Section 1.1.0

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Plants in the courtyard in 2009, on the occasion of NoÍl van Dooren’s departure as head of the Landscape Architecture department.

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For the graduation show in November 2016, cars were hoisted into the courtyard. Photo Inge Hoogland

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Winter School Winter Wonderland in January 2010. Photo Hans Kruse

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A bamboo structure was erected in the courtyard during the start workshop in 2017. Photo Marlise Steeman

Index

Contents

14 Preface Madeleine Maaskant 24 The World inside the Academy, the Academy in the World

29 Graduation project Home of the Legends 33 Education 34 / 35 Anne Holtrop + Anne Dessing Graduation project Affordable Paradise 45 49 50 / 51 52 / 53 57

Research Floris Alkemade + Ton Schaap Han Wiskerke + Eric Frijters Graduation project About Walls and Other Freedoms

61 Artists-in-Residence 62 / 63 Gabriel Lester + Rianne Makkink Graduation project Re.Claim 69 73 Masters of Form 74 Bruno Vermeersch + Arne Hendriks Graduation project Forever Travelling 85 89 Practice 90 / 91 Ronald Rietveld + Arna Mačkić Graduation project A Front for the Back 97 101 Exchange 102 / 103 Urs Meister + Machiel Spaan Graduation project Pairi Dæza 113 117 Winter School 118 / 119 Jeroen Musch + Sarah van Sonsbeeck Graduation project Waarderpolder 125 129 Explore 130 / 131 Jan-Richard Kikkert + Andrė Baldišiūtė 138

Graduation project Second Nature

141 Graduation 149 Graduation project Marcy Houses

153 Facts 10

Aesthetic / 118, 162 Analytical /35, 154 Balance / 27, 45, 158, 166 Beautiful / 15, 51, 63, 86, 118, 130, 131, 150, 162 Blindfolded / 74, 118 Bravado / 50 Brushstroke / 24 Bureaucracy / 51 Change / 26, 51, 52, 62, 70, 79, 114, 158, 160, 163-166 Closeness / 102 Collective / 86, 114, 115 Colour / 63 Community / 27, 33, 63, 154, 164, 166 Concept / 26, 74, 75, 89, 102, 119, 131, 163 Conscience / 163 Context / 25, 26, 33, 61, 129, 154, 156, 164 Contrast / 25, 80 Courtyard / 1-9, 15, 25, 27, 114, 141 Craftsmanship / 50, 164 Cross-pollination / 63 Cross-thinker / 90 Curriculum / 24, 26, 27, 52, 89, 129, 154-158, 162, 164, 166 Cutting Edge / 33, 154 Devote / 166 Disciplined / 51 Disposable / 81 Dream / 131, 163 Dynamic / 27, 46 Energy / 25, 49, 52, 53, 62, 91, 102, 165 Entrepreneurship / 50 Eternal / 25 Exchange / 24, 27, 34, 62, 101, 102, 130, 155, 158, 159, 164 Experience / 24, 27, 50, 51, 53, 62, 63, 89, 98, 118, 119, 130, 131, 154, 155, 157, 158, 165, 165 Experiment 14, 15, 26, 50, 76, 90, 161, 163, 166 Exploit / 91 Fact / 58, 62, 70, 114, 150, 153,155, 161, 163 Form / 49, 50, 58, 61, 62, 73-75, 85, 98, 102, 114, 113, 139, 141, 153-156, 162, 163, 165 Freedom / 34, 57, 74, 90 Fresh / 51 Future / 14, 45, 49, 50, 52, 53, 70, 86, 101, 117, 138, 160, 162, 163 Glory / 98 Happy / 118, 150 History / 15, 25, 81, 91, 130, 150, 154, 163, 164 Ice Cream / 30 Ideal / 14, 15, 130, 163 Idyll / 114 Imitation / 14, 163 Impossible / 35 Inside / 15, 24-27, 62, 98 Inspire / 35, 61, 114, 117, 119, 155, 161, 166 Intelligent / 131 Interactivity / 119 International / 25, 26, 33, 34, 61, 90, 102, 103, 131, 154, 155, 157, 158, 164 Laboratory / 15, 33, 90, 154, 165 Location / 34, 35, 46, 86, 98, 102, 118, 126, 129, 130, 154, 155, 158, 164,166

Lost / 63, 81, 98, 118 Master / 63, 73-75, 89, 91, 101, 117, 118, 141, 153-157, 160, 161, 164-166 Material / 14, 53, 54, 58, 62, 76, 80, 101-103, 114, 138, 158, 161, 163, 165 Model / 12, 24, 26, 27, 30, 53, 89, 102, 130, 131, 154, 155, 161, 163-166 Multidisciplinary / 61, 155 Nature / 25, 50, 86, 119, 137, 138, 155, 158, 159, 165 Network / 46, 53, 102, 154, 158 Ornament / 80 Outside / 25, 27, 34, 51, 62, 102, 103, 153, 157, 166 Panic / 131 Parallel / 26, 155, 156, 164 Perception / 70, 164 Play / 14, 24, 25, 30, 34, 53, 62, 74, 114, 115, 155, 160, 162, 164, 165 Poem / 118 Politics / 26, 91 Poverty / 46, 52 Practice / 14, 25, 26, 27, 33, 34, 49, 50, 58, 61, 89, 90, 119, 154-155, 157, 158, 160, 163-166 Private / 115, 163 Public / 33, 53, 55, 98, 115, 126, 153, 154, 157, 163, 166 Rational / 118 Reinvent / 25, 101 Relevant / 27, 53, 89, 119, 156-158, 162, 164 Repetition / 82 Research / 26, 34, 35, 45, 49, 52-54, 62, 74, 89, 102, 119, 154, 155, 157, 161, 165 Result / 26, 30, 53, 58, 70, 86, 89, 102, 118, 119, 139, 141, 155, 156, 158, 160, 162-166 Reuse / 58, 101, 164 Scale / 26, 34, 98, 102, 114, 119, 150, 154, 155, 158, 161-163, 165 Secret / 26, 27, 91, 118, 156, 158, 160, 161, 163-166 Security / 126 Self-conscious / 34 Sensory / 118 Sewer / 163 Silence / 119, 123 Solution / 27, 131, 138, 156, 165 Space / 15, 25, 26, 30, 46, 53, 55, 58, 69, 70, 74, 90, 91, 98, 114, 115, 118, 119, 126, 130, 150, 154, 155, 160, 161, 165, 166 Spirit / 63, 162 Spontaneous / 118 Stimulate / 50, 70, 86, 102, 115, 163, 166 Student / 24-27, 33-35, 50-52, 61-64, 67, 73-75, 89-91, 101-103, 117-119, 129-131, 141, 153-158, 160-166 Sustainability 30 Symbol / 62, 131, 138 Test Case / 46 Tired / 91 Transformation / 49, 137, 138, 163, 165 Ugliness / 51 Unconditional / 50 Universe / 24, 27, 35, 130 Vacant / 50, 91, 138 Vacuum / 118

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Amsterdam Academy of Architecture Section 1.1.0 Sectional model of the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture.

Project by Juliette Gilson. Photo Jimmy on the Run

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Madeleine Maaskant

Cross Section On entering the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, you chance upon a bust of the architect Willem Kromhout. In 1891 Kromhout published his famous essay ‘Tout à l’égout’, in which he philosophized about the ideal architecture school he would establish once he had done away with each and every already existing style and school, in De Opmerker magazine. If it were left up to him, this ‘school of the future’ would no longer have room for order books and references to classical antiquity or other imitation styles. Instead, architects would have the opportunity to develop themselves and to experiment with new forms and materials.

Nearly two decades later, Kromhout was in a position to test his ideas in practice: in 1908, he played a prominent role in the establishment of vocational and professional architecture departments at what was at that time the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and is currently the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture.

On 5 October 2018, the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture celebrates its 110th jubilee. This anniversary occasions reflection. One of the ways we do this is by the publication of Section 1.1.0. For the non-architects among you: the word in the title both refers to a drawing that represents the cross section of a building, a city or a landscape, and to a cross section in the metaphorical sense. This book gives an impression 14

of the activities that take place at the Academy, emphasizing the last couple of years. The number in the title refers to the structure in which architecture offices generally store work drawings and of course to the age of the Academy.

The school has been housed in the Oudezijds Huiszittenhuis and the Arsenaal on the Amsterdam Waterlooplein since 1946. Generations of architects, urban designers and landscape architects have memories of this beautiful old building complex with its creaking staircases, beautiful lecture halls, courtyard and meeting points. They have worked there, taken exams, partied, listened and discussed. When I walk around inside, I often think of Georges Perec’s novel La Vie mode d’emploi, which describes the lives of the occupants of a residential building in Paris room by room, from the cellar to the attic. Any author venturing to describe the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture this way would not only write a fascinating portrait of the building and its occupants, but also a history of Dutch architecture in the second half of the twentieth century.

Today, 110 years after the school’s establishment, we find ourselves part of a long tradition.

The Academy still wants to offer plenty of space to experiment, produce and reflect. This school – in the heart of Amsterdam – is a laboratory and workshop in one. Willem Kromhout philosophized about the ideal architecture school in ‘Tout à l’égout’; in his name, we do our utmost to be and remain that ideal school.

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Kirsten Hannema

The World Inside the Academy, the Academy in the World You cannot paint a portrait of the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture with just a few brushstrokes. The Academy is a veritable universe in itself, housed in a monumental building with brick façades, characteristic red shutters and an interior filled with hidden corners and passageways. At the same time, the educational institution is connected to the surrounding world in many different ways, through exchange students, study trips and guest lecturers.

A wondrous thing: as if you can turn the Academy inside out or vice versa: the city inwards. How can you explain such a phenomenon?

To start with, you could list a number of – impressive – figures and names. The Academy, which is a part of the Amsterdam University of the Arts, is more than a hundred years old. In the last century, more than 1,500 students have trained here to become architects, urban designers and landscape architects. Among them are famous people, like Cornelis van Eesteren, Piet Blom and Lotte Stam-Beese, and well-known young architects like Anne Holtrop and Arna Mačkić. They created numerous buildings and urban designs, like Van Eesteren’s General Expansion Plan for Amsterdam and Blom’s Cube Houses. They spread their ideas and experiences by teaching at universities and colleges in the Netherlands and abroad.

They have often played a large part in the debate about architecture, urban design and landscape architecture, and the renowned architecture magazine Forum has its editorial board at the Academy.

Attention for the so-called ‘concurrent’ educational model is growing.

In this model, students work at design firms during the day and are trained to be designers in the evenings. Enthusiasm for the interdisciplinary (bilingual) curriculum offered by the Academy and the city of Amsterdam is growing as well. By now, 40 per cent of the students is foreign. Conversely, increasingly more Academy students are studying abroad.

In this way the reach of the Academy keeps expanding. ‘The Academy is actually an eternal design project,’ former director Aart Oxenaar wrote in the book that was published in honour of the Academy’s 100-year anniversary. ‘A construction that – like the Museum of Unlimited Growth by Le Corbusier and the Tour Sans Fins by Jean Nouvel – continues to grow and essentially reinvent itself, driven by the energy of new generations of students and teachers.’

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First Stone

The first stone of that eternally growing structure was laid on 5 October 1908. On that day, architect Willem Kromhout – whose bust can be admired in the Academy’s entrance hall – founded the department of Secondary and Higher Architectural Education, together with a number of other prominent members of the society of architecture Architectura et Amicitia, including Berlage, Cuypers and Kalf.

Their goal for the new programme is still the same today: learning together and from each other about architecture. The teachers, most of whom were members of A et A, were designers themselves and only students with experience were accepted. That is how theory and practice merged, between the world inside and outside the Academy.

In this respect, Oxenaar mentions another nice metaphor for the Academy and its history: the film Der Lauf der Dinge by Swiss artists Fischli and Weiss (1987). In the film, energy is transmitted with a lot of skill and inventiveness: fireworks strapped to a tire make it roll onto a shelf, making a metal cylinder hit a construction with a bottle of water, which pours into a cup on a seesaw with a candle on the other end, lighting a wick, etcetera.

The only goal is ‘to elicit tension about what is possible and what is not, and generate concern about the issue of right and wrong,’ he explains. ‘That it ends up creating beauty is a nice side effect.’

Place in the City

In 1946, the Academy moved from the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten (State Academy of Visual Arts) on Stadhouderskade to the Oudezijds Huiszittenhuis on Waterlooplein, in the centre of Amsterdam. The facility was built in 1655 to accommodate a charity that used it for the storage and distribution of peat, grain and other foodstuffs for the poor who did own a house but were otherwise in need of support. People would enter through a back alley, then through the archway past the courtyard to receive their rations. The goal of this back alley was to let the poor come in unnoticed.

‘It explains the introverted nature of the building,’ former head teacher of architecture Jarrik Ouburg said in his inauguration speech The White Space (2012). ‘This nature is in contrast with its current use. An academy in a city should have an outgoing character. Our focus should be outward.’ He describes the institution from an angle of interaction with the world in which it operates – the Academy itself, the Amsterdam University of the Arts, the city of Amsterdam, the international playing field and the greatest context: time.

‘Why do I notice a certain building time and again,’ Ouburg wonders, ‘and not the one next to it? Why does one park function as the city’s garden and the other is just a lawn? A lot of what we can learn in this business, we can learn from the city of Amsterdam. But to me it’s more about what the city can learn from us. . . . How can we make the building look more like a distribution centre again? Not for grain or peat, but for equally important basic needs: knowledge and inspiration. . . . Within these walls we can create a parallel reality that might be less bound by budget, and maybe also less politically challenged, but definitely doesn’t lose its credibility. One that can also be interesting to developers, clients and to politics.’

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The Secret of the Academy

Educational Model

A parallel reality inside that enclosed building: it makes the Academy somewhat mysterious. What is its secret? This question was put to director Madeleine Maaskant when students from the Academy won the first and a second prize during the Archiprix in 2014 – as it had in 2013. This graduation contest has been around for over 35 years and the Academy has brought forth many winners, especially the last couple of years. Remarkable, because the amount of students studying at the Academy is small compared with the Faculties of Architecture of the Universities of Technology in Delft and Eindhoven.

In search of an explanation for this success, Maaskant revealed the three secret ingredients of the Academy in her inauguration speech, 1:1 Reflections after one hundred and one days (2015): the education at the Amsterdam University of the Arts, the ability to respond to change, and the educational model itself.

And thirdly, the exceptional educational model: for designers, by designers, with concurrent education and an interdisciplinary curriculum.

The teachers are all guest teachers who work in the field, who write their own assignments for the students and who know best what the current relevant themes are to put to them. The combination of working and studying within the doctoral programme is unique. After an education at the Academy of Architecture, a student has more than graduated, because of the work experience gained: he or she is, in fact, an architect, an urban designers or a landscape architect.

Architecture, urban design and landscape architecture are offered in combined projects. Students learn to come up with integral solutions for spatial problems in line with the changing practice, where designers are increasingly working as specialists, together with other specialists.

But that still does not solve the mystery. ‘The strength of this school lies not in one of the mentioned secrets,’ Maaskant notes, ‘but in the indivisibility of the three: they’re intrinsically connected and overlap each other. They’re in a certain balance and we need to maintain that equilibrium.’

Le Corbusier’s Museum of Unlimited Growth, the Tour Sans Fins by Jean Nouvel, the film Der Lauf der Dinge, the building itself – a distribution centre of knowledge and inspiration – and a secret that consists of an indivisible trinity. There are many nice metaphors with which to describe the Academy.

What they have in common is their description of movement: dialogue, exchange, looking for and maintaining the balance between the universe that the Academy is in itself, and the world around it.

There is a place where you can experience this dynamic first-hand: the courtyard of the building. On the patio you are inside the Academy: that special, lively community of students, teachers and employees. But you are also outside, connected to the city and the elements. You can hear the trams, the church bells and the hustle and bustle of the market, you can feel the wind, the sun and the rain.

People smoke, eat and drink on the patio. They stress about presentations, celebrate successes, deal with disappointment about failed courses here. They hold workshops, build summer pavilions and just hang out. It is a place where everyone meets, ideas are spread and fierce debates are held. The patio is the Academy’s Forum Romanum and for many, the favourite spot in the building.

Typical: the first sentence in the study guide starts there. ‘Midsummer in Amsterdam. The chestnut tree in the courtyard catches the blazing sun, the temperature hovers around 30°C and fragments of city sounds blow in through the open window. . . . ,’ Madeleine Maaskant wrote. The best way to get to know the Academy is possibly by just sitting down in its centre.

Cultural Meaning

Being a part of the Amsterdam University of the Arts and the resulting undeniably apparent cultural meaning of the business is the first ‘secret’.

‘Education at this college isn’t only about science and research, but also about personal development,’ Maaskant writes in her inauguration speech.

She refers to the German word Bildung, in the sense of German scholar Wilhelm von Humboldt: a ‘certain cultivation of the mind and character that nobody can afford to be without’. ‘A description that goes against the “student factory” that today’s university has become in many Western countries,’ according to Maaskant.

Education at the Academy is more than a curriculum. Students also need space to experiment and to push boundaries. That is what the Academy wants to offer with its individual approach to students in a small-scale learning environment: time to find out what position they want to take and the possibility to ripen into mature designers.

Ability to Change

The second element Maaskant mentions is the ability to anticipate what the construction practice will do in changing times and to embrace new challenges in education. The economic crisis that started with the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 has hit architecture hard. The real estate market is slowly recovering, but the vacancy rate is persistent. The result is a shift in spatial commissions, from large-scale new construction to renovation and rezoning. It takes new spatial concepts, changes in legislature, finance and dealing with monuments, but mostly a change of mentality.

At the same time, the crisis shows how the business is increasingly determined by an international context, not just economically but also politically and culturally. Designers should possess the skills and knowledge to work abroad and to collaborate. That is why student and teacher exchanges from different countries is so important.

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Home Legend Dafne Wiegers

Architecture

Home of Legends eSports hub for Fnatic Graduation date 11 07 2017 Commission members Machiel Spaan (mentor), Kamiel Klaasse, Ira Koers Additional members for the examination Bart Bulter, Miguel Loos

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Home of Legends Home of Legends is an eSports hub in the heart of London, designed for Fnatic. Fnatic is one of the most storied eSports organisations in Europe, succeeding in being about far more than just gaming. Home of Legends houses Fnatic’s League of Legends team and head­ quarters. It 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 hand, are intertwined like an ice cream sundae. Fans visiting the building are on a constant quest to find out where their heroes are, and may (or may

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not) find them. Because where is the entrance? And how do you get to the next level? What is behind that wall?

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.

The structure is designed like a series of scenes the visitor can explore, instead of starting from a series of floor plans like traditional architecture. This results in a fragmented building. In the Home of Legends building, there is no route. You can enter in a lot of places, and follow different paths up and down. This temple of gaming is fragmented like the internet is fragmented: you’ll have to find your way through it.

Moreover, Home of Legends is an investigation of how our physical habitat will look if the digital habitat becomes more and more influential, and we spend more time submerged in it. I think the digitalisation of our lives is a revolution as important for architects as was the housing development with the industrial revolution, the social turnaround of the sixties and the crave for sustainability in the nineties and zeroes.

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ed uca ti on Education

The Amsterdam Academy of Architecture prepares students for the practice of spatial design as a discipline on the cutting edge of visual arts, construction engineering, civil and cultural engineering and the spatial sciences in a national and international context. The city of Amsterdam is a permanent laboratory for the design assignments of the students and teachers of the Academy of Architecture.

The Academy is closely connected to the local professional community, public services, contractors and developers. It also has strong ties to associated schools in Europe and strives for further expansion and fortification of its international cooperation. The students who study at the Academy come from all quarters.

International guest teachers and lecturers visit regularly.

Winter School Slim City in January 2014.

Photo George Maas

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Holtrop

Anne Holtrop graduated from the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture in 2005, after which he founded his own firm, Studio Anne Holtrop, with offices in Amsterdam and Bahrain. He combines his work as an architect with teaching, at first as a guest lecturer at the Academy, now as a visiting professor at the Mendrisio Academy of Architecture in Switzerland.

What made him go to the Academy in the first place was ‘the nice location, the hands-on programme where small-scale and individual education is provided by local architects’, but mainly ‘that it’s your own choice which direction to take’. Holtrop: ‘Like the choice of graduation subject or of the mentor to guide you in that process: you’re encouraged to set your own course.

It helped me a lot, because the questions were more about me. What interests me and what can I do with those interests as a designer?

You become more self-sufficient and more self-conscious.’ That is what he wants to pass on to students now. ‘I try not to teach a method, but to create the conditions and freedom to create work that surprises even yourself and helps you to move forward.’

In the same way that he asked his graduate mentors at the time, he himself was approached by Anne Dessing in 2012 to be her graduate mentor.

‘She wanted to work with me,’ says Holtrop, ‘because I’d done spatial research into “the wall” as an architectural element for my graduation. Anne wanted to study three different projects from an open question, to then further formulate that 34

question and continue to develop a project into a design. Our projects were similar in terms of structure and we also connected in our way of working. I think you can still see the influence of our collaboration in her practice today.’

Can the Academy improve in any way? Holtrop: ‘At the time of my graduation I already felt the Academy could be more conscious of its international position. I think Dutch architecture can benefit from outside influences. Education plays an important part in student exchange and introducing new design practices. It would be good if architects from other countries would come to teach here: they give you another perspective on the world.’ On the other hand, he likes to point at famous architects like Walter Gropius, Bruno Taut and Mies van der Rohe, who travelled the world over and opened themselves up to new ideas. ‘It’s a mistake to think that the world is at your feet, with Internet and budget flights,’ Holtrop says. ‘It’s an open mind that makes it possible.’

Anne Holtrop is an architect and a guest lecturer at the Academy, and a former student.

Anne Dessing

The decision to study architecture at the Academy was a logical one, says Anne Dessing. She already knew as a child that she wanted to be an architect, and her education at a Polytechnic provided her with the necessary background.

What she was looking for, and found at the Academy, was a place where she could work on her personal development.

‘I liked the individual approach,’ she says. ‘It’s a lot different from the University of Technology in Delft.

There they teach from a certain theoretical background, but the Academy encourages you to research your own fascinations and to take a stand yourself. Of course that doesn’t happen right away. You start with short eight-week projects, during which you’re closely involved with the work of your fellow students.

Gradually, the projects get longer and you’re on your own more often.

In the end you formulate your own graduation assignment and you choose your mentors yourself.’

On a visit to Japan, Dessing was impressed by the ultracompact Japanese houses, built in the most impossible places. It inspired her to research the possibilities of new housing locations in Amsterdam, using Japanese urban planning principles.

She decided to ask Anne Holtrop to be her mentor because of his connection with Japan – he was an artist-in-residence in Tokyo for a few months. It turned out to be the right decision. ‘It was as if I saw the light,’ she says. ‘Until then I had done mostly analytical research for architecture firms, focused on making decent designs.

Anne works in a way that suits me much better, his style is much more

Dessing

Anne Holtrop

personal: starting with a shape and discovering during production what it is or could become. You can question every design and gain new insights that way. I don’t really believe in problemsolving architecture.’

Although Dessing runs her own office and now teaches at the Academy herself, she still approaches architecture the same way she did when she was studying. ‘In my work and my lessons I mainly ask questions. I’m more of a researching architect than someone who has all the answers. I’ve always felt the need to work for myself, to make things. And also exciting: can you make a living that way? Anne Holtrop has been an example in that, too, in the route he took. He graduated with artist Krijn de Koning. He realized that when you work autonomously, you can ask your own questions.

By focusing on that, you can let your work grow into a new “universe”.

I think that’s an interesting approach.’

Anne Dessing is an architect and a guest lecturer at the Academy, and a former student.

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Afford Paradi Affordable Paradise Providing a counterbalance to a polarizing Amsterdam Graduation date 08 12 2016 Commission members Boris Hocks (mentor), Jelte Boeijenga, Marco Broekman Additional members for the examination RiĂŤtte Bosch, Tess Broekmans

Urbanism

The Winter School in 2013 researched the future of the Amsterdam canal district in the next 400 years. Photo Jordi Huisman

Jerryt Krombeen

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Affordable Paradise Housing in Amsterdam is threatening to become unaffordable for people on low and middle incomes and this is having major consequences for the social structure of the city.

An unaffordable city centre environment has arisen with mostly people on high incomes, with poorer quality neighbourhoods around it with high concentrations of poverty and people on low incomes. And this while Amsterdam owes its success to the dynamic character that has arisen through the wide range of incomes and people who live interspersed among each other. The Bijlmer in particular has a much lower quality of living than other districts in Amsterdam.

The Bijlmer is a test case. By creating a higher density, more addresses, more space for companies on the street, urban pressure and economic vitality will arise along the major routes.

By making the motorway profile of the Gooiseweg single-level, neighbourhoods will be connected with each other and space will become available for approximately 33,000 new homes for people on middle incomes, without having to demolish a home for this. The densification will also provide the current companies and 86,000 residents with a local network with many more facilities.

The demand for more homes for people on middle

incomes will lead to more socioeconomic diversity at the location and a spatial- economic structure in the shape of a city street on which the districts themselves can continue to build. Amsterdam can accommodate approx. 73,000 new residents on a devalued motorway and densify at a place where an investment in spatial quality and diversity is most sorely needed.

Hollandpark

Inholland

Middelbare school

Basis school

Basisschool

Sporthal

Basisschool

Brede school

Cruyff court

Food court

Brede school

Brede school

Markt

Sporthal

Cruyff court

Basisschool

Bibliotheek

Brede school

Middelbare school

Basisschool

Cultuur centrum Sportpark

Cruyff court Sporthal

ROC Stadsdeelkantoor + markt Zwembad

Brede school Sporthal

Basisschool Amsterdamse poort

Arena Boulevard

Nelson Mandela park + Kwaku

Trein + metro + bus

Middelbare school Basisschool Middelbare school

Basisschool

Sportpark

Basisschool

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re sea rc h Research

Under the title Tabula Scripta, Floris Alkemade developed, together with research fellows Jarrik Ouburg and Michiel van Iersel, the Architecture lectorate that researches how architects relate to existing places and design practices. The research focuses not only on transformation of what is considered valuable, but also on handling the non-protected and more recent generic heritage.

Since 2013, Eric Frijters is in charge of the Urban Planning lectorate, titled Future Urban Regions (FUR). His predecessor was Ton Schaap, who led the research group Design in Urbanism. FUR is a collaboration between six Academies of Architecture in the Netherlands.

The goal is to achieve forms of collaboration between education institutions and local and regional governments in the field of healthy urbanization.

Landscape architect Sven Stremke was hired in early 2017 as lector of Landscape Architecture.

He succeeded Han Wiskerke, who researched the spatial aspects of food production. With his lectorate High-Density Landscapes, Stremke focuses on the development of sustainable energy landscapes, with special attention for the role of design and the designer in the transition of energy: the generation, transport and storage of renewable energy.

Results of the Tabula Scripta lectorate are exhibited on a wall in the hallway of the Academy.

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Alkemade

For 18 years, Floris Alkemade travelled the world as an architect and partner of OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture). In 2008, he founded his one-man practice FAA, which he calls ‘an experiment for an office without structure’. He likes it. ‘I do small commissions by myself,’ he says, ‘but by collaborating with other firms, I can also work on gigantic projects.’ He has combined his work as an architect with the function of Government Architect since September 2015.

OMA’s craftsmanship, the entrepreneurship of having his own business and the sociopolitical agenda he influences as Government Architect: three fields that complement each other perfectly. He brings that knowledge and experience to his lectorate at the Amsterdam Academy for Architecture. But he also learns from it.

‘At OMA, we’re always running forward as fast as possible,’ Alkemade says.

‘Education is about reflection, about looking back. What lines can be seen in the events surrounding us? What experiences do you want to transmit to others? You hardly get around to those questions in everyday practice. That’s why I’ve always liked to teach besides working as an architect.’

The title of his lectorate is Tabula Scripta. It is the opposite of tabula rasa, where an architect starts drawing on an empty sheet of paper. ‘The time of filling entire pastures with buildings is over in the Netherlands,’ Alkemade says.

‘The future is in the existing city, in transforming vacant lots and 50

buildings. That means another kind of architecture. It takes more creativity, but it also makes it more fun.’

He has ‘unconditional faith in what the next generation is going to come up with’.

Alkemade: ‘That’s how I mainly see education: not letting the students doubt their own strengths.

You saw that after the economic crisis. The bravado was completely gone, there was hardly any urbanity, everything had to be green: nature as a kind of penitence. Luckily that’s changing. I see a mix of interests: in tradition, in social elements linked to the living environment. I love it and it makes me hopeful to see it.’

His most memorable moment at the Academy? ‘Once, I let the students teach a class themselves.

One evening, they each got three minutes to talk about what they felt was important, followed by a discussion about what had been said. That was extremely interesting.

You teach based on knowledge and experience. But interaction within a generation is important too. Like De Stijl and Team 10: new developments usually start from groups who worked together and defined new goals. That’s a form of building culture that is hardly ever used nowadays. It’s important to stimulate that, too.’

Floris Alkemade is the Dutch Government Architect. He has been a lector of architecture at the Academy since 2014.

Ton Schaap

‘It was pretty intense,’ Ton Schaap says, looking back on his Ton Schaap student days at the Academy. For xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx four years, he commuted between xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Amsterdam and Deventer in the east of the Netherlands, where he worked at an urban design firm. It was not unusual for him to work 100 hours a week. The blood, sweat and tears were not in vain. After his graduation in 1983, he was able to work at the Amsterdam Planning Department right away. ‘The best job in the Netherlands,’ according to Schaap.

He never wants to leave it.

Before he was asked to be a lector in 2011, he had done a project once or twice, or given a lecture.

‘That’s the nice thing about the Academy: it’s not stuck,’ Schaap says. ‘Teachers come and go, what they bring is fresh. That link to the field is important: you can’t learn urban design from just books. I give students first-hand information, I’m in the centre of Amsterdam planning.

My goal as lector was simple: to pass on the trove of experience I’ve gathered in 30 years.’

According to Schaap, Amsterdam is a ‘nice example of the Dutch water city’. But to know what a metropolis is, you need to travel, he feels. He took students to London, Barcelona and St Petersburg. Especially the latter made an impression. ‘It’s a deceitfully beautiful place, if only for that it’s good to visit. So you see there’s ugliness too. And the climate! In the summer things go crazy, there’s finally light and people are outside 24 hours a day. Yes, we also went clubbing until the early morning, and experienced the effect of climate change first-hand.’

Back in Amsterdam, Schaap organized a winter workshop about

Schaap

Floris Alkemade

Station Zuid in the business district De Zuidas, which is up for renovation. ‘It yielded unbelievably great plans, which we presented to the municipal service. It cheered everybody up. Look, 85 per cent of a municipal project is bureaucracy: meetings, drawing up papers. Designers can imagine all those words and ideas, create new perspectives. Plus the realization that, if a project gets stuck – like when that happened with the Zuidas – there are always other options. All of a sudden you see: that’s possible too. That’s the strength of creativity, of youth.’

‘The strength of the Academy is that the youth is put to work in a disciplined way,’ Schaap says.

‘You can’t get away with a nice story. Hard work, and turning that into executable plans. That’s how I learned it, and that’s what I hope the school can keep doing until the end of time.’

Ton Schaap is an urban planner, a former student of the Academy and former lector of Urbanism.

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we provide the world’s growing population with food in xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx a sustainable way? It is one of the xxxxxxx fundamental questions of our time, along with climate change and the need for social cohesion – issues that connect in spatial design and architecture. With the lectorate Foodscapes, headed by Wageningen professor of Rural Sociology Han Wiskerke from 2013 until 2016, this issue landed at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, as part of the curriculum of Landscape Architecture.

‘At Wageningen University, we’ve been working for some time on the issue of how to organize food provision in the city,’ Wiskerke says, ‘but we ran into the question: How do you design it spatially? The collaboration with the Academy provided the possibility to have design students sketch a number of future scenarios that we can bring into the research and use as a means to initiate discussions. On the other hand, the lectorate fills the need of the Academy to gain insight into the possibilities of research by design.’

Wiskerke taught classes, organized excursions and programmed a series of lectures about food landscapes. He connected design assignments to running researches. A team of ten students (Architecture, Urban Design and Landscape Architecture) travelled to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, where one of his doctoral students was doing research. ‘The question was how to provide food to such a fast-growing city, without designing a new blueprint,’ Wiskerke says. ‘My

Wiskerke

Wiskerke How do

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doctoral student guided the students past the food markets to give them insight into the eating culture, the daily social patterns and also the poverty. Less than 10 per cent have their own means of transportation, so people are dependent on food that can be bought within walking distance. There are also a lot of problems with rain, flooding parts of the city and making markets inaccessible. One student researched the possibility of covering the market stalls and organizing the drainage, storage and recycling of rainwater.

Another looked on a district level at the role of the riverbed, where a lot of waste is dumped. He had the idea to use the waste to build dikes and to structure the riverbed for urban farming.’

What stuck with him most is ‘the enormous motivation of the students’. Wiskerke: ‘I did the lectorate next to my job as a professor in Wageningen – I worked long hours. At the end of the day I would get on the train to teach in Amsterdam in the evenings. But at 11 o’clock I would be buzzing with energy again on my way home, thanks to the eagerness the students show and the questions they put forth. I’d like to use this opportunity to thank them for that.’

Sociologist Han Wiskerke is a former lector of Landscape Architecture at the Academy.

Eric Frijters

‘The great challenges of the future lie in the city, or the urban area,’ Eric Frijters says. ‘We are dealing with problems like global warming, social inequality, worldwide migration and a shortage of resources. Cities and “city makers” play an important part in handling these problems.’

The lectorate Future Urban Regions (FUR), headed by Frijters, is working on new models and ideas on how to create healthy, futureresistant urban design. ‘Spatial design is at the centre of the great issues of the future. Research by design is an essential instrument in that, to connect the relevant parties and to research and imagine new futures.’

FUR is a collaboration of six Dutch architecture academies and is a result of the central government’s Design Education Network Programme. The six most important future assignments have been selected from the main theme ‘healthy urbanization’. Each academy received one assignment, relating to developments in their area. Amsterdam focuses on vital economy, Arnhem on healthy living and ecology, Maastricht is researching sociocultural connectivity, Tilburg is working on ‘resilient systems’, the port city of Rotterdam on flows of materials, and in the (former) natural gas-extraction region of Groningen the focus is on the energy transition.

‘You can view it as one school with six branches,’ Frijters says. ‘This way we can operate nationwide, while the lectorate is strongly embedded in the region – through the local Academy networks consisting of researchers, teachers, employers and stakeholders – which generates specific assignments.’

Frijters

Han Wiskerke

The researchers work from three core questions: What, how and who? The ‘what’ is new typologies and infrastructures the city has to deal with, like heating hubs. These are nodes in the heating network where warmth is distributed based on supply and demand. They also function as meeting points. Another example is the water square, which combines public space with the storage of excess water.

‘How’ is about the way design can anticipate that.

‘To get new commissions you need different skills than you need to detail a window frame,’ says Frijters.

‘It’s mainly about formulating clear questions.’

The ‘who’ are the clients behind the new infrastructures, like energy suppliers. ‘They’re starting to realize that they’re not simply producing energy, but that their role is also spatial,’ according to Frijters. ‘They’re taking the initiative, along with others, to redevelop former port areas and industrial zones, and make a city of their own. That requires new knowledge and skills. The interesting thing about research by design is that you can explore scenarios with it. Traditional science can’t do that: it draws conclusions based on data from the past. At the academies I experience a sense of adventure, to further explore the role of the design within the aforementioned transitional issues, and to test new learning models within them.’

Eric Frijters is an architect and has been lector of Urbanism at the Academy since 2013.

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The research and design project StreetWorks targets the cohesive function of the urban street: the study of the role of importance in the linear space, orientation within the city and its surroundings, and the role of architecture within this urban context. This is done by considering traditions and ideological opinions in Europe.

The research targets the concept of the layered nature of the urban reality of the street: meaning, history, functions, perception.

Amsterdam Academy of Architecture

Publications Over the past several years, the Academy has worked on many publications, reflecting the areas of research and the Academy’s lectorates. Here’s a selection.

Amsterdam Academy of Architecture Architecture – Urbanism – Landscape Architecture

StreetWorks is a research project of the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture led by Professor Henk Hartzema. The research was made possible thanks to the collaboration between the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture and six foreign schools in five European cities: the Helsinki University of Technology, the Edinburgh College of Art, the University of Porto, the University of Zagreb the Sint-Lucas School of Architecture and the Institut for Architecture of La Cambre, both in Brussels - and the urban planning departments in all these cities.

Architecture Urbanism Landscape Architecture

Artist in Residence Jeroen Musch

StreetWorks

Streetworks: Patterns in urbanity Henk Hartzema, Joan Busquets, Rogier van den Berg (2011)

Amsterdam Academy of Architecture

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

Brick: An Exacting Material Jan Peter Wingender (2016)

Stedelijke vraagstukken, veerkrachtige oplossingen: Ontwerpend onderzoek voor de toekomst van stedelijke regio's Eric Frijters, Sandra van Assen, Tijs van den Boomen, Marco Broekman, Guido van Eyck, Marieke Kums, Willemijn Lofvers, Saskia Naafs, Thijs van Spaandonk, Ady Steketee, Franz Ziegler (2017)

Go with me: 50 steps to landscape thinking Thomas Oles met Marieke Timmermans en Jacques Abelman (2013)

Available in early 2019

Available at the end of 2018

Amsterdam Academy of Architecture Foodscapes Research Group

Real Urbanism: Decisive interventions Ton Schaap (2018)

Seeing Dar

Tabula Scripta Floris Alkemade, Jarrik Ouburg and Michiel van Iersel (2019)

‘Public space in Tanzania is as rare as the rhinoceros‘ Daniel Mbisso, Ardhi University Dar es Salaam - Department of Architecture

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Seeing Dar Han Wiskerke, Saline Verhoeven and David Habets (2016)

Flourishing Foodscapes: Design for City-Region Food Systems Johannes S.C. Wiskerke and Saline Verhoeven (2018)

On Air 2015-2016 Marijke Hoogenboom and Sanne Kersten (2016)

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About Walls and other Freedoms Search for meaning of the Panopticon in Haarlem Graduation date 16 02 2017 Commission members Marcel van der Lubbe (mentor), Hanneke Kijne, Violette Baudet Additional members for the examination Bart Bulter, Ira Koers

Architecture

Notes on a wall in the hallway of the Academy discuss the subjects covered by the Tabula Scripta lectorate in 2018. Photo Janna Visser-Verhoeven

About and ot Freedo Annette Bos

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About Walls and other Freedoms The Haarlem panopticon has been an introvert and closed bulwark for more than 100 years.

It consists of an ensemble of buildings designed on the basis of an ideology that has slowly developed with the rise of capitalism since the 17th century.

Because the inmate in his cell was continuously under the observation of the guard, he would supposedly behave better and return to society as a ‘reformed’ human. Unobtrusive techniques that made one malleable, controllable and knowable were shaped in this building. The panopticon is in fact the pinnacle of this form of power.

This unique piece of heritage, of which only three still exist, is in the process of being repurposed.

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This was the departure point of a search for a new designated use and inter­ventions. The central question was how this unique ensemble of buildings of historical value can continue to exist and receive a new meaning, whereby its essence would remain visible. And how the new interpretation will enter into a dialogue with the past. The design examines the possibilities of minimal interventions that make the site suitable for use today.

The site, which has gradually become silted up and cramped since 1901, will be given breathing space once again through the demolition of a number of buildings. The demolition material will be

reused in order to build a sloping park. The former prison site will be transformed into an inviting place for musicians, music lovers and all citizens of Haarlem, with a programme that caters to the ambitions of Haarlem and which reinforce its identity as a city for pop music. There will be, among other things, venues practice rooms, recording studios, workshops for instrument builders, music start- ups, a vinyl shop, and also space for catering establishments.

An inflatable object with an acoustic shell will be placed in the dome. As a result of this, two concert halls will be created, each with their own atmosphere.

In that way, the enormous space can be flexibly laid out for

countless types of concerts and performances. This makes temporary use possible so that the soul of the dome is preserved.

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ai r

Artists-in-Residence (AiR)

The Amsterdam University of the Arts invites the artist-in-residence to inspire students and teachers by confronting them with topical developments and issues from arts practice.

These tailor-made AIR programmes focus on innovation and connection in an international and multidisciplinary context. Past participants in the residency programme include the artists Sarah van Sonsbeeck, Gabriel Lester and Jeroen Kooijmans, architects Jeanne van Heeswijk and Rianne Makkink, advertising executive Erik Kessels, photographer Jeroen Musch, futurologist Michiel Schwarz, scientist Adriaan Beukers, designer Ed van Hinte and choreographer Krisztina de Châtel.

Form Studies by Gabriel Lester in 2015.

Photo Thomas Lenden 60

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Lester

Artist Gabriel Lester organized a special form study, titled The Battle of Waterloo, as his crowning achievement as an artist-inresidence at the Academy of Architecture. He had a window made that shows a view of the Waterlooplein, where cars rush by, markets are held and pedestrians saunter by. Students were invited to paint the glass to their own taste.

‘One painted little figurines, another circled a series of lamp posts and yet another noticed a lot of Peugeots driving around. It was a playful way to demonstrate that you can draw everything in the world back to you as a designer. You change the perspective of reality by drawing – literally.’

That is how he sees work as an artist-in-residence: as an exchange between the world inside and outside the Academy. Lester: ‘The question I was asked beforehand was not only: What can you do for us? It was clear that the programme should also help my development.’

He decided to let the students work on a research he had been working on for a while, about light.

‘Because it’s such a broad topic and we live in a multimedia society, I wanted to work with the different courses at the Amsterdam University of the Arts: the Academy of Architecture, the theatre school and the film academy – all three are located around the Waterlooplein.’

In a series of three lectures, titled ‘Sunrise, Afternoon and Sunset’, light is studied in all of its facets. ‘We invited philosophers, medical scientists, light experts from the opera and an expert on the 62

use of light in painting,’ Lester says.

‘We learned how to light something in film, how light is used as a symbol, what you can do with solar energy and also, for example, how athletes handle jetlag. My goal was to offer a trove of information about the material of light. Information that reaches further than what you would find based on a project, for the designers to feed themselves with in the long run.’ In short: sources of inspiration for life.

What did he want to achieve as an artist-in-residence? ‘I want to release creativity,’ Lester says. ‘You would think experience is necessary for people who have to make something. That an experienced person feels looser, freer. The opposite is true: experience can also be a burden. People freeze up under pressure. It’s not hard to do assignments at an architecture firm. But to take initiative yourself, to create new ideas, takes a flexible mind. You hear designers say: the possibilities were limited. In fact that means: I wasn’t able to do that balancing act. Lessons in brain exercise, that’s what I want to offer as an artist-in-residence.’

Gabriel Lester is a visual artist and former artist-in-residence at the Academy.

Rianne Makkink

‘The Academy feels like a close family. That’s nice, but it’s also good to pull students out of that comfortable world once in a while,’ architect Rianne Makkink of Studio Makkink & Bey says about the Summer School she organized as an artist-in-residence. She had already been a member of the jury once at the Academy and had mentored a workshop. ‘What I noticed was that all the students translated their ideas onto the same photoshop pictures. Efficient, professional – nothing wrong with that but I thought: there’s more there. I felt they should make things one on one a lot more, with their hands in the clay.’ This thought was shared by the head teacher at the time, landscape architect Marieke Timmermans, and Makkink was invited to be artist-inresidence.

She decided to take the students to the Noordoostpolder for a week, where she and her husband Jurgen Bey own a former farm.

She also invited another group of students, from the Design Academy Eindhoven where she teaches the Master course. The students were divided into three groups that each received their own subject and their own colour overall. ‘Farming to create community spirit’ was her first goal. Makkink: ‘At the time, our studio was working on the Erasmusveld project in The Hague, an area that’s being developed bottom-up from various communal activities. Building on that, we created three clubs: a bee club, a compost club focusing on chicken farms, and a water club. Then we gave them a batch of cube crates and said: get to work.’ A week later, the Noordoostpolder had gained a bee watchtower, a series of

Makkink

Gabriel Lester

connectable chicken coops, and a helophyte field.

‘What I took away from that is that the one on one contact between the two courses worked really well,’ Makkink says. ‘Students from the Academy of Architecture usually talk a lot before they take action. I myself have an architecture background, I know it’s hard to let go of analysing. At the Design Academy, they tend to just get to work. The Summer School was not only a great experience, it also brought forth a beautiful crosspollination.’

Another part of the programme was a cycle of lectures on female designers.

‘Half of all the architecture students is female,’ Makkink says, ‘but you don’t see them in the field. In Ghent, where I also taught, my best students were usually female. They graduate cum laude but often disappear from sight as soon as they have kids. I notice that women also don’t come to the foreground often at the Academy.

Too bad, because a lot of talent gets lost this way.’

Rianne Makkink is an architect and former artist-in-residence at the Academy.

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Students at work during Gabriel Lester’s artist-in-residency, and Gabriel Lester’s exhibition Light, both in 2015.

Photos Thomas Lenden 64

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Students at work during Rianne Makkink’s Summer School, at her farm, in 2012. Photos Thomas Lenden 66

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Re.CLA

Rianne Makkink’s Summer School in 2012. Photo Thomas Lenden

Landscape architecture

Yuka Yoshida

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Re.CLAIM In search of space to reconnect with the Nihonbashi River in Tokyo Graduation date 16 10 2014 Commission members Maike van Stiphout (mentor), Paul Achterburg, Boris Hocks Additional members for the examination Joost van Hezewijk, Nikol Dietz

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Re.CLAIM Could we solve complex urban issues by changing people’s perception? I believe so. Instead of altering the urban landscape in order to solve a problem, we could plant a positive image, and give tools to connect with neglected spaces. This can stimulate people to find a way to reclaim urban environment without losing the soul of the place.

Nihonbashi River, one of the most historically significant bridges from the Edo period (1603–1868) is covered by the concrete structure of a metropolitan highway. This is the result of the attitude towards the urban river during the post-war economic boom (1950s–1970s). 90 percent of the river is banked by the highway

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and the properties adjacent to the river are disconnected from the river. Many of the buildings have been built with their back to the river, and even the few open spaces along the river have no relationship to the water. The negative perception toward the space created by the flood­walls and the highway turn the river into the back of the city. There have been discussions about replacing the highway with an underground tunnel. But the fact is that the modernized city is heavily dependent on it and not ready to remove it. By focusing the discussion on the highway, people’s strong desire to reclaim the river has been put on hold.

Re.CLAIM aims to slowly change the perception toward

the Nihonbashi River to reconnect the city life and urban rivers. The design proposal considers the historical values of the place as the force while dealing with the issues in the contemporary city of Tokyo.

The under-utilized spaces along Nihonbashi River are seen as opportunities, the floodwall acts as the connecting element to improve the access to the river.

As a result, the river is more visible for people who come to the surrounding neighbourhoods.

Showing the spatial quality of the neglected river will lead to the improvement of the perception and for a better future of the urban life with the Nihonbashi River.

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fo r m Masters of Form

The goal of the form study is to develop an individual handwriting, allowing the student to learn to position themselves as an independent designer. The subject is coordinated by Bruno Vermeersch and makes up an integral part of the education at the Academy. The title of the form study programme is ‘Masters of Form’, referring to the system of student-master that is the basis for the subject. The form study is not a Master’s course in itself: Vermeersch sees the term ‘masters’ as a nod to the three regular Master’s programmes of the Academy. ‘We use the project title to usher in adulthood and to leave puberty behind.’

Drained by Iris Lunenburg. Photo Iris Lunenburg 72

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Vermeersch

They met at the Academy, where incidentally neither of them studied. ‘But that’s a good thing,’ Vermeersch says. ‘We’re here to disrupt things. The Masters of Form programme is simple: there is no obligation. Based on that thought I actually do nothing except make space for another, create freedom.

Students at this institution already have to do so much: work in the daytime, go to classes, implement the brief in their designs. I remember the first time I handed out a design assignment as a teacher.

Everyone presented their plans on enormous A0 sheets. I said: ‘You’re also allowed to do it on A4s. It turned their world upside down!’

Hendriks: ‘Architecture is a creative but not very free business. Take the city. We look at it as a collection of buildings and streets: a relatively limited definition when you see what kind of people, activities and stories you run into in Amsterdam. Architecture can be so much more, if you allow imagination to run free. How can we get the profession to move?’ Vermeersch: ‘That’s what Masters of Form has to offer: something completely different.’ He shows short films of graduation presentations where drawings are shredded, water turned into crystals and students leapfrog blindfolded.

Vermeersch: ‘I don’t come up with a teaching method myself, but I make the programme, invite teachers and let the rest develop in their hands.’ Hendriks: ‘We guide 74

students in a personal development if they’re looking for it. A lot of them just want to design buildings and that’s fine, too.’

The Academy has played a main role in Hendrik’s development. As an artist-in-residence, he worked on the project ‘The Incredible Shrinking Man’, research into how and if humans can get smaller. Before that, he was worked as an art historian and a curator. The lecture he held at the Academy in 2009, about pre-creative space in art, made him realize he wanted to be an artist.

Vermeersch only invites artists, film directors, writers, photographers and light and product designers as guest lecturers. ‘I don’t necessarily want to point students in the direction of autonomous work, but I also don’t think everyone should become an architect, just like not everyone studying sociology becomes a sociologist. And I think that architecture can be more than just floors and walls.’ Hendriks: ‘It’s about giving students space to research, and giving them the strength to discover who they are.’

Vermeersch: ‘A discovery that can only come from obsession.’

Vermeersch tries not to speak of buildings. ‘I want people to leave the beaten track more often. Masters of Form focuses on forgetting all of the paradigms of architecture, and even what people do within the Academy, for a while. You can only forget by losing yourself completely in something else.’

On the other hand, Hendriks finds it educational to see how students respond to his work.

‘As architects, they’re capable of incorporating space and light in my conceptual ideas, and that’s very valuable. I work intuitively and I don’t have many skills. They’re capable

Hendriks

Bruno Vermeersch and Arne Hendriks

of actually creating concepts: I encourage them to jump into that hole.’ If he had a group of students right now, he would have them work on his current project: building a mountain of fat in Amsterdam Noord.

It will be a huge island of waste fat that Hendriks is collecting, drop by drop. Vermeersch: ‘I call that an obsession. Exactly what I want to fire up with Masters of Form.’

Architect Bruno Vermeersch has been working as the editor-in-chief of Masters of Form since 2015.

Artist Arne Hendriks was a guest lecturer at Masters of Form.

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Elena Staskute THE PRIDE COLLECTOR This project is about the award as an object and as proof of success. How does an award work? Is it more important as an object or as an expression of pride? How much do you lose if you lose your award?

- guestteacher / Philip Lüschen -

Elise Laurent MEMORIES OF COLORS After a few experiments in glass bottles, I decided to focus on the interaction of materials in layers. The inspiration came from an ice sample that showed different layers of the earth, like memories from the past. To realize some samples, I filled plastic tubes with different materials and then removed the tubes, to observe how the materials had reacted. Those were only the small tests.

From the beginning, my intention was to translate this idea into a real architectural element: a column of 2 m tall and 30 cm wide.

In this case, the mould is not a plastic tube anymore, but a so-called ‘cardboard monotone’ that is specially made for concrete constructions. For practical reasons, but also because of my fascination for the artwork of Stijn Ank, I decided to only use plaster and colours. The beauty of the project is the inability to control the appearance.

- guestteacher / Robin Vermeersch 76

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Iris Lunenburg CELLULAR MUTATION It takes only minutes for a cell to develop and multiply following a logarithmic scheme. This is the cause of growth and survival of all living things. In case of cellular mutation, something else is happening. Cells change uncontrollably and act in an unpredictable way, which may even lead to destruction of the organism. Nevertheless, mutation on a cellular level can be spectacular to behold.

- guestteacher / Pim Palsgraaf -

Aris Stefani (NO) PROMISED LAND Gods against Titans, and the night turns to day. Those caught in the crossfire must take control of their lives – or die. There are those who seize the day and the world becomes tiny in their eyes, and those who can’t jump and fall down, deep-down. There’s nothing for granted, only steel, with which the world is forever contaminated. And with it civilization will make its path, to storm the heavens or be gone.

- guestteacher / Pim Palsgraaf -

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Sebastiaan van Heusden OBJECTS Adolf Loos was known for attacking the ornament in architecture. In his manifesto Ornament and Crime he describes how ‘it is a crime to waste effort needed to add ornamentation, when the ornamentation would cause the object to soon go out of style’.

Although his buildings are modern and free of ornament, his interiors are rich in material and the objects in his interiors are classical and very ornate. The drawings in the frames show this contrast between the modern interior and classical objects.

- guestteacher / Robin Vermeersch -

Stephanie Marques GOLDEN STRAW ‘What works good is better than what looks good, because what works good lasts.’ (Ray Eames) The relationship with disposable objects is based on indifference. The straw is a very cheap and average thing, but it’s still present in daily life – and by this ordinariness remains unnoticed. However, it has not always been like this. In the old empires (3000 BC), it was a desirable luxurious accessory, made in gold and Lapis lazuli, but it lost its value in the course of history. Today, it’s based on a simple, but not simplistic, design and engineering that accomplish and improve the act of drinking. The value of the straw goes much further than the selling price.

- guestteacher / Sander Wassink 80

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Tobias Kumkar TURNING Two circular objects: one static, one moving. One moving along the other, turning its rounds over and over again. How did it start, how will it end? When did it start, when will it end? They were always there, one was always turning. They will always be there, one will always be turning. Repetition as a legitimation of being.

- guestteacher / LĂŠon de Lange -

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Imane Boutanzit RELEVATION OF GODS Revelation of gods: a utopian disaster. The rebirth of the landscape is about the closest relationship that is built from the destruction. All those who have died, will be raised to life in one of two resurrections. This is my gift for you.

- guestteacher / Pim Palsgraaf -

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Foreve travelli Sweder Spanjer

Architecture

Blackout by Iris Lunenburg. Photo Iris Lunenburg

Forever Travelling A crossing to Terschelling Graduation date 26 08 2016 Commission members Jan-Richard Kikkert (mentor), Bruno Doedens, Gunnar Daan Additional members for the examination Ira Koers, Bart Bulter

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Forever travelling I love Terschelling. Not only because my family has lived there for generations, but especially due to the boat trip to the island, its different landscapes and the abundant nature. Many more people love Terschelling; each year 400,000 people visit the island, and often their love is passed on to successive generations, as families spend their holidays together.

And then a person is suddenly confronted with death and also, therefore, his or her next of kin. You ask yourself how you would like to spend the last moments of your life. In a hospice, as is customary nowadays? This project opts for a different scenario. Wouldn’t it be nice to make the crossing to

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Terschelling one final time with the whole family, and to spend the remaining time there together, almost like previous holidays. Surrounded by nature, the sea, the turbulent weather and the crystal-clear nights with the starry sky.

A place where you can find solace, because you realize that we are all part of nature, a greater whole. That consists of influences which we have no control over and rhythms that are constantly recurring, just like the cycle of life and death.

A place where there are memories of previous holidays on the island, as a result of which you reflect on special events and moments. And then you spend your final moments on one of the

most beautiful locations of the island, right on top of a dune.

Surrounded by people that you love, at a place you love.

A place where the future bereaved can support each other, as an important part of the care; where the collective bond between the seven families that can stay here, is shaped by providing the primary needs, food and warmth, together and maintaining this throughout the year. The interaction between the various families and people is stimulated and the interaction can lead to a bond or a friendship, like a form of enrichment.

This is a place where I have achieved my personal ambition of uniting death and commemoration in one place.

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pr act ic e Practice

Students are obliged to work a minimum amount of hours of professional practice (4 x 840) during the Master’s programme, at a workplace relevant to the study. This can be an office for architecture, urbanism or landscape architecture – a job abroad is also possible. At the end of the programme, the professional experience must result in a student having gained the knowledge, insight and skills that are described in the learning outcome for the disciplines of architecture, urbanism and landscape architecture of the Architectenregister.

Meeting with Heren 5, an architecture office that employs students from the Academy. From left to right: Meintje Delisse, Merijn de Jong, Bas Liesker and Jeroen Atteveld.

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Rietveld

‘At our studio, we like to work with a mixture of people and specialists,’ Ronald Rietveld says. ‘Philosophers, artists, graphic designers, and also architects and landscape architects from the Academy of Architecture where I studied. What’s so special and attractive about the Academy is that it’s part of the University for the Arts.’ He sees that art is too easily disappearing from architecture. ‘The Dutch government currently views building mainly as an economic activity, as part of the cultural industry.’

‘I think architecture needs art now, more than ever,’ Rietveld says. ‘There’s a need for visions that go beyond everyday pragmatism and efficiency thinking. We need spatial ideas that can point us to the daily reality. And, most of all, I think we should encourage new radical experiments, free of limitations.

When I look around, I see the same renderings and a slavish way of designing internationally.

We have enough followers in this business. I prefer crossthinkers, and that’s what the Academy can be to those who look for it.’

In 2008 he met 18-year old Arna Mačkić, who was studying interior design at the Rietveld Academy. She asked him after a lecture if she could work at his office. He gave her a job and encouraged her to continue studying at the Academy of Architecture.

Is Mačkić a cross-thinker?

‘Not at first,’ Rietveld says, ‘but we did see promise in her work.

We gave her a test assignment to see what she was capable of: after all, you want to know 90

what you’re bringing on board. Her ideas were convincing. Plus she’s very hands-on: she got right down to work.’

The combination of work and study, that is what he likes about the Academy. ‘Because you connect theory and practice, but more importantly: because this approach demands complete submission from the students. Work four days a week, go to classes in the evenings and then there are the assignments you take home: for four years you have to work your fingers to the bone.

That creates a completely different atmosphere, not to be compared with other schools. That dedication is very important.’

He encouraged Mačkić to ‘use the Academy as a laboratory for her own ideas’. Rietveld: ‘I did that too.

The school provides the space and freedom to develop yourself, but you do need to use it. You must confront your teachers, take the questions into your own hands.’

‘And of course our studio also shaped Arna,’ Rietveld says. ‘But at a certain point I saw she was ready to go her own way. I’m curious to see how she’ll do. With a studio of your own you have something to prove. The hardest thing is to actually implement the ideas you stand for, convincingly.’

Ronald Rietveld is a landscape architect and studied at the Academy of Architecture.

Arna Mačkić

‘I still remember Ronald’s lecture,’ Arna Mačkić says. ‘I thought: if this can be your job, then I’m signing up for it. It wasn’t just about designing a cool building. These projects touch on phenomena like history, war, politics. It’s about how you can act on that as a designer.

Plus, Ronald’s persona and his visual work appealed to me. He is sure of himself but also dares to be vulnerable and questioning.’

She started at RAAAF with the project Free Port Amsterdam, which was about using temporary vacant space in the harbour area. After that she worked on Vacant NL, the exhibition for the Venice Architecture Biennale 2010, and Secret Operation 610, a mobile thinktank on the former airbase of Soesterberg. ‘I loved the combination of study and work.

It suited me, personally, but also resonated in terms of our view on architecture.’

After the Rietveld Academy, Mačkić decided to continue studying at the Academy of Architecture, in search of ‘depth’. ‘Going back to school, that took some getting used to. I’d just learned at the RAAAF to be stubborn. Plus we were in the middle of the economic crisis, making work mostly about creating master plans – not the kind of assignment I prefer.’

Mačkić decided to take control and organized a series of debates on the changing role of the architect, together with fellow students Lorien Beijaert and Luuc Sonke. It was a success: the room was filled every time. ‘It’s fun to fight the establishment a little. And because everyone at the Academy is constantly tired, you need to generate energy. The nice thing is that the school board and teachers came to us for advice. We were

Mač kić

Ronald Rietveld

able to give feedback in a productive way.’

The combination of study and work can also be hard. ‘My position in the office grew fast. I strongly felt the urgency and relevance of the projects we did as a firm and therefore put in a lot of my time. Often time that I should’ve been spending at the Academy.

The trick is to exploit the tension between the two worlds. During my first and second year at the Academy, I clearly noticed its positive influence on my work at RAAAF – after that it was the other way around: the work at the office lifted my study projects to a higher level.’

She now has her own studio, Studio L A, and she is head teacher of architecture at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. Now she only needs to graduate. The project, a building for the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights in the centre of The Hague, is almost finished.

Arna Mačkić is an architect and a guest lecturer at the Academy, and a former student.

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Iruma RodrĂ­guez HernĂĄndez at work at the City of Amsterdam's Planning and Sustainability department (above) and at the Academy (below). Photo Jimmy on the Run

Meintje Delisse at work at Heren 5 (above) and at the Academy (below). Photo Jimmy on the Run 92

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Bart Jonkers at work at the Academy (left) and at ZECC (right).

Photo Jimmy on the Run

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A fron for the A Front for the Back New scenario for the invisible city centre of Amsterdam Graduation date 15 05 2014 Commission members Laurens Jan ten Kate (mentor), Laura Alvarez, Holger Gladys Additional members for the exam Tom Frantzen, Albert Herder

Architecture

Meeting with Heren 5, an architecture office that employs students from the Academy.

Ivar van der Zwan

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A front for the Back Nowadays, it’s easy to find the hidden spots in the city using smart phones and internet; getting lost is no longer possible. Will this virtual environment also influence the constructed environment? A smart phone allows us to see behind the façades of the city.

Suddenly we are able to find businesses and shops on the third floor at the back of a building. Because of this, shops and cafés are no longer tied to eye-catching locations. With this project I examine if it is possible that these functions end up at hidden places, like the many alleyways of Amsterdam.

The design around the Keizerrijk alley includes 20 houses, combined with studio/

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shop space. It illustrates a scenario that further consolidates Amsterdam, but also provides a way to add a new scale to the city centre. The public route along roof gardens and studio/shop spaces makes this new Amsterdam area accessible to all inhabitants: it acts as a Front for the Back.

The ‘back’ of the block south-east of the Palace on Dam square is made accessible by two alleys: the Keizerrijk alley and the former Kaatsbaansteeg, which will be restored to its former glory. The design is built up of 15 brickwork slabs, positioned in the same linear direction as the two alleys.

When walking through the project, one always moves in

the linear direction of the alleys, or straight through them. The openings in the slabs together form the public route, which leads along two roof gardens and a number of atriums and ends up at a public roof terrace.

The houses are designed in such a way that the inhabitant also experiences the movement in between the slabs. The stairs run along the brickwork slabs, like an alley inside a house, or through the slabs, in which case the brickwork is part of the stairs.

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ex cha n ge Exchange

Crafting the Façade: Reuse, Reactivate, Reinvent was an Erasmus+ project in collaboration with the Mackintosh School of Architecture of the Glasgow School of Art and the University of Liechtenstein. The project focused on structural issues, tectonics and construction, seen in relation to cultural, social and economic themes. Project leader was Machiel Spaan, former head of the Master’s course of Architecture. In the Reuse module, which took place in Glasgow, students analysed existing materials, constructions, elements and façades. The module Reactivate dealt with existing technical and artisanal traditions.

In the module Reinvent, students studied constructions and materials from each other’s countries. In Liechtenstein, students built huts according to the traditional Blockbau method.

In Amsterdam, so-called brick workshops were organized: Amsterdam Brickwork and Bricks of the Future.

Workshop Crafting the Façade in Limburg in 2017. Photo Allard van der Hoek

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Meister

‘Just like the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam, our school is relatively small and young,’ says Urs Meister, professor at the University of Liechtenstein.

‘Therefore, we think it’s important to look beyond our own place, and to bring our school to an international level.’

Via the Erasmus programme, exchanges have been organized since 2003. On one of these occasions, in 2008, Meister met Academy teacher Machiel Spaan, with whom he set up a series of workshops in which students build 1:1 scale models with local materials. The workshop at the factory of Dutch brick producer Daas is the one Meister recalls as ‘one of the best’. Why? ‘Brick is very handy,’ he says. ‘You can take it anywhere and start stacking straight away.

After three hours you look at the result, learn your lessons, and start over again. It’s a rotating system, and a clear concept to teach students.’

Based on this concept, ten workshops in total were organized, with among other things stone (Ireland), concrete (Denmark) and plywood (Belgium). The grand finale of this ‘travelling university’ was the wood workshop in Liechtenstein in 2014, where 40 students constructed two houses using logs.

What has the programme brought to him? Meister: ‘On the one hand there’s the cultural aspect. A student from Glasgow approaches stone in a different way than I would; you see this in the regional architecture styles. So there’s a necessity to exchange ideas.

On the other hand there’s the 102

stone itself. With this programme we want to stimulate students to start thinking from the material instead of the form of the building. Brick, wood – what could you do with them? We believe in this bottom-up approach, and it’s a huge advantage that we can share this view with other schools, such as the Academy. In this way a network of teachers and learning methods is evolving throughout Europe.’

The results of the research and workshops are always documented.

‘Putting it on paper forces you to reflect and to enhance,’ says Meister.

‘It takes commitment. And it also helps with communication. Last year, we presented our Erasmus programmes at the International Conference on Structure and Architecture in Portugal. That would have been difficult without books.’

His personal learning moment?

‘One part of the ten-day workshops is to cook a “national dinner” together, a local dish that’s served at a location somewhere outside the city. Eating brings people together, and this social energy is in turn fuel for the workshops. You can work together in a kitchen or on a project: both will benefit your learning curve. It creates trust and a closeness that’s productive.’

Urs Meister is a professor at the University of Liechtenstein.

Machiel Spaan

What is the difference between Dutch brick and the natural stone that is often used in Scotland?

Naturally, teacher of architecture Machiel Spaan knows the answer.

‘Natural stone is – the word says it all – a natural product: bricks are industrially produced from clay,’ he says. ‘That’s why every brick has the same shape while every piece of natural stone is different. That leads to another way of building.

With brick it doesn’t matter which one you begin with, the different blocks of natural stone need to be categorized: one is suitable for laying on the bottom, another to finish up with, and another to fortify the wall with. But when you think about it a bit more, it’s also a sensible way of viewing a brick wall: it also has a base, a finish and constructive connections.’

What Spaan means to say is: it is good as a designer to look outside your own school and country. And that is exactly what the international school programme Crafting the Façade intends. ‘By seeing how other countries work, you learn to question your own knowledge and skill,’ Spaan says. ‘Conversely, we help other participants to sharpen their minds.’

Crafting the Façade started in 2008 as a collaboration between seven European schools of architecture that, subsidized by the Erasmus Foundation, organize an annual ten-day workshop covering a local construction material. Brick, concrete and willow – the palette is very diverse. Spaan has just returned from Liechtenstein, where a group of 30 students and teachers worked with wood. ‘Over there, I found out that in the Netherlands we have a very different tradition than in the Alps,’ he says. ‘Because of the

Spaan

Urs Meister

swampy polder soil, our way of construction is focused on limiting weight. There’s also a clear hierarchy in the construction, with a roof that is then developed further.

In Switzerland and Austria, where they build on a hard surface, weight is no problem and blocks of wood are traditionally stacked into socalled cabins. The buildings don’t immediately show it, but they are two different ways of thinking about wood.’

‘During the workshop we map traditions,’ Spaan continues. ‘How did a certain way of construction develop, and how does it continue? That investigative attitude: that’s what we want to teach the students. We do this purposely by drawing and building.

When students speak English with each other, it has its limitations. The nice thing about our business is that you make a tangible “language” that everyone can understand. A stone, a wall or a house, every designer understands that.’

Machiel Spaan is an architect and former head of the Academy department of Architecture.

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Brick workshop within the framework of the Erasmus Intensive Programme Tectonics in Building Culture: Brickwork in 2008.

Photo Jeroen Musch 104

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Crafting the Faรงade workshop in Amsterdam during the Fabcity event in 2016.

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Summer workshop in Liechtenstein in 2015, within the framework of the Erasmus Intensive Programme Structures in Building Culture.

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Crafting the Faรงade workshop in Limburg in 2017.

Photo Allard van der Hoek 110

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Pairi Dรฆza An ensemble where we, our parents and our children live with each other and can care for each other Graduation date 11 05 2015 Commission members Jan-Richard Kikkert (mentor), Machiel Spaan, Furkan Kรถse Additional members for the examination Peter Defesche, Micha de Haas

Architecture

Workshop Crafting the Faรงade in Limburg in 2017. Photo Allard van der Hoek

Pairi D Milad Pallesh

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Pairi Dæza Pairi Dæza is a reflection of the necessary idyll and the desire to be able to count on each other, to be able to live with each other. Caring with and for each other, from son to father, from the boy to the woman next door, from grandson to grandma. My generation will have to deal with the consequences of the fact that people live longer and the withdrawal of the welfare state.

We are required to address these changes in the form of selforganized or informal care.

This architectural assignment, situated in the Amsterdam Bellamy neighbour­ hood, focuses on housing for the elderly, based on offering and accepting this informal care.

The point of departure is the

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theory that in order to stimulate informal care, the emphasis must not be placed on the care but on the housing: a unique form of housing that stimulates social interaction and relationships on various scales, from neighbour­ hood to ensemble and from residential quarter to home.

The tangible transitions of the various scales play an important role in this, expressed by the use space and light, as well as in material and tectonics. By mixing different generations, caring for each other can once again become something natural.

The homes and neighbourhood functions form a wall that surrounds a communal courtyard garden, inspired by the elements and contours of the

Persian garden. The Persian garden is, in turn, inspired by Paradise. This is how the idea of Pairi Dæza arose, the old Persian word for Paradise, or walled (pairi) space (diz).

An ensemble of 45 homes is created, divided across 5 residential quarters. They are placed in such a way that collective quarter gardens are formed, on which all front doors border. By keeping the routing, access and the distances between the front doors as short as possible, the social distance between the residents is reduced. The quarter gardens will be collectively maintained per quarter, which stimulates collectivity and interaction.

The home is also approached as

a transition from collective to private, whereby the public space is once again an intermediary, based on the traditional patio. It is the space that connects, opens up and brings together all the spaces in the house. The front door plays an important role in connecting the patio with the collective quarter garden.

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win ter sch ool Winter School

The Winter School is an annual, twoweek education project that is organized in January, and students from all disciplines take part in it (Architecture, Urbanism, Landscape Architecture).

The 2017 assignment was to look at the former Marineterrein in Amsterdam with the eyes of a photographer, and to register what is of value and what could be of value in the future. How does the process of valuation take place? What new meaning can this place have for the city? Photographer and artist-in-residence Jeroen Musch was asked to inspire the students. The student teams each presented a three-minute film that was evaluated by a jury.

The 2018 assignment was led by artist-inresidence Sarah van Sonsbeeck. The Academy of Architecture asked her to inspire students with her research into silence. First-, second and third-year students 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.

Winter School in 2017 with Jeroen Musch.

Photo Thomas Lenden

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Klok/Musch

Arjan Klok and Jeroen Musch organized a Winter School at the end of January 2017. After a scouting trip of the Marineterrein in Amsterdam – the location of the Winter School – the students gathered at Pension Homeland, to share experiences and to warm up. It was very cold that week.

The programme for the Winter School came from the desire to let the students experience how to expand their awareness of a place.

‘We wanted to convey to them that you need to open yourself up in a sensory way to really understand a place,’ Musch says.

‘That every place has its secrets that go beyond the visible. And I wanted to put them in touch with their artistic intuition.’

By leaving the Academy and first camping out on the edge of the Marineterrein for three days, Klok and Musch tried to create a kind of vacuum. All attention was on the special area, which was explored on foot and by boat, in the daytime as well as by night in the dark.

They would eat, drink and watch movies together. Some of the students even walked around blindfolded, to fully use other senses than sight. ‘Step by step we let the students get lost,’ Musch says, ‘but we also let them discover new means.’

‘The sequence of films was well chosen,’ Klok says. ‘Visual Acoustics is about American photographer Julius Shulman.

He makes you doubt the proper image of modernism as a rationally organized movement: a sort of alternative architecture class through the eyes of the photographer. We subsequently 118

showed the documentary A Bigger Picture about artist David Hockney, who works day in and day out in the open air on a series of paintings of the landscape of his youth.’ And finally the film Down by Law by Jim Jarmusch, with cinematography by Robby Müller. ‘Time, rhythm and space are important elements in that film,’ Musch says. ‘It looks badly made, which makes you think: I can do that too. But the film is actually carefully thought out.’

‘When at the end of the two weeks one of the students cycled home, he spontaneously recorded a poem on his phone,’ says Musch.

The next day his group edited his poem into the short film. ‘That’s the essence of what we want. We want them to turn their sensitivity for an environment into a poetic ability to do something with the place.’

Klok: ‘I’m very happy with the incredibly aesthetic experiences the students gave us after they got in touch with their senses and dove deep into their emotions. The results are much more varied this time than what I see them do in design projects, while our profession is also very much about aesthetics.

Architecture students can learn a lot from films. A combination of image, sound and music creates something beautiful in them.’

‘Not only something beautiful,’ Musch says, ‘but also something that is unnameable and at the same time very convincing.’

Jeroen Musch is a photographer and former artist-in-residence at the Academy of Architecture. He organized the Winter School in 2017.

Arjan Klok has been head of the Master’s course of Urbanism for the past five years.

Sarah van Sonsbeeck

To investigate the role of silence in architectural practice, the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture 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 thirdyear 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.

In two weeks, the students researched different aspects of silence and the effect of that on the living environment, together with a team consisting of Madeleine Maaskant, Maike van Stiphout, Marjoleine Gadella and Van Sonsbeeck herself.

Van Sonsbeeck offered the students a wide range of perspec­tives: ‘Like a concert from 0-100 decibels at the Bimhuis and a lecture by artist Ahmet Öğüt about the Silent University he initiated for the Tate Modern. There was also a lecture by psychiatrist Pelle de Koning on misophonia [a condition in which specific sounds trigger intense feelings of rage, hatred or disgust].’ After a week, the students received the assignment: design silence for the Kop van Java in Amsterdam. ‘This assignment is

Van Sonsbeeck

Arjan Klok and Jeroen Musch

relevant,’ Van Sonsbeeck says, ‘because the municipality is considering not developing it but giving the space to silence. They’re thinking a city park. I really wanted to think on a wide and radically conceptual level about alternatives, together with the students.’

Van Sonsbeeck was impressed by the results of the Winter School. ‘The planning was exciting for me,’ she says, ‘and sometimes even surprising.

All of it together gives a good impression of the themes that are interesting to the Kop van Java. Subjects like interactivity, thinking on the scale of the city, building an experience, involving the citizens of Amsterdam and nature in the development of a plan: it was all there.’

The most important lesson that Van Sonsbeeck wants to leave her students with: ‘Remember the neigh­­ bours. I mean that students need to realize how sound can relate to architecture.

That they realize that limits are fluid. Sound doesn’t stop at a wall, but also invades the neigh­bour’s space. A design can be so much stronger if you’re conscious of this. How nice would it be if a student would graduate on the design of a residential building where people with misophonia could live comfortably with their partner and family.’

Sarah van Sonsbeeck was an artist-inresidence at the Academy of Architecture and organized the Winter School in 2018.

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Winter School in 2017 with Jeroen Musch.

Photos Thomas Lenden

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Winter School The Right to Silence, the Right to Speak in 2018 with Sarah van Sonsbeeck. Photos Thomas Lenden

Waard polder Waarderpolder From industrial estate to working city Graduation date 19 07 2017 Commission members Huub Juurlink (mentor), Ad de Bont, Tom Bergevoet Additional members for the examination Hans van der Made, Jaap Brouwer

Urbanism

Winter School in 2017 with Jeroen Musch and Winter School in 2018 with Sarah van Sonsbeeck. Photos Thomas Lenden

Hein Coumou

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Waarderpolder My grandpa had a building company in the centre of Hengelo. His workshop with storage and machinery was behind his home. On Saturday, the workshop was open to the neighbourhood: anyone could make use of the machines under supervision.

In recent decades, we have made separate residential districts and worksites.

Residential districts are often quiet and abandoned during the daytime. At the worksites, security guards guard at night.

The worksites eat up space: they lie like isolated masses in the landscape, poorly laid out.

Visitors feel hopelessly forlorn due to all the fences around the buildings.

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The project location is the Waarderpolder in Haarlem; an industrial estate of 255 ha with 1,100 companies close to the city centre of Haarlem. The Waarderpolder now lies like an isolated mass between the landscape and Haarlem. By making the industrial canal public and extending it to the Mooie Nel lake, the Waarder­polder will be given a heart, and will be connected with the city centre of Haarlem and the landscape.

People will live and work alongside new urban structures using space economically.

However, not all companies will fit within that. For example, companies that create a lot of noise, smell and particularly those busy with logistics. These

companies will be situated on the work streets. Those streets are built in such a way that the urban structures will only cross a work street a single time.

The development strategy will begin with the most important intervention: the industrial canal. After which, developments along the river Spaarne, in the landscape and the city streets will ensure that the area is further anchored to the city. By adding a gross floor area of 225 ha, the housing demand in Haarlem will be solved. A part of the city that is in use 24/7 will arise where there is support for all kinds of facilities. Just imagine.

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expl or e Explore

Several short excursions, at home as well as abroad, are part of the curriculum. The excursions have different goals: they serve to examine the location of a design assignment, to get to know other students or design schools or, in more general terms, to expand the general knowledge. The excursions are preferably initiated and organized by the teachers and students themselves, supported by the Academy. At the start of the study year, the Academy organizes the Holland Tour, an introductory excursion for first-year students. Many other excursions are part of the curriculum. In the context of education project Crafting the Faรงade, students attended workshops in Glasgow and Liechtenstein, guided by Machiel Spaan. And a bit further from home: in January 2018, a group of students visited Mumbai, together with Michiel van Iersel, Jarrik Ouburg and Anne Dessing.

Eurotour Scandinavia in 2016.

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Kikkert

‘About ten years ago, Andrė Baldišiū tė from Lithuania was a student at the Academy, who on return started a successful architecture firm. She also encouraged compatriots to go to Amsterdam to study at the Academy, like Kristina Petrauskaitė recently and Mindaugas Savickas a few years before that. Savickas had chosen the remains of a former shipyard built by the Germans in Klaipéda on the coast of Lithuania for his graduation project. He used the industrial heritage as a basis for a music school with a concert space.’

When Kikkert ran into it on a tour of the Baltic Sea, he experienced a feeling of déjà vu. Mindaugas had indeed chosen a beautiful location.

He already liked Lithuania, so when a colleague approached him about leading a study trip together, he knew right away what the destination should be.

They gave their students the assignment to make a design for a school of architecture. Kikkert: ‘It was about what type of education appeals to you and what kind of a building goes with that. We involved the director and students of the Vilnius school of architecture in the assignment. After the students thought about the structure of an ideal school for a couple of weeks, we went to Vilnius to measure their thoughts against local ideas.

We discussed themes like the school as a workplace or a place for startups. There was even an idea to design the educational building as a sphere: a little universe. We subsequently travelled across the country past a series of projects to 130

Klaipéda and we did a similar exercise with the local art academy. This time, the students had to find the right location for their “ideal models”. In that week we completely submerged ourselves in the Lithuanian world of architecture.’

‘I have a positive view of travel,’ Kikkert says. ‘You make friends for life, and connections are established. I saw that happening here, too: students were making connections, exchanging views and the Lithuanian students came to visit us in Amsterdam afterwards.

What you pick up from such an exchange differs from one person to another: the confrontation with another culture, the different forms of urban development, the handling of history. My goal is to feed students with overwhelming experiences.

Education doesn’t end when you graduate – that’s when it begins.

The richer the ground, the more chances of something beautiful growing from it.’

Jan-Richard Kikkert is head of the Academy department of Architecture.

Andrė Baldišiūtė

Architect Andrė Baldišiū tė will never forget her first-year design project at the Academy. ‘As I was racing on my bike through the city centre, in order to be on time for the review, the wind blew my models into the canal,’ she says. ‘In a state of panic I called my teacher, Laurens Jan ten Kate, who told me that if I didn’t present my project, I would fail. I had to decide in an instant what to do; the models were sinking. I jumped into the water, and proceeded to the Academy with the wet models.

I passed.’

It was the international boom of SuperDutch – the conceptual and spectacular architecture of OMA, MVRDV and UNStudio – that had brought Baldišiū tė from Lithuania to the Netherlands in 2003. ‘I remember when the embassy in Berlin, designed

by OMA, was opened,’ she reminisces.

‘This building was not about making something beautiful; it was about the spatial system the architects had developed for the people and the surrounding city, about the experience of the building – very different from what I had learnt at the university in Vilnius. I wanted to learn more about this architecture.

Apart from that, I think being in touch with different knowledge and cultures is always good.’

A friend pointed her towards the Academy, which offers the opportunity to study and work at the same time. ‘It was the only option for me to study abroad, as I had neither a scholarship nor rich parents to pay my way,’ she says.

‘I think it’s a perfect, yet difficult combination.’ Baldišiū tė found a job at ONE architecture, ‘a great office, very challenging’. Looking back she wonders: ‘Would I be brave enough to do it again? I went to Amsterdam

Baldišiū tė

Jan-Richard Kikkert

with a dream: to become an architect. I came without clothes, without people to take care of me, without any knowledge of this new world; I had to do it all by myself.

The jump into the canal was indeed quite symbolic.’

Baldišiū tė : ‘The most important lesson I took from the Academy, is to think about what you do, not how you do it. In my previous school we had the habit of showing our work – not defending it or speaking about it. I just hung my drawings to be looked at and judged. Ten Kate said: “Explain how you got to this design.” But it’s not just about making good designs; it’s your progress as a person that determines whether you continue to the next year. I like this idea, of competing with yourself instead of others.’

In 2007 Baldišiū tė went back to Vilnius and started her own office, DO architects. It rapidly grew to 45 people, but BBaldišiū tė tries to stay ‘a boutique type of office, in size and style’. She says: ‘It’s what I liked at the Academy: working in small teams, bringing ideas together, asking a lot of questions, and combining multiple spatial solutions into intelligent systems.’

Andrė Baldišiūtė is an architect based in Vilnius and a former student of the Academy.

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132 133 Eurotour Scandinavia in 2016.

The study trip to Vilnius, Lithuania, in 2016 was part of the Architecture course P5.

134 135 During the Eurotour 2017, students travelled to Ljubljana, Zagreb, Sarajevo, Split and Dubrovnik.

Re-act Re-light workshop in the Barcelona pavilion by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in 2017. Photos Anna Mas Talens

Secon Nature

Landscape architecture

Hannah Schubert

Study trip to Mumbai and Cairo in 2018, within the framework of the Tabula Scripta lectorate.

Second Nature A slow, natural transformation as alternative to demolition Graduation date 25 11 2014 Commission members NoÍl van Dooren (mentor), Klaas Jan Wardenaar, Jo Barnett Additional members for the examination Marieke Timmermans, Lada Hrs̆ak

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Second Nature The Netherlands has hundreds of long-term vacant buildings.

Redesignation for other uses is not always successful; demolition often seems to be the only option.

This project is an exploration to find an alternative solution, in a time after the credit crisis that hit in 2008. It is a project in which the force of nature is used to slowly transform a ‘failed’ building into landscape.

The uncontrollable and unpredictable character of nature is adopted as starting point for the directed metamorphosis of a building.

The building that will undergo the metamorphosis is the Scheringa Musem of Realism in Opmeer, commissioned by the banker Dirk Scheringa and

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designed by architect Herman Zeinstra. The museum symbolizes the failures of our economic system. The colossus, which has never been put into use, has stood empty in the flat, functional landscape of WestFriesland since 2009. It is a blind spot that the villagers have never been able to discover.

With minimal interventions a maximum transformation is achieved. By strategically removing parts, light and moisture will penetrate the building, so that the natural processes can occur. Over a course of more than 50 years, the building will gradually be transformed in this way, and it will become an ecological refuge for the plants and species of

animals that have increasingly less place in the arid farmlands of West-Friesland.

The first intervention is the removal of the surplus, still valuable material – in order to reveal the ‘soft parts’ of the building. In the second phase, the building will be ‘modified’: the floor will be partly drilled open according to a preconceived pattern, so that plants can nestle in the cracks.

The last intervention focuses on the act of adding: in order to safeguard liveability and accessibility in the future, a path is built using partially recycled material. This circular path will cut through all parts of the building and creates a new connection between the historic

ribbon development and the adjoining park, so that the Museum can once again become part of the village.

This project is about time, decay and growth, about the celebration of transience instead of denying this. It is a quest for a hybrid form between architecture and landscape – a new reality, as a result of which a sense of value is created that goes beyond that which can be expressed in economic rate of return. The Scheringa Museum will become a green monument, a real-life ‘Museum of Realism’.

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gra du at ion Graduation

Every autumn the Graduation Show takes place, a three-day exhibition of all the graduation projects of the students of the Master’s programme of Architecture, Urbanism and Landscape Architecture. At the opening, the graduation projects are announced that were selected by the Academy of Architecture for participation in the Archiprix NL, the prize for the best graduation projects of the Dutch design schools. Bruno Vermeersch, responsible for the Form studies, added a new component to the exhibition in 2016: the Roadshow. Results of the form studies of the first-, second- and third-year students were presented in the trunks of eight cars that were airlifted into the Academy building’s courtyard.

At night, the courtyard turned into a drive-in with a film programme by the students of the Form studies.

Graduation show in 2017. Photo Inge Hoogland

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Graduation show in 2017. From left to right: Jeroen Musch, Madeleine Maaskant, Aart Oxenaar, Maarten Kloos, Sven Stremke, Maike van Stiphout, Jan Zoet, Miranda Reitsma, Bart Rรถmer and Yvonne Franquinet. Photo Inge Hoogland 142

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Architecture

Marcy Houses A case study of social housing in New York City Graduation date 29 08 2016 Commission members Laurens Jan ten Kate (mentor), Marcel van der Lubbe, Gus Tielens Additional members for the examination Elsbeth Falk, Machiel Spaan

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Marcy Houses If anything is typical of the demographics of New York City, it is its character of enclaves.

While higher level demographic data show a diverse, vibrant melting pot, small-scale New York City is relatively segregated.

This seems to work just fine in most neighbourhoods.

Unfortunately, this is not the case for the poorest New Yorkers. Since the 1930s, they have been housed in large-scale housing developments popularly referred to as ‘projects’.

Over 400,000 people live in these subsidized houses, divided over 334 developments.

The majority of these neighbour­ hoods are based on the ‘Towers in the Park’ scheme. They breathe modernism and a top-

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down urban design mentality.

The fact that they have a waiting list of 200,000 people is an indication of their continuing relevance.

The Marcy Houses in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighbour­ hood of Brooklyn are a representative example of a housing ‘project’. They are situated in a beautiful area of central Brooklyn and they are surrounded by picturesque neighbourhoods where a happy middle class finds identity.

However, the Marcy Houses themselves are often referred to as a neighbourhood with a lot of problems.

With the need for 50% more social housing than currently available, that also has

to be funded in a different way than has traditionally been done.

I am adding 25% more marketrate apartments and commercial spaces, on top of the 50% extra social housing. As such, densification and diversification not only becomes desirable from a socio-economic perspective, but also from a purely economic and affordability standpoint.

The Marcy Projects should be proud like New York City, showing off their resilience, as well as their richness in diversity and history.

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f a ct s Facts

The Academy of Architecture is located on the Waterlooplein in Amsterdam in a seventeenth-century building complex, converted by Claus en Kaan Architects. The Academy has its own place in the cultural life of Amsterdam and the professional debate.

Workshops, events and exhibitions are organized, often in collaboration with external parties. The 1.Lectures deal with thematic, topical issues in the fields of architecture, urbanism and landscape architecture at home and abroad. They are public lectures in English, also meant for interested parties from outside the Academy.

The three Master’s programmes (Architecture, Urbanism and Landscape Architecture) are made up of projects, exercises and lectures, complemented with form studies. Design projects are the backbone of the study, with a diverse and intensive supply of (interdisciplinary) design assignments and ideas. Training design skills is central to the exercises, and there are additional exercises focused on text analysis and writing. In form studies, the students translate ideas into creations.

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Seminar organized by the Education Academy of the European Association of Architectural Education (EAAE) in Amsterdam, 2017. Drawing Harriet Harriss, photo Parvinder Marwaha

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History In 1908, the Academy of Architecture started with the course for Secondary and Higher Architecture Training, organized by the Amsterdam Architect’s Association Architectura et Amicitia. The establishment of the Academy of Architecture society followed in 1916. The Academy of Architecture Amsterdam has been the ‘faculty of Architecture’ of the Amsterdam University of the Arts (AHK) since 1987.

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The Academy of Architecture is located in the centre of Amsterdam in the former Oude Zijds Huiszittenhuis and adjoining warehouses: the Arsenal. The building was designed in 1654 by Willem de Keyser, son of Hendrik de Keyser, and is now a national monument. It has served as an ‘alms-house’, a warehouse for artillery and a municipal office. The Academy of Architecture has rented the building since 1946. All services and facilities are located in the building. There are 15 ateliers and workspaces, a model workshop and an auditorium.

Vision The Amsterdam Academy of Architecture offers education for designers by designers. It focuses on motivated and equipped students and selects teachers who have distinguished themselves in the practice of design and research. Students are prepared for spatial design as a practical and critical discipline on the cutting edge of art, science and technology. The deliberate connection with art education (AHK) emphasizes the exceptional importance we place on the artistic aspect of the profession. The Academy offers a small-scale, high-quality learning environment with an open atmosphere that centres on determining one’s own position, by teachers and students alike. International orientation is naturally a part of that. For this reason, the curriculum is offered in Dutch and in English. Architecture, urbanism and landscape architecture are independent disciplines. Contemplation of what belongs to the inalienable essence of these disciplines – and should therefore guide the education programme – is consequently part of our mission. The fact remains that the three disciplines are deliberately offered simultaneously and partly combined. This prepares the student for an integrated occupation in a field where, within fading limits, there is an increased demand for a unique design ability. Specific locations in the Netherlands, Europe and the rest of the world are the laboratory for the designer. The city of Amsterdam, the location of the Academy, is actively used in the training as a social structure, a historical work of art and a permanent exercise in design. This comes from the desire to position the spatial designer as a socially involved ‘master’ who deals with assignments from a historically

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informed idea of what is, and with an analytically justified critical view on what lies ahead. The Amsterdam Academy of Architecture offers three Master’s programmes: A Architecture S Urbanism L Landscape Architecture

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Goal The Academy of Architecture prepares 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. The degree entitles graduates to independently practice one of the three disciplines taught at the Academy. The degree meets the admission requirements that are defined in the Architect’s Title Act and is notified with the EU. The graduate has direct access to the register of architects, urban planners and landscape architects and is qualified to compete in the European market.

Architect degree Upon obtaining the Master’s degree (Master of Science), you are entitled to practice independently and have direct access to the register of architects, urban planners and landscape architects.

Practice oriented research in education Social, practical and technical developments continuously put new demands on a designer.

That is why the Academy integrates practiceoriented research in its curriculum. The lecturers organize masterclasses, projects, excursions, exhibitions and lectures within their research.

What does the Academy of Architecture stand for?

Studying in an international context The city of Amsterdam is a permanent laboratory for the design assignments for the students and teachers at the Academy of Architecture. The Academy has close ties to the local professional community, to public services, contractors and developers. Our study programmes also have a prominent position internationally. The Academy has close ties to related courses abroad. Students from all quarters study at the Academy, international guest teachers and lecturers visit regularly and students often take part in international excursions and projects.

Studying and working simultaneously In the competitive education at the Academy, the combination of study and work experience positions the students and teachers in the middle of the practice of design and research. Because of this, students are already an active part of an expansive network of colleagues during their study. Graduates of the Academy of Architecture often stay involved with the Academy. The student often becomes an employer and based on that position becomes a teacher or mentor for a new generation of students.

Interdisciplinary The Amsterdam Academy of Architecture is the only education institution in the Netherlands that offers the Master’s programmes of Architecture, Urbanism and Landscape Architecture interdisciplinary. This combination puts the Academy of Architecture in a unique position, both nationally and internationally.

Inspiring environment and topical debate The Academy of Architecture is located on the Waterlooplein in Amsterdam in a seventeenthcentury building complex, converted by Claus en Kaan Architects. The Academy has its own place in the cultural life of Amsterdam and places itself in the professional debate. Lectures, workshops, events and exhibitions are organized in collaboration with external parties. The lecture series 1.Lectures on thematic, topical issues are accessible to all students and take place year round.

Part of the Amsterdam University of the Arts (AHK) There is space for interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary collaboration within the available training at the AHK, as well as for international exchange. The AHK offers students an expansive orientation on art and culture, and for that reason places a high value on the fact that students can learn from developments within the other art disciplines.

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Master of Architecture In the Master’s programme of Architecture at the Academy of Architecture you learn to find and convey your own position within the wide area of the profession of architecture. The current education model, a proven combination of study and work experience, impassioned guest teachers from the field and the small-scale and international training in the centre of the city, helps you to develop into a fully-fledged architect. To grow into an inspiring spatial artist with an individual architectural signature that is fully equipped to play a central part in the design process. At the Academy of Architecture, you are trained to be an architect who is not afraid to stick their neck out and who can see further than the world you already know. You see possibilities, you can inspire, you are able to make choices and know how to incorporate them.

Master of Urbanism Cities are an unlimited man-made source of inspiration and fascination. In the Master’s programme of Urbanism, you learn to understand

the city in all its complexity and often inconceivable scale, to make smart strategic developmental proposals for specific locations in the city. As an urban planner, you can translate the wishes of citizens, entrepreneurs and administrators and the abstract analyses, theories and stories of sociologists, economists, commissioners, traffic experts and similar disciplines into concrete and meaningful spatial design proposals. For street, neighbourhood, district, city and urban areas. At the Academy, you are handed all the means to develop into a central and connecting person in the construction of the city and to become a versatile and authentic professional.

Master of Landscape Architecture Landscape Architecture is also described as ‘drawing in the topography’, but the profession involves much more. At the Master’s programme of the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture you acquire the knowledge, insight and skills that enable you to solve spatial problems with design and to bring new topographical situations into focus. On different scale and abstraction levels, from garden to region. You will not only learn to reconcile new elements like water, infrastructure, construction and vegetation with the existing qualities and possibilities of the natural and historical environment, but also to start a process that increasingly more parties get involved in.

Research is an important part of the profession, and can result in genuine understanding and innovation. This means also understanding other elements than the spatial ones: the users, makers and operators. The landscape architect is furthermore conscious of the influence that the element of time has on the quality of the environment and is able to let it do its job.

Application of the right basic conditions creates a high-value outdoor space.

Internal curriculum The three programmes each have a similar structure. In the six semesters leading up to graduation, three forms of education are offered in parallel: . Projects (P) . Exercises (O) . Classes (C) These three forms of education are supplemented with: . Form Studies (V) in semesters one through three . the Winter School between semesters one and two, three and four, five and six . the Clinic and Graduation Clinic in semesters five and six . elements from the Elective Programme These education elements do not only focus on the development of knowledge and skills but also actively work on the individual portfolio.

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Projects The design projects are the backbone of the study.

Knowledge, insight and skills are integrated here in the context of the design assignments. A number of design projects is interdisciplinary. From the start of the study, the ability to see through the design issues of related areas of expertise is developed and to develop an eventual orientation in the chosen discipline through a diverse and intensive supply of design assignments and design views. The design projects are evaluated by the relevant design teacher(s) and take either half of a semester or an entire semester.

Exercises The exercises focus on training skills in areas that are essential to the recognition, solution and transmission of the design issues. The exercises are in this case linked to the design projects.

Additionally, there are three exercises focused on text analysis and writing. Evaluation of the exercises takes place in terms of attendance and the work created during the exercise.

Lectures During the lectures, the acquisition of knowledge and insight is key. Lectures are offered at the beginning of the study. After that, the emphasis is on the active participation of the student by offering workshops that are preferably linked to the issues of more complex design projects.

Evaluation of the result of a series of lectures is based on presentation, excursion and/or by means of a test assignment. Attendance of all lectures is mandatory. If attendance is not possible due to sickness or personal circumstances, cancellation is necessary through the secretariat. Missing one or more lectures can result in either having to do a replacement assignment or, when the amount of missed lectures is high, exclusion from the year test.

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Form studies Form studies, a course on form. Any way you look at it, form is shape and you can learn to create shapes. Form is an integral part of architecture, urbanism and landscape architecture, if not the one essential element of the profession. But form has many shapes. Form studies are not to be led by just a physical or traditional appearance. Form in word, sound, volume and/or image. The form study ‘Masters of Form’ is the movement crossing the curriculum that searches for autonomy and everyone’s imaging ability. The main goal is to develop a clear handwriting, planting the first seed of a greater oeuvre, so students can position themselves as independent designers in architecture, urbanism or landscape architecture.

This takes training – a lot of training – to eventually be able to let go of the existing balustrades of logic and specific assignments.

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Clinic The learning goal of the clinic is the targeted and focused removal of the deficiencies that are identified in the second year. It is important that the student has a clear view of which elements are well-developed and which elements need extra attention in the third year. During the first half of the third year, the student can already address these during the P5 and the O5. The clinic offers the possibility to pay extra attention to a specific element. Multiple thematic clinics are offered that each deal with a certain aspect of the design process. Every student signs up for one of the clinics from a personal motivation and in coordination with their mind.

English as a Foreign Language) with a passing score. The TOEFL or IELTS certificate is to be submitted along with the application papers.

Failure to send in the certificate or an inadequate score means the applicant cannot be registered as a student.

Elective programme Students must get a total of three credits in the second and third year (three European Credits, of which one European Credit stands for 28 hours).

Two of the three credits are optional. One credit is mandatory and consists of eight lectures from the 1.Lectures that can be attended in the first, second and/or third year. Before Exam 3 can be taken, the credits must have been attained. To facilitate this, every year an elective programme is established that can consist of: workshops, 1.

Lectures, excursions and study trips, selfmanagement seminars and study at other schools.

Graduation clinic The graduation clinic between the student and the head of the relevant department takes place in the second semester of the third year. The p. 140-148 possibilities of graduation are explored in this clinic and a graduation proposal is written. The clinic runs parallel to the O6, where the graduation proposal is worked out in further depth.

Workshops During the entire study, short-term intensive workshops are offered that all students can sign up for, no matter what discipline. These usually take place in the summer months. Individual input in setting up the workshops is encouraged.

Participation in workshops elsewhere can be accepted after prior approval.

Winter School In the Winter School, one single assignment is worked on in an interdisciplinary context. The goal of the Winter School is learning to work independently as an interdisciplinary team.

Every team consists of a mixed formation, in terms of study year as well as field of study. In January of the new calendar year, focused work is done on the implementation of the assignment p. 116-124 for two weeks, with a maximum of three moments of guidance per week. The assignment is shaped in terms of content by one of the members of the study leadership, or a guest curator. The assignment is about a design for an object, area, place or spatial assignment in the Netherlands, where rural, urban and architectural design can all be employed. The Winter School can take the shape of a design contest.

Study at other schools The Academy encourages studying at other schools at home or abroad. This is possible in the framework of credits or as part of the course. A maximum of one semester can be accepted as part of the study programme. For EMiLA students, this is two semesters.

Language The lessons at the Academy of Architecture are given in English and in Dutch. That is why a Dutch student needs to master the Dutch and the English language, passively as well as actively.

Candidates from non-English speaking countries from within or outside the EU need to show a certificate of IELTS (International English Language Testing System) or TOEFL (Test of

Lectures The 1.Lectures on Thursday evenings handle thematic, current topics in the field of architecture, urbanism and landscape architecture at home and abroad. These are public lectures in English, also meant for interested parties from outside the Academy. In the first three years of the programme, a total of eight lectures need to have been attended for a credit, based on attendance. The lectures take place every other week on Thursday evening, starting at 20:00 in the Hoge Zaal. An attendance register is available. See the website for the current programme (www.arcam.nl/1-lectures).

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Excursions and study trips Study trips of a continuous period to places at home or abroad can be a part of the elective programme if the following five conditions are met: . the excursion has been approved by the study leadership, . literary research has been done prior to the excursion, . an excursion guide is made, . a lecture is organized on the place in question, . an excursion report is presented to the study leaders afterwards.

An excursion is generally rewarded one credit.

The excursions are preferably initiated and organized by teachers and students themselves, supported by the Academy.

Seminars Self-management. The goal of these seminars is to enhance the student’s ability to organize their professional work. The content of the lessons is adapted to the situation of an Academy student who is combining work and study. The programme is partly shaped around concrete practical examples from their own running projects. There is ample attention for individual questions, situations and problems of the participants. For this elective course, an active contribution is required during the seminars and some (limited) self-motivation in the intermediate weeks.

Study at other schools The Academy encourages study at other schools at home or abroad. This is possible in the framework of credits or as part of the study. A maximum of one semester can be accepted as part of the study programme. The Academy assumes that architecture students have gained the necessary technical knowledge in the Bachelor phase. The emphasis in the education is therefore on architectural thinking and designing.

External curriculum Part of the education at the Academy of Architecture is gaining relevant professional experience. Working in the field takes place concurrently with the study: concurrent education. This generally means that a student of architecture works at an architecture firm, a student of urbanism at an urban design office, and a landscape architecture student at an office for landscape architecture. It is also possible to work for multiple employers in the discipline that the student is studying, on a freelance basis.

A student is allowed to combine the study at the Academy of Architecture with their own practice or enterprise. In that case, a condition is that the student indicates in a written request what their activities are, substantiates the time spent on those activities, which professional qualifications are developed with it and who their mentor guiding them in these activities is. Additionally, they state the reasons why the work situation meets the Academy’s demands in terms of quality. Upon approval, the student can add this practice and professional experience to the practice documents on review.

Legal framework As a result of a new European directive, the Netherlands has adjusted the Architect’s Title Act (WAT) consistent with European legislature.

As of 1 January 2015, graduated architects, urban planners and landscape architects need to have two years of relevant professional experience

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before they can register as an architect. An exemption clause has been added for the Academies of Architecture. Students who have completed the Academy of Architecture course and the accompanying professional experience, can get registered immediately after graduation.

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The work situation Whether the student is employed or works on a freelance basis or owns their own company, the work situation is expected to: create and implement designs, actively guide the student by at least one designer (the mentor); offer a stimulating and challenging work environment with enough conditions for the student to develop into an adequately acting professional (designer); have an adequate level of infrastructure: availability of relevant literature, documentation on legislature and materials, possibility to discuss the business etcetera; enable the student to, over the course of the study, deal with all the elements of the process and to gain insight in the connection between the different parts of the trajectory (from initiative to completion). The coordinator of professional experience can come to the conclusion, based on abovementioned points and the substantive quality of the external curriculum, that the work situation of a student does not offer the correct facilities and/or conditions to gain the required professional experience. Various factors, like the nature and size of the office, the nature and size of the assignment portfolio, the economic situation and time constraints, can limit the developmental possibilities of employees temporarily or structurally. Naturally, the Academy understands, but cannot subordinate the education requirements to that. In that case, the coordinator of professional experience can advise a student to gain the professional experience another way. This can mean an advice to speak with the employer, to find another work situation or, if the student owns their own office or works freelance, to find a work situation with an employer. If the coordinator has urgently advised the student to change their work situation because of a possible withholding of credits, there will be a joint agreement on a time limit that is acceptable to each involved party.

This advice is binding. Not following the advice can result in a negative judgement of the professional experience and as a result, a refusal to grant credits. A balanced relationship between study and work means a work week of a maximum of four days. Fridays should be available for study.

The student keeps the Academy advised of their current workplace and communicates any changes with the secretariat immediately. The professional experience must, towards the end of

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Architecture, Glasgow School of Arts; Bauhaus Universität, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Studies, Weimar; Istanbul Kültür Üniversitesi, Department of Architecture; Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Arquitectura; Ecole Nationale Superieure d’Architecture et de Paysage, Bordeaux; and Riga Technical University, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning.

the programme, lead to the knowledge, insight and skills that are described in the learning outcomes for the disciplines of architecture, urbanism and landscape architecture of the Architectenregister (www.architectenregister.nl).

Practical modules The learning outcomes of the external curriculum have eight professional qualifications. In support of gaining the necessary professional experience, the Academy offers a series of practical modules in the framework of these professional qualifications. The practical modules Design and Organization, Presentation and Communication are mandatory for all students. You attend one module in the second year and one in the third.

Attendance of the two practical modules equals 28 hours of professional experience and one European Credit (EC) for the external curriculum.

In the fourth year, students attend the mandatory module of Design and Enterprise. This series also equals 28 hours and one EC for the external curriculum. The amount of hours or Course Load of a practical module (28 hours per module) is subtracted from the amount of hours of professional experience to be achieved in the year of the module. The total amount of hours of professional experience to be achieved is 840 per year (including classes), a total of 3,360 hours in the entire programme.

EMiLA (Landscape Architecture) In the EMiLA programme we collaborate with: Amsterdam University of the Arts (AUA)/ Amsterdam Academy of Architecture (AAA); Universitat Polytècnica de Catalunya (UPC)/ Escola Tècnica Superior d’Arquitectura (ETSAB)/ Escola Superior d’Agricultura de Barcelona (ESAB); The University of Edinburgh/Edinburgh College of Art (ECA)/ The Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA); Leibniz Universität Hannover (LUH)/ Fakultät für Architektur und Landschaft; and Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Paysage Versailles/ Marseille (ENSP).

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Internationalization The Academy is part of a network of mostly European schools where selected students and teachers are exchanged on a small scale. Active participation in the European Association for Architectural Education (EAAE) and the European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools (ECLAS), visits to peer institutions abroad and targeted invitations to students of foreign schools to participate in the study programme are the foundation of this network. In addition, the Academy is a co-organizer of and partner in Erasmus summer workshops for architecture, urbanism and landscape architecture at various locations in Europe (Design in Urbanism and EMiLA).

Wood (Architecture) The Academy is participating in a Strategic Partnership Architecture from 2017 to 2020, titled ‘Wood’, with Trondheim Faculty for Architecture and Design NTNU and Universität Liechtenstein.

Design in Urbanism (Urban Design) Within the partnership Design in Urbanism, the Academy collaborates on a yearly basis under the title of The Big Reset in Neighbourhood Design with: LUCA School of Arts, Faculty of Architecture, Brussels; Mackintosh School of

Erasmus programme Within the Erasmus+ programme, there are exchange agreements with currently 11 foreign schools: Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Copenhagen; University of Copenhagen; Leibniz Universität Hannover; Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona; Ecole Nationale Supérieure du Paysage, Versailles; Ecole Nationale Superiéure de la Nature et du Paysage, Blois; Edinburgh College of Art; Istanbul Kültür Üniversitesi; Universität Liechtenstein; and Vilnius Gediminas Technical University. Exchange with other schools is possible if they are affiliated with the Erasmus+ programme.

architects and artists in the city are the point of departure. The minor partly coincides with the Building Technique course.

Urbanism and Landscape Architecture course The Urbanism and Landscape Architecture course is intended graduates in the possession of a Bachelor’s degree (with the exception of the HKU Spatial Design, these graduates are directly admissible to the Master in Landscape Architecture) and for professionals who want to do a Master’s degree in Urbanism and Landscape Architecture, but who are missing important professional knowledge or design skills in their prior education. Parts of the course programme coincide with the minor in Urbanism and Landscape Architecture.

Minor in Urbanism and Landscape Architecture In the minor in Urbanism and Landscape Architecture, ideas about city and landscape will be discussed and various research and presentation techniques will be practised.

Learning through experience and forming your own opinion is paramount and the way of teaching is adapted to this. There is also room for the exploration of various related disciplines, such as architecture, art, culture and media. In addition to making designs, the theory and exercise component consists of: research, experimentation, morphology classes, interviewing, excursions and visiting design firms. In the practical component, students will work together with professionals in studios on topical design assignments.

Building Technique course Graduates in the possession of Bachelor’s degree in Architectural Design or Interior Architecture can follow the Building Technique course. This course is intended to bring technical knowledge to the required standard so that students with a different entry level in structural and technical fields can begin the Master’s in Architecture at the Academy of Architecture. The course partly coincides with the minor in Architecture. p. 102-103

Minor in Architecture The minor in Architecture offers students from relevant preparatory courses the possibility to already become acquainted with the education during the Bachelor’s phase. By following the minor, you can explore the field of study and become acquainted with the education. The minor in Architecture is entitled Studio Amsterdam. The local environment, the city of Amsterdam, the water and the many talented

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Reflections after one hundred and one days Inaugural speech Madeleine Maaskant Academy of Architecture 1 October 2015 Ladies and Gentlemen, It is a magnificent opportunity that I have been given, being made director of the Academy of Architecture. This inaugural speech, in which I will describe my reflections after one hundred and one days, coincides with the Kromhoutlezing (Kromhout Lecture), which has been organized every year around 5 October (the Dies Natalis) since the centenary of the Academy in 2008 and to which all alumni are invited.

The architect Willem Kromhout was one of the founders of the Academy of Architecture. I greet his distinctive head every morning upon arriving (‘Hello Willem’) when I walk towards his unmissable bust in the hall. Following in the footsteps of Kromhout, via Boeyinga, Snellebrand, Slebos, Hylkema, Smienk & Stam and Oxenaar, more than 100 years later, a Maaskant at the Academy of Architecture.

Let me get straight to the point. ‘Are you related to the Maaskant?’ is a question I have been asked very often over the course of the years, because I share my name with the designer who has left an indelible mark on post-war architecture in the Netherlands with a number of iconic buildings. I sometimes sigh, for the umpteenth time, somewhat recalcitrantly, ‘Just look at my hands. They don’t look anything like – apparently – the legendary giant hands of Huig’. In any case, the answer is no, I am not related to the Maaskant from Rotterdam. I am an Amsterdam Maaskant, who has been given the wonderful opportunity to be director of the Academy of Architecture in this city.

I started at the Waterlooplein on 1 June 2015.

I was asked to prepare a speech within a week, because ‘the heads of the Master’s study programmes always give an inaugural speech shortly after taking up their position’. There is, however, a salient difference: when a head of a Master’s study programme starts, the students flock around him or her. Teaching must be provided immediately and direction is needed right away. The head of a Master’s study programme is like the captain of a ferry. There are lots of students on the quayside waiting to be taken immediately to the other side. The position of a director is, however, a different one. It is more like that of a captain on a tanker, which sails cumbersomely and slowly, around which the ferries navigate, and where a change in course of just one degree can ultimately result in a different destination.

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It requires well-considered navigation skills, because the Academy of Architecture is such a unique school with a rich tradition; a school that is part of the Amsterdam University of the Arts and which is strongly intertwined with the professional world in Amsterdam; a breeding ground of artistic innovation that has produced many talented designers in more than one hundred years of existence, who have left their mark on Dutch cities or have made an important contribution to the appearance of residential environments. They have also often played an important role in the debate about architecture, urbanism and landscape architecture.

This is the school where I have enjoyed coming to for more than 25 years already; as a teacher, as an external examiner or to listen to one of the many lectures. Or, and this was how it all started, as a Delft architecture student living in Amsterdam, who came to photocopy an article in the library late in the evening or came to examine a book, which they turned a blind eye to.

This speech about the first hundred and one days at Waterlooplein 213 is a reflection on the values of the Academy and the education that is offered to students so that they are well equipped to get to work in the ever-changing work field.

What is the secret of the Academy?

There you stand then, just finished as an Academy student, with a recently obtained degree certificate under your arm… A few years ago, at the time of the economic boom, the opportu­nities seemed limitless. You could find a job at any firm as a recently graduated designer; but future prospects have taken a turn for the worse in a short space of time. As a designer, you are taught to improve the world with ideas and designs during your study. In order to be able to do that, you must first have some understanding of the world, which is no easy task when so much that previously seemed self-evident has turned out no longer to be the case. The design practice is strongly susceptible to change, which nobody could fail to notice, and the contours of a different, new building culture seem to be arising in practice at this moment in time. Or to put it stronger, are arising in practice at this moment in time. I will return to this point.

During my story, I will be guided by the question ‘What is the secret of the Academy?’ This is a question that I was asked when students at this Academy were among the prizewinners once again in the Archiprix. In the more than 35 years that this graduation competition has existed, the Amsterdam Academy has produced many prizewinners and the Academy has been highly successful in obtaining special mentions in the past decade.

In the past 11 years, the first prize has been awarded nine times and a second prize or special mention twelve times. The Academy has also performed well in the Prix de Rome. Last year, an alumna of this Academy was awarded the prestigious prize. These successes are striking, not only given their frequency, but also given the number of students that the Academy trains: that number is relatively small if you compare it with the much larger student populations of the architecture faculties of the universities in Delft and Eindhoven.

‘What is the secret of the Academy?’ It is an interesting question in my first hundred and one days; a question that has an entirely different significance now the responsibility rests squarely on my shoulders than when I was still a teacher.

What are the characteristics and values that make this school what it is? The number of registrations from interested students is increasing. Each year, we succeed in finding inspired teachers prepared to teach here and getting interesting speakers on stage in the Hoge Zaal. Add to that the aforementioned prizes, plus that fact that all three Master’s study programmes were recently accredited as ‘good’.

‘What is the secret of the Academy?’ is a question to which various answers can be given. I will answer the question from three different perspectives. One observation in advance: whenever I talk about architects in the rest of my story, I also mean urban designers and landscape architects.

Education at the Amsterdam University of the Arts Small-scale learning environment I have called the first secret ‘Education at the Amsterdam University of the Arts’ and I will begin with a quote from Minister Bussemaker’s strategic agenda Hoger Onderwijs en Onderzoek 2015-2025 (Higher Education and Research 20152025), which was published in July 2015. The title is De waarde(n) van weten (The value of knowledge), which includes a plea for small-scale learning environments. ‘The quality of education is also determined, apart from the efforts of teachers, by the contribution of students themselves. That is why higher education must become smaller in scale, so that teachers have more time for individual contact with students.

Education comes about through a relationship between people.’

The plea for small-scale learning environment appears to apply seamlessly to what the Academy of Architecture is and has been for a very long time: a small school in which the educational model implies that individual contact between

the student and teacher is self-evident. The designers who teach here do so with great commitment and love for their profession. A commitment that is sometimes so great that they have to be asked by the caretaker on duty late in the evening to leave the building, because they would otherwise risk solitary confinement.

The room for education, alluded to in the quote, is a great blessing within the Amsterdam University for the Arts. High quality of education in order to train ‘the student as the artist of tomorrow’ is the main priority, which also applies to this school where ‘the architect of tomorrow’ is formed.’

It appears that there is a renewed interest in training within the world of education, as witnessed by the fact that the German word Bildung was used during the opening of this academic year in the opening addresses at various universities. Higher education is not only about scholarship and research; students must also be shaped individually. Education is important, not just the economic benefit.

When using the word Bildung (which is defined as ‘a particular character formation, which nobody should lack’ by Wilhelm von Humboldt), there is an element of friction with the efficient student machine that the modern-day university in many Western countries has become.

Friday afternoon experiments One anecdote that I like to give, in relation to the efficiency described above, is the way in which graphene was discovered by Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov; a discovery that was rewarded with the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Graphene is a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon, extremely thin, almost transparent, tremendously malleable and much stronger, for example, than steel. To name just one of its many uses: graphene could make the internet one hundred times faster.

A discovery that will have a great impact. But now comes the point that I would like to make: these physicists discovered this material almost by chance, by accident. By conducting ‘crazy experiments’, as they have stated themselves in interviews. They call these ‘Friday afternoon experiments’; light-hearted experiments that you should spend at least 10 per cent of your time on according to the Nobel Prize winners.

Why do I mention this example? Students must be able to shape themselves and have the time and space to experiment; to try out crazy things, conduct Friday afternoon experiments, test limits. This Academy is such a school and must remain such a school; a school where students are given the opportunity to ripen into mature

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designers. This was aptly put into words by Alvar Aalto in his essay about The Trout and the Mountain Stream.

Architecture and its details are, in a way, connected with biology. They are perhaps like large salmons and trouts. They are not born mature; they are not even born in the sea or the waters where they normally live. They come many hundreds of miles from their natural environment, removed from the world. Where the rivers are little more than brooks, small glistening streams between the mountains... As far removed from their normal environment as the spiritual life of man and his instincts from daily life. And just like a fish egg needs time to develop into an adult organism, everything that develops and crystallises in our world of thought requires time. Architecture requires this time more than any other creative activity.

Voyage of discovery Time is what the Academy wants to offer; time to discover which designer lies dormant in a student. The curriculum is not the main focus, but the development or formation of the individual student. During the study programme, students are regularly asked ‘What kind of designer do you want to become?’ ‘Which position do you want take in the profession or professional discourse?’

Who are your current heroes and why?

It is a form of education that can be direct and confrontational, but with sole aim of motivating the student to adopt a position. One student needs more time for that than the other: discovering where you stand goes hand in hand with trial and error. Because a designer is an explorer who travels out of curiosity or who is sent on a trip by means of an assignment; he or she learns, investigates, ask questions and makes connections. He or she then returns from the trip with stories, designs and drawings; they are the results of an often unruly, but creative process.

1:1 The result of such a creative process hung in the display window of this building. Upon being appointed, I was asked to set up a small exhibition there. A fun request. What do you show if you are invited as new director of the Academy of Architecture to create an exhibition?

Images of your work as an architect? Your favourite buildings? Your heroes through the years? Your own graduation project? Or a collection of buildings, cities or landscapes, which turned out be relevant within the professional discourse?

I decided to show my studio; more specifically one of the walls in my studio. The collection that

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hangs there was temporarily moved, on a one-toone scale (1:1), to the Academy. The collection consists of photos, postcards, invitations, newspaper clippings and magazine pages, which I hung up on one of the walls in my studio over the years. A kaleidoscopic collection that demonstrates what catches my eye, what intrigues me, what moves me and what survived my critical gaze, thus claiming a permanent place on the wall.

You may ask why I do this? I must admit it is a peculiar habit. Wanting to keep something in spite of not knowing what you want to do with it, but which you think you would like to use one day. Not yet knowing what or when. The different parts of my ‘collection’ ended up on the wall for various reasons: sometimes it was the aesthetic beauty, sometimes it was confirmation of a dormant suspicion, the eye-catching representation of an idea or a memory. But it can also be a future destination, a beautiful invitation or a greeting from an acquaintance abroad who wants to share a photo of an interesting building that is worth knowing about.

The arrangement is associative; chronology is absent. Something disappears and the place left empty is filled up once again. In this way, the collection has grown along with me over the years, in my studio on the Plantage Muidergracht, and could be temporarily seen in the building where I came to work. A collection that shows what catches my eye and how I look at the world.

Architecture is learning to look As I mentioned earlier, as a designer you learn to improve the world with ideas and designs. In order to be able to do that, you must first have some understanding of the world. Since the beginning of mankind, we have tried to understand the world around us. In order to give ourselves reasons to act and to make that action convincing, people have gone in search of the meaning behind things. The question was thus born and with the question, the answers had to follow. The answers became stories; many, often, beautiful stories that tell us how to see and what to see.

Learning to look closely is of great value.

Something I can still remember vividly from the lectures of Herman Hertzberger at Delft University of Technology was how he showed his students his fascinations and drilled into them the importance of looking closely. In one of my yellowed notebooks from those lectures, it reads: ‘Architecture begins with learning to look, because something is not always what it seems to be at first glance. Learning to look in order to understand. And if you want to be innovative,

you must learn to look differently by asking yourself questions.’ Students are taught to ask the right questions at the Academy, which serves as an important key to learning to look in order to determine a ‘personal position’ in the field.

Is there not an explanation for the strength of the Academy of Architecture in the fact that it forms part of the Amsterdam University of the Arts and the resulting undiscussed obviousness of the cultural significance of the field? Is the room for creativity offered, and the individual approach of the student in a small-scale learning environment, the reason for success? No, that’s not it alone; there is a second secret.

Critical ability in times of change ‘Tout à l’égout’ (Everything into the sewer) This annual Dies Natalis lecture is named after Willem Kromhout. A ‘personal position’ in the field was not self-evident in his time, judging by his tirade in the following quote: ‘I would like to make an ideal sewer, in which everything that we could totally do without was carried away; a sewer of enormous dimensions, clad in glass, built with a slope of 10 centimetres per metre, so that everything was dragged downwards at a thunderous pace. Apart from faeces, gutter water and rainwater, I would like to divert all established art forms into it.

Cartloads of orders, series of capitals, all expressions of imitation, everything into the sewer. And if a blockage should arise, which is not conceivable because I would make my sewer extremely large, if that should happen, I would build new waste pipes...’

This is how ‘Tout à l’égout’ begins, the manifesto that was published in the Dutch architectural journal De Opmerker, the mouthpiece of the Architectura et Amicitia society. The author of the manifesto was Willem Kromhout, one of the founders of modern architecture in the Netherlands. He called himself a bouwkunstenaar, which can be loosely translated as a ‘building artist’, and was also called the kunstenaarsgeweten (artists’ conscience) among architects. The manifesto carries on along these lines while more and more still disappears into that large sewer.

Willem Kromhout In this way, Kromhout involves architecture in the important task of ‘cleaning’ or ‘purifying’ society. He believes that harsh criticism helps the self-reflection of the architect and society.

However, this cleansing is not simple. Kromhout discusses a few of his biggest sources of irritation, with eclecticism beating the lot. He blames education for this lack of ‘originality’ in

the architectural practice. In his opinion, the schools created a generalized concept of style, which erased the ‘personality’ of the architect.

To illustrate this claim, Kromhout discusses a metaphor of a press that produces the same form again and again. Kromhout wants to reveal the personality of the architect (once again). He wants architects to develop themselves and ask themselves questions, instead of copying Doric columns, with the book full of orders on the drawing board. Kromhout has hope for the future and also stimulated ‘free’ experimentation with new forms and materials. He emphasizes the ‘talent’ that one must have to become a building artist, please note ...artist, and that this is not for everyone. In ‘Tout à l’égout’, Kromhout dreams about a ‘school of the future’ and he succeeded in adding the deed to the dream. He established his ‘school of the future’, this Academy of Architecture. We will never know if it became the school he envisaged, but a number of guiding principles upon which his educational model was based are still going strong. And that demonstrates their strength, because more than one hundred years later a lot has changed in the building practice.

Changing times We cannot escape the fact that the building machine, focused on innovation and growth, has created a surplus. You can make a crude comparison with the economic cycle or take it further with Winckelman’s famous artistic theory of growth, bloom and decay. It is clear, however, that the property market is at a low ebb, which it is slowly recovering from, but vacancy levels still persist and are taking a heavy toll on the stamina of public and private parties. The question is whether the market will fully recover, just like after other crises. The result is a shift in spatial assignments from large-scale expansion to management, maintenance, renovation and repurposing. Or from ‘demolition and new development’ to ‘preservation and transformation’. It requires a change in the expertise and working methods of many parties concerned. New spatial concepts and working methods are necessary, as well as changes to the regulations, the financing and the handling of monuments.

Above all, however, it requires a change in mentality and a different way of looking.

Buildings have a history. They withstand the test of time and if they could see and speak, they would tell stories about events, incidents, people and encounters of which we, as accidental passers-by, are unaware. Plagued by all weathers, sun and rain, they grow older through the years and like wrinkles on skin, the signs of an advanced age become visible. They wait until they are

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discarded or demolished, or until they are renovated and are given an opportunity once again.

The mental world, which is different for everybody, is inextricably linked to places in buildings or in cities that your thoughts store for you. The perception of a city can be shaped by memories of those places. But sometimes buildings disappear, places change. At the moment, the answer to the question if demolition is permissible is no longer self-evident. Processes of production and consumption that provided the Western world with its unparalleled prosperity are no longer consistent with the realisation that the planet is being depleted. Sometimes demolition is unavoidable, but preservation and reuse generate unforeseen opportunities.

The old dividing lines between maintenance, renovation and new development create friction and architects are increasingly asked to think about reuse of existing buildings. It is telling that the number of new construction projects were in the minority in the most recent edition of the Jaarboek Architectuur in Nederland (Architecture in the Netherlands Yearbook) for the first time in its 28-year history. Reuse of buildings is not a gap-filling exercise of square metres of programme, but a means of lending significance to a building or location with new functions. This is an assignment that students need to be practiced in and some responsibility for this lies with education.

The ‘architect of tomorrow’ is also trained in a field that is increasingly determined by an international context. It is important in an increasingly globalized world to recognize the consequences of that on education. Students must possess knowledge and skills with which they can work and collaborate across borders, simply because the work may be there and not here at certain times. Due to the increasing internationalisation, a receptive attitude towards other cultures is necessary and that is why exchanges between students and teachers from different countries is of great importance. It teaches students and teachers to look at the field differently, to look at different cultures differently and to look at one’s own culture differently with its accompanying values and traditions, because the ‘architect of tomorrow’ will end up in an increasingly international job market.

Is the critical ability to act and be able to embrace new assignments quickly and effectively, and where necessary with the same certainty as Kromhout, the secret of the Academy? The answer is no once again. That is not it alone...

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Craftsmanship first For designers, by designers Designing not only requires talent, it is also a skill. Rolling up one’s sleeves and getting to work, because it is a skill that requires a lot of practise. Just like a pianist must also study a lot before a Bach or Beethoven sonata can delight the ear.

Teachers play a crucial role in the development of students, as cited above from the strategic agenda De waarde(n) van weten (The value of knowledge) of Minister Bussemaker. ‘Education comes about through a relationship between people. Between student and teacher. ‘This school is a training for designers, by designers.

The teachers are all guest lecturers, active in the professional practice, who write their own assignments for the students and who know better than anyone which current themes are relevant to present to them. This is a method that has remain unchanged since the establishment of the Academy. It has turned out to be a fruitful point of departure. As a result of this flexibility, many designers have taught at the Academy throughout the years, which has included some big names.

The teacher turnover ensures the Academy remains closely connected to the reality in the field of work and, as a result, any changes thereto automatically trickle into the school. Many teachers know the Academy well, often because they also studied here themselves. Successful alumni enjoy coming back. They are invited to teach after their graduation; the Academy invests in these novice teachers by pairing them with experienced teachers. This is how the baton has been passed on for decades and a community of colleagues has grown who have pledged their hearts to the Academy.

Concurrent model For many who are involved with the Academy, the concurrent model needs no explanation. It is one of the guiding principles of the educational model that was partly thought up by Kromhout: an educational model that consists of an internal and an external curriculum. Students work at design offices during the day and are trained to become designers in the evening; an educational model that is considered to be the foundation of this school.

Willem Kromhout himself followed this learning pathway to became an architect. He understood the merit of combining practice and schooling better than anyone and he also knew which sacrifices had to be made to successfully complete such a path. Since 1 September 2015, the Academy student receives the title Master of

Science once that goal has been achieved and he or she can immediately register in the Dutch Register of Architects.

Is concurrent education so unique? Yes, the combination of working and studying within the Master’s study programme, as arranged in the curricula at Dutch academies, is unique. At the majority of European architecture study programmes, working in the professional practice only starts after finishing the study: the student in possession of a degree certificate is the finished student. After completing a study programme at the Academy of Architecture, a student is more than that due to the work experience gained: after receiving a degree certificate, he or she is an architect, urban designer or landscape architect. The combination work and education demands a lot of students, but at the same time many alumni have ‘experienced their time at the Academy as an extremely important and formative period in their life.’

Interdisciplinary education Another important characteristic of the educational model of this Academy is the interdisciplinary range of courses offered.

Architecture, urbanism and landscape architecture are offered within interdisciplinary projects, including the Winter Schools. What do students learn from that? It teaches them to come up with integral analyzes and solutions respectively for spatial problems.

Students are challenged to step off the beaten track. An architect in training learns to think and design on the large scale of the city and the landscape, just as the landscape architect or urban designer in training is confronted with the small scale of the building. That requires an open attitude, curiosity and the realisation that numerous good design solutions are possible with assignments. The ultimate solution, after graduating in the practice, is also increasingly found in collaboration with other disciplines.

The educational model of the Academy thus ties in with the changing practice of an integrated profession, in which designers have to increasingly operate as specialists amidst and together with other specialists. Entering into collaborative working arrangements with other disciplines, both within this Academy, as well as with other faculties of the Amsterdam University of the Arts, is practised in a laboratory setting.

One example is the project based on the theme ‘light’, under the supervision of artist and artistin-residence Gabriel Lester who had students from the Academy of Architecture, the

Netherlands Film Academy and de Theaterschool work together. The interdisciplinary project within an arts university is literally and metaphorically a shining example of what such a collaboration can produce.

Is the model described (for designers, by designers, concurrent education and an interdisciplinary range of courses offered) the secret of the Academy? This also does not cover it completely. But what does then? I will come back to this.

The architect of tomorrow The Academy of Architecture celebrated its centenary in 2008, which was also the year in which the consequences of the economic crisis became visible. A lot was brought into jeopardy for many who were, or unfortunately used to be, employed in architecture, urban design and landscape architecture. The building machine focused on innovation and growth began to falter. A lot has changed since then. Assignments change as a result of economic, social and technological developments. Themes that play a significant role include vacancy levels and the accompanying transformation required, the population size, the ageing population and housing for the elderly. But also the urbanisation in the Randstad conurbation and the shrinkage in the periphery of the Netherlands, the delta problems and the spatial impact of the energy transition.

Forms of collaboration also changed; the roles changed and the designer increasingly acts as initiator, sometimes literally as developer. At other times, designers fulfil a role within an interdisciplinary team of specialists. The architect also increasingly acts as builder and producer. Young architects are often occupied with inventing materials, innovative compounds and new building components, whether that be with 3D printers or other new techniques. In times of change, new space for innovation arises.

The importance of design – research-based design – is also increasing. In order to solve complex social issues, design and the power of design, are seen as effective methods. Clients ask designers to help come up with the (formulation of) assignments, whereby the role of the architect appears to be further shifting towards the front lines of the process. Research is being conducted into new forms of food production, different forms of urbanisation, circular building, the relationship between mankind and nature, building for biodiversity and the different aspects of repurposing design assignments.

In times of change, there is an urgent need for

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good design education that is in line with the practice. A time that is characterized by some people as a period of cultural deterioration, a period in which economic interests are more important than the cultural significance of the design profession. A time that is seen by others as a period of re-evaluation, a time in which space for change and innovation arises. I count myself among the latter group and I am optimistic about the opportunities that this time and the new developments can offer to architects. The inquisitive, often as yet undefined, thinking of young designers inspires, disrupts and stimulates contemplation.

My affinity with them has been the reason that I have committed myself to the boards of organisations like the Jaap Bakema Foundation, Europan and Archiprix in previous years; they are all initiatives aimed at placing young, talented designers in the spotlight and ensuring there is a platform where their body of ideas and their designs are given an audience and are made visible to interested parties in general, and peers and professional journals in particular.

My affinity with young designers was the reason that I want to devote myself now to the Academy of Architecture. Creating the right conditions for talent development is about creating opportunities so that promising designers can develop into inspiring examples for peers and a broader public. This is beneficial to the quality of interest in architecture, urbanism and landscape architecture and increases the social and economic added value of these disciplines.

Back to the question ‘What is the secret of the Academy?’ I have approached the question from three perspectives. First of all, being part of the Amsterdam University of the Arts and the resulting undiscussed obviousness of the cultural significance of the field. Secondly, the ability to be able to expeditiously anticipate the building practice in changing times and to be able to embrace new challenges in education. And finally, the education model itself, which has already proven its worth over the years. One of my predecessors once said ‘this curriculum is indestructible.’

The power of this school does not lie in one of the three secrets mentioned, but in the inextricability of all three; they are inextricably linked with and overlap each other. They are in balance with each other and must be kept in balance. And all of us within the Academy community are responsible for that. I consider it my role to make sure the discussion about this remains on the agenda, and steer a course with well-considered navigation skills, focusing on the interests of the Academy.

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‘The architect of tomorrow’ is shaped here, in a time in which space for change and innovation is arising. The educational assignments offered within the school walls must continue to be geared to the reality outside. The designers in the making must be prepared for the different roles that they will fulfil. They must learn to look by asking the right questions and dare to take a ‘personal position’, but above all they must continue to experiment with ‘Friday afternoon experiments’.

‘The architect of tomorrow’ is shaped here; by us, the Academy community; within and outside the walls of this building. And with the Academy community, I mean all guest lecturers, the heads of the three Master’s study programmes, the professors and the employers. But I also mean those people employed by the Academy, who pull out all the stops time and time again in order to ensure that the education for students is well organized and fits well within this nationally listed building, which is so much more than ‘a roof and a teaching programme’.

The Academy of Architecture is an educational model, a physical location in the city and a unique community. I would like to thank that community for the trust placed in me.

Madeleine Maaskant, 1 October 2015

Captions and credits _ 16 Detail of the plan of Amsterdam from 1625 by Balthasar Florisz. van Berckenrode.

Photo Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

_ 41 The workshop Drawing Time Now in 2013 was led

by Noël van Dooren en David Kloet.

Photo Betul Ellialtioglu

_ 17 Nocturnal satellite photo of Europe, showing the amount of light pollution in the various regions.

The Po Valley in Italy and the Low Countries clearly stand out. Photo NASA Earth Observatory images assembled from data collected by the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) satellite

_ 42 The workshop Drawing Time Now in 2013.

Photo Betul Ellialtioglu

_ 18 A copper-engraved view of the Oudezijds Huiszittenhuis in Amsterdam from 1693 by Caspar Commelin. The building now houses the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture. Casparus Commelin, Beschryvinge van Amsterdam, Desselfs oorspronk uyt den Huyse der Heeren van Aemstel en Aemstellant, Wolfgang, Waasberge, Boom, Van Someren en Goethall, Amsterdam, 1693 _ 19 The Amsterdam Academy of Architecture by night. _ 20 Painted ceiling in the Academy’s regents’ room.

Photo Klaas de Jong _ 21 The Academy’s cafeteria, designed by Claus en Kaan architects. Photo Peter Elenbaas _ 22 Painting in the Academy’s regents’ room. School of Ferdinand Bol and Govert Flinck. _ 23 Carton boxes turned into Tetris-like spatial objects during the Bachelor’s workshop on 24 February 2010. _ 36 Architect Rianne Makkink organised the summer workshop 2012, where students presented projects under the theme Building and Landscape. _ 37 Martijn Troost at work in the model workshop.

Photo Jonathan Andrew _ 38 An exercise in materialization (O4A) in 2014.

Photo Thomas Lenden _ 39 Winter school 2015. _ 40 The winter school 2014 was themed Slim City.

Photo George Maas

_ 43 Graduation show 2011. Photo Hans Krüse _ 44 The Winter School in 2013 researched the future of the Amsterdam canal district in the next 400 years. _ 144 03 Bart van der Salm – Grounding 05 Laura van de Pol – Urban Mangrove 06 Lars Zwirs – The European Embassy 07 Jelmar Brouwer – The Dutch Level 09 Michiel Zegers – Domus Botanicus 11 Michiel Zegers – Domus Botanicus 13 Mark Peters – Stardust 15 Annette Bos – About Walls and Other Freedoms _ 145 01 Annette Bos – About Walls and Other Freedoms 03 Kristina Petrauskaite – Growing House 07 Tjeerd Beemsterboer – Church 33058 09 Ramon Scharff – The House of the City 10 Hans Maarten Wikkerink – Marcy Houses 12 Michael van Bergen – New Life for the Dead _ 146 02 Abdessamed Azarfane – Bayt 03 Lorien Beijaert and Arna Mačkić – The Heard and Spoken Word 04 Brigitta van Weeren – Dutzendteich 06 Marco Kramer – Re-creation 07 Jeroen Schoots – Believe in Health 09 Marjan van Herpen – Present 10 Nanna Janby – Take Five 11 Marjan van Herpen – Present 12 Sjors Onneweer – Space for a Place 13 Mark Spijkerman – House of Power 14 Yuka Yoshida – Re.CLAIM _ 147 01 Michael van Bergen – New Life for the Dead 03 Daria Naugolnova – The Ark 06 Abdessamed Azarfane – Bayt 11 Chiara Dorbolò – The Seven Follies of Lampedusa 12 Floris Grondman – The Lifeline _ 148 02 Hein van Lieshout – The New Dam 05 Annette Bos – About Walls and Other Freedoms 08 Abdessamed Azarfane – Bayt 12 Chiara Dorbolò – The Seven Follies of Lampedusa 13 Lars Zwirs – The European Embassy

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Colophon Title Section 1.1.0 Editorial Board Madeleine Maaskant, Joseefke Brabander, Jarrik Ouburg, Klaas de Jong Managing Editor David Keuning Authors Lotte Haagsma Page 118 Kirsten Hannema Pages 24-27, 34-35, 50-53, 62-63, 74-75, 90-91, 102-103, 130-131 Madeleine Maaskant Pages 14-15 and 160-166 Janna Visser-Verhoeven Page 119 Translation and Copy Editing (student projects) Richard Glass Pages 30, 46, 58, 70, 86, 98, 114-115, 126, 138-139, 150 Translation and Copy Editing (all other texts) InOtherWords (D’Laine Camp and Nasja de Vries) Pages 14-15, 24-27, 33-35, 49-53, 61-63, 73-75, 89-91, 101-103, 117-119, 129-131, 141, 153-166 Cover Drawings Felix Claus Dick van Wageningen Architects Graphic Design Joseph Plateau Grafisch Ontwerpers Printer Zwaan Wormerveer Publisher Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, 2018 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy 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.

ISBN 978-90-827761-3-3

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