THE AFFAIR
Pr e f ace by Kenne t h Framp ton
BERLAGE
The Berlage Affair is a multi-layered book organized in seven chapters clustering diverse articles according to topics. Yet what all these essays, studies, reviews, and interviews share is their intellectual origin at the Berlage Institute, where Vedran Mimica worked for 22 years. Herman Hertzberger, Wiel Arets, Alejandro Zaera-Polo, Kenneth Frampton, Rem Koolhaas, and Elia Zenghelis, with whom Mimica worked closely for many years, as well as many leading architects and students from all over the world, developed a sort of Berlage institutional platform for the construction and development of an array of contemporary architectural pursuits. Author relied on this specific conceptual intelligence in his professional engagement as educator, writer, curator, and initiator of many architectural workshops, seminars, and events. Much of The Berlage Affair is dedicated to the research of contemporary city while the Berlage initiatives constitute a cognitive process that acknowledged that by the turn of the 21st century the exposure to global urbanization was an essential part of architectural education and research. Mimica’s architecture writings are well positioned to offer a synthetic overview in a debate about the contemporary city taking into account economy, ecology, sociology, art, civil engineering, history, literature, politics, religion and ideology.
TH E B E R L AG E AFFAI R
Epilo g by W ie l Ar e t s
MIMICA
VE D R AN M I M I CA