Annual Newspaper 2017-2018

Academic Year 2017/2018

CREDTIS

Editorial Board Madeleine Maaskant, Joseefke Brabander, Klaas de Jong Managing Editor David Keuning Translation and Copy Editing InOtherWords (D’Laine Camp, Maria van Tol and Pierre Bouvier)

Graphic Design Haller Brun, Amsterdam Printing Rodi Rotary Press, Diemen Publisher Amsterdam Academy of Architecture

© 2018 Amsterdam Academy of Architecture www.academyofarchitecture.nl ISBN 978-90-827761-2-6

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or trans­ mitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photo­ copy or any storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Whilst every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture does not accept responsibility for errors or omissions.

EDITORIAL Why has the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture decided to produce an annual newspaper? To envision and share with each other what is taught, studied, drawn, writ­ten, made, built, discussed, organized and exhibited at the Academy of Architecture. The Academy strives to offer plenty of space to experiment, produce and reflect.

The school – located in the heart of Amsterdam – is a laboratory and workshop in one. Together we search for answers to the urgent spatial problems of our time and the future: spatial challenges in which innovation, technological developments, social changes and sustainability play a major role. In education, in research; with each other, with external clients; in the school and beyond.

And by beyond we mean ‘the city’, or even more specif­ ically Amsterdam, because it has a prominent place in this annual newspaper.

That people increasingly migrate to cities is a global de­velopment. But what are the consequences for Amsterdam? The demand for housing is impossible to meet, housing prices are on the rise again after a number of years of crisis, the flow of tourists is unstoppable, mobility is stagnating, and the energy transition will completely change the city – but into what? In what kind of city do we want to live and who gets to determine that?

And what role can or should designers take and play in this? These are questions that the Academy considers important for students to think about, questions that chal­ lenge them to choose a position.

During one of the lectures in the series entitled The Amster­dam Agenda, Esther Agricola (director of the Space and Sustainability Department of the City of Amster­dam) outlined future developments in the capital.

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Subsequently, international guest speakers took a close look at Amsterdam from different angles on 14 consec­ utive evenings. The city was compared with, among other places, Paris, Berlin, Istanbul and Hong Kong. A final debate took place in Pakhuis de Zwijger. The central question in this series was: What can Amsterdam learn from other cities? Students discussed different scenarios, including things you do not want to learn from other cities.

Oliver Wainwright’s luxury property safari through London, for example, describes the rapidly advancing development of building houses as investments rather than places in which to live. In April 2018, a report by the International Monetary Fund was published that warns of the risks of the globally rising house prices in the increasingly interconnected real estate markets. ‘Investors make global cities unaffordable’ is the title of the article in Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad about this report, which Wainwright seems to confirm in his contribution to the annual newspaper, given the square metre prices he mentions in his article.

The Amsterdam Agenda is one example of the educational activities offered at the Academy of Architecture, along with many other projects, exercises, lectures, tours, form studies, exchanges, debates, winter and summer schools … This year’s newspaper does not have the illusion of being complete, it is rather a kaleidoscopic collection of examples and subjects that the editors would like to share with you. Enjoy reading it!

Madeleine Maaskant, director

MADELEINE MAASKANT

HARVEST

ACADEMY AND THE CITY

The billboards of the London luxury property market show an industry obsessed with money, white-washing and personal safety.

Text and Photos Oliver Wainwright

SELLING THE CITY

SELLING THE CITY

swimming pool that will connect two of the towers, hoping that its glass is as bomb-proof as the 6-inch-thick windows of the embassy next door.

It’s the same story down the road at the Albert Embank­ ment, where a clutch of silvery silos by Foster and Partners now stands, topped with £ 22 million (€ 25 million) penthouses. ‘When you’re in a place like this, you literally have London at your feet,’ proclaims the billboard of The Corniche, showing this new-look London to be a place populated solely by Caucasians. For a bit of balance, a solitary Asian face stares forlornly out from one of the building’s goldfish bowl windows, trapped in her hermetically sealed investment unit.

The marketeers claim it’s an accident. ‘I would be appalled if people thought this was conscious ethnic cleansing,’ says William Murray of Wordsearch, the communications agency behind the branding of Battersea Power Station and many of the world’s most exclusive developments, from the Shard to One World Trade Center in New York. ‘It just comes down to whatever stock people the rendering company happens to have in its image library. Visualizations are a blunt tool, not something to be relied upon as representative of the place being created. We spend a lot of time discussing what kind of clothes people are wearing, not what colour their skin is.’

As developers compete for attention with ever more elaborate pieces of ‘placemaking’, these construction hoardings have become a parody of themselves. Property companies no longer build homes, but ‘curate concepts’. They don’t sell flats, but offer ‘boutique collections’. On the Greenwich Peninsula in southeast London, where Hong Kong developer Knight Dragon is busy building a new quarter of 16,000 homes, buyers are invited to ‘join the land rush’, with an image of allwhite settlers loaded into a horse-drawn wagon. ‘Be a peninsula original’ – along with the other 16,000 lumberjack shirtwearing pioneers. Across town, Chelsea Barracks claims to be ‘the most coveted 12.8 acres in the world’, a place where you can acquire ‘A Heritage. A Destiny. A Legacy’ of Britishness, courtesy of the development arm of the Qatari royal family.

Others are more desperate. ‘Drink beverages together’ is the glamorous lifestyle opportunity offered by Stratford’s Prospect East, near the London 2012 Olympic site, while in the newly minted speculators’ hotbed of Aldgate East, they’ve decided to do away with any pretence of building

ACADEMY AND THE CITY

‘We don’t do ordinary,’ declares the billboard at the entrance to the Battersea Power Station building site in southwest London, where cranes are busy conjuring a new world of 3,500 homes, 150 shops and 15,000 jobs from the mud. After standing derelict for decades, Giles Gilbert Scott’s majestic temple of electricity will soon be surrounded by a forest of luxury apartment blocks, some in the shape of thrashing metallic flowers by Frank Gehry, another like a writhing glass snake by Norman Foster, all clustered around a plunging piazza by Bjarke Ingels. It’s a heady cocktail of competing forms and egos that will make the gargantuan brick cathedral seem almost humble in comparison.

It is true, the developers of Europe’s largest regeneration project don’t appear to do ordinary. But they don’t seem to do black people either. In the computer-generated visions emblazoned across the site hoardings, the bustling cafe-lined streets are inhabited by an almost entirely monocultural society of white thirty-somethings. Women with long blonde hair and shopping bags fill the foreground, occasionally accessorized with prams, the scene drenched with that scorching Miami sunshine so familiar to London. ‘New exciting concept coming soon,’ coos another billboard over a vacant shopfront where this tableau is intended to unfold. The new real estate concept of ethnic cleansing.

It might seem like an odd decision, particularly given that the project is masterminded by a Malaysian consortium, and that the first phase of flats was sold mainly to buyers in Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong. But therein lies the answer: speak to any property marketing agency and they’ll tell you their East Asian clients don’t like to see black faces in the brochures. They are buying a piece of England, which means blonde, blue-eyed Burberry models.

The white-washing continues up the Dubai-style strip of the Nine Elms district, running along the River Thames to Vauxhall, where £ 15 billion (€ 17 billion) of international investment is shaping the riverside into a gauntlet of luxury enclaves. Surrounding the new US embassy in a £ 1 billion (€ 1.1 billion) fortified arc of paranoia, ‘London’s new diplomatic precinct’ of Embassy Gardens trumpets the arrival of ‘a London address with international significance’. But not that international: its hoardings are once again populated by white models staring into the middle distance, trying their best to look like dashing diplomats as they loll in the glass-bottomed

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OLIVER WAINWRIGHT

Luxury property billboards across London.

ACADEMY AND THE CITY

actual homes for people to live in. ‘Off-plan investment opportunities,’ trumpets one hoarding. ‘Proven return. Project 54% growth to 2020.’

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Outside the Bubble As prices have inflated beyond all reason in the capital, investors are flocking to the regions to find better rental yields on ‘affordable luxury’ schemes outside the bubble, from Manchester and Liverpool to Birmingham and Leeds. In Salford Quays near Manchester, the first of four 26-storey barcode-striped towers is fast rising out of the ground, but there is no marketing suite in sight. The 1,100-flat ‘X1’ scheme is aimed specifically at buy-to-let investors who will likely never even visit, hence the cheap build quality, the towers’ tacky grey livery in-keeping with the MediaCityUK complex nearby, which won the Carbuncle Cup for the ugliest building in the country.

A little further east, north Manchester has been rebranded as NOMA, an £ 800 million (€ 922 million) 20-acre lifestyle concept that claims to be ‘where the modern world began’ – although any evidence of that heritage will soon be trampled beneath ‘Manchester’s most exclusive and iconic landmark’ in the form of a 36-storey slab of luxury flats.

In Liverpool, that historical hub of international trade, the origins of overseas investment are making themselves known more explicitly than ever before with the arrival of New Chinatown, a £ 200 million (€ 230 million) symbol of ‘the burgeoning energy and dynamism of modern China transplanted into the heart of an historic world heritage city’. Currently emerging from behind bright red billboards below the Angli­ can Cathedral, the development will feature 800 five-star serviced apartments looking on to a sunken Chinese bazaar, based on the ‘idea and motif of the awakening dragon – a powerful symbol of China’s resurgence and status as a new global power’. As Hong Kong-based estate agent Neil Jensen says: ‘You can’t just put up a block of flats in Liverpool and expect people to buy it … If you want foreign buyers there has to be a story.’ The project has since collapsed amid accusations of fraud.

Such stories are increasingly being told the other side of the world, from where the concrete realities are taking shape.

Most buyers of these kind of schemes will never see the roadside hoarding, but acquire their assets at an exhibition stand in a far-flung hotel lobby.

In the deserted marketing suite at the Battersea Power Station site, which is clad with vaguely crumpled metal panels to hint at the coming Gehry, a sales assistant admits that most of the units have already been sold off-plan overseas – but that now I have the lucky chance to buy one back at a premium. ‘Many of the investors are re-selling their units before the project has even been finished,’ he says, handing me a Playstation controller so I can take a walk through my virtual future home. ‘They only paid 20 per cent, then they’ll sell them on again a year or so before completion and make a load of money, which is pretty cool.’

Brexit The reality is that, with the looming spectre of Brexit, many buyers have been ditching their assets as fast as they can, realizing there is a huge glut of flats at the top end of the market. It was recently revealed that more than half of the 1,900 ultra-luxury apartments built in London last year failed to sell, raising fears that the capital will be left with dozens of highend ghost towers. A combination of Brexit uncertainty and a hike in stamp duty on second homes has deterred many.

Thankfully, the Battersea Power Station sales assistant says I’m still in time to snap up a £ 1.7 million (€ 2 million) Gehry two-bed flat, or a penthouse on the roof of the power station for £ 45 million (€ 52 million).

The globalized nature of the high-end property market is having an interesting effect on how developments are being presented on the street. Given that the UK’s superprime apartments are increasingly sold elsewhere, via agents trained to ensnare the world’s ‘ultra-high net worth individ­ uals’, the traditional site hoarding is mutating from a device to sell flats into an instrument to appease the local community.

It has evolved from glitzy advert to defensive justification, trumpeting the community benefits that the project will bring and offering extensive menus of alternative facts.

‘Over 50% of the development is public realm,’ insists a sign at the foot of the swollen 53-storey shaft of One Black­ friars, a tower on the south bank of the Thames that attracted ridicule for its promotional video, which featured a young couple arriving to the capital in a private helicopter, visiting museums and ‘exclusive boutiques’ before heading to their penthouse. ‘50 Shades of Grotesque,’ tweeted writer Nereida Diesent. ‘British condo pitch or trailer for the worst

SELLING THE CITY

Advertisement for the Greenwich Peninsula, presently being built according to a masterplan of London architects Allies and Morrison. The 60-ha site will include 15,720 homes and 2.5 km of public riverfront.

ACADEMY AND THE CITY soft-core porn flick ever?’ But at least we now know that half of the flats will be pubic realm, open to anyone to walk in whenever they please.

Stung by the widespread animosity, the developer of One Blackfriars, St George, a branch of the Berkeley Group, now stresses the local benefits of its bulbous totem. ‘Not only building homes, but building futures,’ says the hoarding. ‘Over 200 new jobs created upon completion of the development.’

Never mind that the project gets away with providing no affordable housing on site, paying just 4 per cent of its total value to the council instead.

The Berkeley Group continues to propagandize its philanthropy across the capital wherever it can. A large sign outside The Corniche lists the total bounty that the developer has magnanimously given back to the community, asserting that ‘over the last five years, Berkeley has contributed £ 1.5 billion (€ 1.7 billion) to pay for affordable housing, as well as £ 396 million (€ 456 million) to help pay for schools, parks, shops, transport and other public amenities.’ The project in question contains ‘84 affordable senior living homes,’ it adds, using the Newspeak definition of affordable: the onebed retirement flats start at £ 565,000 (€ 652,000), and they’ll be overshadowed by the hotel next door. In Hackney, east London, the Labour council has taken to using site hoardings to justify the construction of private housing on public land and criticize the Conservative government’s housing policy.

‘28 new council homes for social renting, 39 for shared owner­ ship,’ reads the hoarding around an estate regeneration project, ‘and eight for private sale to help pay for them all in the absence of government funding.’

I conclude my luxury property safari at the dense thicket of concrete stumps that will soon be Southbank Place, ‘a location where residents feel they have truly arrived’. This £ 1.3 billion (€ 1.5 billion) joint venture by the Canary Wharf Group and Qatari Diar will see 900 flats squeezed in behind the London Eye, packed so close together that a third will fall below the minimum daylight standards. The estate agents’ sales strategy identifies the target market as ‘international tycoons’ and ‘middle eastern couples’, but I give it a go anyway. I’m greeted by a jovial butler, who politely hides his disbelief at my intention to buy a £ 1 million (€ 1.1 million) studio apartment, and ushers me into the oak-lined corridors of County Hall to await my tour of a glowing buffet of Perspex models, where

a Chinese family and their agent are exploring touch-screen panoramas of their penthouse options.

It turns out to be an appropriate setting for such a scene.

This palatial suite, with windows looking out over the Thames, used to be the office of Ken Livingstone, then head of the leftwing Greater London Council, who as mayor of London first opened the doors of the capital to investors as a place to park their cash.

‘I was very keen to get foreign investment into London,’ Livingstone said in a recent interview. ‘But that was in terms of constructing developments and creating new jobs, not flogging them off to people who just keep them there in case there is a coup and they have to flee.’ Southbank Place will have plenty of those, but it also professes to be a mixed community. The sales assistant assures me there are a handful of affordable homes, though I won’t have to meet the residents; they’re tucked round the back in a separate block facing the main road.

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OLIVER WAINWRIGHT

Luxury property billboards across London.

ACADEMY AND THE CITY

Esther Agricola, director of the Space and Sustainability department of the city of Amsterdam, talks about the relationship between the Academy and the city.

CITY

People who at the mention of the director of an urban planning department imagine a designer in a white dustcoat and a pencil in hand, have a surprise coming to them at the Space and Sustainability department of the city of Amsterdam. Director Esther Agricola (black pencil skirt, relentlessly attention-seeking mobile phone on the table) studied architecture history at the Vrije Universiteit and subsequently held a variety of positions, including project manager at spatial planning institute Nirov and director of the municipal Monuments and Archeology department. On 14 February she gave a lecture at the Academy entitled ‘Les Grands Projets Hollandais’. Below, she tells us more about the Academy and the city of Amsterdam.

CITY MAKER

Text David Keuning

ACADEMY AND THE CITY

Photo Space and Sustainability Department, City of Amsterdam

Esther Agricola is director of the city of Amsterdam’s Space and Sustainability department.

MAKER hat makes you a top employer for the Academy. The avT erage architecture firm may employ one or two Academy students.

‘Yes. But we are not an architecture firm. We employ urban designers and landscape architects. Those are the people interested in us as an employer. Urban development’s link to the public cause is even stronger than that of architecture. Since our task is such a public one, with assignments from the city, some people are really interested in working here.’

also ensure that they introduce practical assignments to the students. The city is a source of ingredients for all kinds of challenges. In Amsterdam, for example, we are increasingly realizing high-rise buildings. The Academy pays attention to this. What can you do with that? What kind of typologies can you develop? We like students to investigate this.’ ou trained as an architecture historian. How do you Y look at your current activities from the perspective of that discipline?

‘Good question. Traditionally, urban development departments were led by urban designers. In that respect, the world has changed substantially. Departments are now more integrated.

Urban development is integrated with planning, green, water, sustainability, and so on. This has changed the profile of its director as well. Past directors, pencil in hand, were drawing big things. But today the job also involves a lot of management, administration, organizational development, you name it.’

oes the Academy impose requirements on the type of D work people get to do in the Space and Sustainability department?

‘Yes it does, and vice versa, we also keep an eye on the curriculum the Academy provides. What is it an urban designer actually has to be able to do? We regularly consult about this.

It is an important exchange, because the profession is very dynamic. Sustainability is becoming increasingly important, for example. The question is: How can you fit such a subject into the curriculum? What do designers need to know about the energy transition, or about climate change? What do you need, to be able to do your job properly? The Academy is up to date on this subject.’

I understand that the Space and Sustainability department outsources a lot of design work to design offices anyway?

‘That’s only partly true. We employ many urban designers and they work on all kinds of areas, but it is true that they often do so in collaboration with external designers. Take IJburg, for example. Our urban designers gave it all they’ve got, together with external designers. The design and layout of the public space is an important part of our work. Public space is often quite anonymous. Certain designs are associated with certain names, but the city is not into personality cults. Our people are government officials and they get the job done together.

As a result, artistic signatures of makers are not always visible.

But we do have a lot of in-house designers. That is our basis.’

o you sometimes use ideas and plans generated by D Academy students? Artist Sarah van Sonsbeeck, for example, organized a winter school about a design assignment at the head of Java-eiland. Jolijn Valk graduated on a bridge across the IJ. Does the city look at the results of such studies?

‘We regularly do. The Academy often picks up topical issues from the city and presents them to students. We are interested in the results. Colleagues of mine who teach at the Academy

How did you end up here?

‘I also studied Political Sciences, though I did not complete the course. That is what raised my interest in decision-making processes. Graduating as an architecture historian, I had focused on the reconstruction period. That was a gigantic building task and studying it, you cannot escape questions that are strictly speaking outside the domain of the history of architecture. Which power structures, which decision-making processes, which institutions are involved? In a word: How do

ESTHER AGRICOLA

avid Keuning: Are there many Academy students workD ing in the Space and Sustainability department?

Esther Agricola: ‘We have a very close relationship with the Academy. Not only because our staff have been teaching there for years – Martijn de Wit and Hans van der Made, for example, and Ton Schaap used to lecture there – but also because many of our staff members are training at the Academy. At this time, about 20. After their graduation, we often hire these people as well.’

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ACADEMY AND THE CITY

it, invite tenders, negotiate with developers. We are involved in quality monitoring. We also enforce regulations regarding the external appearance of buildings: through the integrated Spatial Quality committee. There is, of course, a lot of tension; I see all kinds of things happen. I often come across dilemmas that I try to steer in a certain direction as well. It’s a constant weighing of pros and cons. Spatial planning is a balancing act.

Space is scarce and you can only use it once.’

I n a city like Amsterdam, there is sometimes a bit of tension between the past and the future in terms of new developments that people fear will affect culturalhistorical values. What is your angle?

‘It can indeed result in conflicts. People can strongly disagree about these issues. I think a certain amount of tension between heritage values and ​​ future values is a ​​ good thing. I also think that we should organize that tension well. That is why I’m glad there is still a separate department for Monuments and Archaeology. It is a department with its own knowledge, views and instruments. You have to be able to fight well together to figure out what is important. The Sixhaven area in Amsterdam Noord, for example, is a protected urban landscape with heritage value. How can you use this in area development? That is not an easy story. You want to build towers to get the area up and running and to finance the metro station. This is at odds with green and cultural-historical values. It is a productive tension, which you have to go look for deliberately and in which everyone is responsible for their own role. There is a Monuments councillor and there is a Spatial Development councillor. If citizens and civil servants cannot reach agreements, the councillors have to have room to argue with each other. I think that is thrilling. It’s the way it should be.’

he city council is responsible for the political assessT ment of spatial issues. How does this relate to the big and small decisions taken daily by your employees in the Space and Sustainability department?

‘Many, many issues require the approval of the city council, the College of Mayor and Aldermen or the governing body of a city district. Zoning plans or urban development plans have to be decreed because citizens have the right to add something to them or to simply oppose them. They have to be in a position to state their objection the moment the subject is on the table.

That is the way, thankfully, spatial planning is organized in the Netherlands. I think it is a beautiful, democratic organism. Many people call it bureaucratic, and it often is, but democratically it is a great thing first and foremost. It is a method that protects citizens from the government and the government from individual interests. After all, governments have to monitor the interests of the public and protect it from individuals that want to take the money and run. As a municipal department we have a great range of instruments, in particular zoning plans and licensing.

Everything is aimed at keeping an eye on the process to ensure that nothing crazy happens. This takes time, because you want to do it carefully, and decision making almost never happens in a straight line since it involves too many different interests. But it is always worthwhile.’

he Academy devoted an education project to Sixhaven.

T It is indeed an interesting challenge, because it is a particularly vulnerable, small area. It may be gone before you know it. And you can build towers anywhere. So what is your personal point of view? Do you ever feel you have to keep the developers in check?

‘Spatial development is a continuous conversation about quality. That’s what we aim for. My goal is to look carefully at the context and to make connections with the nature of a place.

Within the city of Amsterdam, the municipal development company organizes area development. Once we have made an area survey or an urban development plan, they will implement

topical discussion is of course the one about the A Sluis­buurt, to which the Academy also devoted an educational project. How is this project coming along? After the public discussions, in spring last year, there has not been any news.

‘That’s right; that has to do with the process. The city council established the urban development framework in September last year. This included preconditions such as the height and the density of the buildings. That was the first occasion on

CITY MAKER

Photo Jan-Richard Kikkert

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you rebuild a city and a country together after a war? That’s when my political interest and my interest in the past came together. From that moment on I focused on the post-war history of cities. At some point I found myself in heritage preservation. On the basis of my knowledge of the past, I was able to switch to the future.’

Teachers and students admire the exhibited models during the final assessment of the Sluisbuurt project (P3b).

ACADEMY AND THE CITY

Photo Jan-Richard Kikkert

The models were exhibited in the auditorium of the Academy of Architecture, where they could be seen together for the first time.

which people could give their opinions. We made the rounds of the districts; these give advice and present the plans for public consultation. We then made their input part of the decision-making process. Once a plan is up for discussion by the city council, all political parties can try to influence the decision. That is now over and done with, a first version is being made with an eye to all of the comments. At some point, the plans will re-enter the decision-making process.’

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o the municipal decision-making process determines S the moment at which the public discussions take place.

‘Exactly. We organized a large number of evenings to gauge public opinion. We also initiated a discussion in the professional community. It was dominated by certain colleagues holding strong opinions. I thought that was excellent, because we are doing something new. The Sluisbuurt will not become a dime a dozen. We are developing a new urban planning repertoire, and we are curious about the views of urban designers and architects.’

o conclude, do you also teach? I can image your practiT cal experience is valuable to students.

‘I do occasionally give lectures, like recently at the Academy, but I do not teach. I would really like to though. It is very labour-intensive. If you are a designer, you can give assignments and supervise students. But if you are a historian like me, then you have to tell a story yourself. I’m in awe of people who do that and who are good at it. Teaching is incredibly important. Today’s students are the designers of the future.’

ESTHER AGRICOLA

o you have no problems with architects who make S alternative plans on their own initiative to mobilize public opinion.

‘On the contrary, I think that is good and important.’

EDUCATION

The start workshop is aimed at getting acquainted: with each other and with building structures.

Text Bruno Doedens, Photos Marlise Steeman

FROM BUCKMINSTER FULLER TO SHIGERU BAN

FROM BUCKMINSTER FULLER TO SHIGERU BAN

The start workshop is the first real day for new students at the Amsterdam Academy of Archi­ tec­ture to get acquainted. Over the course of that day the students from the three disciplines – architecture, urban design and landscape – get to know each other by undertaking all sorts of activities in fun ways. This includes constructing bamboo structures in the courtyard. Focused collaboration is the dominant theme here, but the challenge also evokes all kinds of associations,

from the domes of Buckminster Fuller and Otto Frei to the low-tech architecture of Shigeru Ban. There is also a walk around the immediate neighbourhood of the Academy, through which students get to know the importance of narratives and as a result get a peek into the logic of the history of urban developments. The third element is personal reflection. Why did you decide to study at the Academy of Architecture? What is your personal ambition? And we finish with

perhaps the most important question: When, for you, does building become architecture?

This last question, of course, should remain at the back of students’ minds during their entire time at the Academy. The start workshop is a fun way to lay the foundation for collaboration among the disciplines of architecture, urban design and landscape: a unique, and perhaps the most significant, strength of the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam.

The structural design of the dome had a clear basis.

Two bamboo triangles were combined to form a six-pointed star, whose shape gives it a high degree of stability.

EDUCATION The six-pointed stars were combined into a large three-dimensional structure that occupied virtually the entire courtyard.

BRUNO DOEDENS

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EDUCATION

Student life at the Academy comprises hard work as well as leisurely lunches at a sun-drenched courtyard.

Photos Jonathan Andrew

ACADEMY LIFE

ACADEMY LIFE

ACADEMY LIFE

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EDUCATION

EDUCATION

Head of Form Studies Bruno Vermeersch was responsible for the exhibition design of the Graduation Show.

Text Vibeke Gieskes, Photos Inge Hoogland

A SEA OF PLASTIC

A SEA OF PLASTIC

EDUCATION ‘The design for the Graduation Show was a quest for temporality and transience,’ says Vermeersch. There were a few premises for the exhibition: it would only last three days and the budget was limited, which meant using as little material as possible. That extra material would be necessary was a fact: exhibition space had to be created and the routing had to be designed. ‘In the exhibition building business, the use of “sustainable” materials is advocated on the one hand,’ says Vermeersch. ‘On the other, however, a temporary exhibition is by definition not sustainable, with a few exceptions. The amount of material and packaging that is thrown away is immense.’

Vermeersch therefore used a large amount of plastic in his design: an implicit critique of the building world’s pursuit of sustainability. During the Graduation Show, visitors were guided through plastic corridors and spaces along all of the graduation plans. Where necessary, passages were closed off and rooms were created.

Eventually, 36 kg of plastic were used for the exhibition, with a total weight that was a fraction of what it would have been if walls and panels of another material had been implemented.

‘Moreover,’ says Vermeersch, ‘the transparency of plastic yields an important spatial and aesthetic quality. And plastic is very easy to recycle.’

VIBEKE GIESKES

For the Graduation Show, Bruno Vermeersch, architect and the head of Form Studies at the Academy of Architecture, transformed the academy building into a continuous exhibition space for a few days. Vermeersch explains that for such an exhibition, where you want the visitors to see all of the graduation projects, the building has too many different escape possibilities: each space can be reached in different ways. Ikea’s routing concept was an important source of inspiration for Vermeersch. The attractiveness of the products ensures that visitors want to see everything, and the routing guarantees that they cannot do otherwise.

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EDUCATION

Donna van Milligen Bielke portrays the ideals of the Academy with her work.

Text Vibeke Gieskes

An important part of the Graduation Show is the Kromhout Lecture, named after the namesake and co-founder of the Academy of Architecture Willem Kromhout (1864 – 1940). Since 2010, this lecture is held annually by an alumnus or former teacher of the Academy of Architecture who has an affinity with the way that Kromhout practiced and thought about architecture. ‘Kromhout’, ac­cording to director Madeleine Maaskant in her introduction, was the ‘artist’s conscience among architects’. She further emphasized that Kromhout’s ideas are still an important guideline for determining the content and policy of the current curriculum at the Academy of Architecture.

The development of architectural knowledge and artistic talent still go hand in hand and an important part of education is, as Kromhout originally intended, the development of the personality of the architect, an architect who by asking

the right questions develops a critical attitude towards society. It is therefore imperative for the school to provide space for individuality and experiment, according to Maaskant.

The Kromhout Lecture 2017 was presented by Donna van Milligen Bielke, who works on the interface between architecture, urban design and urban interior. She graduated from the Academy of Architecture in 2010 and won the prestigious Prix de Rome in 2014. Many of her projects are geared towards research, but she is now also working with Ard de Vries on the realization of one of her designs: the Kunstwerf in Groningen.

In an intuitive and rational way, she repeatedly proposes rigorous interventions in existing urban structures, interventions that not only change the structure of the city forever, but that also have a profound effect on the architecture and urban interiors. By seeing the city as a built structure, the

boundary between public and private, between inside and outside, can be blurred and adapted more easily, as her projects demonstrate. In this structure, she designs new borders and boundaries and adds new ordering layers, allowing new routes, connections and new open and confined spaces to arise. By making use of the organizing power of the wall, she in fact choreographs the movements of the users of the spaces.

The visual power of her drawings and visualizations hardly needs words. Artistry and a critical attitude towards what is and can be, is present in all facets of Van Milligen Bielke’s work. Her narrative and fictional representations bear witness to a sensitive, clear and recognizable style.

The spirit of Kromhout therefore still seems to imbue the Academy of Architecture.

KROMHOUT LECTURE

THE ARCHITECT’S CONSCIENCE

The 2017 annual Kromhout Lecture was delivered by architect and former student Donna van Milligen Bielke in November.

URBAN DESIGN DREAMS flexibly to changes in society, technology and economy. We’re living in times of major changes and need to meet the challenges of today by the responses of tomorrow.’

Appenzeller’s own firm, MLA+, focuses on the local application of progressive ideas and concepts from all over the world. He aims to apply the philosophies of his architecture practice

19

in education as well, with one big difference.

‘Stu­dents can dream and work on challenges that are idealistic, technically unfeasible or not politically expedient,’ he says. ‘I want our students to dare to dream and thus contribute to the discussion of tomorrow. That way, they can raise the level of both urban design and our living environment.’

MARKUS APPENZELLER

Markus Appenzeller has been the head of the Urban Planning Master’s programme since 2017. He gave his acceptance speech in November.

Photo Marlise Steeman

Markus Appenzeller has been head of the Urban Planning Master’s programme since the summer of 2017. The profession of urban designer, he says, is a difficult one. ‘We make cities rather than buildings; we create public space rather than plant trees.’ He believes the diffuse boundaries of the profession also create many opportunities. Appenzeller: ‘We can and have to respond

EDUCATION

Markus Appenzeller wants students to dream and work on challenges that are idealistic, technically unfeasible or not politically expedient.

EDUCATION

The Amsterdam Academy of Architecture nominated two landscape designs and two architecture projects for the annual Archiprix Netherlands competition.

Text Janna Visser-Verhoeven

ARCHIPRIX NOMINATIONS

ARCHIPRIX NOMINATIONS

Each year, academic design programmes in the Netherlands select their best graduation projects to participate in the Archiprix Netherlands competition. Twenty-seven projects from the universities in Delft, Eindhoven and Wageningen and the Academies in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Groningen, Arnhem, Tilburg and Maastricht vie for this prestigious prize every year. Graduation projects by alumni of the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture have been awarded first prize for five years in a row and have received various honourable mentions as well.

The Amsterdam Academy presented the four graduation projects from the 2016 – 2017 aca­ demic year that would be nominated for Archiprix

Netherlands 2018 at the conclusion of the Graduation Show on 5 November 2017. This year the Graduation Show featured 25 designs from the Master’s programmes in architecture, urban design and landscape architecture.

Architect Jeroen van Schooten, co-founder of Team V Architectuur, served as visiting critic.

He was part of the jury along with the director of the Academy, Madeleine Maaskant, and pro­ gramme heads Jan-Richard Kikkert (architecture), Markus Appenzeller (urban design) and Maike van Stiphout (landscape architecture).

The nominated graduation projects were Flow­ ing Power by Mirte van Laarhoven (landscape architecture), On Walls and Other Free­doms by

Annette Bos (architecture), Dut­zendteich by Brigitta van Weeren (landscape architecture) and Home of Legends by Dafne Wiegers (architecture). The Archiprix Netherlands award ceremony took place in June 2018; Mirte van Laarhoven received an honourable mention for her graduation project Flowing Force.

This year again featured a vote for the audience award. Bert Verveld, president of the Executive Board of the Amsterdam University of the Arts, announced the winner: The Seven Follies of Lampedusa by Chiara Dorbolò was selected as the audience’s favourite graduation project.

Street view: a building without a façade.

heroes are, and may (or may not) find them.

Because where is the entrance? And how do you get to the next level?

Like many games, the building is free to play, providing an open space with a roof garden for the city, while at the same time guaranteeing a business model. More­ over, Home of legends is an investigation of how the physical habitat will look if the digital habitat is becoming more and more influential, and more time is spent sub­merged in it. The digitization of daily life

is a revolution as important for architects as was the housing development in the Industrial Revolution, the social turn­around of the 1960s and the quest for sustainability in the 1990s and 2000s.

The jury noticed that this type of programme does not yet have a typology.

‘That has been the challenge for the designer,’ says the jury. ‘She convinced us with the embracing of new technologies.

That is also visible in the way the project is presented.’

Entrance area.

21

Gaming arena.

Merchandise and display space.

Office and meeting spaces.

Player’s private room.

Section showing the bar, gaming arena and roof terrace.

Model.

EDUCATION

Dafne Wiegers

Home of Legends is an eSports hub in the heart of London, designed for gaming team Fnatic, housing their League of Legends team and head­quarters. Home of Legends offers spaces for the profes­sional players to train, eat, come together and sleep, and the building can also be visited by fans.

In this building, spaces for professional players on the one hand and spaces for fans on the other are intertwined like an ice cream sundae. Fans visiting the building are on a constant quest to find out where their

ARCHIPRIX NOMINATIONS

Home of Legends: eSports hub for Fnatic

EDUCATION

Flowing Power Mirte van Laarhoven

The Dutch river delta plays a major role in the national identity and economy of the Netherlands. In designing the area, emphasis has long been placed on safety, security and functionality; along the way its natural value has been overlooked. Flow­ ing Power aims to transform the delta into a more sustainable, self-sufficient system in which water flow, erosion and sedimen­ tation foster greater biodiversity.

By means of strategic interventions at crucial node points, problems concerning

water safety and security, biodiversity, recreation, infrastructure, safeguarding fresh water, rehabilitating migration routes for fish and birds and interpreting ambitious European nature objectives are approached in a pos­itive way. Challenges that seem to conflict at first glance reinforce each other.

One example is the flood channel at Varik, orig­inally designed solely to discharge large quantities of water at high tide. Permanently using this channel for both water discharge and shipping creates room to restructure

this waterway, which is silting up and highmaintenance, as an ebb channel: a nature area where the river shapes the landscape and residents and visitors benefit from flowing power.

The jury was impressed by the richness of this project and the convincing way the solutions of the water issues were illustrated.

‘Research-through-design in using physical models for testing is done in a contagious way,’ said the jury. ‘The proposal is very convincing on all scale levels.’

Tidal gradients on the Ventjagersplaten.

River dunes at the Bocht van Sint Andries.

22

Meander curves and marshes in the Rijnstrangen.

ARCHIPRIX NOMINATIONS

Ventjagersplaten demonstration: from riverbank obstacles to gradual land-water crossings with tidal gradients.

Rijnstrangen demonstration: from a closed-off river arm with agrarian water-level management to secondary flow channels with meander curves and marshes.

Bocht van Sint Andries demonstration: from silting channels to shipping channel and ebb channel with river dunes.

EDUCATION

Master plan.

Impression of the Grosse Strasse as a water axis.

Filling up the toxic Silbersee creates a new dune, the Silberdüne.

Playing basketball on the Zeppelinfeld with the Zeppelintribune in the background.

23

Dutzendteich: Difficult Heritage as New Public Park Brigitta van Weeren

Dutzendteich is a 340-ha event space and recreational park on the outskirts of Nuremberg, where the Nazi Party rallies were held in the 1930s. At that time Albert Speer made a master plan with an enormous scale of which some promi­ nent structures remain to this day. These buildings have been in decay for quite some time. The city of Nuremberg recently decided to conserve the site, but only looks at the structures and the architecture.

This graduation project connects the structures to the surrounding park and the city.

The courtyard garden is located at one of the main park entrances and could be programmed by the cultural functions that are in the head buildings of the Congress Hall.

The proposal is to incorporate the heritage sites by making them ‘open spaces’ in the forest. The design focuses on the four open spaces. The Grosse Strasse, now an 8-ha paved parking area, becomes a water axis. The footprint of the road remains and the historical structure stays visible but it can now be used as a place to swim, row or cycle along. The soil that is left from digging the water at the Grosse Strasse, is used to fill up the heavily toxic and pol­luted Silbersee. The granite stones on the Grosse Strasse are used to create a new public sports square on the now

closed-off Zeppelinfeld. The façade of the Congress hall, the biggest preserved national socialist building in Germany, will be opened up and the courtyard, now mainly used for parking, will be turned into an exotic garden.

The jury was impressed by the courage of picking such a controversial site for a graduation project. ‘The design gives new meaning to the place without ignoring the loaded history,’ says the jury. ‘By designing a new landscape the emphasis is put on the public space instead of the enormous controversial surrounding buildings.’

ARCHIPRIX NOMINATIONS

The new public courtyard garden with lush planting and exotic plant species.

EDUCATION

On Walls and Other Freedoms: Search for the meaning of the dome prison in Haarlem Annette Bos

For over 100 years the dome prison in Haarlem has been an introverted and closed fortress. It consists of an ensemble of buildings whose design was based on an ideology that slowly developed from the seventeenth century onward. As the prisoner in his cell was constantly under the eye of the warden, he would behave better and be able to rejoin society as a ‘reformed’ individual. The dome in Haarlem is no longer in use as a prison.

On Walls and Other Freedoms is a research project into a new use for the site.

The grounds, which have gradually become

clogged and cramped since 1901, are to be given new breathing space thanks to the demolition of several buildings.

The demolition material will be recycled to create a hilly park. The former prison site is to be transformed into an inviting place for musicians and music lovers. This will include stages, practice rooms, recording studios, workshops for instrument makers, music start-ups, a vinyl shop, and there is also space for café and restaurant facilities.

Inside the dome a unique structure with an acoustic skin will be erected, creating two concert halls, each with its

Axonometrics.

From impenetrable boundaries to a permeable membrane.

24

From hierarchy to relaxed meandering.

From introvert to extrovert.

ARCHIPRIX NOMINATIONS

Plan map.

From monologue to dialogue.

Maquette.

own atmosphere. The structure is inflat­ able, making it possible to partition the enormous space for an endless array of concerts and performances. This allows temporary use, so that the soul of the dome remains intact.

The jury was surprised by the way the designer opened up the existing building and the site. ‘A place that has been a blind spot in the city is transformed into a public place; from a blind spot into a hot spot,’ said the jury. ‘The integrity of the building has been kept although the function is turned around in a beautiful way.’

EDUCATION

Aerial view of the seven follies on the line.

Fuori, model.

La torre, section.

Terra promessa, section.

La porta, plans and sections of the elements.

Dentro, model.

25 Dentro, detail.

Morteammare, plan.

The Seven Follies of Lampedusa: Using Architecture to Deconstruct the Borderline Chiara Dorbolò

Migration is a natural phenomenon and it has always been part of human history. This is especially evident in a place like Lampedusa, a small island in the middle of the Mediter­ ranean Sea. Lampedusa was for centuries a stepping stone, offering safe harbour to pas­sing ships in case of storms. Today, Lampe­dusa is a militarized piece of land along the border between Italy and Libya. The island plays a contro­versial role in the eyes of the European public: that of a deten­tion centre. It became an instru­ment of political debate during the refugee crisis, a stage from which to convey either the threat of invasion or the urgency of humanitarian aid.

This project researches how archi­tec­ ture can be used as a tool to change the narrative around the island in relation to the topics of borders and immigration. It traces an imaginary line from Tripoli, the main point of departure for immigrants eventually reaching Lampedusa, to Amsterdam. This line passes right through the island. Just like the borders between countries are based on imaginary lines that have become real through social construction, the line tran­sect­ing Lampedusa is made real by the construction of seven architectural inter­ ventions, so-called follies. Using a language based on the vernacular architecture of

the Mediterranean peoples, the follies aim to be reminiscent of home, wherever that might be. Each folly addresses a specific issue connected to immigration and borders, and each of them creates an emotional experience that relates to the dangerous journey across the sea. In doing so, it reminds everyone that every human being is on a journey. The seven follies carry the visitors and the inhabitants of Lampedusa into landscapes off the beaten path. They also provide new public spaces, free from institu­tional power and superimposed programmes.

ARCHIPRIX AUDIENCE AWARD

Morteammare, model.

EDUCATION

During a workshop, students learned all about drone site photography and photogrammetry.

Text James Melsom

Lead by James Melsom, cofounder of Landskip Lab, students of the Integral Design project (P6) conducted the workshop Landscape as Lab oratory in the Achtersluispolder, north of Amsterdam. The workshop focussed on the deployment of aerial (drone) and terrestrial (phone) site photography and photogrammetry. The process of aerial site photogrammetry – or photo-based surveying and digital terrain modelling – was applied to two distinct areas of the Achtersluispolder, on either side of the A2 national motorway.

The aerial-surveying aspect of the workshop produced two distinct high-resolution datasets that can be integrated into the larger national terrain datasets, revealing details such as sur-

face ice, vegetation heights, ground texture and conditions, allowing deeper insight into land use, landscape change, seasonal variation and dynamic systems.

A secondary exercise involved the application of the drone landscape photogrammetry premise on the human scale, capturing and processing a discrete site detail or constructed element as a textured digital model, for later integration into discrete design projects, or into the large-scale photogrammetric dataset of the polder.

For the students, the role of the humble site visit is reinterpreted, with the designers applying their cameras to strategically detect and survey specific landscape structures and layers on the site. In a process analogous to reconstructing

FLYING HIGH

FLYING HIGH

Drone demonstration on site to workshop participants with Maike van Stiphout by James Melsom.

digital models of the site from photos, overlapping photos from different positions are jux­ taposed to recreate a section of the site, emphasizing the key landscape elements detected.

The students were able to collage these terrestrial photographs with the thousands of aerial shots taken by the drone, expanding their possible field of view and bridging public and private views. The composition of various landscape typologies (industry, infrastructure, housing, allotment gardens, agriculture, polder, canal and lake nature reserve) could be combined into one collage.

A parallel series of lectures incorporated a discussion of techniques and international surveying and research projects of the Landskip Lab.

EDUCATION Collages of aerial and terrestrial imagery from the photogrammetric campaign.

JAMES MELSOM

Collage Sybren Lempsink

27

EDUCATION FLYING HIGH

Aerial view of the Achtersluispolder.

EDUCATION Aerial view of the Achtersluispolder.

29

JAMES MELSOM

The microtopography of the polder is clearly visible in this section through a high-resolution point cloud survey model of the frozen Kolksloot, 11:00 a.m., 27 February 2018.

EDUCATION

With their basic shape and strong embedding in the landscape, North Holland stolp farms lend themselves perfectly to analysis and design challenges.

DUTCH PYRAMIDS

In the first quarter of the past academic year, the projects and exercises of second-year students involved a typically Dutch building form: the North Holland stolp farm. The aim of the assignments was to learn how buildings and landscapes are connected in a coherent functional and spatial system by analysing this traditional, regional building type. Jan-Richard Kikkert, head of the Architecture Master’s programme, talks about the reasons that led to his choice of subject.

DUTCH PYRAMIDS

Text David Keuning

EDUCATION

Photos Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands S.J. Bouma (left) and P. van Galen (right)

David Keuning: Why are stolp farms fascinating?

Jan-Richard Kikkert: Stolp farms unite all of the elements of the farming business under a single roof. They centre on a haystack between four large columns, called the vierkant (square). It is surrounded by dairy cattle, young stock, storage space for wagons and other equipment, a dwelling and a place to sleep for the farm hand, close against the straw.

Because of the scale increase in livestock farming, the cows no longer fit under the roof, so expansions were added over the course of time. Later still, the animals were housed in a separate building, and the feed was also housed elsewhere.

At that time the stolp farm only contained the dwelling anymore, a modest dwelling under a huge roof. As a result of land consolidation and progressive scale increase, many stolp farms have now lost their ties with farming.

Constructively, it is an interesting building type. As the entire roof rests on the vierkant, the walls only support themselves and this actually makes the stolp form a plan-libre avant la lettre. An ingenious wooden construction allows a cantilevered roof. Their prominent presence in the North Holland landscape will familiarize anyone who passes through this landscape on occasion with the pyramid-shaped roofs of this historical farm type. The stolp farm never stands isolated.

Its relationship with the landscape is central, as the landscape was the breeding ground from which the running of the farm resulted. hy are stolp farms a good subject to address in a teachW ing environment?

Now that many farmhouses have lost their original function, they are in danger of disappearing from the Dutch landscape.

At a time when people are once again looking for originality and identity, this would be a major loss, especially given their spatial quality, which transcends nostalgia. The primary form of the stolp farm is pure architectural expression. Students with architectural ambitions that are insensitive to this should ask themselves whether they are on the right track.

With its multiform influx, the Academy is a fertile breeding ground for research by students who are in no way biased in relation to the stolp farm, if only out of ignorance. Knowledge generates love. Asking four groups of students to think about ways to regenerate the stolp farm introduces this historical building type to a new generation which, by their fresh

Interior roof structure of a farm at Oude Gouw 1 in Wognum, photographed in 1989.

perspective on the profession, may think of proposals that nobody considered before.

This focus is not only good for the stolp farm, but for the students as well. After all, the stolp farm embodies the three basic principles of good architecture: clear readability of construction, function and beauty. Therefore, it is the counterpart of current building culture, which is characterized by cast construction, plasterboard and PVC window frames.

In recent years, the stolp farm has also drawn the political attention of the province of North Holland and of environmental quality watchdog Mooi Noord Holland. Architecture historian Dorine van Hoogstraten held the introduction to the subject and Mart Groentjes from the Boerderijstichting took the group of readers on a preparatory guided tour through his own stolp farm.

31

What did the students study and what did they find?

In the design projects, we looked at possible other functions a stolp farm might accommodate and what architectural consequences that would have. In parallel, we had an exercise that examined the patterns of the building structure and its relation with the landscape, both in a functional and in a material sense.

As we hoped for and expected, the design proposals were very diverse and original: from a hub for hot air ballooning to a honey factory and a contemplative centre for people suffering burnout. One proposal deconstructed the stolp farm and used the materials that became available to construct a new building.

JAN-RICHARD KIKKERT

Farm at Osdorperweg 756 in Amsterdam, photographed in 1957.

EDUCATION

The Honey Factory Tom Bruins Slot Bees are an essential link in the crossfertilization chain of plants and trees. However, their continued existence is threatened by intensive agriculture and the associated pesticides. That is why this design proposal converts Stolp Schouwzicht in Purmerend into a honey factory. Behind the existing brick façade, the walls are replaced by a modular system comprising 2 × 2 m spaces that can each contain eight beehives.

The old wooden structure is made visible by keeping parts of the existing roof and façades open. The plants in the garden take differences between summer and winter into account: in the summer, the bees use less energy, which means they can remain airborne for longer periods of time.

Floor plan and cross sections.

32

Planting schedule garden.

Interior perspective.

DUTCH PYRAMIDS

The design is based on a modular system comprising 2 × 2 m spaces that can each contain eight beehives.

EDUCATION Cross sections and long sections.

Floor plans.

33 Interior perspectives.

Site plan.

Dead Normal De Eenhoorn in De Beemster has lost its original agricultural function and has been converted into a farmhouse. This proposal therefore converts the farm into a funeral home. All non-original parts are removed from the former barn. The resulting open space is rearranged using mud walls. The service spaces, including a space for washing and embalming bodies, are housed in a central block. The funerarium is open-plan to allow visitors to experience the pyramidal interior space of the original farmhouse. A linear columbarium in the garden highlights the formal aspect of the rational landscape.

DUTCH PYRAMIDS

Robin Frings

EDUCATION

Perspective of the landscape with the ruins of the old stolp farm.

34 Exterior chapel.

Waterwolf Chapel Steven de Raan When De Beemster was still a lake it was fierce by nature. Regular flooding meant it was not always pleasant to live on the waterfront. After De Beemster had been drained, the resulting polder was divided on the basis of a rational grid of ditches and roads. Farms were built along these linear elements. The openness of the landscape created long sightlines and a vast landscape. On the basis of this information, Steven de Raan decided to reflood the lot on which his stolp farm stood, partially flooding the farm as well. He demolished the wooden roof construction and reused the material for the construction of a chapel, which stands on the old border between water and land.

Perspective of the landscape with the route from the dike to the chapel.

DUTCH PYRAMIDS

Interior chapel.

EDUCATION

Robbertjan van Veen hopes to be admitted to the Master’s programme Architecture and to that end took a course in Construction Technology.

Below, he shares his experiences.

Text David Keuning, Drawings Robbertjan van Veen

Sketch of a house on stilts facing the Singel canal in Amsterdam.

AMBITION ‘During my studies I was prepped, as it were, for the Zuidas,’ says Van Veen. ‘As a result of my specialization, I became acquainted with DBFMO contracts, in which the tendering and maintenance of buildings are recorded. At one point I realized I had to change tack. I wanted to pursue my dream: as a child, I wanted to become an architect.’

Van Veen wrote to various architecture firms asking them what training would be best in his case and to his surprise received a great deal of response. One architect recommended interior architecture training Perk in Eindhoven; a school that offers a three-year part-time programme at the Bachelor level. During his studies, Van Veen worked at a real estate office in The Hague. ‘There, I did the things the other staff members didn’t know how to, like drafting contracts,’ he says. ‘If I become an architect, I’ll hire someone to do that for me.’ During the Construction Technology course, Van Veen took

Structure and Mechanics, Architectural Drawing, Detailing and Designing. For the latter subject he designed a long-legged residence on the Singel that towers over the surrounding buildings. He’s using the results of his work to create a portfolio, which he needs to be admitted to the Master’s programme.

Van Veen thoroughly enjoyed the course. The study pace was high and the subject matter was ‘a tight fit’. He was especially struck by the passion of the students: ‘I enjoyed being among people who would enthusiastically discuss a beautiful building they saw earlier in the day.’ At the time of the interview, he is still unsure as to his acceptance. Just before going to press, however, we’re informed that he’s been admitted to the Master’s course. ‘I’m looking forward to it,’ he says, ‘especially since many students from the preparatory course have by now become my friends.’

Sketch of the ground floor of the house, where the columns rest on a slanted podium.

AMBITION

In addition to the well-known Master’s programmes in Architecture, Urban Development and Land­scape Architecture, the Academy of Architecture Amsterdam also organizes courses for people who want to study at the Academy but do not meet the prior training requirements.

Architecture students must have a prior Bach­e­ lor’s degree in architecture. The Construction Technology course (coordinated by Jos Rijs) is meant for people who do not meet that requirement but want to be admitted nevertheless. Like the Master’s programme, the course is part-time.

Last year, 21 students took the Construction Technology course. One of them was Robbertjan van Veen (31). He was an outsider within his group of students. Most participants had graduated from an art academy and a large number of them were from abroad. Van Veen had obtained a Master’s degree in European Law from Leiden University, with a specialization in construction law and public tender law.

35

EDUCATION

LIVE IT EVERY LIVING SECOND OF YOUR LIFE

Sir Norman Foster

My advice to young artists the young architects is first of all, does architecture or art, sculpting, painting or drawing is that what you really really want to do more than anything else in the world and you would do anything to be able to do it because it really really fires you.

If that’s the case you’ve made the right choice and you go for it! You live it every living second of your life.

If you don’t believe in it that much?

Then you have to find something that you believe in. Something else.

And it doesn’t really matter what it is, because in life you’ll find that everything is creative.

Bad Luck and Trouble

by Lucas Maassen

Trouble Lord, trouble, trouble is all I see Trouble, I said, ‘Trouble, trouble is all I see’ Yes, you know, I ain’t got nobody to work and care for me Bad luck and trouble, two of my best friends Bad luck and trouble, two of my best friends [Incomprehensible] know bad luck Which I’m walkin’ in Bad luck and trouble hangin’ ’round my door In this workshop we will focus on problems, trouble and obstacles. Hurdles, door sills and other things that stand in the way.

MASTERS OF FORM

Factitious Disorder, Laurens van Zuidam

Football, Lucas Maassen

Capsularisation, Iris Lunenburg and Cone, Anne Wies

Paul McCarthy, Bossy Burger, 1991

EDUCATION

oh ....... now yeah the you food ok ....... ....... [UH] ....... [UH] ....... .......

[UM] ....... now ....... [UH] joy ....... ....... ....... .......

[COUGH] equal now [SMACK] do i [COUGH] all of that thing you form ....... of oil the other way in which we measure .......

[SMACK] [COUGH] ....... [SMACK] the thing i became ....... ....... what i do it well would you want to me [UM] [SMACK] [SMACK] [UM] .......

[UH] people people people people people [UM] people people here ....... take .......

37 Forced Behaviour

by Laurens van Zuidam

NO MESS NO GLORY

BRUNO VERMEERSCH

When you force someone into a specific behaviour, You take away their freedom of expression.

We humans are parts of a machine, called consumer society. A society charac­ terized by power and gaining social status. A society that is telling us to behave in a certain way, whereby personal and pure expression is not allowed. Because if the parts don’t function ‘normally’, The machine will break down.

EDUCATION

Stefan Sagmeister

I’m actually quite critical of storytelling.

I think that all the storytellers are not storytellers.

Recently I read an interview with somebody who designs rollercoasters and he referred to himself as a storyteller.

No fuckhead, you’re not a storyteller!

You’re a rollercoaster designer and that’s FANTASTIC. And more power to you.

But why would you want to be a storyteller, when you design rollercoasters or if you are storytelling, then the story that you’re telling is bullshit.

It’s like this little itty-bitty little thing, yes you go through the space and yes you see other spaces and that’s your story?

That’s a fucking bullshit story.

That’s boring.

People who write novels and make feature films don’t see themselves as storytellers.

It’s all the people who are not storytellers who for kind of strange reasons, because it’s in the air, suddenly now wanna be storytellers.

I think by now in our space, meaning in the space of design, it’s sort of took on the mantle of bullshit.

You know, now everybody is a storyteller.

El Lissannezky

by Anne Wies

‘I am not going to do this, you can do this’ – El Lissitzky El Lissannezky is about decomposing the work of El Lissitzky and making new inter­ pretations of it. It starts with 2D collages and ends up in a new 3D world where you see the floating geometrical shapes that El Lissitzky used in his works of art.

YOU’RE NOT A STORY TELLER

Neo-Gothic-Modernism

MASTERS OF FORM

by Bas van Beek

Modernism has only been around for 100 years.

Because society was considered decadent The first modernists rejected the old In order to create something new The modernists were in denial of the past.

Their teachers however were trained classically And found a way to renew the old By studying Gothic architecture and using new building technology They could make an improved version of the old Neo-Gothic Architecture 1749 to 1940 Gothic Architecture 1140 – 1500 In this workshop, we will explore the pre-modern By stripping the Neo-Gothic And analysing the ornament We will work on creating the missing link and expose the influence the modernists were in denial of.

By fusing the missing link to the Russian constructivists we will get a better understanding of the modern. And in the process even might create some fabricated history ourselves: Neo-Gothic-Modernism

Sam Dillemans on being a creative – Madness for the Detail.

EDUCATION

The thing the people lack nowadays in my opinion is veneration.

People don’t often see others as gods anymore.

They like to idolize them.

But I won’t point out the weak points of a god to say he’s as small as I am because of his human side.

So the distance isn’t that great.

No! Michelangelo also had to go to the bathroom.

But put us in the Sistine Chapel and we don’t make it up the scaffolding.

That’s what’s important.

We have to be able to be in awe of something or someone.

Now everything is fragmented. Everyone does everything, but nothing well.

Everybody is an artist.

If you ask someone on the street what they do in their spare time, apart from a lot of rubbish, one bakes pottery, another one paints, a third one plays the guitar, We’re all wonderfully creative.

A lot of people are creative, but not many are artists.

I don’t mind.

I support that democratic system.

But this is the problem.

This 93-year-old crone, who baked two pots, wants twenty exhibitions.

That’s tiresome.

A part-time painter is the worst.

People who are partly something, are the worst. You have to try to be whole.

That demands sacrifice.

But the worst sacrifice is being half.

Many people choose it freely.

They compromise.

Life is full of compromises, but art is not.

Experimenting with Portraits, Maurice Visser

The Point

by Linda Rusconi

MADNESS FOR THE DETAIL

Drawing or painting a portrait is about observing. It’s an investigation.

First you see the big shapes and lines.

The longer you look at a face, the more you see. You notice different colours and details. It’s up to you how to translate this information to paper or canvas. You must experiment with different materials to find the right translation.

Every face, mood or emotion can ask for a different approach. We are going to take a very hard look at ourselves and others.

BRUNO VERMEERSCH

Jelle Engelchor

EDUCATION

Collecting air-filled bladders from Ascophyllum nodosum to extract natural alginate.

THE BLESSINGS OF NATURE

Students exert pressure on skins of seaweed to create ‘fabric from the sea’.

EDUCATION

In a research assignment, students explored the use of seaweed in building materials.

Text and Photos Baukje Trenning

THE BLESSINGS OF NATURE building traditions (the Modern Seaweed House on the island of Læsø, completed in 2015) and a commercial insulation material used in hollow spaces like walls and roofs (NeptuTherm, produced by the eponymous company in Karlsruhe and launched in 2015).

Worldwide, 12,000 different species of sea­weed exist. In the O4 research assignment we used the local green variety Ascophyllum nodosum, found in the North Sea, both in fresh and dried form, as well as with Agar Agar powder, available at Asian food markets. It is the ambition to explore in a later stage the use of waste streams arising from seaweed production for non-food applications such as medical and pharmaceutical production and biofuels.

We examined seaweed in several ways using simple DIY processes. The first experiments

showed the aesthetic and physical potential of the material. Furthermore, as an educational exercise the 1:1 experiments raised the students’ awareness of the visual and tactile aspects of the material, as well as developing an understanding and knowledge of research processes. As the emphasis of the project was on collaboration and sharing knowledge, students kept track of their experiments and findings and recorded these in logbooks. Future students will be able to build on these experiences in developing their own experiments. In 2018 we developed, together with guest lecturer chemist Pieter Keune, a fuller comprehension of the chemical composition of seaweed and ways to process it. For the moment the most promising application of seaweed in architectural construction seems to be as a temporary support structure or a sealant.

Chemist and science philosopher Pieter Keune helps students to create alginates (a gel-like substance) from chemicals.

BAUKJE TRENNING

For the architect of tomorrow, it is important to have knowledge of high-tech and biobased materials, sustainable architecture and the circular economy. Therefore the Academy of Architecture Amsterdam started the research assignment Seaweed (O4) in 2017. Within this assignment, students investigated the possibilities of seaweed as a building material by reviewing literature and projects, and by developing material experiments.

The project fits in a global trend of exploring the potential of algae. Various institutes of higher education in the Netherlands look into the use of seaweed, for instance to create biofuels to replace fossil fuels, as an alternative protein source to meat, or by using the waste chain to create bioplastics. The O4 research assignment was triggered by the use of seaweed in two architectural applications: a house in Denmark based on local

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EDUCATION

Together with the Gdansk University of Technology and the Gdansk School of Fine Arts, students of the Academy worked on the design of the ideal school of architecture.

Text Bart Bulter

The Architecture School (P6) project combines designing a school of architecture and gaining experience at design establishments abroad.

For this project, students from Amsterdam designed the ideal architecture school together with students from other European design institutes. On the basis of experiences at their own schools and analyses of other institutions, they examined what the school of architecture of the future would probably look like.

The education and the building of the Am­ster­ dam Academy of Architecture form an important background to their thinking about architecture education and its ideal accommodation.

Objectives for the school of architecture of the future that students name include the broadening and deepening of the discipline and the opportunity to develop more individually as a student. This mainly boils down to more flexibility so they can find their own way within the curriculum and the building. To realize a more versatile curriculum, they want to directly involve the building in lessons about, for example, history, theory, visual arts, sociology, photography and music.

To create a broader perspective and to learn how to approach design challenges in different circumstances, we collaborate with other Eu­ro­ pean design institutes. Different socioeconomic

circumstances, histories and perspectives of the profession ensure that colleagues abroad look differently at architecture education and the way the subject should be taught. Our goal is to run this project for a number of years and then look at what common denominators there are in terms of architecture education and the ideal school building.

To, among other things, generate a closer and more intensive collaboration, former Academy students are invited to contribute to the project as either professors or visiting critics on location, or as teachers in Amsterdam.

In 2018, after collaborations with schools in Vilnius (Andre Baldisiute, Lithuania) and Bel­grade (Tatjana Dordevic, Serbia) the P6 project ended up in Gdansk, an important strategic port city in the north of Poland. The city bears the marks of the various wars and spheres of influence to which it was subjected in recent history. How­ ever, Gdansk is increasingly opening up to its environment and is a layered and interesting city today. Its charged past plays an important part, but provides a positive view of the future as well.

In addition, Gdansk is home to two ambitious schools of architecture: the Gdansk University of Technology and the Gdansk School of Fine Arts. The Amsterdam students worked on the

EXCHANGE

EXCHANGE

Lindsey van de Wetering. Fabric.

school of architecture of the future with both of these. First, students created the foundation for the ideal typology of an architecture school in Amsterdam. The workshop at the School of Fine Arts subsequently mainly focused on accentuating the typology and on the questions, what shape the architecture education of the future should have and what programmatic facilities this would require of the school building of the future. At Warsaw Polytechnic, they worked out their views in more detail and investigated what type of location they needed to give the ideal school the best possible basis.

The search for the ideal location brought them to Gdynia, one of Gdansk’s major suburbs.

Gdynia was an important testing ground for modernism in Europe. Though the town has lost part of its strength due to poor maintenance and bad urban and architectural decisions, it still comprises a rich and diverse environment for the location of the ideal school of architecture.

The students will convert the acquired knowledge and experience into spatial and typological starting points that will be tested on site in Gdynia. We are still exploring the possibilities of bringing together all the results of the design exercises in both Amsterdam and the collaborating schools of architecture.

EDUCATION Roxana Vakilmozafari. The Promenade of Inspiration.

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Wouter van Velpen. Architecture City.

BART BULTER

Quita Schabracq. The Play Institute.

OUTDOORS

The three-year educational project Crafting the Façade, supported by the Erasmus+ funding programme, culminated in a workshop in Zuid-Limburg.

Text Machiel Spaan, Photos Allard van der Hoek

MATERIAL AND TECTONICS

MATERIAL AND TECTONICS

At the end of August 2017, 30 architecture stu­ dents from Amsterdam, Glasgow and Liechten­ stein started an in-depth study in the Land van Kalk in Zuid-Limburg. The Land van Kalk is a Kunrade marl plateau between Aachen, Bocholtz and Voerendaal. Spending five days on the hills of Wijngoed Fromberg, the students carried out experiments with Kunrade marl from the local quarry, Brunssummer clay bricks from the Fa­cade Beek brick factory and rough wooden beams from the nearby Houtwarenfabriek. The pro­gramme of lectures, site visits and building experiments focused on the tectonic application of local materials and the careful handling of the tectonic characteristics of the Limburg landscape with its slopes, terraces and geological treasure troves. The workshop was the conclusion of Crafting the Façade, a three-year educational project by the Amsterdam Academy

of Architecture, Mackintosh School of the Arts in Glasgow and the University of Liechtenstein, with the support of the European Erasmus+ Fund.

Crafting the Façade creates an awareness of the inseparable relationship between façade and building. The façade is interwoven with every aspect of the building design and cannot be considered separately from it. The design of the façade takes the environment, building typology, spatial atmosphere, construction, building materials and building technology into account. These aspects are rooted in tradition as well as in progress.

Based on three originally location-based building materials, the relationship between façade and building is examined, compared and interpreted: stone in Glasgow, brick in Amsterdam and wood in Liechtenstein. Though the materials are each part of a long local tradition, their application is

Machiel Spaan talks to the students.

always innovative. The results of Crafting the Façade have been collected in a book published

by Park Books in Zurich.

During the workshop in Zuid-Limburg, the students built objects from stone, brick and wood.

Experimenting with layering, they examined the characteristics of the three materials. Using their hands and bodies, they experienced the building logistics, weight and (absence of) regularities of the material. They discovered material-specific rules and experienced distinctive characteristics. Playing with the materials, the students learned to act tectonically: to deliberately arrange materials into a construction. This resulted in material-specific structures that nestled in the landscape as if they belonged there. craftingthefacade.com

MACHIEL SPAAN

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OUTDOORS

OUTDOORS

At summer school 2017, students designed a research centre on the Dutch Marker Wadden, an artificial island in Markermeer.

Journalist Tracy Metz accompanied them during a site visit.

Text Tracy Metz

THE LARGEST SANDCASTLE IN THE NETHERLANDS

Photo Madeleine Maaskant

THE LARGEST SANDCASTLE IN THE NETHERLANDS

OUTDOORS

Photo John Gundlach

The idea for the Marker Wadden was raised when plans for a fourth Flevopolder – Marker­ waard – were axed in 2003 after a long period of discord. In preparation for the creation of Markerwaard, a narrow dike had already been constructed between Lelystad and Enkhuizen, the Houtribdijk. This dike cuts off the Markermeer from the IJsselmeer. The Markermeer was gradually turning into a stagnant pool – murky, no water running through, a lot of mud, no more fish and therefore no more birds. Its banks were made entirely of stone as well, 220 km of it. They were planted with reed using a hovercraft.

During our visit the initiator, Roel Posthoorn of Natuurmonumenten, told us: ‘Although in the Netherlands we have every reason to be proud of our water management in terms of flood prevention, we should be ashamed of having left one of the largest lakes in Europe, located in an area with more than 2 million people, wither away.’

It is exciting to see how the Dutch continue to play God – this is the largest sandcastle in the Netherlands. Here, nature is just as makeable as a polder or a business estate. You just construct it. Significantly, we had to wear helmets and safety vests during our site visit – we were walking on a large sand plain, but it was a construction site nevertheless. To make nature, you need huge shovels and draglines. There was also a large Boskalis vessel about, hovering over the area and layering sand onto the islands like a 3D printer.

A project like this also says a lot about the priorities of Dutch spatial policy. The Delta Works and the IJsselmeer Dam were about water safety – to prevent flooding forever. The Flevopolder was about food supply – to prevent hunger forever, after the war. Now nature is considered a priority and so we are in the process of repairing one enormous intervention with another. Really very Dutch. In September 2018, the Marker Wad­den will ‘open’.

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TRACEY METZ

Photo Madeleine Maaskant

Two years ago, authorities began to construct five new islands in the Markermeer. Jointly, the islands in the southernmost part of the IJssel­meer would cover the size of 100 football pitches. This grand project was based on an idea by Natuurmonumenten, executed in collaboration with Rijkswaterstaat and the Province of Flevo­land and conducted by Boskalis. If it were up to Natuurmonumenten this would only be the first stage, costing 78 million, of a much larger project.

The islands were the subject of the EMiLA sum­mer school 2017, which took place from 25 August to 2 September. EMiLA stands for Euro­pean Master in Landscape Architecture, a collaboration of five European design schools that includes the Academy. The assignment was to design an accommodation for 20 researchers and 12 guests that could be used throughout the year. Five groups of students dove into the assignment, which started with a two-day site visit.

OUTDOORS EUROTOUR 2017

EUROTOUR 2017

The Eurotour is part of the Academy of Architecture’s educational summer programme. In the summer of 2017, 27 students travelled with Sasa Radenovic and Jan-Richard Kikkert to Ljubljana, Zagreb, Sarajevo, Split and Dubrovnik. They studied the consequences of Yugoslavia’s dissolution for its architecture.

BALKAN STATES

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OUTDOORS

LECTURES

Daniel Libeskind lectured on themes like home, war, climate and future, and gave his audience some advice.

Text Kirsten Hannema

GO OFF THE MAIN ROAD

Photo Gerrit Alink

GO OFF THE MAIN ROAD

LECTURES

Photo Gerrit Alink

consists of four Hebrew letters that make up a word that translates as ‘in memory of’, forming a labyrinth of passageways flanked by brick walls.

Inscribed on each of the 102,000 bricks is a name of a victim. A presentation for the municipality was an exquisite opportunity for the Academy to invite the famous architect to hold a lecture – part of the curriculum – organized in cooperation with architecture centre Arcam.

With great enthusiasm and sense of humour the architect guided his audience through his work, from his early drawings and installations to museums and office buildings, elaborating on themes like home, war, climate and the future. It becomes clear that the architecture of memory is not just about war. ‘It’s everywhere around us,’ says Libeskind, ‘in our houses, our cities. Why do

we go to the pyramids? We don’t believe in immortality anymore, but they still succeed in telling us a story, like all great buildings do. If there’s a lesson I’d like you to take with you, it would be that: go off the main road.’

A student wanted to know if he liked symbolic architecture best; is that typical Libeskind?

‘Architecture is always symbolic,’ answered the architect. ‘Think of the wall. Whether you build a house or a school, you always work with the same language.’ In answer to the question of which topic he would choose for the Venice Biennale as its artistic director, he answers: ‘It’s complex. There’s always the tension between art and the vernacular. I’m against populist architecture, but I think a marriage is possible: public service meets public art.’

KIRSTEN HANNEMA

The Dutch Holocaust Memorial of Names, designed by Studio Libeskind.

Rendering Studio Libeskind

How to materialize memories? That’s the question Dutch Government Architect Floris Alkemade posed in his introduction to the lec­ture ‘Lan­guage of Architecture’ by Polish-American architect Daniel Libeskind, which took place in the packed former church De Duif in Amsterdam.

We all know him from the Jewish Museum in Berlin and Memorial Plaza in New York, but he also designed the Military Museum in Dresden, based on the pattern of the bombs dropped on the city in the Second World War. They’re impressive spaces that remind us of horrific events: war, death, immense sorrow – and the fact that these horrors still continue to happen around us.

Libeskind is the architect of the Holocaust Memorial of Names in Amsterdam. The design

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LECTURES

During a series of 15 lectures in the spring of 2018, international experts addressed this century’s metropolitan problems.

Text Michiel Hulshof and Daan Roggeveen

THE AMSTERDAM AGENDA

THE AMSTERDAM

LECTURES View of the Prinsengracht and far beyond.

If you have been away from Amsterdam for a number of years, like us, there is one thing you will immediately notice upon your return: the city is doing well. Very well. At parties, homeowners furtively compare increased dwelling prices. In no time at all, districts such as Bos en Lommer, the Indische Buurt and Noord are turning into veritable paradises for lovers of coffee, yoga and local brew. All of the major museums have been renovated and the new subway connection is now actually about to materialize. It really is. Professor of Urban and Regional Planning Zef Hemel even believes that Amsterdam is currently experiencing a ‘Third Golden Age’.

Amsterdam looked quite a bit different 30 years ago.

Buildings stood abandoned all over the city, heroin addicts openly shot up in the metros and middle-class families preferred to live in safe, manicured dormitory suburbs like Purmerend or Almere. Reputedly, life in Amsterdam was anything but idyllic. By 1984, the population of the capital whole-heartedly sang along with young folk singer Danny de Munck’s song Mijn Stad: ‘Amsterdam is dog poo on the pavements / and hatred in the streets / you’re on your guard / especially late at night.’

A transformation like the one Amsterdam went through also took place in other major western cities such as New York, London and Paris. Rather than flee this chaotic, dirty, dangerous city, people are now doing the reverse: ever-larger numbers of knowledge workers, students, migrants and tourists are moving into the big cities.

Mind you, the new appeal of Amsterdam is not only a reason for cheer. House prices are now so high that teachers, police officers and nurses find it hard to secure a dwelling in the capital. Waiting periods for social rental dwellings now take well over ten years. Other problems require solutions as well. As yet plans to make Amsterdam more energy efficient are not paying off as much as they should and the big data boom is creating new privacy issues. At the same time, a heated identity debate rages through the city: an increasing number of its citizens complain about the influx of tourists, expats and other yuppies. At the same time, Amsterdam residents with migrant backgrounds are increasingly loud about the fact that their culture is now also part of Amsterdam’s urban identity.

These problems are not unique to Amsterdam. Cities around the world face similar problems. Naturally, solutions can be found in Istanbul, Shanghai or Berlin as well as in our

own country. This was the starting point of the Amsterdam Agenda, a series of lectures to second- and third-year students of the Academy of Architecture that took place in the spring of 2018. In 15 lectures, international experts who had each investigated a different issue told the students about their problem analyses and presented proposals and solutions from abroad that Amsterdam and the Randstad could learn from.

This way, students were not only taken on a journey along a number of leading metropolises, but at the same time gained an understanding of the major urban challenges of our time: accessibility, sustainability, inclusiveness and dis­ rup­tive technologies.

More Dwellings Opening the series, Esther Agricola, head of the Space and Sustainability department of the city of Amsterdam, outlined the huge task her department faces: building more dwellings without extending the city. ‘In Amsterdam, this hasn’t actually been done before. In the past, each time the city boomed, we planned extension areas.’ At the same time, society is rapidly changing through successive new technological possibilities.

Difficult, especially because urban planning is traditionally a slow sector. Streets and buildings that are being planned today will still have to perform in 30 years. And this while nobody knows what society will look like by then.

Currently, Amsterdam has roughly two extension ‘flavours’ to choose from. Model 1 manifests in the Sluisbuurt area: here, housing developments are planned top-down and in high density. Model 2 is in Haven-Stad, where developments are planned more bottom-up, with the city looking for new and radical ideas.

Point of interest: the city’s last large-scale, visionary and radically urban development was the Bijlmermeer. Within a quarter of a century head designer Siegfried Nassuth not only saw the construction, but also the large-scale demolition of his life’s work. In his guest lecture journalist Daan Dekker, who wrote the biography De Betonnen Droom about Nassuth, drew important lessons for the Amsterdam of today. The biggest mistake made in the Bijlmer, he says, was not the design itself but the process: under pressure from the high demand for housing, the radical design was rolled out almost in one go, without the possibility of adapting it to practical experiences.

53 MICHIEL HULSHOF AND DAAN ROGGEVEEN

AGENDA

28 02

07 03

14 03

ACCESIBILITY

Daan Dekker Bijlmer Blues

ACCESIBILITY

Esther Agricola Les Grands Projets Hollandais’

ANALYSIS

21 02

ACCESIBILITY

ANALYSIS

ANALYSIS

14 02

Daan Roggeveen & Michiel Hulshof Go West!

21 03

28 03

04 04

11 04

25 04

02 05

IDENTITY

– OPTIONAL –

Inge Goudsmit Boring Hong Kong TECH

Florian Idenburg Future of Work

TECH

Neville Mars Sustainable Urbanism

TECH

Adam Frampton Irregular Development TECH

Menno van der Veen The Paris Paradox TECH

Marc Schmitt Baugruppe in Berlin

09 05

16 05

23 05

Stephen Hodes AirBnB & Disneyfication

Valerie von der Tann Smart City

Various speakers Conclusion

The C4C6 lecture series aimed to give master students at the Academy of Architecture a clear understanding of the current urban issues in Amsterdam.

Secondly, the international perspective showed students that urban solutions generated in one part of the world can be an inspiration for cities in other countries.

FUTURE

David Mulder van der Vegt Bright Lights, Big City

IDENTITY

Selva Gürdoğan Mapping Istanbul

Miquel Gentil Cross-Mediterrenean Migration IDENTITY

Pakuis de Zwijger - Free entrance

Amsterdam Academy of Architecture Lecture series C4C6 — wednesday 19h30

LECTURES THE AMSTERDAM AGENDA

07 02

to build car-free cities, but you do have to create car-free zones.’ He showed the students his visionary plan The Node, in which self-driving cars move from parking space to user by underground infrastructure.

One thing is certain: a city district without cars needs wellorganized public transport. In Amsterdam, where the construction of a new metro connection can take a long time, other solutions may need to be considered. Selva Gürdoğan and Gregers Tang Thomsen of the Istanbul office Superpool investigated the informal forms of public transport in their city. In Istanbul, bus services that use minibuses form a finemeshed network that is extremely flexible, does not require any pre-investments and can easily be made more sustainable. This may well present an interesting basic model for Haven-Stad’s public transport.

New York architect Adam Frampton of the Hong Kong office Only If carried out similar research: in his Cities without Ground, he mapped all traffic flows in the city at all different levels. The book immediately makes it clear that informal structures are as important for the functioning of a city as planned infrastructure. Frampton swears by the ‘mapping’ approach: minutely mapping the existing situation first, with the aim of discovering opportunities that you would other­ wise miss. During his guest lecture he talked about his project Irregular Developments, for which he mapped all kinds of remaining plots of land on Manhattan to find the ones on which building would be the easiest.

The position of work in urban society will undergo fundamental changes in the coming decades, argued architect Florian Idenburg of the New York office SO-IL. Under the influence of technology, work is becoming less of an economic necessity and increasingly a lifestyle. This has quite a few consequences for design. ‘As an architect you have to focus more and more on the design of atmospheres: good spaces that are not linked to a specific use.’

Valerie von der Tann, consultant at McKinsey Berlin, specializes in technological possibilities for the building of smart cities. She examined how cities and their governments use technology and data to reach better decisions concerning the planning of the future – and how these can actually improve the lives of their residents. Her analysis showed that internationally, Amsterdam is already leading in this area.

LECTURES

Migration In addition to issues related to housing and new technologies, social changes are also a challenge for the twenty-first-century metropolis. The most pressing is perhaps the anticipated increase in migration flows – a development that regularly leads to conflict. Architect Miguel Gentil of Baum Arquitectura in Seville carried out research into migration between Morocco and Spain and about the ways urban planners can provide for this in their plans.

In addition to permanent migration, there is another international flow of people that is growing: just like in Barcelona, New York and Berlin, the flow of tourists is becoming somewhat annoying in Amsterdam as well. Tourism expert Stephen Hodes, trained as an urban planner, showed examples of the ways in which other cities are trying to get a grip on this growing phenomenon. His statement: if Amsterdam gets it right, it can be leading on the subject.

And what is a good city without a lively nightlife? Architect David Mulder van der Vegt of Amsterdam office XML con­ cluded the series with a lecture about the influence of the club scene on the DNA of cities. Presenting examples from New York and London, he argued that a rich nightlife in a city is essential to creativity and inclusiveness.

The Amsterdam Agenda brought students into contact with a variety of visions and opinions held by international experts.

The greatest common denominator was that all lecturers based their ideas on the thorough investigation of their local situation and subsequently formulated answers. This is the attitude and working method for which we wanted to enthuse the students.

We are living in a time in which metropolitan problems – the explosion of real estate prices, super-fast technological changes, sustainability and identity issues – are occurring simultaneously and at an ever-increasing pace in most cities around the world. At the same time, the lectures taught us that the answer to these questions is not unambiguous and often depends greatly on local conditions. A solution that works in one place can fail to do so in another – and vice versa.

But examples from other cities always offer inspiration as they broaden our range of prospects for action.

Amsterdam is on the verge of one of the biggest construction challenges in its history. It is clear that the city – and its future designers – can benefit from considerations, developments and experiments from the rest of the urbanizing world.

55 MICHIEL HULSHOF AND DAAN ROGGEVEEN

Abroad With this wise lesson in mind, the various guest lecturers addressed examples from abroad, mainly in the field of housing.

Architect Marc Schmit of the Berlin Playze talked about the Baugruppe, the German model for collective private commissionership, calling it a temporary phenomenon. ‘As the groups get bigger, they increasingly leave things to professional construction supervisors. Project developers are now taking over this role and that means you are back to traditional development.’ He himself expects more of a hyperflexible urban planning grid that gives residents different design options per dwelling and per block.

Another strategy is densification through more high-rise buildings. Few cities are a better example of this than Hong Kong. OMA architect Inge Goudsmit carried out research in this city. She warned that a high population density will not automatically lead to lively neighbourhoods. She said large parts of Hong Kong now have an unexpectedly monotonous side. The large-scale development of gated communities creates an urban structure that is socially and economically fragmented. This ‘concrete jungle segregation’ leads to ‘black holes’ in the urban fabric. Something to avoid! What other cities can take over from Hong Kong are its transportoriented processes (TODs) and its metro network-driven urban development.

Amsterdam’s intention to grow by some hundreds of thousands of people inside the existing city limits also means current residents will have to move over. The question is how their interests and wishes can be taken into account. Lawyer and philosopher Menno van der Veen specializes in various forms of citizen participation in spatial processes. Using examples from Paris, he showed how residents can participate in decision-making processes concerning the future of their neighbourhood. He believes a good process helps plan development, whereas a lack of participation opportunities can lead to protests and the shutdown of development.

Urban densification goes well with the sustainability challenge, argued Neville Mars of Mars Architects, based in Shanghai. He demonstrated how he tried to convince Asian city authorities to opt for extreme densification rather than push back building frontiers. He believes the Netherlands is doing a better job in that respect. The idea to create a pedestrian Haven-Stad area appealed to him. ‘You don’t have

RESEARCH

The Tabula Scripta Lectorate comprises a plea for existing cities and landscapes as valuable breeding grounds for new creations.

Text and Photos Michiel van Iersel and Jarrik Ouburg

Image edit足ing HOH Archi足tec足ten

TABULA SCRIPTA

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Informal additions to formal archi足tecture.

RESEARCH Diemen in 100 layers: results of the term theme Amsterdam Inside-Out.

Dutch Government Architect Floris Alkemade has been responsible for the Architecture Lectorate since November 2014. In early 2017, ur­ banist and critic Michiel van Iersel and architect Jarrik Ouburg were appointed fellows of the Lectorate alongside Alkemade.

In the coming years, the trio will focus on the development of the Lectorate, including the setting up of an international knowledge circle and the creation of a publication that will be presented in early 2019. Various educational activities will also take place in the framework of the Lectorate, including guest lectures, workshops and site visits at home and abroad.

A great deal of post-war architecture regarded the city and the landscape as blank pages, or tabula rasa, on which designers could project and realize their dreams to their hearts’ content without taking note of the context. The Lectorate, on the other hand, focuses on the so-called tabula scripta, or the ‘written page’, their starting point for a plea for existing cities and landscapes

as a valuable breeding ground for new creations.

They see architecture as rooted extension rather than foreign addition.

How can the existing context be read, understood, valued and further developed? How the can care for heritage and new developments go hand in hand? And how can architecture anticipate new and urgent developments, from aging and social segregation to climate change, on the basis of existing contexts?

The Tabula Scripta Lectorate is looking for answers to these questions through an analysis of the drivers of change of various places and design practices at home and abroad, from historical inner cities and post-war suburbs to new towns and outskirts. The research not only focuses on preservation through transformation of what is considered valuable. Dealing with non-protected and more recent generic heritage is also included in the study. Whether it is in Amsterdam or Cairo, every site has the same potential according to the idea of tabula scripta.

Detail of the Tabula Scripta wall at the Academy of Architecture Amsterdam.

In the autumn of 2017, for example, the fellows, teachers and students of the Academy visited Cairo, where they investigated the dynamic interaction between human and natural processes in this city that grows by half a million people every year. How do basic components such as dust and salt influence local design and building practices? And what can we learn from a city that has largely been built without the intervention of architects?

In addition, Mumbai was visited in 2018 and Beirut is still on the programme. During these visits, workshops dedicated to tabula scripta are organized in collaboration with local designers and architecture students. Students previously worked on related tasks in Diemen, Belgrade and Charleroi. The aim is to compare these very different places with each other and to encourage them to learn from each other. tabulascripta.nl

MICHIEL VAN IERSEL AND JARRIK OUBURG

THE WRITTEN PAGE

RESEARCH

A visit to Mumbai brought students into contact with the intractable realities of this metropolis.

Text and Photos Michiel van Iersel and Jarrik Ouburg

In February, research fellows Michiel van Iersel and Jarrik Ouburg of the Chair of Architecture and the students of the Academy visited the Indian city of Mumbai under the supervision of architect and teacher Anne Dessing. The former Bombay is famously one of the most densely populated cities in the world. Whereas Amsterdam houses 5,000 people per square kilometre on average, India’s biggest city houses 20,000. Living on a narrow peninsula in the Arabian Sea, rich and poor, Hindus and Muslims, humans and other animals form an eclectic mix. This results in very extreme and inspiring forms of architecture and urban development. The group from Amsterdam experienced an intensive week here.

The students and fellows studied several places in the city and spoke with local architects, activists and academics. They discovered different varieties of tabula scripta, the term used by the Chair for situations in which architecture builds on existing situations and responds to contexts.

For example in the work of the grand lady of Indian architecture, Brinda Somaya, who has

devoted herself to the conservation and transformation of dilapidated and mostly vacant colonial and industrial buildings in numerous places throughout the city in recent decades. Or in the projects of Urbz, a collective of architect-activists working in Dharavi and other informal (slum) neighbourhoods where they try to improve the living conditions of and with residents through research and physical interventions. In addition, the fellows and students were introduced to the work of renowned local offices, including Studio Mumbai and Case Design, which are known for their context-sensitive designs, their collaboration with local artisans and the use of natural materials and processes.

Besides partaking in excursions, interviews and working visits, the fellows also gave a guest lecture at the Rachana Sansad Academy of Archi­tecture and they spoke with Prasad Shetty of the School of Environment and Architecture and with Shweta Wagh of the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture and Environmental Studies.

Based on the visit to Mumbai, the students designed public buildings for different types of businesses near Reay Road Station, a neighbourhood in the industrial port area on the east side of the city, where there are currently virtually no public facilities. The students faced the problem of dealing with the intractable realities of the area, in which a heavy and very polluting metal industry puts enormous pressure on people and the environment. The results were presented in May. The research fellows will use the interviews and gained impressions as material for a publication by the Chair due early next year. It will not only address places and people, but other details of the visit as well. Like the Sunday afternoon spent on a cricket ground. Many of the people of Mumbai practice this sport, a kind of baseball with a wide wooden bat and three upright poles.

Different competitions are played simultaneously on a single lawn. This multiple use of space is typical of Mumbai and a fitting metaphor for a city in which the people form the space.

LEARNING FROM MUMBAI

LEARNING FROM MUMBAI

RESEARCH Sunday mornings in Shivaji Park; everybody is playing cricket at the same time.

59 MICHIEL VAN IERSEL AND JARRIK OUBURG

A schematic comparison between the spatial aspects of cricket and football. Shivaji Park is compared with The Future of Ajax. In the Netherlands, football pitches are usually at a suitable distance from each other. There are only two teams and one ball on each pitch. Boundaries, separations and order determine the space.

Women, men and children are separated. In Mumbai, the pressure on the space is so great that more than 30 games of cricket are played simultaneously on a field the size of 12 football pitches. The result is a crowd of cricket players.

RESEARCH

The Future Urban Regions Lectorate (FUR) is now in its second stage of research.

The book Urban Challenges, Resilient Solutions reflects the first three years of study.

Text Tijs van den Boomen, Photos Catalogtree

It was a Labour of Hercules, the Future Urban Regions Lectorate. For three years, students from the six Dutch Academies of Architecture carried out research by design into the future of urban regions. The more than 300-page book Urban Challenges, Resilient Solutions was published in October 2017.

The Future Urban Regions Lectorate functioned as a doubled-edged sword: students not only worked on concrete assignments, they also tested the theoretical models for conducting research by design developed by lector Eric Frijters. The book is arranged on the basis of the three key questions that designers face in practice: What, how and who?

Part one – What is healthy urbanity? – gives due consideration to the problems of the An­thro­ po­cene, to the planetary limitations formulated

by Swedish scientist Johan Rockström and to Oxford economist Kate Raworth’s ‘donut’, which is gaining critical acclaim today.

Part two – How do you conduct research by design? – provides a theoretical basis and a detailed discussion of the models and steps

to be taken. The book addresses the C3 cube, which helps to position the challenges on the levels ‘scale’, ‘actors’ and ‘urban challenge’; the DTP diagram, which unravels the Design Thinking Process into stages; and finally the ICCI model, which divides the research by design into four concrete steps, with the process diverging in the first two steps (Inform and Com­ bine) and subsequently converging (Choose and Implement).

Part three addresses the most difficult question – Who do you need to realize these ideas?

After all, research by design is not the solitary activity of designers that simply offer up their brilliant finds, but an interactive process that involves lots of people. It calls for coalition forming with different stakeholders in the course of the process. This idea is developed in detail on the basis of three cases: the long genesis of ‘Plan 2050 – An Energetic Odyssey’ presented at the IABR 2016; the development of circular neighbourhood Buiksloterham in Amsterdam; and a reconstruction of the development of the water square in Rotterdam.

Each academy focused on a single healthy urbanity theme. Amsterdam, led by Marco Broekman, addressed the vital economy.

Broekman is a fan of research by design precisely because it reveals interests. ‘Research by design can be politically charged,’ he says. ‘A direct confrontation can be necessary, sometimes even with commissioners.’

His students are well represented in the book: they account for eight of the total of 33 selected student projects. A selection: Roeland Meek trans­forms the vast Haarlemmermeer polder into a gigantic water battery that couples the storage of wind and solar power with recreation.

Brigitta van Weeren ensures that the furniture industry, in which Zaanstad used to excel, gets a new impetus through the production of circular furniture and interiors of flax grown in the adjacent polders. Willemijn van Manen also puts the old Zaanse industry on a new, sustainable track boosting the food industry by the large-scale cultivation of algae.

HERCULEAN LABOUR

HERCULEAN LABOUR

Tijs van den Boomen edited and compiled the book Urban Challenges, Resilient Solutions.

RESEARCH

The Future Urban Regions Lectorate, led by Eric Frijters, examines design challenges on the level of the region, the city and the street.

Text Matthijs Ponte

A HEALTHY LIVING ENVIRONMENT FUR not only draws attention to the challenges associated with urbanization processes but also contributes to a healthy urban living environment. In addition, the research explicitly zooms in on ecological, sociocultural and economic urban challenges at the level of the region, the city and the street respectively.

FUR focuses on three key questions that create a starting point for its research into urbanization: What is healthy urbanity? Who is going to make this healthy urbanity possible? What form should the research into the healthy city have? The three key questions are the basis for literature studies, for the organization of teaching studios in collaboration with Academies of Architecture and for practical research carried out in the urban environment. The research

results will be presented in a second book by the end of the research period and, in the interim, shared online using text, sound and image and offline on platforms across the country.

The FUR team of the coming years will consist of lector and architect Eric Frijtens (Fabrications), architect David Dooghe (Deltametropool), urban planner and architect Thijs van Spaandonk (Bright), architecture historian Catja Edens, architect Willemijn Lofvers, designer Jet van Zwieten (Foundation projects, previously Vechtclub XL), architect Chris de Vries (Rademacher & De Vries) and philosopher and journalist Matthijs Ponte. futureurbanregions.org

A HEALTHY LIVING ENVIRONMENT

Early in 2018, the Future Urban Regions Lec­tor­ ate (FUR) launched the second stage of research first initiated in 2013. FUR is a collaboration between the six Dutch Academies of Architecture focusing on the innovation of urban design models. The Lectorate consists of eight researchers who will jointly focus on the issues and challenges associated with increasing urbanization until the end of 2020.

Including architects, designers and historians, the group of eight researchers will continue to work on the research of which the first stage was captured in Urban Challenges, Resilient Solutions. This book includes some 50 practical examples of innovative research by design and describes a method to flesh out the study of new urban developments. By publishing this book,

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RESEARCH

The Academy of Architecture Amsterdam published seven books this year.

Marker Wadden: A Laboratory for Living with Nature

ME: Seeing Is a Creative Act Jeroen Musch, Arjan Klok (2017)

The 9th EMiLA summer school (2017) Maike van Stiphout

Atlas of Edges: Regional Analysis and Representation David Kloet, Merten Nefs (2017) In just eight weeks, a group of 18 landscape and urbanism students of the Academy of Architecture Amsterdam made a courageous attempt to understand a very complex region, east of Amsterdam. What’s at stake in the Diemerscheg area, why does it look the way it looks today, and what is its potential? To do this, each of the participants had to acquire new skills: drawing styles, using geographical data, thinking in ecosystems, making regional prototypes and engaging in a clear dialogue with experts. Besides this, they had to work as a collective. The storylines of the five working groups, including maps and diagrams, were assembled into this final document: the Atlas of Edges.

The EMiLA summer school 2017 took place at two locations: the Marker Wadden islands in the Nieuw Land National Park and Hamerkwartier in Amsterdam. The Marker Wadden are islands located in the Markermeer lake, to the north-east of Amsterdam. They are man-made hills built in the lake to improve the water quality and to provide biotopes for flora and fauna.

In the plans of the islands, there is an area dedicated to human settlement. On the islands, which are dominated by birds and other animals, building a settlement will have an impact on the ecosystem. The assignment was to design the settlement.

Students were asked to come up with a settlement that would enhance biodiversity and create space instead of consuming it.

The lessons learned from this case were applied in a plan for an inner-city district of Amsterdam named Hamerkwartier.

How can we design for animals and plants while designing cities for people?

Graduation Projects 2016 – 2017 Bruno Vermeersch, Michiel Zegers, Klaas de Jong (eds.) (2017) Graduation Projects 2016 – 2017 features the work of students who earned their degree during the 2016 – 2017 academic year at the Academy of Architecture Amsterdam. Architecture critic Kirsten Hannema introduces the projects by the 30 Masters of Architecture, Urbanism and Landscape Architecture.

Marker Wadden - A Laboratory for Living with Nature The 9th EMiLA Summer School | 25 August–2 September 2017 | Amsterdam, the Netherlands

PUBLICATIONS Drawing Time: The Representation of Change and Dynamics in Dutch Landscape Architectural Practice after 1985 Noël van Dooren (2017)

PUBLICATIONS

Noël van Dooren’s doctoral thesis Drawing Time deals with drawings, time and professional practice. How is the important concept of time reflected in the drawings of land­ scape architects? Or is it not reflected at all, because they draw in the tradition of architects, with the accent on space and not on time? This doctoral thesis is a historicaltheoretical study; an exploration of thought and action in the current professional practice and a voyage of discovery through new drawings with a strong focus on time.

Noël van Dooren is professor of Sustainable Foodscapes in Urban Regions at Van Hall Larenstein University of Applied Sciences in Velp and guest lecturer at the Academy of Architecture. He has previously worked, among other places, at H+N+S landscape architects, and as a freelance designer and researcher. He is also a publicist for the Dutch journal for landscape architecture and urban design Blauwe Kamer and the international Journal of Landscape Architecture JOLA.

Urban Challenges, Resilient Solutions: Design Thinking for the Future of Urban Regions Brick of the Future Machiel Spaan, Baukje Trenning, Jochem Heijmans (2017) Dutch company StoneCycling makes bricks from rubble: it doesn’t use clay as raw material, but used toilet bowls, tiles and roof tiles, among other things.

How can we further upscale this sustainability ambition? Traditional bricks are laid by means of cement or mortar. The mortar has reached a level of such high quality that it glues the bricks together. It’s not demountable and therefore not very sustainable. It also seems to rob brick of its rudimentary, aesthetic and tectonic qualities: stacking balance and stability. The objective is to discover and design new methods of stacking and connecting bricks. By eliminating the mortar, students are triggered to reconsider elementary stacking techniques and the limitations that gravity imposes on brick. The assignment focuses on the design and production of bricks that defy, stretch and deploy these limitations. Allowing bricks to function as sticky notes: deploying gravity or other means in order to accomplish a dry, or in any case, demountable stacking of bricks: Sticky Stones.

With the help and the facilities of StoneCycling and the St. Joris factory, the students translated their design research into physical prototypes. The experiments and results were exhibited at FabCity, a circular campus at the head of Java-eiland, as part of the Netherlands’ presidency of the EU in 2016.

Trancityxvaliz with Lectorate Future Urban Regions and the Academies of Architecture in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Groningen, Arnhem, Tilburg and Maastricht (2017) Contributors: Sandra van Assen, Tijs van den Boomen, Marco Broekman, Guido van Eyck, Eric Frijters, Marieke Kums, Willemijn Lofvers, Saskia Naafs, Thijs van Spaandonk, Ady Steketee, Franz Ziegler The future of humanity is urban. We are facing major problems such as climate change, social inequality, large-scale migration, and resource depletion. Cities (and those who ‘make’ the city) play an important role in addressing these problems. In Urban Challenges, Resilient Solutions, the Future Urban Regions Lectorate offers designers, their commissioners and (local) governments new models and ideas to deal with healthy urban development. Illustrated by more than 50 case studies and global examples, this book offers a toolkit for those interested in implementing research by design and healthy urban regions.

Seeing is a creative act. The importance of learning to look is so great in the disciplines of architecture, urban design and landscape architecture that the Academy of Architecture invited a photographer to be their artist-inresidence: Jeroen Musch. He attended the Rietveld Academie, lives in Rotterdam and works internationally. Musch is a talented photographer with considerable expertise in various types of photography.

The field of research of the winter school was the former Marine Etablissement (navy yard) in Amsterdam. What significance can this place have for the city? Thinking about that and dreaming, making sketches and capturing images, requires prior research.

What can we see now that the walls have been pulled down, what do we see? How do we go about exploring ‘new land’? How will people use this new public space? Students are asked to experience time and space through the eyes of a photographer. To look, to appreciate, to accept and to capture what is of value or could be of value in the future.

This publication contains an overview of the videos that students made of the Marine Etablissement in Amsterdam.

ENERGY LAND­SCAPES At the Amsterdam Academy, the research group is now outlining research for the coming years and discussing possible collaborations with partners from both the business and the government sector. The group aims to start research soon, through designing for a number of energy landscapes that are designated for export rather than local demand. Over the past months, the group has gotten acquainted with most of the students through various lectures and it will continue to do so through the upcoming studios

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Regional Design (P4) and Integral Design (P6).

Oudes has been a member of the jury for the Energy Meets the Arts design competition, judging over 40 proposals to integrate energy provision in public space from a design perspective.

Stremke recently lectured at Pakhuis de Zwijger and has held lectures at many other venues in the Netherlands and abroad.

Sven Stremke held a lecture at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture in December 2017. At the end, he presented the research group’s advisory board.

SVEN STREMKE

Photo Marlise Steeman

The research group High-Density Energy Land­ scapes, led by Sven Stremke and Dirk Oudes, has started working at the Academy following a kick-off on 7 December 2017 with more than 120 visitors. Stremke and Oudes have been associated with the Academy since 2017: the former as professor of Landscape Architecture and the latter as PhD researcher. They also collaborate at NRGlab, a laboratory on energy transition linked to the Landscape Architecture Group of Wageningen University.

RESEARCH

Sven Stremke heads the research group High-Density Energy Landscapes, which designs for energy landscapes that are designated for export rather than local demand.

Photo Sven Stremke

RESEARCH ENERGY LANDSCAPES

The large mirrors (heliostats) of the Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plant are rigidly positioned around the central tower. The support system at the back of each mirror becomes a prominent feature.

Photo Dirk Oudes

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Photo Dirk Oudes

Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plant Gemasolar near Sevilla, Andalusia. The central tower captures the concentrated reflection of a field of large mirrors called heliostats.

RESEARCH Hydropower dam in the Canales reservoir near Granada, Andalusia. Apart from electricity production, the reservoir is used for irrigation, drinking water supply, fishing and evening strolls.

ENERGY LANDSCAPES

Photo Dirk Oudes

High concentration of wind turbines near Zahara de los Atunes, located at the south coast of Spain.

ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAMME

Sarah van Sonsbeeck looks back on the 2018 winter school.

SILENCE

To investigate the role of silence in architectural practice, the Amsterdam Academy of Archi­ tecture invited artist Sarah van Sonsbeeck to take part in its artist-in-residence programme.

Van Sonsbeeck studied architecture at Delft University of Technology and fine arts and writing at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. She was also artist-in-residence at the Rijksacademie van Beeldende Kunsten. The many facets of silence are an inspiration to her, as well as a recurring theme in her work.

The Academy of Architecture asked Van Sonsbeeck to inspire students with her research into silence and to curate the 2018 winter school. First-, second- and third-year students from the disciplines of architecture, urban design and landscape architecture worked together for two weeks in January. The assignment Sarah formulated for the students: design silence for the Kop van Java, the unbuilt tip of the Java-eiland in Amsterdam.

SILENCE

Text Janna Visser-Verhoeven, Photo Thomas Lenden

ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAMME Sarah van Sonsbeeck with Ahmet Öğüt before his lecture on the ‘Silent University’.

two weeks you also learn to work together. Coming up with a common plan within a group, specifically, is very instructive.

I thought the plans were exciting, sometimes even really surprising. As a whole they give a good impression of the themes that are of interest for the Kop van Java. Topics like interactivity, thinking on the scale of the city, constructing an experience, involving Amsterdamers and nature in the development of a plan: it was all in there.’

How did you structure the 2018 Winter School?

‘With the team, consisting of Madeleine Maaskant, Maike van Stiphout and Marjoleine Gadella, we examined various aspects of silence and its effect on our living environment.

From a concert of 0 – 100 Decibels at the Bimhuis to lectures by artist Ahmet Öğüt on the Silent University he initiated for Tate Modern and by psychiatrist Pelle de Koning on misophonia [a condition in which certain sounds trigger feelings of anger, hatred or disgust]. After a week the students were given the assignment: design silence for the Kop van Java in Amsterdam. This assignment is topical, because the city is considering not building on this site, instead providing space for silence, most likely in the form of an urban park. I really wanted to think about alternatives on a broad and radical conceptual level with the students.’

What did you learn yourself from the 2018 winter school?

‘How fun it is to be able to involve others in your research.

I think it would be wonderful if more academies were to enable this exchange of other disciplines within the format of a winter school. It’s a great initiative that merits more visibility.

And I rediscovered my love for architecture. It’s so lovely to see the way students approach the craft.’

hat did you impart to the students during the 2018 W winter school?

‘You’d better ask the students themselves. At the awards ceremony I quoted a line from one of my favourite teen films: “There is no such thing as a bad student, only bad teacher.” So in a certain sense their success is also my success, but their struggles are mine as well. Silence seems so simple, but it has an incredible range of forms and guises. A forest can be silent, but so can censorship. I think I was able to make the students aware of the influence of sound in architecture.’ hat did you think of the students’ designs for the Kop W van Java? Are there ideas among them than you think could actually be implemented?

‘I was impressed by the fact that many of the students work almost full-time and are still prepared to work on the winter school every evening and all weekend. I could sleep in; the students couldn’t. I think a lot comes out of that intensity. Over

hat else will you be doing during your time as artistW in-residence?

‘I’m consulting students about what their needs are and I’m going to think about the upcoming content with Maike and Madeleine. I very much enjoyed coming up with interdisciplinary lectures, so you might get another two or three, who knows. But I also want to make the results and the process of the winter school more visible. We’re going to produce a book and a vlog, and I’m going to present the results soon to the people in the city administration who are working on the Kop van Java. It would be so wonderful if the students’ ideas were included in the city’s plans on a conceptual level.’ hat is the most important thing you would want to imW part to the students during your residency?

‘Don’t forget the neighbours. I mean that students have to realize how sound can relate to architecture. To realize that boundaries are fluid. Sound does not stop at a wall; it also invades the neighbours’ space. A design can be so much stronger when you’re aware of that. How great would it be if a student were to do a graduation project on designing a residential building in which people with misophonia could live comfortably with their partners and families.’

SARAH VAN SONSBEECK

J anna Visser-Verhoeven: What did you think when you were invited to be artist-in-residence for a year at the Academy of Architecture?

Sarah van Sonsbeek: ‘I was initially surprised to be invited, until it was explained to me that the idea was to give students, during the winter school, a new perspective on the theme of silence. That appealed to me very much. As an artist I’ve been researching the theme for almost ten years.’

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ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAMME

This academic year’s teaching material includes two important design challenges from the Amsterdam practice: designing a statue of liberty on the head of Java-eiland and conceiving of a shape for the concept ‘silence’.

Text Maarten Kloos

THE ACADEMY AS A PLACE FOR EXPERIMENT

THE ACAD­EMY AS A PLACE FOR EX­PER­I­MENT

Plans that looked particularly interesting from the beginning were the ones in which the question stood out because of its originality or even its contrariness. Plans in which a student deliberately turned away from what is expected in a particular practical situation, saying: but I can also imagine … If maximum freedom of thought is discovered within practical limitations this way, it can reveal the most surprising new mind-sets.

In the history of the Academy of Architecture, the graduation projects of Paul de Ley and Jouke van den Bout for Bickers­eiland (1972) and that of Theo Bosch for the Jordaan neighbourhood (1973) have become legendary, partly because of the influence they had on the urban renewal of Amsterdam. Still fresh in our memories is the graduation project Second Nature (Hannah Schubert, 2015), which visualized a slow, natural transformation as an alternative to demolition.

An idea we have not heard the last about yet.

A Monument to Creativity The fact that two projects were dedicated to the head of Javaeiland in a short period of time has everything to do with the character of this location. It is no exaggeration to say that this place has fired the imagination since the year 2000 like few others have.

Java-eiland, located in the middle of the eastern IJ basin, is a true monument to the great creativity to which the city owes its existence. First of all, this is artificially constructed rather than natural land, the shape of which has everything to do with a period in history in which overseas trade could profit from ever-larger ships, which were awaited at quays by everlonger trains. After the completion of the island, a dynamic harbour climate was able to develop here in the first half of the twentieth century, but this did not last long. When after the Second World War it became clear that the future of the port would definitively be on the west side of the city, authorities ultimately, after long deliberation, firmly decided to transform the entire eastern port area into a residential area.

Historical prints and photos show that the head of the island has always been in a class of its own. It is located on the tip where the island touches the IJ channel. Due to an angular rotation with respect to the longitudinal axis of the island it appears to fold towards that channel and thus embodies the idea of ‘this far and no further’. Even in the original situation

ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAMME

Once every year a magical scene takes place somewhere in Amsterdam. A group of adults bustles about enthusiastically.

There is intense discussion. Using felt-tip pens, they produce sheets of mottos and diagrams. And after two days of work­ing, large-scale models materialize, the result of some uneasy but intensely pleasurable cutting and pasting. This is the Spatial Quality course of the municipal Project Management Bureau (PMB), which introduces managers who know every­thing about organizing projects to all things involved in designing so they can ‘think along with the designer’ (quote from the course manual).

That organizing such a course is worthwhile has been established by the Academy of Architecture Amsterdam over the past six months, during two presentations of educational projects for the head of Java-eiland. The subjects were the design of an Amsterdam ‘statue of liberty’ in June 2017 and an assignment to design ‘silence’ in January of this year. In both cases representatives of the city attending the final presentations were surprised by the wealth of ideas and the imagination of the designers involved.

The surprise with which educational projects that touch upon reality are often received is good reason for the Academy to continue to systematically look for such connections.

Asking a young, by definition still somewhat naive generation for its opinion can produce exciting new angles.

Who it is that takes the initiative is important. An educational project can be derived from an open competition organized by stakeholders, a government or a private party. But the occasion can also be a less formal, external call, up to and including a cry for help from some corner of society in which there is a need for a completely new approach. It makes a lot of difference whether there is a large degree of freedom in a project or whether there are clear directions, for example because it includes the intention to offer a polemic alternative to existing plans.

It is good to realize that either an entire Academy, the head of a department or an individual student can focus a concrete practical problem on their own initiative and come up with a solution, whether together with a party that struggles with that problem in practice or not. Fortunately, students are in many cases free to formulate problems nobody noticed before – or even non-existent ones – without being steered in any direction by anyone and, on that basis, to create an inspiring, unprecedented plan.

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MAARTEN KLOOS

The assignment for the first-year Construction and Building course (P2b) was the design of a statue of liberty on the head of Java-eiland.

The results were on show at an exhibition in Arcam, which was opened on 11 July 2017.

ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAMME

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there were never buildings on it. It was mainly of importance as a manoeuvring space and switchyard. When the plan for housing on the island was agreed to in 1991 – 1992, the decision regarding the use of the head was pushed forward.

And so it happened that it was not until 2000 that the issue became topical. Only then did people notice that Amsterdam included an unimaginably beautiful location at the head of Java-eiland. It was qualified as ‘the most beautiful place in the world’, and from that moment on, the search for the only plan that could be considered good enough for the site was on.

An open call did not yield anything at the time, which is why a ten-year moratorium was imposed. From 2008, the Advisory Committee Head Java-eiland has been assessing all plans spontaneously submitted to the city. This has led nowhere.

Statue of Liberty The initiative for an educational project devoted to the possibility of realizing an Amsterdam statue of liberty on the head of Java-eiland was taken by Vola Nederland BV. This company specializes in the sale of sanitary accessories in the style of timeless Danish design and additionally develops appropriate cultural-social activities. In 2017 Vola noticed that the current era is confronting Amsterdam with a substantial chal­lenge.

The number of inhabitants and visitors is increasing spectacularly and as a consequence the use, design and experience of the public space in the city is under growing pressure as well. In this context, the Amsterdam Art Council, among others, contemplates the creation of new cultural icons, especially outside the Amsterdam city centre.

Considering this, Vola came up with the idea to make plans for a monument very relevant in times of large-scale migration: a statue of liberty, to be realized at this historically important cultural site on the IJ. The Academy of Architecture and Arcam (Architecture Centre Amsterdam) got involved as partners. The Academy organized an educational project in which 45 students designed statues of liberty. Arcam facilitated the publication of the results through an exhibition.

At the presentation of 10 out of the 45 plans, there was every reason to speak of a successful project. The average quality of the plans was remarkably high and it was also striking that almost all plans had something intriguing, something unique. The challenge to project an ideal story on an extremely challenging location turned out to have fired a lot of

THE ACADEMY AS A PLACE FOR EXPERIMENT

Elena Staskute. Equilibrium.

imaginations. Two aspects stood out. Unlike most short-term studies, the plans were strikingly realistic. In addition, plans that had a poetic character were the most impressive. Two of the plans touched on the essence of the place. ‘Equilibrium’

by Elena Staskute is a monument of freedom, representing balance. A balance that has to be reached within the freedom of choice. There are two opposing shapes. Part of the monument dips 7 m into the ground while the other rises 7 m upwards. Thus, the monument marks the line between earth and sky, framing the horizon. ‘Theatre of Freedom’ by Esther Bentvelsen combines the openness and classical feature of a theatre with the dark experience of a cave. As a landmark, it offers a paradox between light and dark, resembling both of them, within its construction and within the different stages.

So far, it could be concluded that the project had been very educational, but some reservations are in order as well.

For example, it was unfortunate that the students were not sufficiently aware of the actual situation at the head of Javaeiland. In retrospect, the relationship between education and practice was perhaps less exciting than it could have been.

A useful lesson to the Academy.

In addition, it seems that the organizers of the project underestimated the treacherously high degree of difficulty of the subject. A monument can literally be anything – large or small, low or high, complex or simple, made of wood, stone or concrete, and green, yellow or purple – as long as it is agreed that the object in question is actually a monument.

This makes the challenge of balancing a conceived meaning, a designed shape and a location provided for some reason or other an extremely difficult one. One could hardly blame students that had not managed to meet it.

A Silence By the time the head was once again chosen as the location for an educational project several months later, reality had changed. On this occasion it was possible to start from clear and firm preconditions, because after the aforementioned advisory committee had been forced to accept that the head could well become the location of a slow traffic bridge over the IJ, making it an island by itself, it decided to take the initiative on the basis of everything it had gotten a look at in ten years. The result was that in the autumn of 2017, the responsible Amsterdam councillor received the advice

MAARTEN KLOOS

Esther Bentvelsen. Theatre of Freedom.

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ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAMME

Photos Thomas Lenden

ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAMME THE ACADEMY AS A PLACE FOR EXPERIMENT

Sarah van Sonsbeeck’s silence project included site visits, hand drawing and model making.

ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAMME Hindsight Comparing the projects for a Statue of Liberty and for ‘a silence’ is relevant, if only because they were each other’s opposites in various respects.

In the first case, a concrete situation was provided that, on closer inspection, was not actually concrete and a concrete plan was asked for something that was very difficult to define.

In retrospect, there is reason to say that it might have been

better if the assignment to design a peace monument had not been linked in advance to a seemingly realistic location.

Rather, the students could have been asked to propose a location themselves. In that case, they could have motivated their choice of location on the basis of their designs, which would have provided more possibilities for in-depth research into the unity of monument and location.

With ‘a silence’ the combination of a concrete, precisely defined location and an abstract task was liberating. As a result, designers set all constraints aside and the municipal officials visiting the Academy for the occasion feasted their eyes and asked one question after another. Questions about what they could derive from the students’ ideas concerning the core of the assignment. Questions with which they themselves had been confronted under completely different circumstances and conditions, usually without enough time to fully fathom them. Questions about reconsidering strategies, searching for new tools. And about issues such as boundaries and radicalism.

MAARTEN KLOOS

not to develop the 1.5-ha island, as the only location in the increasingly intensively built-up IJ basin, but rather green it in a sustainable manner and, to begin with, give it the designation ‘park’. This advice was enthusiastically embraced by the councillor.

The Academy took up this development, which surprised many people, in an unusual way to the benefit of its programme for the winter school 2018, that is: by asking students to confront the still rather abstract idea of ‘a green island’ with their ideas on emptiness, darkness and tranquillity.

The theme chosen under the guidance of artist-in-residence Sarah van Sonsbeeck was ‘a silence for the head of Java’.

Encouraged by the slogan ‘The right to silence – the right to speak!’, many possible meanings of silence were investigated from the beginning of the project. Subsequently, divided into 18 groups, the same number of very different projects took shape. Projects that showed that the participants had been informed from a wide variety of viewpoints during the project: the company of (guest) teachers attracted for the occasion consisted of architects and landscape architects, artists and curators, writers and journalists, biologists, a technologist and a psychologist, a philosopher and a psychiatrist.

What eventually happened could have been predicted in advance. Whereas in the case of the Statue of Liberty there had been room for doubts about the reality value of the question and, therefore, about whether the assignment involved a concrete design or a conceptual approach, in the case of ‘a silence’ the stated question was both more clear and abstract. On the basis of the idea of ​​silence, the hard contours of the location could be interpreted as a dream. As a result the 18 projects showed little or no preoccupation with something like social relevance. What now surfaced was playful and festive, inventively theatrical, romantic and solemn, introvert and profound.

73

ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAMME

Interdisciplinary artist Vesna Petresin works across architecture, music, film, and body movement.

RENAIS­SANCE

Vesna Petresin is hard to catch: not only physically (our appointment for an interview took weeks to materialize), but also conceptually. Originally from Slovenia, she studied music at the Ljubljana Conservatory of Music and Ballet, fine art at the Arthouse College for Visual Arts and architecture at the University of Ljubljana, before obtaining a PhD from the latter. She now works as a performance artist, combining the subjects that she previously studied with virtual reality. Since January 2018, Petresin is artist-in-residence at the Amsterdam University of the Arts. She’s been working with students from the Academy of Architecture, among others, on projects exploring the possibilities of virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality and other new media, with a case study involving the Eye film museum.

RENAISSANCE WOMAN

Text David Keuning, Photos Thomas Lenden

WOMAN

ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAMME Synaescape IV, a mixed-reality installation by Vesna Petresin with Rubedo and interaction advisors Aron Fels and Bram Snijders.

First staged at the ID Lab, ATD, 8 March 2018.

VESNA PETRESIN

75

ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAMME

76

avid Keuning: How did you become involved with the D Academy of Architecture?

Vesna Petresin: ‘I was invited to do a visiting professorship at the Film Academy. They wanted me to teach methodologies of artistic research, without the need to produce a film as the end result. That was really interesting for me. The Academy then invited me to develop formats and content for new media, particularly in relation to virtual reality, as an artist-inresidence. This brought me in contact with the dance academy, the music conservatory and the school of architecture.

With the students, I started exploring and giving some structure to ideas about new media. Using those media, how do we create a new workflow? What sort of output can we make that goes beyond either a still image, a moving image or a spatial organization? That also includes the question: What are new ways of storytelling? My take on that is that storytelling is most interesting when it’s related to space.’

Why is that?

‘It’s my personal view that in the imagination, things unfold in space. I’ve always been interested in the connection between architecture, its concept of space and the way stories unfold in it, whether they are musical ideas, choreographed expression or narrative environments.’ or my understanding: When you talk about space at this F point, do you mean physical space?

‘A space can be physical, virtual or hybrid. Space as a concept is always the starting point. I’ll give you a more concrete example. A few years ago, I made an interactive installation with my London-based practice, which was a game-like environment that you could navigate as a first-person player. It was this dark, topologically shaped environment. Whenever you hit a trigger point, a sound loop and a three-dimensional light installation started to play. The purpose of this quest was to allow every player to experience how they can co-create a space that is full of information and that resonates with sound and light. I have been further developing this installation in Amsterdam as a mixed-reality performance. Soon questions emerged. How do we share experiences that are generated in the virtual world, almost like an extension of our own creative minds, with an audience? How do we create communal experiences? Virtual reality can be very lonely and isolating.’

his led to the interim presentation that you gave on T 8 March.

‘Yes. On a stage, I shared the experience that I had in cocreating the virtual reality environment with the audience by projecting a view of that experience in a 360-degree projection around them. They saw a framed view of the scene that I was experiencing in a four-dimensional world. This projection functioned as a standalone installation, but we could take this further into city space. In my opinion, architecture is the best-suited profession to work with virtual, augmented and mixed reality.’

RENAISSANCE WOMAN

Why do you think that?

‘Because of the way of thinking and designing. Virtual worlds – or more specifically: immersive environments – deal with spatial and temporal constraints as we know them from the physical environment. In a way, we are trying to recreate the world, for whatever goal: entertainment, gaming, engineering, and so forth. BIM is a good example. It allows every component of a structure to be augmented with information. The virtual environment is a shadow of what we know from real space. Architectural thinking has to conceptualize and visualize unbuilt space and figure out methods of building it in a three-dimensional environment. This makes architects best suited for designing virtual worlds.’ o you see virtual reality as a design tool or as an enviD ronment to be experienced?

‘The beautiful thing is: it’s both. It’s a new platform and it will become instrumental in the way we design spaces.

The design process itself will be much more organic in the future. The communication between humans and com­ puters is moving towards a gesture-based interface rather than a screen and a keyboard that require a lot of abstraction. I still use pencil and paper for sketches – that will never go away – but there’s a long way between that sketch and making that sketch come true in the physical world.

There are many steps required for that to happen. Virtual technology is a tool that allows us to more accurately create a real environment, without too much obstruction in the process. It’s a tool for communication and fabrication, but also a fantastic artistic medium that allows new levels of expression.

In a way, virtual technology is an extension of a very old process. Architectural visualizations have always tried to create impressions. They had to be as inviting, enticing and exciting as possible. This has always caused a conflict between the real and the imaginary. Now, if we can make this imaginary space somehow tangible for people that may not inhabit our headspace, then that’s a very logical step in the development of architectural visualization. Ten years ago, we worked with Arup Foresight on the construction of Toyo Ito’s Serpentine pavilion and the King’s Cross development. We created a visualization tool for architecture, designed like a game, in which everyone could enter a space through an avatar as a first-person user. That was a ground-breaking idea at that time. Although technology then was not yet advanced enough to make a parametric model that allowed users to change the design, it was a shocking experience for many city engineers and planners to actually experience the place from a moving perspective and see what works and what doesn’t. They could discuss the design and indicate places that were too low and oppressive, for instance.

The developments are going very fast. It’s also increasingly difficult to keep up with the progress if you want to have a complete overview. Today, I therefore tend to collaborate with people who are more specialized, from the gaming industry for instance. I work with another group who are developing markerless motion tracking without any wearables. This means we only need a camera and an algorithm that recognizes a shape in motion as a human. These data can then be augmented with content like music or visuals. You’ve got all these new professions emerging from such innovations. I very often think of the current time period as a kind of renaissance, a new Bauhaus-type of era, with so many interdisciplinary types of collaboration. Only a decade ago, my colleagues and I still had to argue in order to create a film course for architecture students. It was not really acceptable. “What do you want do with moving image?” I was asked. “Architecture is about building.”’

Do you feel that has changed now?

‘Yes, I think so. I’ve had beautiful experiences working with the students here at the Academy. They’re incredibly openminded and quick to adopt new ideas. Students are very literate in this respect. Using social media and interacting with technology on a day-to-day basis means they already have

an interest in media. There is not such a big conceptual leap when they have to imagine this technology being integrated in built space. Compared to the early stages of my career, these kinds of discussions are now completely normal.’ hat about the step from virtual reality to actual build­ W ing? For a while, in the 1990s, the fluid forms of the work

by Asymptote and Greg Lynn, for instance, seemed to hold a lot of promise, but in a way it seems we have regressed to boxes again. Technological advancement now seems to be the result of attempts to make the building process more efficient, rather than create new architectural form.

‘At first sight, that seems true. Asympote’s work is very fluid but the construction industry doesn’t favour more experimentation in the making of form. Today, it’s about the optimal use of material, budget, information and workflow. There’s also a very important ecological side to that. Perhaps we are still far away from implementing all the skills and methods that are already available today. There have always been periods in history when new ideas flourished and then they got hit by recessions. There’s also always a little bit of a danger that when there’s a new tool, it will trigger a particular aesthetic in the first stage. The tool then becomes associated with that aesthetic. Twenty years ago, computer graphics still looked almost stupidly unrealistic and very dry, distant and cold.

Today, we can create very organic-looking, sensual experiences with tools that are much more advanced. Tools grow.

So does society.’

Jelmar Brouwer, a student in the Master’s programme in Landscape Architecture at the Academy of Architecture, won the PK Award 2017, a biennial incentive prize for young design talent. The basis of the competition, organized by Bouwinvest and Architectuurcentrum Amsterdam, was the design of the square between the Olympic stadium, Amstelveenseweg and two former Citroën garages dating from 1931 and 1962.

The square is an important feature in the area, which has recently been renamed The Olympic Amsterdam. The assignment was to create a design in which the square remains multi-usable for events and that at the same time preserves its lively character for the neighbourhood and other users. Ac­cording to the jury, Brouwer’s plan suc­ceed­ed in introducing the human scale to this large square. The jury was impressed by the co­her­ ence of the plan and considers him a talented designer who can think both big and small.

The PK Award is aimed at tal­ented, starting designers. The winner receives a cash prize of € 5,000 as well as a wildcard to par­tic­ ipate in the subsequent competition for the completion of the entire public Olympic area.

Young Maaskant Prize 2017

ARC17 Jong Talent Award

New York Affordable Housing Challenge

The jury of the Young Maaskant Prize 2017 has rewarded Arna Mačkić’s quest for in­ clusive architecture and new mani­fes­ta­tions of the public domain. According to the jury, Mačkić has a great and earnest sense of Zeitgeist: she seeks out major contemporary social themes – the search for (national) iden­ tity, contrasts between population groups, mechanisms of inclusion and ex­clu­sion, the refugee issue – and reflects on them by word and design. She currently works together with Lorien Beijaert in Studio L A. The Maaskant Prize for young architects, consisting of a cash prize of € 5,000 and a grant for a communicative expression, is an incentive prize for archi­tects under 36 awarded biennially on the recom­men­ dation of an independent jury. Mačkić is the seventeenth person to win the award; the Mayor of Rotterdam, Ahmed Aboutaleb, presented it to her on 10 November 2017.

Five young architects have been nominated for the ARC17 Jong Talent Award. The award is intended for a young designer with an original take on the profession. Milad Pallesh studied Architecture at the MTS and HTS levels and went on to obtain a Master’s degree in Architecture from the Academy of Architecture Amsterdam. He graduated from the Academy in 2015 and his gradu­ ation project won first prize at Archiprix 2016.

During his studies, Pallesh worked for various architecture firms, including Bastiaan Jongerius and bureau SLA. In 2016 he found­ed his own office, Workshop archi­tec­ ten, together with Ivar van der Zwan and Ard Hoksbergen. Workshop focuses on crafts­ manship and on co-designing with contexts and users.

Alumnus Hans Maarten Wikkerink’s graduation project Marcy Houses received an honourable mention in the international New York Affordable Housing Challenge competition organized by Beebreeders and the New York Build 2017 expo. Nine win­ners were selected from more than 250 sub­ missions. Six submitted projects received an honourable mention, including the Marcy Houses project by alumnus Hans Maarten Wikkerink (36), who lives and works in New York. Wikkerink attained his Master’s degree from the Academy of Architecture Amsterdam in 2016. Earlier, his graduation project won him a nomination to partic­i­pate in Archiprix 2017, the Dutch design academies’ prestigious prize for graduating talent. The Archiprix will be presented in June in the former panopticon in Haarlem.

Milad Pallesh

AWARDS

PK Award 2017

Hans Maarten Wikkerink

Arna Mačkić

Jelmar Brouwer

AWARDS & EXHIBITIONS Archiprix International is a worldwide com­ petition that biennially invites 1,600 design academies to nominate their best gradu­ation projects. The 2017 edition took place from 1 to 10 February in Ahmedabad, India.

Here the submitted plans were assessed by an international jury. Of the 386 graduation projects submitted worldwide for partic­i­pa­ tion in Archiprix International, 23 graduation projects – including that of Gert-Jan Wisse – were selected for participation in the Hunter Douglas Award, which consists of an award and a cash prize. Landscape architect GertJan Wisse obtained his Master’s degree in Landscape Architecture from the Academy of Architecture Amsterdam in 2014 with a design strategy to heal the psychological and physical scars of the city of Belfast.

In his graduation project Common Ground Belfast he investigated the opportunities that would arise if Belfast was to develop towards an integrated city on the basis of the wish of the government of Northern Ireland to see the metres-high walls that so severely divide the city gone by the year 2020.

On Saturday 2 June, Mirte van Laarhoven (alumna Landscape Architecture) received an honourable mention for her graduation project Flowing Force during the presen­ta­ tion of the Archiprix 2018. The winners were announced this year at the Wagenmakerij in the Tilburg Spoorzone.

Mirte van Laarhoven received the honourable mention for her graduation plan Flowing Force, a project with the ambition to transform the Dutch river area into a natural landscape with international allure.

The design covers the entire river area and features three locations that are developed on a smaller scale. Various ‘landscape shapers’ are used to stimulate the devel­op­ ment of nature. Together they form a tool­ box with which processes in the landscape can be set in motion, a beautiful application of existing principles.

The jury assessed the 26 best gradu­ ation projects selected by the Dutch design programmes. The majority of the plans deal with socially relevant tasks, ranging from reuse to social housing to ecology.

It is encouraging, according to the jury, that the new generation feels involved in society and that it uses its knowledge to develop solutions for social problems. The quality of the presentation is of a high level across the board, according to the jury.

Gert-Jan Wisse

Mirte van Laarhoven

During the Dutch Design Week 2017, the work of a number of students from the Academy of Architecture was on show at the exhibition Bio-Boost!. The work was the result of the educational project Biobased Materials (O4), in which the students experimented with various bio­ materials, such as paper pulp and xyhlo (an environmentally friendly preservation of wood). The idea was to focus on new developments in biomaterials, combining concrete (industrial) products and explor­ atory materials research.

Paper pulp can be used for structural elements and roof tiles. Various natural in­ gre­dients are added to the pulp to make it stronger for construction purposes. Stu­dents also experimented with the effect of colour.

Simone de Waard from Material Sense Lab, who is also a teacher at the Academy of Architecture, curated the exhibition. ddw.nl

Venice Architecture Biennale At the Venice Architecture Bien­nale 2018, the Amsterdam Acad­emy of Architecture and nextcity.nl contributed to the Space Time Existence exhibition in Palazzo Mora. Invited by the European Cultural Centre (ECC), the Academy showcases recent student and alumni projects. The included projects are the result of design studios that focused on biodiversity. Those design studios were part of the Academy’s department of Land­ scape Architecture, headed by Nextcity’s researcher Maike van Stiphout and super­ vised by teacher Mathias Lehner.

The projects show a wide range of bio­ diverse designs. They include both large projects, such as a new city district on the man-made island of IJburg in Amsterdam, and small architectural objects, such as a seal island in the IJ basin in Amsterdam.

The authors of the student projects are Jeroen Boon, Sjaak Punt, Anne van der Graaf, Joske van Breugel, Nyasha Harper, Lieke de Jong and Marlena Rether. Project N1 Sloterdijk was designed by alumnus Donna van Milligen Bielke. The exhibition is open every day from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (except Tuesdays), from 25 May to 25 November 2018. palazzomora.org nextcity.nl/biennalevenice2018

EXHIBITIONS

Archiprix International Archiprix Netherlands Dutch Design Week

ONE LECTURES

21 / 09 2017

The Act Of Building

Robbert van der Horst

19 / 10 2017

Caroline Bos

28 / 09 2017

UNStudio

16 / 11 2017

Burgerweeshuis

Post Disaster Post Conflict

23 / 11 2017

Walmer Yard London

08 / 03 2018

Peter Bishop

12 / 10 2017

Redevelopment Bijlmerbajes

Winning Consortium

Landscaping The Station

Paul van der Ree

Wessel de Jonge

Peter Salter

05 / 10 2017

Rogier van den Berg

Ilze Paklone

15 / 02 2018

2017 – 2018

Towards Mapping Urban Intensities

30 / 11 2017

bureau SLA

Peter van Assche

London a city detached

05 / 04 2018

Rens Borgers

Happy Healthy Hemp Building

Project P1a Wormerveer Gateway into Nature Maud Aarts • Post-Isolation Francesco Garofalo • Driehuis, sport and play Danielle Huls • Station Castricum Marit Janse • Hilversum Sportpark: Gateway to the knowledge landscape Bart van Leeuwen • What is really behind the Media? Eva Radionova • Buitenpoort Bussum-Zuid Ingeborg Thoral • Lost in space! Paulien Wieringa • Buitenpoort Halfweg Gert-Jan Wisse • Hoofddorp: Gateway to the Outdoors Herman Zonderland Project P1b Toll House Peter van Assche • Sound of Silence Abdessamed Azarfane, Milad Pallesh • Pavilion for a Dying Sun Henri Borduin • Amsterdam Lookout Points Susana Constantino • Artist pavilion in the Rembrandtpark Tatjana Djordjevic • Shopping Box Laurens-Jan ten Kate • Pushing The Horizon, A pavilion ‘making quarter’ Jeroen van Mechelen • Contemporary 24h museum behind a monumental façade Kaita Shinagawa, Jolijn Valk • Homo Ludens, A house for two city nomads Sasa Radenovic Morphology Class V1 De koude kermis René van Engelenburg • Buying is the new making; Everything is editable Fabian Bredt • Tools that tell Vibeke Mascini • Time is just a concept Pim Palsgraaf • Recapture Thijmen van der Steen Morphology Class V2 Soft Wood Fabian Briels • Substantial spaces Brecht Duijf, Lenneke Langenhuijse • Sensory Field Explorations Matthijs Munnik • Portrait Linda Rusconi Project P2a Architecture Architecture and its Double – a villa for Lucky Luck Pnina Avidar, Ricky Rijckenberg • The Villa of the 21st Century Donald van Dansik, Chiara Dorbolò • Glass Weekend House Marieke Kums • Contemplation House Ana Rocha, Iwona Monteiro • Design for private clients Marchel Ruijgrok Project P2a Urbanism Next Neighbour­ hood II Hiroki Matsuura, Martin Probst Project P2a Landscape Architecture Man and beast: “(De)Construction of the Layered Landscape” Roel van Gerwen, Hannah Schubert, Gert Jan Wisse Project P2b Architecture Where the north meets the south Niels Groeneveld, Gerald Lindner, Raoul Vleugels • Thinking by making, Studies in Tectonic Culture Jochem Heijmans • The adoration of the joint Ronald Wenting • Reverse designing Serge Schoemaker, Max Hart Nibrig, Erik Vianen • Sverre Fehn: The Construction of Light Jan Loerakker, Gert-Jan Rozemeijer • Japanese Geometric Pattern Peter Mensinga, Yukiko Nezu Project P2b Landscape Architecture & Urbanism Basisweg on the move towards biodiversity! Hein Coumou, Hanneke Kijne • The City and the City Katharina Hagg • Biophilic Sloterdijk Deborah Lambert • The Rough Strip.

Sloterdijk between Naritaweg and train tracks Matthias Lehner Morphology Class V3 A material trail Alissa + Nienke • Second nature Lada Hrsak • Soundproofing the everyday Sarah van Sonsbeek • Connect it Lara Tolman Project P3a A+L The Back of the Zoo Rene Bouman • Dutch Pyramids – adapting a vacant stolp farm Dingeman Deijs • Cherry Orchard Rick ten Doeschate, Merten Nefs • Urban Ensemble Jeroen Geurst • Urban Living Plus Burton Hamfelt • Homeland Ira Koers • Co-housing in the Unicorn Anouk Vogel Project P3b A+U Skinny tower – a 100m-high community Arnoud Gelauff, Annemarie Swemmer • Design alternatives for the Sluisbuurt Burton Hamfelt, Kamiel Klaasse, Gen Yamamoto • Future Proof residential building at Sluisbuurt Hans Hammink • Biotopia Marcel van der Lubbe, Jannie Vinke Project P3b Landscape Architecture Human meets Non-human: ‘designing the new sublime’ Kim Kool, Thijs de Zeeuw Project P3b Urbanism Transforming the Alfadriehoek / Vlothaven Pieter Jannink

Project P4 Extra Architecture Body, Space and Architecture Judith Korpershoek Project P4 Extra Landscape Architecture & Urbanism Regional design Huub Juurlink, Hanneke Kijne Project P4 Architecture St Peters Seminary – Glasgow Jo Barnett • Katalyze Mumbai Anne Dessing, Anne Geenen • Circular Pavilion for the Municipality of Amsterdam Hans Hammink • Amsterdam Global Community Centre Stephan Verkuijlen • School’s Out Winfried van Zeeland Project P4 Urbanism (Bi)Cycle Into the Future Riette Bosch Project P4 Landscape Architecture Towards 2050: A living landscape for Waardenburg David Kloet, Ellen Wilms Lecture C1a History: Landscape architecture Marieke Berkers Lecture C1b History: Architecture Introduction: history through the eyes of the designer Jouke van der Werf • Themes in 19th century Architecture Jouke van der Werf • Modernism and tradition in early 20th Century Architecture Jouke van der Werf • Team Ten Architecture Max Risselada • Archigram and other utopisms Jouke van der Werf • The Architecture of Housing Els Bakker • Architecture Now Arjen Oosterman Exercise O1 Architecture Repertoire Robert Bijl, Geurt Holdijk, Bas van Vlaenderen Exercise O1 Urbanism Repertoire Sebastian van Berkel, Eric Jan Bijlard, Martin Hopman Exercise O1 Landscape Architecture Repertoire David Kloet, Claire Oude Aarninkhof, Hannah Schubert, Michiel van Zeijl Exercise O2 Textual Analysis Oene Dijk, Mark Hendriks, Vibeke Gieskes, Billy Nolan, Marieke Berkers, Mark Minkjan Lectures C2a History and Practice: urbanism Darren Anderson, Daryll Mulvihill, Eva Plompen, Melle Smeets, Wouter Veldhuis, Tim Verlaan Lectures C2b History: art Bert Taken Tools 2 Landscape Analysis Tools 2 Landscape Analysis Mirjam Koevoet Tools 2 Building Technique Tools 2 Building Technique Charles Hueber, Jos Rijs, Jean-Marc Saurer Exercise O3a Architecture & Urbanism Urban Ensemble Jaap Brouwer, Wouter Kroeze, Jörn Schiemann, Paul de Vroom Exercise O3a Architecture & Landscape Architecture Use aspects and expression of construction Bastiaan Jongerius • Building and Landscape Rianne Makkink • The Dutch Pyramids – Dutch Stolp Farms Paul van der Ree Exercise O3b Architecture Bart Bulter, Paul Vlok, Mark Snitker • Daily living in Amsterdam and surrounding today Jurriaan van Stigt, Adriaan Mout Exercise O3b Urbanism Jaap Brouwer, Martin Probst • Treasure hunt, cartography laboratory Marjolein Boterenbrood Lectures C3a-C5a Design Methodology Marco Broekman, Oene Dijk, Klaske Havik, Karin Helms, Lars van Hoften, Harma Horlings, Chris Luth, Egbert Stolk, Anouk Vogel, Studenten: Kim Kool, Murk Wymenga, Hein Coumou Lectures C3b-C5b Architecture Design Methodology Jo van den Berghe, Rolf Bruggink, Odette Ex, Hans Hammink, Albert Herder, Jan-Richard Kikkert, Marcel van der Lubbe, Jeroen van Schooten, Jannie Vinke, Chantal Vos Lectures C3b-C5b Urbanism Professional practice Markus Appenzeller, Tess Broekmans, Han Dijk, Anton Eguerev, Eric Frijters, Martin Probst, Martin Sobota, Martijn de Wit, Daan Zandbelt Lectures C3b-C5b Landscape Architecture Professional practice Frans Boots, Jana Crepon, Michal Marcinov, Dirk Oudes, Bas Smets, Maike van Stiphout, Martino Tattara, Hank van Tilborg Exercise O4 Architecture Materialisation • Experimental Material Research with Seaweed Pieter Keune, Baukje Trenning • Inside Circularity. Jeroen van Mechelen • School’s Out Jilt van Moorst • RE-ACT/ RE-LIGHT 2018; A spaciousnessinstallation based upon Sonsbeek pavilion Aldo van Eyck Bart Visser, Gert Anninga

Exercise O4a Urbanism & Landscape Architecture Regional research Marjolein Hillige, Jan-Willem de Jager, Nico Jonker, Marten Nefs, Matthijs Schouten, Sven Stremke, Tobias Woldendorp Exercise O4b Urbanism Strategy Bart van der Heijden, Coen Martijn Hofland, Marjolein Peters, Edwin van Uum Exercise O4b Landscape Architecture Live with Life Fred Booy Morphology Class V4 Neo-Gothic Modernism Bas van Beek • Big art, small size Woes van Haaften • Blue substance Léon de Lange • You and me and space Jeroen Musch • Location, location, location Bart Eysink Smeets Project P5 Rearranging Brussels Tom Bergevoet, Tess Broekmans • Cornucopia Yttje Feddes, Mathias Lehner • Caïro between the no longer and not yet delta megalopolis Jana Crepon, Lada Hrsak • The White Page Uri Gilad, Hanneke Kijne • Can we please stop drawing trees on skyscrapers? Marie-Laure Hoedemakers, Gus Tielens • Station Schiedam Centrum Miguel Loos, Hiroki Matsuursa • The White Page Machiel Spaan, Philomene van der Vliet Project P6 Extra Architecture Paleis voor Volksvlijt on the Oostenburgereiland Amsterdam Gianni Cito, Lisette Plouvier Project P6 Extra Urbanism Urbanisme Hiroki Matsuursa Project P6 Architecture Architecture School of the Future Poland Bart Bulter, Sebastian Janusz • Waldorf Astoria and the urban nomad Paul van Dijk, Laurens-Jan ten Kate • The library of things: centre for the sharing economy Micha de Haas • National Human Rights Institute Wouter Kroeze • Smakkelaars­ veld market – Strategies for sustainable urban living Carolien Schippers, Caro van de Venne Project P6 Urbanism Reinventing densification and living along the IJ Martin Aarts, Jerryt Krombeen Project P6 Landscape Architecture The reinvention of the Zaanse Schakel Dingeman Deijs, Jan-Dirk Hoekstra, Nike van Keulen Lecture C4-C6 The Amsterdam Agenda Daan Roggeveen, Michiel Hulshof • Go West! Daan Roggeveen, Michiel Hulshof • Les Grands Projects Hollandais Esther Agricola • Bijlmer Blues Daan Dekker • Maugruppe in Berlin Marc Schmit • The Paris Paradox Menno van der Veen • Irregular Development Adam Frampton • Sustainable Urbaism Neville Mars • Future of Work Florian Idenburg • Boring Hong Kong Inge Goudsmit • Mapping Istanbul Selva Gürdoğan, Greger Tang Thomsen • Cross-Mediterrenean Migration Miguel Gentil • Bright Lights, Big City David Mulder van der Vegt • AirBnB & Disneyfication Stephen Hodes • Smart City Valerie von der Tann 1-Lectures The Act Of Building Robbert van der Horst • Towards Mapping Urban Intensities Ilze Paklone • Post Disaster, Post Conflict Rogier van den Berg • Herontwikkeling Bijlmerbajes David Gianotten, Eric Frijters • Knowledge Tools: architecture as a knowlede practice and how knowledge is applied Caroline Bos • Burgerweeshuis Wessel de Jonge • Landscaping the Station Paul van der Ree • Design, invent & fabricate Peter van Assche • The Language of Architecture Daniel Libeskind • Walmer Yard Peter Salter • A city detached Peter Bishop • Ecobouw Rens Borgers • Up to the sky Laura Gatti • Amstelstation Ton Schaap, Miguel Loos, Jan-Peter Wingender • Purpose Francine Houben Exercise O5 Jaap-Jan Berg, Marieke Berkers, René Boer, Vibeke Gieskes, Michel Heesen, Mark Hendriks, Vincent Kompier, Billy Nolan Exercise O6 Vibeke Gieskes, Michel Heesen, Arjen Oosterman, Aart Oxenaar, Alexandra Tisma Winter School Markus Appenzeller, Defne Ayas, Anneke Blokker, Rosanne Blokker, Jana Crepon, Oene Dijk, Maarten Doorman, Kester Freriks, Tijs Goldschmidt, Gijs den Hartogh, Yasmijn Jarram, Laurens-Jan ten Kate, Yuki Kho,

PROJECTS

combining academic learning with professional development. All of the guest teachers are practicing professionals, forging a strong connection between the school and the job market.

Graduates are entitled to independently practice one of the three disciplines taught at the Academy. The degree meets the admission requirements that are defined in the Dutch Architect’s Title Act and is notified with the EU. The graduate has direct access to the Dutch register of architects, urban planners and landscape architects and is qualified to compete in the European market. The Academy has its own place in the cultural life of Amsterdam and places itself in the professional debate through lectures, workshops, events and exhibitions.

Jan-Richard Kikkert, Annick Kleizen, Maarten Kloos, Pelle de Koning, Barend Koolhaas, Filippo Lodi, Tracy Metz, Ahmet Öğüt, Jarrik Ouburg, Antonis Pittas, Jan Rothuizen, Radna Rumping, Michel Schöpping, Raphael Vanoli, Job de Wit, Fred Woudenberg, Hans de Zwart Start Workshop Narda Beunders, Chris Corstens, Oene Dijk, Bruno Doedens, Rudolph Kempers, Machiel Spaan Building Technology Course Floor Arons, Maaike Behm, Marlies Boterman, Paulien Bremmer, Jaap Gräber, Rens ten Hagen, Paul Kuipers, Paul Ouwerkerk, Jos Rijs, Jean-Marc Sauer, Annemarie Swemmer, Wouter Valkenier, Paul Vlok Minor Architecture Marlies Boterman, Paulien Bremmer, Arnoud Gelauff, Jaap Graber, Annemarijn Haarink, Angelique Haver, Vincent Kompier, Wouter Kroeze, Paul Kuipers, Sil Mantel, Ward Massa, Jeroen Musch, Paul Ouwerkerk, Sasa Radenovic, Jos Rijs, Lonny van Ryswyck, Bart van der Salm, Sjoerd Soeters, Machiel Spaan, Nadine Ster, Frans Sturkenboom, David Veldhoen, Paul Vlok, Jaco Woltjer, Metin van Zijl Minor and Course U+L Hester Aardse, Pieter Jan Agtmaal, Pieter Boekschooten, Djacco van den Bosch, John Breen, Frank van den Broeck, Marijke Bruinsma, Simen Brunia, Lineke van Campen, Mathieu Derckx, Oene Dijk, Gloria Font, Jaap Graber, Niek Hazendonk, Bieke van Hees, Imke van Hellemondt, Rogier Hendriks, Ton Hilhorst, Sanne Horn, Ruiter Janssen, Daan de Jong, Hein van Lieshout, Cynthia Markhoff, Paul Ouwerkerk, Judith van der Poel, Arjan van Ruyven, Simona Serafino, Jessica Tjon Atsoi, Gianluca Tramutola, Baukje Trenning, Joof Tummers, Hugo van Velzen Drawing Workshop Frank van den Broeck, Sanne Bruggink, Hans van der Pas Introductory Workshop U+L Hein van Lieshout, Bieke van Hees, Jerryt Krombeen, Katarina Noteberg, Brigitta van Weeren Introductory Workshop A Dafne Wiegers, Michiel Zegers Information by Ambassadors David Habets, Jerryt Krombeen, Michiel Zegers Personal Effectiveness Anneke Dekker Holland Tour Oene Dijk Design & Management Alijd van Doorn, Martin Fredriks, Gerard van Hoorn, Sjon Pepping, Wim Voogt Design & Entrepeneurship Ad Bogerman, Frans Boots, Martin Fredriks, Mariana Idiarte, Thijs Meijer, Moniek Otten Presentation & Communication Marjolein Roeleveld, Janice Slot EMiLA Summer School Maike van Stiphout, Yuka Yoshida Eurotour Excursion Sasa Radenovic, Jan-Richard Kikkert Landscape Excursion Mirjam Koevoet Coordination Crafting Wood Machiel Spaan Jury Nominations Archiprix Jeroen van Schooten Opening Lecture Daan Zandbelt Kromhout Lecture Donna van Milligen Bielke Job Training Margreet Pruijt Midsummer Night Lecture Oliver Wainwright The Amsterdam Academy of Architecture would also like to thank all assessors, graduation mentors, graduation committee members and staff members.

TEACHERS

About the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture This annual newspaper is published by the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, an inter­ national school that offers space to experiment, produce and reflect in the heart of Amsterdam, providing a laboratory and workplace in one. Established in 1908, the Academy is now part of the Amsterdam University of the Arts (AHK) and offers three Master’s programmes: Architecture, Urbanism and Landscape Architecture. The inter­disciplinary courses prepare students for practising spatial design as a discipline on the cutting edge of visual art, construction engineering, civil and cultural engineering and the spatial sciences in a national and international context. Students study and work simultaneously,

Harvest, Madeleine Maaskant 3 • Selling the City, Oliver Wainwright 4 • City Maker, Esther Agricola 9 • From Buckminster Fuller to Shigeru Ban, Bruno Doedens 12 • Academy Life 14 • A Sea of Plastic, Vibeke Gieskes 16 • The Architect’s Conscience, Vibeke Gieskes 18 • Urban Design Dreams, Markus Appenzeller 19 • Archiprix Nominations, Janna Visser-Verhoeven 20 • Flying High, James Melsom 26 • Dutch Pyramids, Jan-Richard Kikkert 30 • Ambition, Robbertjan van Veen 35 • Masters of Form, Bruno Vermeersch 36 • The Blessings of Nature, Baukje Trenning 40 • Exchange, Bart Bulter 42 • Material and Tectonics, Machiel Spaan 44 • The Largest Sandcastle in the Netherlands, Tracy Metz 46 • Eurotour 2017 48 • Go off the Main Road, Daniel Libeskind 50 • The Amsterdam Agenda, Michiel Hulshof and Daan Roggeveen 52 • The Written Page, Michiel van Iersel and Jarrik Ouburg 56 • Learning from Mumbai, Michiel van Iersel and Jarrik Ouburg 58 • Herculean Labour, Tijs van den Boomen 60 • A Healthy Living Environment, Matthijs Ponte 61 • Publications 62 • Energy Landscapes, Sven Stremke 63 • Silence, Sarah van Sonsbeeck 66 • The Academy as a Place for Experiment, Maarten Kloos 68 • Renaissance Woman, Vesna Petresin 74 • Awards and Exhibitions 77 • One Lectures 78 • Teachers and Projects 79