Bnieuws 53/07 - Fiction (2019/20)

B 53/07

Colofon WELCOME Bnieuws Volume 53 Issue 07 June 2020

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In Conversation With David T. van Zanten

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Shifting Utopias

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Never Been Built

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The Book and The Building

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Please Explain

Contributors Amy Young Oscar Nowak Lotte Dijkstra Stef Dingen

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Where's Ondo?

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Book Review: Being Ecological

Editorial Advisors Javier Arpa Fernandez Lotte Dijkstra

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Explore Lab Fictions

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Artefact: Lotte Dijkstra

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Abandoned Buildings

Contact Room BG.Midden.140 Julianalaan 134 2628 BL Delft bnieuws-bk@tudelft.nl Editorial Team Aimee Baars Christopher Clarkson Federico Ruiz Inez Margaux Spaargaren Robert van Overveld

Cover Editorial team Printed by Druk. Tan Heck

Š All rights reserved.

Although all content is treated with great care, errors may occur.

Editorial

FICTION Fiction, in line with legends and myths, belongs to an intriguing family of non-truths. Fiction has been in our lives from the day we were born, be it the bed time stories we are told as children, or the slightly twisted histories one might have learned about their own country at school; conveniently leaving out certain information. Despite its inherent untrue nature, fiction has the power to provide respite from the unpleasantries of reality; to support uncanny commentary about the reality of our world; to touch us deeply on an emotional level about our fears, prejudices, and biggest hopes and dreams.

As designers, it is first and foremost our duty to dare to engage in the fictitious realm and try to introduce it into reality, bringing those fears and dreams to the people, in the hope they find solace within the spaces we imagine. Within this edition we hope to provide an insight into the importance of fiction in our lives, not only as people operating within the built environment, but also as human beings. With this in mind, the theme of fiction is broadly explored in three ways: fiction as ideology; fiction as a tool to illuminate the unknown; and fiction as a mirror for reality.

What are architectural ideologies and utopias and why do we have them? Editor Frederico Ruiz strives to gain insight into these questions through conducting a series of interviews with Herman Hertzberger and Francine Houben, as well as more recent Bouwkunde graduates such as Bas Horsting on page 08. Sometimes, however, it would appear that the distance between the envisioned utopia and the hard reality of the situation is too great to make ends meet. Editor Aimee Baars explores those dreams which remained exactly that, never quite managing to touch their feet to the flat Dutch ground. These ‘never been built’ projects are featured on page 12. In our first of many to come collaborations with the The Berlage, guest writer Stef Dingen interviews David T. van Zanten about the purpose of competitions, with focus on the case of Walter Burley Griffin’s Canberra plan; an attempt to reinvent architecture on page 06.

Editor Inez Spaargaren hypothesises about the happenings of our empty faculty building and explores the places of the unoccupied on page 28 asking, "What happens when we aren’t there to witness something?" Often, there appears to be a distinction between the fictitious and the real, but sometimes it is through a tangible experience that one gains the most creative stamina as you’ll read in Christopher Clarkson’s interview with Koen Mulder and Louis Lousberg on page 16. Guest writer Amy Young once again contributes with a book review on page 26 explaining that perhaps things aren’t as complex as we make them to be; if we as architects simply accept our position as people within an ecological system we can work with it instead of against it.

We hope with this edition to have invited you to reconsider the importance of fiction in your life, and perhaps inspired you to continue dreaming.

#Bnieuwd

To do / URBAN AND ROOFTOP AGRICULTURE SYMPOSIUM COVID19 demonstrates the need for strong local economies and resilient solutions. Urban agriculture is a productive form of green infrastructure that supports local economies, creates jobs, improves access to healthy fresh food, and provides ecosystem services. GRHC brings together urban and rooftop agriculture experts to share the benefits and challenges of urban agriculture projects at its Urban Agriculture Symposium.

23.07.20, 13:00 – 16:30 location: online

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To do / YALE UNIVERSITY LIVE STREAM Take the chance to broaden your horizons now that there is much more available online! Yale University just made its most popular class ever possible online for free. Open Yale Courses provides free and open access to a selection of introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University. The project aims to expand access to educational materials for all who wish to learn.

01.06.20, all summer location: https://www.coursera.org/courses?index=prod_ all_products_term_optimization&partners=Yale+University

To do / HOEK VAN HOLLAND Rotterdam is changing. New construction projects spring up everywhere, and Rotterdam's nasty edges are cleaned up. Change is also noticeable in Rotterdam's most remote district, Hoek van Holland. In September 2019, a Rotterdam metro line to what the municipality refers to as Rotterdam Beach was opened. The photographer Peter de Krom (1981) grew up in 'the Hoek' and returned to his village between 2010 and 2015 to shoot several free photographic series.

01.02.20 - 30.08.2020 location: Kunsthal Rotterdam

#Bnieuwd

To do / MZN 2020 Stylos is throwing a Livestream on Thursday 2 July, starting with Joep & Sam from BK-FM and the ultimate MZN summer playlist, handpicked by you! Further line-up yet to be announced by Stylos. You can find the link on stylos.nl 02.07.20, 16:00 - 01:00 location: https://www.stylos.nl/nl/evenementen/ aankomende-evenementen/product/268/349

To do / ALUMNUS OF THE YEAR Francine Houben, founder and Creative Director of Mecanoo Architects, has been elected TU Delft Alumnus of the Year 2020. Rector Magnificus and Chair of the Executive Board Tim van der Hagen will bestow the award on Houben virtually during the TU Delft for Life | Xperience Week.

08.07.20 – 12.07.20 location: https://www.tudelft.nl/en/2020/alumni/ francine-houben-tu-delft-alumnus-of-the-year-2020/

To do / ESCHERIAANS In the Ceramics Museum Princessehof in Leeuwarden, you can see a 3D mural made by street artist Leon Keer. The work Hol en Bol inspired him by M.C. Escher. The 3D painting is part of the renewed exhibition 'Thuis bij M.C. Escher'.

20.07.20 location : Keramiek Museum Princessehof, Leeuwarden

To do / NEVER BUILT, THE HAGUE The Bijlmer flats in the Schilderswijk, the nineteenth-century Palace of the States-General in the Binnenhof, these are projects in The Hague that you don't come across because they were never built. At the exhibition 'Never built, The Hague' in the Historical Museum of The Hague you can see which projects are involved and you are invited to look at the city with different eyes.

16.11.19 – 28.06.20 location : Haags Historisch Museum, Den Haag

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Berlage x Bnieuws

IN CONVERSATION WITH DAVID T. VAN ZANTEN Words: Berlage student, Stef Dingen, and David T. Van Zanten, Mary Jane Crow Emeritus Professor at Northwestern University

Several weeks before giving a lecture about Chicago-based architect Walter Burley Griffin’s Canberra Plan, as part of this semester’s Berlage Sessions, there was the opportunity to speak to historian David T. Van Zanten. His recent lecture was one in a series of case studies examining the histories, politics, policies, and processes of canonical architectural competitions since the mid-eighteenth century.

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From the Chicago Tribune Tower and the Paris Opera House, to Parc de la Villette and most recently the Guggenheim Helsinki, the public lecture series explored these competitions as opportunities of experimentation. Beyond the architectural competition’s evident objective of selecting an architect, ulterior motives are often at play. Financial and political considerations can steer the organising party in selecting a particular architect, while designers may utilise their answer to the competition brief as a vehicle to promote a certain ideology. The ensuing glimpse into our discussion about Griffin’s endeavours in Australia, leads from his lofty personal aspirations to the changing nature of architectural competitions at large.

“This is not necessarily a competition to design the new capital for Australia, but rather to set an example of a new architecture,” Professor Van Zanten explained early on in our conversation on Walter Griffin’s work. After beating his European star competitors Eliel Saarinen and Alfred Agache, in the 1911 competition to lay out Canberra, the new capital city of a united Australia, Griffin managed to get himself named in charge of a second step: an immediate competition for the parliament central to his winning urban plan. As Van Zanten argues, it is the competition for this capitol building that he used in his pursuit of inventing a new, concrete architecture. Similar ideas had been implicit in the initial renderings of their winning Canberra proposal by Marion Mahoney, Griffin’s wife and professional partner, but only after the pair mobilised jurors across Europe and the United States, did their intentions become clear. The eventual jury consisted of Louis Sullivan, Victor Laloux, John James Burnet, and Otto Wagner, all of whom were sympathetic to the use of reinforced concrete, and could thus serve as allies in Griffin’s quest. Wagner in particular, appeared to be receptive to this potentially revolutionary project.

Reality hit though when World War I broke out, and the competition as Griffin had imagined it never came to any sort of fruition. It is at this point that our talk moved away

from Canberra to Geneva, where it had been the 1927 competition for the Palace of the League of Nations, which arguably brought an end to the idea that a competition could be the source of a new architecture. Within weeks of Le Corbusier’s famous defeat, he established CIAM, which would use discussion amongst peers to define the future of building. A similar set-up of an international group of architects, also including Le Corbusier, would later collectively develop a design proposal for the United Nations headquarters in 1947. It was through discussion, rather than competition, that this building came to be. “The idea of a competition actually being a way to invent a new architecture, is to be very naïve and optimistic, because the politics are so elaborate and things are going to go wrong,” Van Zanten determinedly underlined once more, “and between the Palace of the League of Nations and the UN, I think the most decisive symbolically is the UN.” Anecdotally recalling his experience as a juror on the 1987 competition for the Harold Washington Library in Chicago, Van Zanten elaborated on the politics of decision making and the range of complications that can deflect the process. From the requirement of architects having to submit their proposal in partnership with a construction company and the limitations of a hundred million dollar budget, to the hierarchical makeup of a composed jury and the social pressure that comes with it.

Following all this, he insists, “that every competition is unique,” and that, “the moment matters, the people matter, and – god knows – the client matters.” If the idea that inventing a new architecture through a competition was already slightly ridiculous in an early twentieth century context, then it certainly seems fairy-tale-like today. The many complexities of elaborate selection procedures and intensely regulated European tenders hardly allow for such grand ambitions, yet we might have to join Van Zanten in appreciating the idea.

The Berlage x Bnieuws presents conversations with leading practitioners and thinkers invited to speak at the faculty as part of the Berlage’s public programme. David T. Van Zanten lectured on the Canberra Plan and Parliament on June 12, 2020 as part of the Berlage Sessions. Other contributors included George Baird, Tim Benton, Urtzi Grau, Kersten Geers, Christopher Curtis Mead, and Katherine Solomonson. Following the COVID-19 outbreak, this semester’s Berlage Sessions have moved online. Please follow their website and social media for livestreams and recordings.

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BK Report

SHIFTING UTOPIAS Words Federico Ruiz

What are utopias? We might solve this question by remembering Thomas More and the precise etymology of the word: utopias have no place in reality. And yet, carrying a handful of notions on how the world should be, we stubbornly insist on improving what we think is wrong out there. What is, then, the nature of these ideas in architecture? How have they changed over time? Are they concrete possibilities for a better future? Or mere fictions that can only inhabit our imagination? I talked to some graduates from BK and this is what they said.

“I studied from 1950 until '58,” says Herman Hertzberger, 87, from his office in Amsterdam, “At that time, in the Faculty, there was still a sort of battle between the Delftse School, which was the traditional side, […] and the Modernists, what they called the Modernists. It was also called right wing against left wing. So the Delftse School wanted to, so to say, keep all the old values including regionalism just in the rebuilding of the country, and the modernists were, of course, influenced by CIAM, especially Le Corbusier. They were dreaming of a new democratic [society] with the emphasis on social housing and better cities.”

Amid this confrontation of ideas on how to rebuild a nation, perhaps one of the few scenarios where utopias have a practical role, Herzberger picked a side, not without first recognising the limitations of such a choice: “For me, there is a looking for a balance of the two. I’m faithful to the modernists, and I will stay faithful to the modernists until the end of my life. But they were not a hundred percent right. They made too much open space, and they neglected the idea of belonging, they neglected the social side of it.” Later in the conversation, he leaves for a moment and comes back with the prints of two images of a family having dinner amidst the ruins of

Aleppo, in Syria: “This whole story is telling that: even when the world completely falls apart, there still will be the force of the social coherence. Which was, in fact, part of the conservative story, you know?”

Today, more than half a century after making that choice, Hertzberger now knows that utopias can’t survive reality without adapting along the way: “They changed with the world. I mean, the world has changed. Today, when you ask [for] the utopia of this time it is in fact, this may sound negative, to ‘save the world’. I mean, this idea of ‘we can make the world’ has changed into ‘we can save the world’.” For architects, this new paradigm translates into the need for making “the conditions, I would say, try to make conditions for social cohesion.

That’s the main task of architecture today.”

In the mid-1980s, when Hertzberger was already a teacher in BK, two students, Els Bet and Francine Houben, were graduating after nearly a decade in the faculty: “I think we were all afraid of starting life.

You know, just extended it as long as you can,” says Bet, now a teacher at the Department of Urbanism of BK. With the student movements of the 70s, this was a faculty in constant reinvention. As recalled by

< Map of the island of Utopia. Woodcut by Ambrosius Holbein. From the 1518 edition of Thomas More's Utopia.

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Houben, “we had the possibility to put and to set up our own projects: we often developed what we wanted to do ourselves and selected our own teachers, and our own subjects.” “They made lecture series, they made the readers, it was the first time of the copy machine so you didn't have to stencil it all with this machine, so we all copied projects and plans, and we gave it to each other,” complements Bet.

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When asked about the utopias of her generation, Bet says that there were three: “‘take care of the world’, ‘make love not war’ and ‘equal rights for everybody’.

And that had not much to do with the School”. In fact, the Faculty was far from having a unified agenda, and distinct groups coexisted under the same roof, all with different programmes and with easily identifiable followers: “We had a lot of architectural schools, [but] they were also a kind of life attitude differences,“ she explains, “It was, you might say, just as now: this kind of architecture school with I think quite a buzz, but also very, very strongly divided. You belonged to this part, or you belonged to that part, or you belonged to that part.”

If the generation of Hertzberger was occupied with the reconstruction of a continent, this was a moment where students were resisting and reacting to the established order. Bet says that after witnessing, “Thatcher and Reagan, and this cutting off the welfare state [...] came Punk time, with this kind of nihilism. You said ‘well, it's a shitty world. It's all shit, so let's party.’ But that did not change your ideas on Utopia.” For Houben, who at the time had already founded the team that later became Mecanoo, this spirit of resistance was expressed through architecture: “This was an extremely important statement for myself, but of course also the group I was part of: that social housing should also be beautiful. Because that was totally not the attitude, I can tell you, by my teachers or my colleagues, the other students. It was very much like ‘it has to be affordable.’”

Internal division, as noted by Bet, has been one of the defining characteristics of the Faculty for the last 70 years. Nonetheless, in the previous decades the perception of this issue changed, and fragmentation turned into the source of diversity. For Bas Horsting, an architect and urbanist graduated in 2002 who answers my questions from his houseboat in Amsterdam, “Our time was an exciting transition period, where three flows connected: you still had the contact with the era of Hertzberger and Aldo van Eyck, the start of the starchitects, and there was this independent group of young teachers and professors that were all somewhere [else],” the latter defending a kind of architecture that was less exuberant, and more focused on a, “sensible, small-scale intervention and approach to architecture.” Stan van der Maas, who graduated three years later, coincides in this view; “there were many different points of view within the faculty, and many different studios and teachers experimenting or practising different ways of doing architecture.”

Despite this wide range of choices, for van der Maas one of the ideas shared by his generation, “was ‘pragmatism.’ I also remember this phrase of Koolhaas when he speaks about New York, ‘An architecture that relates to the forces of the großstadt,’ is what he says, […] as a surfer to the waves. And I think this is the way we were also practising at the Faculty, how we were taught to think. It was not about realising big dreams, it was more about realising big projects. It was not about having a theory or a line of thought or putting yourself in historic perspective, it was more about a concept and developing a concept”. As a comment on this attitude, Herzberger says that: “We had the Koolhaas’ generation, from the 1980s on, and Koolhaas was for limitless possibilities, the Greek would say Carpe Diem. I remember a sentence of Koolhaas directed to me, because he knew that I played the piano, he said, ‘You should use the whole piano and not just one side of it.’ In fact, what he was saying was, ‘You don’t use all the possibilities of

our time.’ And this is, of course, part of the neoliberalism of market and the idea of growth, but I defend Koolhaas in the sense that he really used imagination.”

In the first decade of the 21st century, the Faculty went on fire and, fuelled by a never-before-seen flow of people and information coming from all over the world, it also became the international environment we know today. For Alankrita Sarkar, who graduated from the track of Urbanism in 2017, the first reaction to this environment was trying, “to compare things.

What was there in India and what was here now.”

Driven by this inquisitive attitude, during her time at BK she became interested in, “this idea of comparative study, and also how that can inspire other places. It is not necessarily so that things happening over here are not really [happening] at all in New York. There are always some points or principles that can be taken to any places. So, I think I believed in that thought, and I did a lot of comparative studies during my study years.” In contrast with the Dutch-centred debates of the past, global dreams were now forged inside the rooms of BK. On the other hand, as the faculty widened its programme’s offers and increased the intake of international students, it also lost the slow-paced and debate-centred atmosphere that it once had.

Programmes were shortened, and space and time for thinking were reduced. In this regard, Bas Horsting has some interesting remarks: “If I speak to students from the Faculty, they hardly have time to look well into history and to investigate their own position in history. That's really a pity,” and he continues, “what I notice is [that in] the University now you have to be quite strict on your path, and there's not much time to reflect on what you're doing.” As a student, I couldn’t agree more.

So, what are Utopias? Apparently, they can be concrete visions for a new world, dreams in the ideal state of things, or ways of relating to knowledge.

Nonetheless, and despite the lack of consensus on the shape they have, there was a common ground in their role. In all cases, utopias were revealed as the ideological compasses that let individuals navigate through a sea of uncertainties and risks, “your touchstone. Because you have to stay clear, you have to keep a clear mind on what you're doing,” says Els Bet. They are an absolute system of reference in a world of relatives. Or, as put by Hertzberger, “What you call utopia… I would rather talk about horizons.”

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From the editors

NEVER BEEN BUILT Words Aimee Baars

What if the world's most well-known buildings were never constructed? The Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal, the Empire State Building.

Or what if they had been designed differently? Sometimes, when the time is right, an architect's vision, his fiction, becomes reality.

However, when the time isn't right, the idealistic ideas, the promises of the future, end up in drawers in dark and forgotten archives. For me, the theme 'Fiction' was an opportunity to explore Dutch architects' projects that have never been built. In this article 5 fictitious projects are discussed; two in Amsterdam, two in Rotterdam and one in The Hague. Prepare to be amazed, and perhaps, slightly confused.

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Euromast by Van den Broek & Bakema Before construction commenced on the Euromast as we now know it, several other designs for an observation tower had been discussed. In 1955 the exhibition E55 was opened. It was a manifesto titled, The Rebuilding of a Destroyed City, and the Will to Overcome Difficulties. Rotterdam had been heavily bombed in World War II and large parts of the cities were wiped out once the war was over. The organising architects of E55, Van den Broek & Bakema, who also built the world-renowned Lijnbaan, designed a spectacular tower with 4 viewing decks. However, this plan appeared too ambitious for the 50s. When preparations started for the next exhibition, the Floriade in 1960, ideas for an observation tower once again floated to the surface. The municipality of Rotterdam chose a different location and a different architect, Hugh Maaskant. And so, the Euromast as we know it was constructed. The second part of the name 'mast' refers to Rotterdam as the centre of the shipping industry, symbolising the connection between city and port.

Euromast by Van den Broek & Bakema, 1953-55

Rotterdam Central Station by Will Alsop Over the past decades, before the current Benthem & Crouwel design was executed, several plans had been made for Rotterdam Central Station. One that stood out was the 'champagne glasses' designed by Will Alsop. Alsop used painting as his base for architecture - he started designing without even glancing at the required programme and worked intuitively. He produced paintings over summer, would then send them back to his firm in London where his drawings were reinterpreted as buildings.

He is known for his use of colour, which is also clearly exemplified by his plans for Rotterdam Central Station. In collaboration with Rotterdam

Municipality, he worked on the transformation of the station district for a year - in his plan merely one original building would survive. One essential design element was an integrated public transport terminal, split into three levels, including buses, trams, trains and metro. Above them would rise the champagne glasses, symbolizing a 21st-century gateway to the city. However, it became clear the plans would cost four times the provided budget. While politics changed, both locally and nationally, the plans were put aside: "The period in which urbanists acted as God, appeared to be over" (Tilman, 2018.)

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Rotterdam Central Station by Will Alsop 2000-2001

City on Pampus by Van den Broek & Bakema Another project by Van den Broek & Bakema, more idealist and large-scale than their design for the Euromast was Stad op Pampus, City on Pampus.

They envisioned this megastructure as a solution to all of Amsterdam's issues in the 60s; challenges in mobility and housing scarcity could be tackled by an extension of the city accommodating 350,000 citizens, a population the size of Utrecht. Van den Broek & Bakema designed the city in a linear form, along a central mobility axis, including a monorail,

similar to Corbusier's Ville Radieuse. Along the outer boundaries of the plan, the volumes would be smaller and lower, in order to provide recreational space by the water for the inhabitants. However, during the 60s, criticism increased towards these mass scale programmes which idealised cities as engineerable while neglecting human scale.

Eventually, only small versions of these plans were executed such as the Bijlmer in Amsterdam.

CIty on Pampus by Van den Broek & Bakema, 1958-1964.

Manhattan along the IJ-river by OMA The archives of the Municipalities of Rotterdam and Amsterdam feature many unrealised projects by OMA, including the plans for the Central Station of Amsterdam in the early 1990s. Back then, the capital of the Netherlands was in crisis, both from an economic and a spatial perspective: in a short time frame most port activities had moved out of the city.

The inner city was rapidly transforming from industrial to service-oriented. Most neighbourhoods were in poor condition and the population was in decline. Thus, investments had to be made to re-stabilise the city in order to attract international

markets. In the plan 'Manhattan along the IJ-river' by Rem Koolhaas, western, eastern and northern sides of the station were extended and programmed as a business district. In addition, a huge bus terminal and boulevard along the river were integrated. The plans were officially presented in 1992, but were received with critique, specifically in regard to the accessibility of the design and the financial feasibility. Development of the 'Zuidas' in the South of Amsterdam turned out to be a more feasible option and all the plans for the Dutch Manhattan were discarded.

Manhattan along the IJ-river by

Rem Koolhaas (OMA), 1990-1992

The Peace Palace by L.M. Cordonnier At the start of the 20th century, a design competition was held to build the Peace Palace in the Hague; 216 architects participated, among which Gottlieb Eliel Saarinen, Otto Koloman Wagner, Hendrik Petrus Berlage, Willem Kromhout and Eduard Cuypers.

More than 3000 drawings were sent in. Remarkably so, many modern architects at that time didn't take part which resulted in a series of relatively conservative, traditional contestants. Many designs were in baroque and neo-styles. Nearly every architect exceeded the budget which left the judges Berlage

with a difficult decision. The first prize was eventually won by L.M. Cordonnier, an architect from Lille, and construction lasted six years from 1907 to 1913. The Peace Palace especially exemplifies the influence of society's standards on the realisation of architectural dreams. Our fictions becoming tangible truths depend on realistic conditions, and the challenge appears to be to striking a fine balance between the contemporary 'what we know now' and the unpredictability of the future.

Tรถry

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Kromhout

Cordonnier

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BK Report

THE BOOK AND THE BUILDING Words Louis Lousberg, Koen Mulder & Christopher Clarkson Image Christopher Clarkson It’s 4pm on a Tuesday afternoon and suddenly, the familiar faces of Koen Mulder, affectionately known by many as Mr. Brick, and Louis Lousberg, affectionately known by many as Louis Lousberg appear on my screen. As two members of the committee responsible for running the faculty library, I attempted to ask of Koen Mulder and Louis Lousberg about the importance of the book, not only for the students but also for the built environment as a whole. Why do we make books and what function do they serve in the design process? And, why do we as a faculty need a library? What began as an interview slowly became more of a passionate conversation, and what follows is an account of some of that conversation.

Koen Mulder: We’ve discovered this time and time again, that for our technical colleagues from the rest of Delft, the library is mostly about articles, about information, about finding the right topic and research that’s involved. For us there’s something different, it’s also about the collection itself, it’s about the status of books, it’s about how books are part of our world as architects; architects draw but architects also write books. In a sense it’s more about the physical thing with its design and everything that’s part of that in a way – we have a unique position in this. It’s not so much about looking something up, it’s also about stumbling upon; finding something which you never expected Louis Lousberg: That’s closely related to the way in which designers think, as opposed to engineering [which demands] an analytical way of looking at things. Designers explore, designing is exploring.

It could be said that Books contain information as a general whole, but within architecture, these books are often told in essay formats or with photographs and thoughts and opinions, or architectural theories.

Would you call these kinds of fiction?

Louis: No, why?

Well, I think a lot of texts that are written about architecture are also narratives of the built environment or such things.

Louis: But I think most students aren’t reading at all, but are looking at pictures. They are interested in the pictures and, of course they are. They are looking for ideas to catalyse their own ideas.

As an editor for a predominantly text-based magazine, this was admittedly painful to hear.

Koen: I’ve never seen any equivalent on the internet to how you can look for something in the library and there is a cupboard with books from all different periods of time on that subject, and you can really quickly put things on the table and compare them and kind of specify your design question by use of the things you stumble upon. I think that’s very important, and the other thing is that it’s not only about the information in the books, but the books in their material existence are also a part of the same

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history. You see for example the way the print changes over time, how the book is bound changes over time and I think it’s also really important for our students to get to know they are also a part of a tradition. Those books are in a way a connection to that tradition.

Louis: You could call it a kind of tactile reading, it’s very important to have it in your hands. It’s an object.

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You’re both speaking about it as kind of guardians of the library, which I admire. And we see all over the world how libraries are kind of changing into pseudo-community centres, do you think the Bouwkunde library is at risk of some kind of change in the coming years?

Koen: I think the faculty itself values it very highly, the fact that we have it. It might be a struggle with the technical university as a whole, where they ask, ‘Well, why should you be different from the others?’

But on the other hand, the BK library itself has a value on an almost national level. We are not paid for that anymore I think, but we used to be. For example, you’ll even notice therie’s a lot of other schools that send their students to our library because of the physical existence of the books.

Louis: That’s one, and second, students value the library also as a quiet place in a building where everything is going on, large halls, lots of noise etc. but there’s one place in the building that’s quiet where you can study in a quiet way. And that’s also valued very highly by the students, so I don’t think it will become a kind of community thing like you indeed see in the public libraries.

Koen: Maybe also what’s part of it, is that architects also make books. And students, as soon as they go to work somewhere, the first thing they are going to do is make booklets for projects or clients. Also, for that reason, it’s probably important that you have

physical books, to steal styles and such [Koen laughs nervously] But would you say the physicality of the book is as important as the book, if not, more?

Koen: I’m not saying that it’s as important, because I don’t know how to compare that, but it has a bit to do with the fact that theirs always more information in this material stuff than ‘pure information’ [laughs again], than translatable information.

Could I ask you to try and define that? What is that extra thing?

Koen: Yeah, I agree with you that it has a lot to do with the physical existence, but it’s also the fact that you can keep it in your hand you can take it with you and place it somewhere, if you read it totally it has a beginning and an end. Actually, those very simple things somehow structure your working. Well, take a topic and you read about it on the internet; you never know when you’re finished, you’re never finished. Sometimes I have this feeling that this kind of stream of information, [on the internet] that if you can’t chop it into any chunks, the result is that you take everything very pragmatically purely for a functional reason. “I have this problem, I need an answer ok, that is it.” I find our current information technology extremely pragmatic in this sense because it seems to purely revolve around direct answers to questions. But sometimes it is more about the process of you actually changing through the process of reading – I have this feeling that the time that the books asks of you sometimes provide more answers than the faster methods [of searching on the internet].

I think in that sense, books are very personal things and they say a lot about who you are because of that interaction, I was curious, do you have any books that have shaped you as an architect or as a person?

Louis: In my case, I’m not that much of an architect, I’m more of a management expert so to say… a

theorist. So, my books are more about organisations, or management, or about philosophy of science… that’s my thing [Louis lets loose a solitary chuckle] as a matter of fact. And within that philosophy of science I have some topics, but also on architecture, for instance, one of my - well, you couldn’t say hero - but a very interesting architect for me, is Le Corbusier, somehow, I think it’s one of my favourites, well his houses, this book about his houses: I went to his Villa Savoye near Paris, and there they had this amazing book about the houses of Le Corbusier and that’s one of my favourites.

Koen: Yes, I think for me it’s the same; you have certain favourite architects. You can’t make your own enormous collection, but for those architects you kind of have an agreement with yourself that if you come across a new book you buy it because in a sense those books belong to who you are even if you haven’t read them yet. [Koen Laughs] I have that agreement with Scarpa or Zumthor for example, or maybe Alvar Aalto. [You could ask,] ‘Are all those big names important in architecture?’ But on the other hand, you need to have some kind of hook to hang things on, and that is kind of the purpose they have in your life.

How do you go about selecting new books for the library?

Louis: Well, what we do a few times a year, a delegation of the committee goes to Amsterdam to the library, Architectura Natura and because we have a budget to buy new books (a reasonably strong budget) we change the set of people that go there because it’s like letting a child into a candy store on someone else’s expenses; you can choose whatever you want. So, it’s really lots of fun to go there, but that’s where we select new books.

Koen: It’s also important to mention, there’s a suggestions possibility. Everyone in faculty can make a suggestion, and except for when the book is

10.000 euros, almost all books that are suggested are bought.

As with any conversation, it falls silent briefly, allowing all to digest what has been discussed so far…

Koen: I was thinking, this relation with physical books to pure information, it is a bit comparable maybe to how architects are fond of physical models and not only rendered pictures and 3D models in the computer. It probably also has to do with the fact that every architect knows that if you are making a model you discover things while making them; seeing something in another light, seeing them from a different side that you never intended to that gives a new insight. We have this much stronger with physical models than with computer models. I think the love for the book is kind of comparable to that.

Louis agrees softly, and I remain silent, waiting hopefully for Koen to inevitably fill the void with more interesting ideas...

Koen: Something I always find difficult to understand while researching, is, if it’s about science, you have popular science books and these are different from things like articles, or theses and I didn’t precisely understand how scientists value this.

Because on the one hand, these books [which they] write for bigger audiences are always popularised but then again, these books are very important in what they do. So, I was always kind of struggling with this kind of division, is the book for them just a kind of simple version of the real thing? No, it’s not.

Sometimes the book is just as important and then maybe at the end you point in a footnote to this article where all the technicalities are in, but this kind of overview is also the real thing. I have the feeling that with architecture and art, we don’t have this division. Of course, there’s the real building versus the book, but everything is on paper. Maybe

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you could say with drawings you have the same [division] in a way, but I don’t feel there’s this difference between popularising something and the real thing. I don’t think that we do that in architecture.

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No indeed, it’s interesting speaking of kind of popularised books, there are a few architecture or built environment ‘bibles’ such as Jane Jacob’s 'The Death and Life of Great American Cities' or Christopher Alexander’s 'A Pattern Language' is another one. What do you think it is that these books have that makes them so critical, or crucial?

Koen: I think the books are that important because they are kind of transformational moments in architecture, I think the reason those books are so important in general is because they are on kind of breaking points in how architecture and architectural theory changed: Jane Jacobs, for example, is the kind of the, ‘end of the time where men told the whole society how it should be with all their sexist, and maybe even racist opinions,’ and it’s a kind of, ‘well if you can’t do it then we’ll do it ourselves.’ So, it’s a typical kind of beginning of the 60’s book. Whereas for example A Pattern Language, is about the notion, ‘Is there any scientific knowledge that we’ve gathered as architects that is available and usable for everyone? Or are we dealing with individual artists and their mythical inspiration?’ The book tells you that there are these psychological, maybe scientific aspects of architecture that all architects should know.

Are there any contemporary books that recently have come out that are of similar merit? Or of similar esteem?

Koen: I’d say I think there are but I don’t know! In a sense, this is always afterwards that you say this was a really important moment, and I think 99% of the people like me don’t even recognise it when it happens. In other fields, where you see it more through newspapers etc. It might be easier to see,

like for example with Thomas Pickety; it has become such a stepping stone in economics and labour relations etc. For architecture, I’m not really sure if architecture is important enough for that.

Louis: But maybe these things influence architecture very much, like for example circularity. There you have this young woman, Ellen Macarthur, that sailed a few times around the world, well, what she writes is I think very important and I see that it influences students very much, also architecture students. With this circular thinking anyway.

Koen: Yes, it’s interesting that although the people who live in a certain time don’t recognise it, afterwards you always feel that there’s some kind of theme in a period. For example in the 50s it was about social housing, Architecture as a social tool to make a better society. In the 80s it was probably about showing off success, in the 90s it became this kind of crisis where American architects didn’t build that much and most of the things were taken over by big commercial companies. And then you see this kind of philosophical shift, ‘What’s the meaning of everything?’ And that’s kind of in the beginning of the 2000s; everything was about aesthetics of architecture. We seem to in certain periods value totally different things as the most important, and now we have that certainly with sustainability.

I think speaking about these shifts in thinking and their relation to writing is very interesting, and it also makes me think of the written Manifesto as a kind of tool for architecture. Does our library contain manifestoes ?

Louis: Yes, I’m pretty sure about it. Let’s not forget our Library contains the so-called EFL collection, the collection of van Eesteren, and I’m pretty sure there are manifestoes in there.

Koen: Yes definitely, and of course in the library there are a lot of books that are so valuable that they

don’t have them on the shelves anymore, so, there’s also a hidden part that can only be addressed or seen if you make a special appointment for it. For some of these unique items this is probably the case, we can only display it in a glass cabinet or in a display box.

As a final question, do you have any final comments or inspiring words for the people?

Louis: In general, I’d like to challenge students to realise that first of all we have a great library with a great collection so please explore… please explore.

And, don’t only see these objects exhibited in the

hallways of our own building but make an appointment to see the cellar of the central library.

You won’t believe what you can find there: The military chair of Rietveld! This is a very important chair, the only other one of these chairs you can find is in a museum near Dusseldorf. And it’s just standing there, on a shelf, you can touch it, it’s just there! That and all other, very valuable things are just collected and put in a cellar and that’s it. Go there. Please go there, explore this!

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Pen Pal

PLEASE EXPLAIN Words & image Oscar Nowak

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The main goal of my Architecture degree seemed to be acquiring the skill of being able to justify every part of my design. Every choice had to have a rational explanation, substantiated by analysis, research, and calculation. And that’s the point, of course; being prepared to work in a hard world where people will ask a lot of questions. And you’ll have to answer all of them... which seems tiring.

That’s why I’ve always been fascinated by impossible objects. Designs so simple yet so intangible. You can try and hard as you can to figure it out but you’ll never succeed. You’ll just have to accept that in some cases, there is no explanation.

Oscar Nowak completed his bachelor program at BK last year and has currently started his own design project. A goal to draw 55 impossible figures by hand, inspired by the work of several illusionists. You can see his work via Instagram @fiftyfive.prints

From the editors

WHERE'S ONDO? Words Robert van Overveld, Ondo

Hi, I know this guy from the future who told me that this corona crisis is not as bad as it seems for humanity. His name is Ondo, and he lives in the year 2062. He is quite amazing and has many great stories. This is a transcript of a part of our conversation.

Details transcript: Subject: Future Participants: Ondo and me Date, time and place: May 14, 2020, 7:46 - 8:18 p.m. at Home

Ondo, there are a few other things I wanted to ask.

You may recall what happened during spring 2020, the coronavirus that came into existence. Many people are thinking about the implications of this all. Can you give some clarity on the subject, will it change the way we live?

Well, I was born in January 2021, which means that I didn't experience it myself. But my parents told me about it, and it was part of my history class.

Right, I forgot that you weren't born yet. What did people tell you about it?

Well, for starters, yes, it will change the way people live. But the introduction of the internet did as well, many things do. Change is not something rare in the time you and I are living in. But I understand your concerns. I think it might be interesting to discuss some of the implications on both societal level and a more practical level. At least, what I understand from it.

The threat of the coronavirus will stop not long from now, but in the end, corona will make people rethink about the concept of freedom. Many western people are used to a “modern” idea of freedom, the freedom of the individual. It’s about the ability to express yourself, your beliefs, your thoughts, and is also linked to a private and individual existence.

Many of the people in your generation are used to this kind of freedom and you think very highly of it.

In my time, it became known as, 'small freedom.' Let me explain why.

At some point, people will find that the restrictions that are forced upon you awaken the strength of a more ancient concept of freedom. A type of freedom that is connected to the group, the society. If the society you live in is not free, mentally or physically, then neither can you be free as an individual. The common enemy that is standing in front of you, which symbolises the vulnerability of mankind, will awaken a stream of thoughts that remind you of the fact that to be free in a modern perspective, you need to live in a free society. The freedom of the society is what we call, 'big freedom.' It’s not big and small in the way that one is more important than the other. Both of them can not exist without the other really.

In the case of the coronavirus, this means that the

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easiest way to deal with it is solving it as a society, doing things together even if it doesn’t benefit you directly. Try to be creative with the given circumstance, instead of defending your ideal situation. An individual approach is very much understandable, but will only solve things for in the short term.

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Well, I'm glad that this corona thing comes to a stop at some point. This small freedom that you are talking about is indeed valuable to us. I do think that many people in my time realise that it makes humanity a bit shallow.

I think it does as well. For many people, mostly minorities, economically weak or sick, the strength of a group is nothing new. These common threats, like the coronavirus, will be a reminder of the importance of the group for people that, let's say, forgot. My father always says that you can only be free because of the other people and other people only because of you.

That’s nice. And is this change in perspective considered to be a positive thing?

It is hard for me to say personally because again, I was never part of this thinking. My parents say it is and many people say so as well. In general, I think that it reminded us of the fact that humans can be fantastically resilient and creative. The future is a good place most of the time. I just think th...

[Phone drops] I'm sorry, my phone fell on the ground.

Your phone? Those big devices that you used to bring everywhere, right?

Yes, those devices indeed haha...

I've seen an iPhone once, it just looks really funny to me. Anyway, what was I saying… I think for too long people have been thinking that the only thing humanity needed was "good" people and "good"

leaders. All throughout history people have been antagonising different groups of people because there had to be a reason that the world wasn't perfect. With common enemies like corona, the focus will shift towards things that lay outside the narrow perspective of our prejudiced minds. We didn't need a strong leader; the only thing we needed was a strong common enemy to remind us that small freedom is not all that there is. If one thing proves itself time after time, then that must be the strength of camaraderie and cooperation.

That does make a lot of sense.

That is considered to be the weakest part of people in your time; you were competing all the time and not focused on getting the most out of everyone.

The individualism, and the competition that goes with it, is dreadful indeed...

I can imagine that it is still a bit vague, but clarity will come once you experience it yourself. Just think about it the coming time. I wanted to say something about the practical side as well, I’m sure it will be very interesting to you and at the same time better to visualise.

Cities will change in the way they are used. What the distancing rules will do in the end has not so much to do with creating distance, but making more space.

In the beginning more and more streets will be turned into public domain. Lives of people will increasingly change from an indoor experience to an outdoor experience, from a private experience to a public experience. Corona is not the reason for all of this to happen, but among other events, it will start a new way of thinking which will lead to many creative ideas like the Transas.

The what?

Transas, you see them everywhere in the city, they are liquid, transparent bubbles that are just as easy to set up as a pop-up tent. You can shape them in

any size and form you like and some of them even have patterns and colours. People do all sort of things in these rooms, which they basically are, from selling food to doing sports. It’s just the extra space that is needed sometimes, but the reason they are used so often is mainly that people really like the connection with outside. Watching the rain is amazing, it feels like an invisible shield protecting you. They're not replacements for buildings, people still very much value the privacy that our standard homes provide.

Besides that, technologies of underground and above ground transportation will expand and improve tremendously. Most roads in cities are underground, although most people use the ball. A mode of transport which is a spin-off of the hyperloop, all vacuum, but even smaller and more flexible. It is a one-person device in the shape of a ball, that literally rolls you to certain points in town via an underground system. It resembles the marbles kids play with. In my time they already have 15 times more stops than of the public transport modes combined in 2020. It also makes it possible to expand cities, and boy they really will in the future.

It probably doesn't come as a surprise, but even Rotterdam expands to 2,4 million inhabitants.

The development of cities will not only occur on land but towards the ocean as well. Since oceans are more resistant to weather conditions, whole cities will be built on the water. Some of them can even go underwater during extreme weather conditions. In the North Sea, a city called Cinta will be built. It's one of the bigger water cities that is going to be realised. Approximately 20 million people live there

and it functions fully independently. They have really anything you can imagine, from forests to libraries.

Some people call these water cities 'The Arks,' since they are home to many animals that went extinct on the mainland.

They are trying to build way more water cities because unlike on the mainland, these cities can move. Weather systems are very advanced and they can make incredibly precise predictions about where the most ideal location would be for the city. This means that the island is constantly on the move. It makes a more general shift the whole year to make sure the temperatures don't get too high or low and smaller movements to make sure there is the right balance between rain and sun. The latter is important because although they can make saltwater drinkable, it’s still a slow process. If they move the city to the right location, they are able to capture enough water to maintain everything.

That's sounds unbelievably cool, Ondo. I'm actually wondering if you would be ok with me sharing this information with people? I think it might inspire and comfort people.

Well, I’m not sure if that's allowed actually. But whatever, I'm in a good mood. If you want you can give them my email address, that's OndoAtHotmailDotCom@gmail.com. They probably have many questions.

That's awesome and don't worry, probably no one will believe you even exist.

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Pen pal

BOOK REVIEW: BEING ECOLOGICAL Words Amy Young In light of the current pandemic, the term ‘post-COVID’ world has cropped up again and again within the architecture community. Architects have rushed to the rescue with mediocre design solutions; temporary hospitals, 3d printed face masks, and socially distant parks, just to name a few.

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Despite the seemingly good intentions, I find the design proposals incredibly problematic. It highlights the, ‘Architect is God,’ phenomena, in which architects try to solve complex social, political and health issues, that are far beyond their skillsets and the reaches of their profession. Instead of all these quite pointless and dead-end projects aiming to ‘revolutionise’ the ‘post-COVID world,’ I feel as if it would be far more productive for these architects to try to just get the architecture right. Highly problematic buildings are still being erected that have a detrimental impact on the climate, just look the work of Zaha Hadid or BIG. Perhaps it would be wise for architects to truly understand climate change, climate-driven design and their role in designing a sustainable future first.

the often-complex ideas Morton presents. After overcoming the sometimes-intellectual waffle, the perspective Morton offers in ‘Being Ecological’ is fresh, exciting and layered. He gives the reader permission to relax into the uncertainty of the future and refuses to conjure all the solutions.

Morton states very clearly at the start of the book, that the writing is not a ‘data dump’ with ‘factoids’ and numbers. Instead he writes a series of provocative statements and questions that slowly try to change the reader's perception of the climate and ecological crisis. For example, in the first chapter he states:

One book that illustrates an incredibly refreshing and new perspective on climate change is Timothy Morton’s, Being Ecological. It restructures the entire argument around climate change, allowing the reader to understand there has to be a deep shift in thinking before we can solve any of the complex problems involved. As an architect, it is a fantastic book that prompts the re-evaluation of how and what we design, in the midst of a climate crisis.

“So, I do have a lot of sympathy for the ‘so what are we going to do?’ sort of question. And this is precisely why I refuse to give a straight answer. What this type of question is asking, and the way the question is asking it, has the need to control all aspects of the ecological crisis. And we can’t do that. That would require being able to reverse time and return to at least 10,000 BC before humans set the agricultural logistics in motion that eventually gave rise to the industrial revolution, carbon emissions and there to global warming and mass extension.”

The tone of Being Ecological is one of assurance and authority. Morton has clear ideas throughout, which are well supported by his breadth and depth of understanding not only of ecology but also philosophy, literature, art, and the sciences. The book is a piece of academic literature and tests the reader to connect references in order to comprehend

It is a refreshing point to hear, emphasising that perhaps our very ridged problem-solving approach to climate change is ineffective because we are simply too late, we have already surpassed the point of no return. In a world that is effectively fuelled by neoliberal capitalism, it would, “require a major global revolution to dismantle the structures that are

polluting the biosphere with carbon emissions.” The author dismisses the idea that we can be the saviours of earth and instead we have to start thinking about how we can minimise the effects of climate change in a different way.

Morton also challenges the idea of blame in regard to the climate and ecological crisis. He suggests that the individual is not to blame, arguing that only populations could have caused climate change; only in the masses could we have made such a disastrous impact to the planet. However, he raises the sorites paradox which asks when does a collection of things become a heap? Or in relation to Morton’s problem, when does the individual become the population?

He doesn’t answer the question but as a reader, it brings forward a point to ponder yourself. Do you still have to feel guilty about your personal contribution to climate change because one is in effect both the individual and the population?

To give his arguments more assertion, in the second half of the book Morton refers to the philosophical theories of Kant and Heidegger, focusing largely on object-orientated ontology. This theory looks at how non-human entities experience their existence in a way that lies outside our human-centric definition of consciousness. It brings us away from the anthropocentric way of thinking and instead suggests we should view the world more wholly. This is in itself intriguing as it presents the idea that climate change is not just a human-focused problem, but there are many, many other components to consider; everything non-human has a complex existence that needs to be accounted for too.

The existence of humans and non-humans is further explored in relation to the idea of systems. The ecosystem simply cannot be broken down into its constituent parts, each relies on each other. Morton explains these human and non-human connections through the analogy of a forest: “A tree isn’t connected to the forest it’s in because it’s measurably ‘inside the forest.’ The tree has to do with the forest.” Or more directly he explains the theory through the bacteria biome in our gut, it

clearly demonstrates the intense connection between the human and non-human, one cannot exist without the other, creating a complex system that is formed of many individual parts. From the perspective of climate change, this attitude of interconnectedness is essential. Every decision made by humans will impact the system. It is not simply a case of looking to the impact on human life anymore but to the impact of the larger entity, on the non-human elements that are equally important for the system or the ‘web of life’ as Morton refers to it. However, Morton does admit this is a difficult position for humans to be in, we struggle to see the bigger picture because we are right in the depths of the picture, floating amongst everything else.

Morton concludes the book with quite a dramatic and final statement: “You don’t have to be ecological because you already are ecological.” He builds up the argument in the previous chapter by suggesting that we are already part of the system, we already live symbiotically with nature, we already breathe the air and coexist with non-humans. Instead of trying to be more ecological, we instead should raise the question, 'How should we be more conscious of our ecological life?' and, 'How can we treat it more carefully and with more intent?' We have to perhaps abandon the anthropocentric idea that has been instilled into us since the Neolithic age, trying to instead view the world more as one, one that we are intrinsically and deeply a part of.

Being Ecological is less so a book on climate change than a book on contemporary philosophy and thought. However, the angle in which Morton directs his comments allows the reader to connect the ecological with the philosophical. With a base understanding of Kant and Heidegger, Being Ecological is a fantastic read, however the major critique is that it is easy to get lost among the string of theories, philosophers, artists and ideas that Morton presents. With some prior reading and understanding however, the book is enriching and thoroughly worth the hours ploughing through the pages. B

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BK Report

EXPLORE LAB FICTIONS Words and illustrations Camille Billottet, Anne de Zeeuw & Aimee Baars

Explore Lab is a master graduation track at the Faculty of Bouwkunde. The intentions of this programme are all in the name: you are free to explore a design subject of your choice; you come up with your own problem statement, choose your own tutors who are familiar with the chosen themes, get experimental with research (model making, collages, interviews, a mix... whatever rows your boat).

Then finally, like any other studio, you create a design that supports your narrative, or 'fiction'. I spoke to two Explore Lab graduates, Camille Billottet, and Anne van der Zeeuw, whose projects show an intruiging, alternate architecural reality.

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Camille, what is your project synopsis?

Smells are everywhere around us. They affect our mood, perception, localisation, they are part of our everyday life, of sex, food, nature, industry, of others and ourselves, of birth and death. They are present from the womb of our mothers until our last breath; they follow us, intrigue us, bring back memories, seduce us, manipulate us. But in the experience of contemporary architecture, sight and touch prevail and the olfactory dimension of our built environment is often forgotten.

This project explores the interactions between the space outside of the body and the body itself, studying how smells matter from the scale of the molecule to the scale of the city. So what are the potentials of this somewhat neglected sense and how could it be used by designers and architects? How do smells affect architecture and the humans inhabiting it?

After studying the alterations of materials, construction techniques, spaces but also bodies and minds, the project aims at colonising a district of Lyon (France), through smells and architecture.

By means of seven interventions, the visitor visits a SmellTrail, trailing from the busy basilica to the calm bathhouse, alternating areas of rest, meditation, recollection, subtle scents or powerful ones, individual experiences or shared ones.

How did your fascination for this subject start?

In January 2019, my fellow students and I were asked to write a theory thesis on a subject of our choice. While I started researching the experience of space of the visually impaired, I was promptly led to the importance of the sense of smell for blind people.

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The subject quickly fascinated me, as the more books I read, the more research I did, the more I realised how unfamiliar I was with this sense. Though scents are everywhere around us, I never really thought about them as a potential for my practice of architecture. So much so that I realised how little I used my nose in general. While there is a sociological aspect to why we humans don’t trust our noses anymore, I recollected memories of me not being able to smell moments others could. I remember going through the kitchen cabinet, sniffing and thinking “Oh no... It’s true! I have a terrible sense of smell!” This little fear I carried in me, this semi-joke about not being able to really smell the delicate scent of a flower or the stink bombs thrown in high school, was, in fact, true. So, the fascination became an obsession, which led me to train my nose by working with a perfumer, landscape designers, and gardeners, engineers, historians, and theoreticians, to challenge the way I was experiencing space myself.

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What drives you to design?

I remember growing up in social housing in France and hearing my mother describe our home as a rabbit cage, making us rabbits go to work and then come back to their cages.

During my years of studying architecture, I realised that while architecture could make us feel miserable and small, architects also had the power to bring joy and pride to the inhabitants. So this desire to change someone’s day through an object as elementary as a wall, or a floor, a roof, a door, a material used, a light, a shadow, or a scent is what drives me. During my graduation, the research on smells was particularly interesting for this reason; making people more aware of the invisible, of the little things we tend to take for granted and change the visitor through different experiences. And this concern is reflected in the choice of materials I made: more natural, and raw, they are sensorily interesting but also more sustainable than mere concrete. They engage with the visitor as much as she or he engages with it.

How would you relate your project to the theme 'Fiction'?

While smells are our discrete companions through life, we often fail to imagine the affect they have on our bodies, and, minds, but also our conception of space and matter.

Stiegler explains indeed that one consequence of the humans’ shift to bipedalism is the “defunctionalisation of the sense of smell,” (Stiegler, 2005) emptied of its sexual role, removed from the earth’s surface where most odorous molecules travel, giving the eye the leading role. For decades, our noses were considered a primitive function of our bodies, but the myth of the human “bad nose” is being challenged by various researchers who found out that human beings can discriminate at least one trillion olfactory stimuli.

This had me asking “Why don’t we consider smells as a primordial part of our lives?”

So, I imagined a project in which for once scents are given the spotlight, where the visitor has the opportunity to reflect on new sensations driven by different scents, paths, spaces, materials, lights, and so on.

What (object/person) inspired you during this project?

I think this graduation process allowed me to meet brilliant professionals who all

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impacted both the project and my conception of architecture. I owe a lot to perfumer Fredrik Dalman, of the Amsterdam based Maison Mona Di Orio, a man of great creativity, talent and patience. He took the time to guide me through the rudiments of perfumery, to discuss the potentials of scents for designers - and gave me exercises to train my sense of smell! Then, I must say that Stavros Kousoulas and Roel van de Pas had the greatest impact on the project, especially as the thesis took both an unexpected theoretical path (through texts of Deleuze & Guattari, E.Crosz, Malgrave, Massumi, Spinoza and more), but also an experimental path that challenged and completed my readings. With their help, I was able to discover aspects of architecture I knew little about.

Anne, what is your project synopsis?

The relations between us and food have become distorted, deviated from their origin and meaning in our daily lives. Where solutions are sought in consciousness, this research focuses on the subconscious level of our relation with food by changing our perception of it, using architecture as a medium between us, the subject, and food, the object. By researching within a phenomenological framework, nine speculative scenarios have been made with the goal to understand how to influence the public by storytelling in writing, drawing and architecture. The question posed is: "How can speculative design help architecture enable a meaningful relation between us and food?"

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The tenth scenario askes the question: "What if our food runs out?" By deconstructing my own street in Rotterdam I propose a new way of relating to food. The streets will be dug up, buildings gradually demolished and materials used to build a new communal food system in the centre of the street. Upon the tram rails and sewer system we will build a new foundation made of the bricks of our former homes. This entails an open sewer for composting, a labyrinth of corridors for food storage, and an open wooden layer of functions; everything from a woodstove, an abattoir, a dry house, a water tower, a smoke tower, to a kitchen, greenhouse and wood workshop. All made by hand with former residents, it is designed to give food a more meaningful place in our lives.

Whether this is utopian or dystopian, that is up to you.

What drives you to design?

The graduation thesis is the perfect opportunity to give room to your fascination. For me the combination between food and stories has always interested me; the process of following a recipe, the entanglement of the senses, the movement, the history and future of produce. We all learn to tell stories through a medium, but it took a long time till I found mine. During my bachelors program, I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t feel the freedom or opportunity, I even took a break from architecture all together. It was only until this master track, that I found out how powerful a narrative could be and how architecture gave me the tools to tell it. Explore lab has been the only studio able to guide me through my own thought process without damaging or diminishing my interest in the subject.

How would you relate your project to the theme 'Fictions'?

My research and design are based on the methods of speculative design and phenomenology. Speculative design is grounded on ‘wicked problems’, attempting to solve these problems needs a rigorous and totally mind changing approach. This type of design thrives on imagination and aims to open up new perspectives. During my research the aim was not to focus on the current and future needs of the consumer, but rather to imagine a possible future that reflects on the complexity of a current problem, in this case wicked problems concerning food. It gives you the chance to play with morality, and describe outrageous things which conclude that maybe cannibalism isn't that strange at all considering it is only dead meat. Thinking through speculative scenarios will make reality more flexible which can help address the problems of today by projecting them in their possible future. Hopefully this will help spot factors that may lead to undesirable futures and address them early on while their impact now is still (in some ways) limited.

Op dit moment ben ik research assistent bij een

pursue a PhD on the subject! Another part of me

fellowship van de TU Delft wat onderzoek doet naar

wants to learn from professionals who have a

AR binnen het onderwijs. En daarnaast ga ik bijna

passion for materials, experimentation, and 1:1

van start met de Nationale Denktank. Voor vragen

applications of theories. And as the last part of me

ben ik bereikbaar via Instagram onder de naam: @

needs to reimburse my loan, I will probably be first

Anne_and_others.

looking for an agency that hopefully shares those interests!

I will be presenting my graduation within the Explore Lab in just a few weeks, so I am currently working

Contact info:

towards this goal. Concerning the near future, a

camille.billottet@gmail.com

part of me really doesn't want to let go of this

Linkedin: Camille Kétsia Billottet

research, so it would be amazing to be able to

Instagram: Cambllttt

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Artefact

ROTRING ARTPEN Words Lotte Dijkstra

‘Artefact’ is a recurring two-page spread, which features a beloved object presented by one of the BK City staff members. Every month, the ‘Artefact’ contributorship is passed on someone new. This months’ artefact is from researcher and communication advisor Lotte Dijkstra, who researches trees in urban conditions at the chair of Landscape Architecture and who regularly writes about various topics dealing with the built environment.

The ideal pen can be used to write, draw, and manifest all kinds of creative ideas on different kinds of paper. Pencils, ballpoints, fountain pens, dip pens, fineliners, markers with fine or thick felt-tips, charcoal, paint, crayons… So many possible vehicles to transcribe new concepts to paper.

The Rotring Artpen is a kind of hybrid version for both writing and drawing, originally designed for calligraphy. I was allowed to borrow a team mate’s pen during a collaborative art project, and have since written and drawn most of my work with this particular type of pen. It has a ‘Fine’ sized rounded tip and interior space for two ink cartridges of black ink.

The pen has many imperfections: the ink from cheap refill cartridges blotches and staines, and does not combine with water colours at all, my hands are regularly stained, etchings on sketching paper take a disproportionally long time to dry, and the ink easily bleeds through thinner types of paper. Each time the pen accidentally drops to the ground, I’m worried that the internal filling mechanism will break again.

This is the second replacement pen in a six-year period.

Even though the pen is not faultless, it does have perfect balance. A perfect physical balance, the way the pen lies in my hand. A perfect mental balance, with the ink stains on my hands showing I’ve had a particularly productive day; new ideas conceived and noted. And a perfect emotional balance, between writing and drawing. Seeing the pen can be used for both, I can seamlessly transition between different areas of interest.

Many times, when I pick up the pen, it is to jot down a new idea, a new insight, a new concept, recorded for posterity. And those ideas might not be executed, insights may change, concepts might not work out – yet they existed. Which always reminds me of this beautiful poem from The Rubáiyát by Omar Khayyám: The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

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BK Report

ABANDONED BUILDINGS Words Inez Spaargaren

It doesn't matter where you live in the Netherlands; there will probably be several abandoned buildings nearby. While in most cases, the reasons for leaving a building are the same - lack of maintenance, no interest or bankruptcy - this time, the story is much more enjoyable. Each abandoned building has a story about how it became a vacant and escaped occupation, whether it's an urban legend or the truth.

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Take the Faculty of Architecture, a particularly lively and noisy place over four months ago. Now it feels cold and chilly. For months there hasn't been a move in the building. All doors and windows are closed. I look inside, and I hold my hand above my eyes, a light tension rages through my body. It’s hot outside, and I sit down on the floor in the faculty’s shadow, my focus is on the orange hall. Slowly, I disappear into my daydream. In my head, I start walking through the faculty. What is going on here?

With small steps, I walk through the long corridors and carefully look around me. Occasionally, I hear crackling, and my heart makes a little leap. I open a door and look around the corner. There is a model, On a black table in the corner, unfinished. Now and then, the glue is loosening because of the heat, and a stick falls. Will the owner get it back?

Luckily, it's cool in the shade here, the sunlight barely penetrating the surrounding trees. The same trees that were bare four months ago now are in full bloom thanks to the sun of the last months. I walk further to the model room. A thermometer is not necessary to know that trees do not surround this place: it’s too hot to breathe here... Longing for a little water, I open the tap of the toilets. At first, nothing happens, but after a while, a thick black sludge comes out. What is this?

Last year I stood here every hour filling my water bottle. During this activity, I often had a chat with my classmates. Now it is dead quiet here; you could hear a pin drop. The cozy noise of architecture is gone. When will it come back?

The bushes around the faculty are deserted. The gardener hasn't shown himself for weeks, and the branches are slowly bending towards the wall.

Looking up, I see a wall of leaves scattered over the windows. Insects soon find their way between the overgrown bushes. I have to stand on my toes to catch a glimpse of the main entrance. Will there be a day when we can go back inside?

The above questions can only be answered in the future. Right now, because of the coronavirus, more buildings have become abandoned more ever.

Abandoned buildings can be scary and fascinating at the same time. There are many photogenic abandoned buildings all over the world, each with their own story. Let your imagination flow, would the faculty be overgrown by plants after two years standing empty, or will it look like these five abandoned buildings.

The following are the stories behind five abandoned buildings…

Land van Ooit, Drunen, Netherlands Kloontje, the Giant Child, once stood at the head of

the invented Land van Ooit. The inhabitants, the Ooiters, had their own currency and rules. Here, children were the bosses. For fifteen years, the giant amusement park in Drunen was a great success, but after financial setbacks, the park went bankrupt for the second time in 2007. Although the municipality of Heusden bought the area, the amusement park completely fell into disrepair. The Pink Castle stood disconsolate, the paths were overgrown and the Lazy Lakei, Sap the Earth Root, and the Soldiers of Napoleon were still preserved there smiling, with frightening stares. One of the most deserted places in the Netherlands is no longer there.

Swimming pool complex Tropicana, Rotterdam Tropicana was put up for sale in 1990 and sold to a catering entrepreneur in 1993. Over the years, the new owner carried out renovations and adjustments which have modified the original concept. This caused financial problems. Besides, the swimming pool also suffered from a negative image, fuelled by stories about group rapes, brawls, and other naughty behaviours. Razors were also said to have been attached in various slides. The stories have never been proven, but the suspicion has not helped the image of the once-popular swimming pool any good.

Now, entrepreneurs are trying to make the best of it, and they have transformed it into an exclusive hospitality venue.

Beelitz-Heinstätten hospital, near Berlin, Germany The history behind the Beelitz-Heilstätten hospital, 48 kilometres southwest of Berlin, is as scary as it looks. A worker's health insurance corporation designed this hospital complex of 60 buildings. In 1898, the doors opened as a sanatorium where patients were treated for lung diseases. During the First World War, it served as a military hospital of the Imperial German Army. In 1916, Adolf Hitler was admitted after he his leg was injured during The Battle of Somme. The Beelitz-Heilstätten hospital was later used again as a field hospital to treat wounded Nazis in the Second World War.

Land van Ooit, Drunen, Netherlands

Swimming pool complex Tropicana, Rotterdam

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In September 2015, a 21-meter high platform called Baum und Zeit (Tree and Time) was opened. The purpose was to make the abandoned hospital complex more accessible to visitors. The platform hangs above the ground of Beelitz-Heinstätten and continues for about 213 meters.

Beelitz-Heinstätten hospital, near Berlin, Germany

Teufelsberg, Berlin, Germany The Teufelsberg (literally ‘Devil's Mountain’) is not a natural hill, but a large, wooded garbage dump built from the rubble of the Second World War. During the Cold War, it was decided to use this 80-meter high artificial mountain as a base for an eavesdropping station. And so, in the 1950s, a handful of buildings and three iconic domes were built on top of the hill. From this strategic location in the heart of East Germany, it was possible to overhear up to 300 kilometres away. There were plans to build luxury apartments here, but it never came to be. Now, Teufelsberg is a creative breeding ground, with lots of art and graffiti on the buildings.

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Château de Noisy, Celles, Belgium This castle, built-in 1866 as a summer residence for the Liedekerke-Beaufort family, can be found in the Ardennes. It has had several uses over the years. For example, it was also known as Home de Noisy when it still served as an orphanage.

Now, many years later, nature has slowly but absolutely taken the building under its power. Since 1991 the castle has been empty and has fallen into disrepair, so now it looks more and more like a haunted place. Even though the municipality of Celles has already made several bids to buy the castle and the land, the family does not want to give them up.

After this inventory of buildings, I hope there will be various scenarios in your head about what could happen to the faculty, which will allow you to add a story to the faculty building. But of course, we hope that all these scenarios won't be true. And that we can harmlessly speak of an urban legend…B

Beelitz-Heinstätten hospital, near Berlin, Germany

Château de Noisy, Celles, Belgium

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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: 01 CHANGE We live in turbulent times, times which create circumstances where we don’t quite know where we’ll be in just a few short months.

While viruses and protests lay siege on the world we ask ourselves, what will change?

We live in eternal flux, but we live in the tangible evidence of the past.

Next edition: CHANGE. Bnieuws 54/01 release date September 2020.

Bnieuws INDEPENDENT PERIODICAL OF THE FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT TU DELFT VOLUME 53 ISSUE 07