Get yourself inspired by these themes, most of them are still accurate and relevant!
INDESEM ’85 was organized by Herman Hertzberger. The right size is what they spoke about. How to design something the right way, and how to interpret it. This quote is definitely still accurate.
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”See if you can translate all that (and lots more, if you like trough preferably not less!) into what, with more time than we can offer you, would become a GOOD BUILDING (architecture) – meaning simply: a nice place which HASN’T GOT WHAT IT NEEDN’T HAVE (BUT DOES HAVE WHAT IT NEEDS) AND ALSO BELONGS TO WHERE ITS IT PUT*” INDESEM ’85 – Aldo van Eyck, Dutch architect In 1991, INDESEM imagined that a modern theatre, luxurious, comfortable, a great number of technical facilities was the ultimate building to explore. Because in an auditorium many different arrangements of the audience can be created. They researched theather space, a framework not only by aims at the possibility to categorize but also as an aid regarding performance-analysis concerning structure and use of theatrical space. A history of theatre and architecture was their main theme. “To reach the theatre/temple complex, one must climb to the mountain’s summit, through the town in front of the temple gates. The experience of this difficult climb heightens the feeling that one is approaching an unusual place, and enhances one’s sense of pleasure upon arrival.” INDESEM ’91 - Tadao Ando, Founder of Tadao Ando Architects & Associates In 1996 INDESEM ‘explored the Darklands’ a suggestive poetical term that cannot be found in dictionaries and or encyclopedias, but that they nevertheless explored. This exploration had positive and negative sides. The negative side was that architects designed projects without visiting the site, which they thought was a cardinal mistake. The positive side was that as nobody could visit the site information was the same for all.
As one of the results of the book we had near bankruptcy, but also as one of the results of the rethinking we now have a new office, with a reception and people, workers, in it and also, by coincidence or not, a lot of new work… INDESEM ’96 – Rem Koolhaas, Founder of Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) It makes me nervous to follow Ben and especially as I’m a stand in for Zaha. I feel terribly old fashioned. My work is rather conventional. I’m rather interested in stability, old types of space and conventional types of construction. INDESEM 96’ – David Chipperfield, Founder of David Chipperfield Architects In 2000 INDESEM explored the theme ‘A critical judgement’, making the profession more critical with regard to relevant evaluation criteria. They used comparative analysis as the critical tool, the teams developed insight and understanding based on analysis as opposed to consensus. The problem to discuss or even solve was: ‘One problem is that nowadays buildings exist primarily as images. The photographers take the pictures and the architects determine which ones are to be circulated and in this way we become surrounded with brilliant images of brilliant ideas. But isn’t this a fantasy world?’ Question from the audience: Should we as students base ourselves on the architecture that still exists? I think the objective is to look at buildings, because they do contain an enormous range of values, from human, very small-scale values up to very large political values. So to look at what is constructed and what you can experience, is very valuable. INDESEM ’00 – Tony Fretton, Founder of Tony Fretton Architects A political act, the theme of INDESEM in 2005. The tradition of INDESEM is that it addresses themes that are otherwise under-exposed in architectural discourse. But they addressed something different, something recent at that time. Since the rise of Pim Fortyun ( a right-wing, populist politician) and, more recently in 2005 the murder of Theo van Gogh ( a controversial filmmaker), more and more voices claimed ‘integration’ and the ‘multicultural society’ had failed at that time. “The more common role is the architect as hero. The contemporary concept of the architect as hero largely results from the architectural, celebrity, ranking system operated within the international design press. In this elite hierarchy we see continuous professional and press glorification of media savvy architects such as Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, etc.” INDESEM ’05 – Esther Charlesworth, Director of Architects without Frontiers
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“The best political tendency is wrong if it does not demonstrate the attitude with witch is to be followed. This attitude the architect can only demonstrate in his particular activity: producing architecture. A political tendency is the necessary, never sufficient condition of the organizing function of a work.” INDESEM ’05 – Miguel Robles-Duran, Associate Professor of Urbanism at the Parsons School for Design
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The INDESEM.21 publication will be written soon, so prepare for some new inspirational quotes and some brain cracking conclusions of this year’s theme ‘DATASCAPE’.
BK Report
FOLLOW UP Words Robert van Overveld
Following a previous article called “Your teacher and you”, which was about the student-teacher relation, I got a mail from Sake Zijlstra, a teacher at our faculty. Sake and I reflected on the student’s and the teacher’s perspective of situations where the communication during a course fails, and the relation is deprived. Our conversation led to a few thoughts that I quickly wanted to share with you today.
First of all, the relationships you have with those who teach you - may that be your parents, your neighbour, or in this case, a schoolteacher – is an age-old concept that is always subject to change. Perhaps mainly because situations are always different. Therefore, if you find yourself in a situation that does not work for you, dare to talk about it. Accepting things the way they are, doesn’t bring any change for sure. I regret not acting in the situation that brought me to writing my previous article. At the time, I didn’t want to risk worsening the situation and putting my course and grade at stake by talking with the teacher. And although I still understand my reasoning, in retrospect, I think acting would have improved the understanding of the situation, the flaws in communication. The latter also applies to teachers. Actively reflecting on the communication with students help to avoid situations like previously described. A passive attitude and thoughts like “It’s their course, they need to do it” might be justifiable, but sometimes a little bit of attention is all someone needs. Creating a fruitful and balanced environment is complicated, but at the same time the reason why we succeed or fail to learn. As with any relationship, it takes time and effort to keep it healthy. So, let’s stay vulnerable, let’s stay open for change and let’s stay focused on improving.
Whether you're a student or a teacher, please feel free to share the lessons you've learned along the way.
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From the editors
STAY Words Federico Ruiz
The warm softness of my bed amplifies the rawness of the scene. A young man kicks a policeman on his motorbike. The agent, clumsy, reaches for his gun. What follows is a mechanical sequence of movements: aim, fire, miss, get off the motorbike, aim again, pull the trigger twice. His attacker, his enemy, is now dead. Marcelo Agredo, still a teenager, is dead. “This is the country I am going back to,” I think.
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Stay!
Stay.
The voice notes play as I see an egg turning white in the pan. “Things are turning dark and everything seems to indicate that, and I tell you this so you really think about it, they are setting up a state of exception, or a state of siege,” says the voice of a good friend who lives in Bogotá. He is not the kind of person who gets scared easily, so I understand his words as a veiled warning, a pessimistic attempt to discourage me from returning to the city. Doubts grow, and with them a deep feeling of unrest.
I sit in one of the faculty’s rooms. When I turn on my laptop, I see that my mother has sent me a link to the transcript of a speech by Gabriel García Márquez. It begins with a quote from Miguel de Cervantes’ “Don Quixote”:
Stay… The deep voice of a radio host is the usual soundtrack of my showers. The main theme of conversation has been the same for a whole month now: The national strike, initially sparked by a draft of a new tax law, which has now become an unstoppable force fuelled by the indignation of many Colombians. On the other side, the government, used to assimilate opposition as terrorism, keeps suppressing their pacific protests through brutal, military-styled actions. In this radio station, they prefer to focus on the violence than on the legitimate requests of protestors. I swear each time they do that, while my skin boils under hot water.
“all these tempests that fall upon us are signs that fair weather is coming shortly, and that things will go well with us, for it is impossible for good or evil to last forever; and hence it follows that the evil having lasted long, the good must be now nigh at hand.” This apparently flawed logic is what allows me, and many of my compatriots, to remain deeply optimistic. Back home, every disgrace adds to the promise of a heyday that we still have to see. Stay? It is lunch time and I am in the kitchen, watching an interview of Pepe Mujica, former president of Uruguay. There’s a moment when the interviewer asks him how he sees Europe. “Europe has the suffering of having been¸ and not being anymore. Having been the epicentre of civilisation and having
the tragedy of perceiving that this is slipping away. […] For now, I see it quite bogged down.” I nod as tasteless chicken enters my stomach. Leave? I am back in the faculty. A classmate from Kenya sits in front of me. I ask him if he wants to stay or go back, and he tells me that he plans to return. The conversation flows as a tropical conspiracy: “I feel that here you must be a part of a tradition that will tell you what to do and how to do it.”
I am sitting in the dining room. The article I’m reading is telling the story of a group of Misak people, indigenous from the south of Colombia, who have been throwing down statues of Spanish conquerors in different cities of the country. The last one was in Bogotá’s centre. Although the debate could focus on the legitimacy of their action, what intrigues me, what makes me feel hopeful, is the prospect of the discussion about the new monument that will replace it. In Latin America, questions are perpetually unanswered, and searches matter more than solutions. For definitive solutions, there is Europe.
“Yeah. You have to pay a price if you stay here. You have to be a cog in a wheel.” “Also, I think Europe has stopped producing new ideas.” “Oh yes, a long time ago. They haven’t done it since the Industrial revolution.” “And there is something else about staying. You can be very comfortable here. And the fear of losing your comfort is crippling… then you will be too afraid to go back.”
Leave! I lie in my bed, again. I reflect on the whole stay-or-go-back conundrum. I know my desire to return is fuelled by an optimistic idealisation of my hometown and an inversely proportional pessimistic view of the foreign land. Yes, there might be a middle way, but I am a radical. Renouncing to Colombia is renouncing myself. Disliking the Netherlands was always an exercise of dignity and, in truth, there is nothing for me here. Come on, don’t be so bitter. There must be something nice you can say about these years.
Leave… Thanks, anyway. Gabriele, an Italian-Dutch colleague, is usually amongst the last students to leave the Urbanism studio. While walking away from the faculty, we discuss our plans after graduation. We agree on how the Netherlands might be the right place to provide economic prosperity, but not a sense of purpose. “A Latin person can only live in the Netherlands for a limited time,” he says. Different mundane reasons create this sense of alienation: the food, the landscape you see from the train’s window, a particular notion of elegance… Leave.
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I AM THE DATASCAPE
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I am a brick. I live on the streets. I am just a couple of centimeters thick, monolithic. No wires in me, no screen, no wifi. I seem to be a fully analog object. Nonetheless, somewhere out there, in a world i cannot see, exists a copy of me. A much more interesting version of myself you could argue: attached to it, an endless amount of information, thousands of photos showing how I look in winter, in summer, in the morning, in the evening. Information obout the people I have carried on my back, tourists and locals, swapfiets blue and swapfiets red. Just because I happen to have been layed onto a bridge that people like to take pictures on, my digital twin is a huge collection of data about me, a small analog brick in Amsterdam. I am a printer. I do my work standing still. I keep track of the amounts of ink, the sheets of paper. Often, I trouble people. When I do, I let the network know that I’d been bad, so all my other printer friends can avoid making the same mistake. I remember your files and make sure you pay the right amount. Imagine an important week, and I forget everything I know. Don’t know which file is whose, which color to mix where. I look like I do my work standing still, but I am only useful because I travel through the network around me. I am water. I am important to people. Without me, they can’t make coffee, they can’t wash. Without me, their dogs and plants die. Without me, everything dies. So they keep track of me, to make sure I am always there when they need me, always gone when I am scary. When I rain, they measure and predict what I’ll do, they get worried when I stay too long. There are apps and TV programs just for figure out how I am. When I am the sea, I am the happy place. My properties are monitored to make sure I am safe to swim in. If I rise, alarm systems trigger gates that close and make people move. I am one, real and physical - still, each of my digital copies shows another side of me, another view on what water is, what water means. I am the DATASCAPE. The datascape is the layer underneath everything physical. If you rip out a piece of the real world, the datascape shows. We rarely take a moment to ponder on both the importance as well as the impact of our datascape: how we have come to rely on it, what the physical reality of the masses of information is, what their climate impact is. Should we be excited or scared? Optimistic about the possibilities or pessimistic about its impact? Next time you have to wait for the bus, look around you and try to visualize all the hidden datastreams around you - I am sure you’ll be impressed with how many you find.
"Datascape" was the theme of INDESEM.21. Want to know more about how the board chose this theme? Read INDESEM.21 chairman Hidde's reflection on page 26.
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From the editors
A SHORT STORY OF BNIEUWS Words and images Oliwia Jackowska
One day, Ale, Inez, Robert, Jonas, Federico and Oliwia took a walk by the sea. They noticed a strange flying vehicle approaching them. It was an extraterrestial body, which threw them all in a situation out of this world.
They needed to find a way to get out of this strange place. By making, organising, sourcing, sharing and collecting ideas, they all tried to find a solution in their own different ways. This is the story of Bnieuws. This is our story.
From the editors
LIKE IT'S NORMAL Words Inez Margaux Spaargaren
A 25 day diary of acceptance of how to live normal in this rapidly changing life. From being all locked-up to a social life with open terrasses. Read through my experience and decide yourself what normal is.
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02/05/2021 Today my roommate reminded me of an article I wrote in Bnieuws issue CHANGE in December 2020. She told me that not that much had changed since I wrote that article. The picture that I portrayed is indeed still prevalent in our household. "Now that my days are longer, I find myself more often messing around in my room until late at night… Most of my housemates study at home every day, believing that they will be able to go to the university library again." My days are still long and slow as ever, but I notice that outside there is a rapid change going on. The elderly are vaccinated, the numbers and corona patients are falling and the lockdown is almost to its end. I wonder when and if we will feel any awkwardness in our way of living, because of this change. Will we go back to normal? That's where I put my question marks. Normal is a problematic word; because when is something normal? 03/05/2021 Definition: normal Pronunciation: [nɔrˈmal] as most common, as most people do Examples: "an espresso, a decaf, and a normal coffee" 04/05/2021 Okay, so normal is what happens most often. At the moment, a hug, a kiss or a study in a coffee shop is
not normal. Because of the lockdown, this hardly ever happens anymore, and we all know it. Honestly, I do miss those three wet kisses and the happiness of finding that free spot on a crowded terrace or that pat on the back from my colleague I only know from the screen. But this year, many say, everything will be different, or rather: back to normal. Right? 12/05/2021 Today I visited Amsterdam. When walking through the capital, it does Amsterdam well, there was an unexpected peaceful atmosphere. Without effort, I found a green patch of grass in the beautiful Vondelpark. My thoughts wandered to the times when there wasn't a single green spot to be seen. On summer days, the green grass is normally already packed with people at 8 a.m. The 'real' Amsterdammer probably didn't feel at home in those days. There were mainly tourists who, without real love for the park, settle down and leave all the garbage behind. I should do it more often, but differently, leave behind what makes our lives normal— like flying, for example, thinking about whether it is necessary— but instead going on vacation in my own country, rediscovering my own tiny country with friend and family. I would almost dare to say that today's children, like me, have seen more of the world around them than where they live. According to the media, the lockdown was all about living more consciously. Has it sunk in after one year of
lockdown? Will people start to think more about their new normal life or live life again to the fullest? What am I going to do is my big question? 19/05/2021 Today is the day, had a drink on a terrace. Didn't even feel that crazy. There was no discomfort at all. As if it is indeed all normal after all. After a few drinks, it seems as if everything happens a bit further away, with no discomfort. At first, you still hold back a bit, distance, not provocative with many people at a table. Soon, as a student, it has become a standard phrase: "We are a household." We are one big household, I think. Often students are seen as the same. We don't go by the rules and make sure everyone gets corona. Not surprisingly I think, we are the most social group. We study, recreate, and expand our social contacts, beneficial for our future, no? After this drink. I have to say, I would love to live to the fullest, but I know that it’s not acceptable anymore. If I read the newspaper, the front page of Het Parool says; ‘More willingness to adopt environmentally conscious behaviour after corona crisis’. I am not the only one! 26/05/2021 “I hold on shifting, cleaning up, and tinkering with the interior. I move plants, furniture, and other objects from one corner of my bedroom to the other.” What about me? A positive aspect, I still stick to my daily activities. Those haven't changed much. Except that I find myself less in my room, more outside in other
locations. Like the faculty, which is open again, where I can be every day. I'm an exception to the rule, but it's a relief to be there one day a week for many. “After sun down, we all drink our tea, in silence or pleasantly chatting, as if we have been away all day.” However, my roommates still work from home, and we still sit together drinking tea and discussing the day. Fortunately, in the meantime, this can be done cosily on a terrace in the sun, with a beer. I feel that I’m strongly longing for the old days of fun and joy with my roommates. 27/05/2021 The first day of summer I would say: that should be enjoyed. It's funny that everything is suddenly so much better now that there is sunshine. The sun came late this year. Last year it was already lovely T-shirt weather at the end of March. Thank goodness, because the sun has thus in its way eased the lockdown. Will the rain of this year have been a warning? It seems to be going well. 31/05/2021 The last 25 days changed rapidly, even more than I could imagine. From asking myself, what is normal to sitting in the sun with a beer. My perception of normal switched. First is was pessimistic, but now… I’m living my life to the fullest, yes! Living the life we can regulate at the moment and obviously enjoying it more than ever. I am not asking what is normal anymore, NOW is normal.
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Bnieuws x INDESEM
INTERVIEW JAN DIERCKX: 10 MINUTES WITH AN ARCHITECT Words Louisa Hollander
On a sunny Tuesday afternoon, Valentin and I sat behind our computer in the INDESEM office to connect with Jan Dierckx, a design technologist specializing in new materials and the application of robotics in architecture. We had a conversation with him to learn more about what technology and data can mean for the future of our field.
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What’s your name? Jan Dierckx
Inspirational architect? Norman Foster.
Describe yourself as an architect in one word. Innovative.
Must have architecture tools everyone should have? 3D mouse.
Where did you study? A bit everywhere. So I started in Gent Belgium, then in Aachen in Germany then at UCL in the United Kingdom.
Best piece of advice you’ve received? Use the right tool for the right purpose.
What was your favorite subject? Computer aided design. What was your first job? I was in the Specialist Modelling Group at Foster + Partners. How do you start your day? A coffee and some Reddit. What’s your favourite time of the day? Definitely the evening, I am a night owl.
A book that everyone should read? Shoedog, it’s about the founder of Nike and how he set up the company from zero. How do you define a successful building? A building which takes little from the environment, but gives back a lot to society. Favorite color? Red. Fineliner, pencil or computer? Digital pencil.
Dream country to visit? New Zealand.
Most gratifying thing about being an architect? Looking at a completed building and being able to say you were part of designing and building that.
Classic or contemporary? Contemporary, but learning from the classics.
What color clothing do you wear the most? I rarely wear black.
Is architecture for everyone? I don’t think it is, but I think it can inspire everyone. What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the term “Big Data”? When I first heard Big Data, I thought it meant a lot of data. How would you, as an architect, define Big Data? I think there are two aspects to Big Data. One is BIM, Building Information Management, which means you add data to all the parts of the building. The other one is the Analysis and Simulation Data, that you can have before you build a building, while you’re designing it, but also afterwards when the building is built. All the information you can get back from it. How do you think Big Data will impact the future of architecture? I think Big Data will help us understand better how well a building works. Data will show us if our design decisions were the right or wrong ones. But it will also help buildings adapt themselves better to its users, because it will understand how hot it is in a building, how much sun there is. Everyone is different and data will help us understand how we can adjust a building dynamically to its users needs. Have you applied data before in one of your designs? Yes, it was a big residential tower and all the balconies were oval shapes. When the architect had drawn this, all the radii of the balconies were different, which would be very expensive. I developed this tool which looked at all these radii and reduced them to a smaller number, turning them into families. This is called Post-Rationalisation and this greatly reduced the building cost without adjusting the design too much. How do you think data and technology could aid the design process? I have always been very interested in this topic. It was the subject of my Master’s Thesis, which was
almost ten years ago, believe it or not. I wrote a tool in Revit, which would calculate the U-values, the heat transmission value, automatically when drawing walls of a building. It would tell you what the U-value was, while you were drawing. It would also colour the walls, whether it was an acceptable or unacceptable value. The premise of the thesis was; if an architect utilizes this tool, will it help the architect design a better building. The conclusion was that it is very helpful for the architect to know what the performance of the buildings is, while designing it. Do you think data will make future designs homogenous? I think it will do the opposite. If you think about 3D printing; it gives people the opportunity to make every single design unique. With Big Data it will be the same situation. Big Data and Artificial Intelligence won’t ever replace an architect. It will make each building truly individual and each element of the building truly ideal for its purpose. Every location is different and every client is different, enabling a customized building for its exact use. How do you think data will impact our definition of creativity? Big Data will help us be creative in a more elevated way. We will never be able to replace creativity with Big Data. Artificial Intelligence can suggest designs, but the emphatic feeling that people have when they are in or outside a building is something that will always stay human. Will the architect need to adjust its set of skills? Yes, it is already happening now. Architects have no choice but to enter the digital world. Architects should embrace digital technologies, rather than shying away from it to create better and more informed designs. Will the architect need to become a data scientist? No, it is important that everyone works together in a team, where there are architects that focus on architecture and design, BIM managers that focus
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on the data side and design technologists that work on the more innovative aspects of the building. Buildings produce data about its users, the indoor climate or its energy consumption. Should architects own this data? This data should be owned by everyone. It should be anonymous, but architects and clients should work together in the future to generate an optimal experience for the buildings’ users. It could even become an extra business model for an architect by providing a service where the architect manages the data generated by a completed building to generate an optimal experience. So, anonymous data should be owned by everyone and individual data of each building should be shared between the client and the architect.
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Do you think people should be scared of the influence or application of Big Data? It is up to the people to look at the data with a critical eye and make their own decisions. A computer should never make decisions for us. A computer should help us make more informed decisions. With the right approach and mindset, Big Data is something that helps and not something to be scared of. How would you describe your job at the moment? I am a design technologist. That basically means that I am an architect, an engineer and a data scientist in one. I have always been intrigued by how to make things beautiful, but also how to make things work and perform. In my job I do two things: first of all I sit at the table, where architects, engineers, clients and construction companies sit. I take very specific elements of a building that are very complicated or that architects want to design in a specific way, but are not very buildable. The advantage of me sitting at the table is that I speak the languages of the architect, engineer and manufacturing company. So I primarily guard the design, but also make it manufacturable. The second part is more research related. So by looking at parametric tools and custom design tools, which can help architects build
and design in the best possible way, while simultaneously looking at new materials and constructions techniques. For example, by applying robotics to aid the design and construction process. As a design technologist, what digital tools do you use? 90% of the work I do is in Rhino and Grasshopper. I am an advanced Grasshopper user, applying the visual and textual coding side and writing my own Grasshopper tools. For example, I wrote a Grasshopper tool for a robotic arm or a tool for clustering buildings in certain groups looking at solar analysis. Recently, I have gotten more into Revit and Dynamo. But I think it is very important to use the right tool for the right purpose. For the design stages that I am more involved in, Rhino and Grasshopper are more efficient. I also spend a lot of time working on the integration of different softwares and how they work together. What are the positive and the negative sides of BIM? BIM is a very powerful tool to deliver a building. Everything designed is already in this digital twin; the 3D model. However, it is a dangerous tool to design a building, especially in the concept stage. BIM requires a lot of work to add all this data and attributes to each building element. I still believe that pen and paper are the best tools for concept design, because it is so fast. Can you name an example where digital design tools maximized the design? During my time at Foster + Partners, I was involved in the Bloomberg Headquarters. There is this beautiful entrance, called the Vortex. In the design stage, it consisted of a lot of panels. The client was worried that the timber perforated panels would cause colour variations, emphasized by the dramatic lighting of the space. So we used digitals tools to randomly generate patterns and subdivide the panels in twenty different colour variations. Then we randomly distributed those colour variations onto these internal facades to understand what kind of design options we have and what this would look
like. The digital tools helped us understand what the impact of the design decisions would be. How have these tools been applied at, for example, The Antwerp Havenhuis designed by Zaha Hadid Architects? There was a Belgium company, called Bureau Bouwtechniek, who looked at optimizing the facade. The facade consisted of a lot of triangles. When the building was designed, they didn’t look at grouping these triangles. So Bureau Bouwtechnike researched how they could optimize the design and change it as little as possible, but reduce the number of unique triangles from a few hundred to tens. The fewer categories of unique triangles they had the more efficient and the more cost effective the building would be. This greatly reduced the building cost, but did not impact the design. You are also doing lots of research on robotics and innovative materials. Do you think the building of the future is still built by human hands? I think that in the future the building industry will be more like the car industry. There will be a lot of human/robot collaboration. It is, again, important to determine who is best to do what. Humans are not very strong and not very precise, but humans are great at adapting to the environment and assessing a problem and making an informed decision. Robots are very strong, they don’t get tired and make mistakes. But robots are actually very dumb, because they will only do what you tell them to do. So if a robot is attaching a door to a car, but if the car door is 5cm misaligned, the robot will just smash the door into the car. Of course there are ways to use computer vision to help robots understand what’s
happening, but I think it will always be a collaboration between humans and robots. Where the precise complex tasks are executed by humans and the laborious tasks that require a lot of strength will be executed by robots. It is also important to understand that humans and robots don’t need to look the same. The robots won’t be humanoid robots that are carrying bricks like we would carry bricks. A brick has its size, because it is easy to grasp with a human hand. Perhaps when buildings are built by robots bricks will be 5 times as big. What do you think the best option for students is when stepping in the professional world? When you are a student and you are thinking about what to do in the future, it is most important to look around and try to understand what you are really interested in and what it is that you are really passionate about. Then you use these skills to find a job that you love. I believe that if you do a job that you like, you will excel at it. Architecture is a brilliant field to do this in. I like to call it the Built Environment, not Architecture, because right now there is so much you can do in architecture. You can work in architecture when you’re interested in construction, in building detailing, in new materials, in advanced parametrics, in digital design, in computational design, in data. Architecture has a big advantage, because it is such a broad and collaborative field. This means you can combine your strengths with the strengths of others to create a better world.
Watch this interview and many other interesting videos on the INDESEM YouTube channel.
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THE DESIGN PROCESS THE DESIGN PROCESS
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Midterm Presentation
Hours worked
Time spent on pinterest
Excitement about becoming an architect
Personal hygiene
Confidence in personal design skills
Time spent on reading theory
Friends made
Caffeine consumed
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Final Presentation
"The Design Process", is our attempt at mapping various personal statistics throughout the design process. We're all familiar with those exciting moments of optimism and hopeless moments of pessimism. Made by Jonas Althuis and Alessandro Rognoni.
Bnieuws x INDESEM
A RECAP OF INDESEM.21 Words Hidde Dijkstra
Dear fellow architecture students, Last week, it felt unreal to be at the faculty with such an impressive group of students, tutors and architects. There were four days of online lectures and workshops and two days at the faculty for a competition. It has been far too long since we have had such an architectural event taking place.
INDESEM (International Design Seminar) is a foundation run by architecture students that organize a week-long seminar every two years. During INDESEM.19, most of us on this year's INDESEM board were still bachelor students motivated to watch all the big names of architecture speaking at the seminar and participating in the competition with international students worldwide. We were amazed by the possibilities INDESEM gives you, from talking in person with great architects to learning architectural tricks from fellow students all over the world. 26
Now, two years later, we are here again telling everyone to stay 1.5 meters apart and to wear facemasks wherever they go, having to organise half the event online. But apart from the turbulent year of organizing a seminar in these times, the experience and idea of INDESEM has changed. So let us explain what INDESEM is all about. What is INDESEM actually? Well, if you would ask us two years ago, and a lot of people would think of it this way, we would say; a seminar consisting of 80 international students learning from the best architects in the business about a relevant topic. An event where you broaden your views and skillset in architecture. After two years of working on INDESEM however, our view on this has changed. Architecture tends to be a very old fashioned world. And we are all probably studying at good universities, which we are fortunate for. But as the INDESEM.19 seminar discussed; we are all educated in the Echo Chamber of our university. Therefore, we are all a product of what our university thinks an architect should be. What Norman Foster said in his lecture at INDESEM.21 got us thinking: "The only constant is change." The architectural world is not entirely based on facts but also on what very talented people think something should look like. Therefore people could hate or love your design because everyone has their own opinion. So if this world is based on your own
opinion and not on clear facts, why do we always need to listen to our university about what we have to learn? Why can't we choose what we think is best for us? Why can't we use our fresh minds to research architecture in the way we want? Why can't we improve our education? Well, this is precisely what INDESEM strives for and what we try to achieve; we want to break the echo chamber of all universities and create a week of our international education. So this year again, we took matters into our own hands, and we created INDESEM.21: DATASCAPE. So why DATASCAPE? We started the year thinking of topics that we wanted to learn more about and thought students should be more involved. We came up with DATASCAPE because studying at a technical university; you are surrounded with the most advanced technological research, where the development of Big Data is the most bespoke one. Yet we didn't have the feeling that architecture followed the technical developments happening now in the world. Or at least that we weren't being educated about it. So we thought of dedicating this edition of INDESEM to researching what architecture now has to offer and using all the tremendous fresh minds of motivated young architects to explore Big Data possibilities for the built environment and create our education. By inviting exciting people, from whom we could learn something new. This year experienced architects like Norman Foster, and Winy Maas told us about their experiences and knowledge on this topic. But also, smaller companies like Studio RAP gave us an insight into their work. And participating in the workshops of Rhino (hosted by it's developer McNeel) and MVRDV NEXT showed us the possibilities that are now present. But we want to tell you something that we as the INDESEM team learned in the past year. And hopefully, you will also learn in the future. We talked to a lot of huge names in the architectural world. And at first, it's always a bit exciting to speak to them because of their reputation or inaccessibility. But in the end, architecture is again a world filled with opinions and facts only carry so far. So what we tried to achieve and let you notice is that these well-known architects are also just people with thoughts on how they think it's best. So even if they may be highly experienced and have achieved great success, they will never predict the future. There is a reason why all these companies want to be a part of INDESEM. And that is because they realize that we are a group of motivated young students with great fresh insights on how architecture should look and as we learn a lot from them, they also learn from us. So whether you are a famous architect or a starting architecture student at INDESEM, there isn't a difference.
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The INDESEM team sees it as a platform for architecture students to take matters into their own hands and strive for what they think is essential. At INDESEM, students and architects work together to see what the future has in store for us. Thank you, Hidde Dijkstra
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The INDESEM.21 board: Hidde Dijkstra Louisa Hollander, Elina Gaillard, Nadine Nossbaum, Inez Spaargaren, Valentin Zech, Willem Damen, Tijmen Smith. INDESEM.21 panelists, moderators and tutors: Norman Foster, Patrik Schumacher, Kim Herforth Nielsen, Ben van Berkel, Wessel van Beerendonk, Caro van de Venne, Lennaert van Capelleveen, Sanne van der Burgh, Winy Maas, Georg Vrachliotis, Martha Tsigkari, Verena Vogler, Kees Kaan, Jantien stöter, Victor Munoz Sanz, Dick van Gameren, Astrid Piber, Kay Oosterman, Chris van Duijn, Indira van t’Klooster and Machiel van Dorst.
Pen pal
OPTIMIST PESSIMIST Words and Images Oscar Nowak
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We’ve all noticed the impacts of the restrictions in our lives the past year. Less contact, less movement, less hope. Less really felt like less, rather than more. I’m sure I speak for many people when I say that I’ve felt isolated and claustrophobic. Day after day, studying and sleeping in the same little cramped room. And blah blah, everyone has had a hard time and feels just as bad, or even worse maybe... But, the long, dark and lonely winter we’ve just emerged from, also gave something back: the realization of what’s important. For me, I realized I missed drawing these figures. Something I probably
wouldn’t have noticed if life had been normal. And thus, I started season two of my series impossible prints. And that’s how I see the optimism and pessimism in this figure. The bridge is lonely, everlasting and too complicated. The pillars are also impossible and unstable. The appearance is colourless, dull and hopeless. Probably all subconsciously inspired by the past months. But my point is, is that this figure exists in the first place. And that the same past months have taught me I love making them. Luck at an accident, the Dutch would say.
Almost exactly a year ago, we published one of Oscar's illustration in our June 2020 edition Fiction. As he mentions, he's now working on a second season of 'impossible illustrations'. Follow him on Instagram at @fiftyfive.prints.
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Artefact
FLUORESCENT PINK TAPE Words INDESEM Team
‘Artefact’ is a recurring two-page spread, which features a beloved object presented by one of the BK City staff members. Every month, the author passes the ‘Artefact’ contributorship to the next. This month however, we asked the INDESEM team to share an artefact with us.
During INDESEM.21, one colour was not missed; by the end of the event this colour represented much more than just fluorescent pink tape. Each participant received a roll of tape in their INDESEM starter kit. Not all participants lived in the Netherlands, so of course, these were then sent to them. Almost all packages arrived on time... Initially, the rolls of tape were intended for the photo contest. This contest consisted of sticking tape in a specific artistic way to create a DATASCAPE. All over the world, this was carried out. In retrospect, there were crazy incidents with the police or bystanders. Fortunately, it was greatly appreciated and photographed by many. As INDESEM board, we all have good memories of this tape, read them below: Hidde: "Tape is a metaphor for life. You think it never ends, and then it does." Inez: "Subtle yet striking, this tape does well for everything. Lines of tape in the form of an art object, or just sticky tape." Louisa: "This tape is a means to add structure, direction and colour to your life." Willem: "The sticky waste is a serious problem. Because it sticks to humans, everything is neon pink, where is a bin?, a random bike, and who's making the photo?" Tijmen: "Our life is all about colourful offline connections, just like the life of this tape." Elina: "Tape to brighten up the situation, while trying to keep everything falling apart, together." Valentin: "A streetsign, a public space, a laptop, a shoe. If you stick a little piece of the tape onto some objects, they suddenly belong together. It's a piece of tape." Nadine: "In the end; my macbook, charger, airpods, phone became part of the pink world."
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So, why an extended editorial? This is a continuation of the editorial on page 1.
If you’re still with us, thank you for reading this edition. The 32nd page that you've now reached is always a tricky one; a lonely single page stuck between the artefact and the preview of the next edition. A difficult spot to fill. Because of this, we thought it may be interesting to extend the editorial, becoming both opening and closing; prologue and epilogue, perhaps allowing us to reflect more directly and deeply on this edition's theme and its relevance to the current moment. To say that it's been an unusual time would be an understatement, but there are different ways you can look at these past 15+ months that have become dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The end of a long and strange academic year is in sight, but we're not there yet. Better weather is coming our way, but right now it's raining. We have so many experiences to reflect on and learn new things from, but it's been unpleasant from start to finish.
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Which way of thinking do you identify with? Despite, or perhaps because of, the duality of 'optimism and pessimism', we've found that it isn't an easy topic to get a grip on. Initial conclusions only beg more questions, as is often the case. Is it better to be one or the other, and does being either have actual implications for our daily lives? Is being optimistic or pessimistic implicit in our nature as human beings? Does it come from our upbringing and/or from our cultural background? And of course, how does this theme relate to our thought process as designers? Just thinking out loud, questions such as "will this concave corner of my building be a cool deviation from the larger urban structure or will drunks use it as a public toilet?" come to mind. We’re continuously making assumptions about how our designs will be inhabited or used, and whether you assume the best or assume the worst can make a significant difference in our design choices, be that on the humble scale of the water closet or that of the urban grid. And then, there’s the question of whether separating such concepts into two absolute and clearly defined camps is even useful. How many truly optimistic or honestly pessimistic people do you actually know? Maybe we are all neither strictly optimistic nor strictly pessimistic; perhaps we fluctuate, moving back and forth, across the spectrum. Instead of feeding your thoughts with mine, I'll leave you to ponder these questions for yourself; you have a few months to do so before you hear from us again. I think we can finally say with some (cautious) certainty that we have positive things to look forward to. With that, I wish you a restful summer. Written by Jonas Althuis on behalf of the Bnieuws editorial team.
BECOME A PEN PAL! We are always searching for new voices to join and contribute to Bnieuws. Whether your talents are in writing, drawing, photography, graphic design, or you’re filled with a range of skills, we would love to hear from you if you have any ideas for the faculty periodical. If you would like to be on our contributors list, simply send an email with your ideas to: bnieuws-BK@tudelft.nl
NEXT ISSUE: HUMOR Let’s be honest. Everyone’s communicative skills are a bit rusty after the pandemic. Nothing to worry about, it is really just a question of practice! Because of this, in the next issue the Bnieuws team wishes to deal with what we think is the real essence of all social interactions. The glue which unites us all both in our differences and similarities. That shield which protects us from the ferocity of the outside world. (And no, it’s not love.) Bnieuws 55/01 due October 2021.
Bnieuws INDEPENDENT PERIODICAL OF THE FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT TU DELFT VOLUME 54 ISSUE 06
