Kubuswoningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands 1977. Piet Blom
noise dept.
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Mike Driver

oozey mess
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NASA

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styofa doing anything
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@spatialforces
Kubuswoningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands 1977. Piet Blom
Writings on art, culture, and media technology
“The book takes up the (post-)operaist concept of immaterial labour (cf. Maurizio Lazzarato: 1998, Toni Negri, Michael Hardt: 2000) and relates it to spatial processes and architectural projects from the 1960s. The book’s title is the hypotheses of its investigation. It allows to be exemplified with the following questions: Do we find, parallel to a dominant cultural practice of immaterial labour new forms and orders of architecture? Which forms does it take on? Or does workplace architecture disappear at all parallel to the blurring of the formerly clearly marked spaces of the factory?”
“Design is associated with power. Designers plan to commit resources and thereby affect the lives of many. Designers are actors in the application of power.” - Horst Rittel in ‘The Reasoning of Designers’
The Vernon C. Bain floating prison in New York.
aus: Martin Büdel: Mehr arbeiten - Carmen Losmann // Work Hard Play Hard
“Losmann gelingt es in ihrem Film ein gewisses Unbehagen auf den Zuschauer zu übertragen, das von den Ambitionen der Unternehmen ausgeht und einen Teil der Alltagsrealitäten vieler ArbeitnehmerInnen ausmacht. Sie legt Diskurse und Praktiken offen, mit denen »moderne« Großunternehmen“ versuchen, „in die gesellschaftliche Praxis einzudringen“, wie es der Soziologe Henri Lefebvre formulierte. Ein Unternehmen, so schrieb Lefebvre, schlage „der gesamten Gesellschaft seine Rationalität als Organisations- und Verwaltungsmodell vor […] reißt Funktionen an sich […] die morgen der städtischen Gesellschaft gehören müßten: Wohnen, Erziehung, […] Freizeit usw. […] Auf seine Weise vereinigt das Unternehmen das gesellschaftliche Leben [und] unterwirft es den totalitären Ansprüchen“.2 In diesem Prozess, so zeigt Losmanns Film, versuchen die Führungskräfte der Unternehmen immer weniger dem Zufall zu überlassen: von der räumlichen Gestaltung der Arbeitsplätze bis hin zur Selbstoptimierung der Angestellten.” via
Feedlots (2013), Mishka Henner
Carceri d'invenzione (1749/1750), Giovanni Battista Piranesi
A walktrough this serie of Piranesi engravings, an animatition created by Gregoire Dupond for Factum Arte to be part of the exhibition The art of Piranesi. via
What I am especially bothered by today is that, particularly in the media, design is being used as a 'lifestyle asset.' I’m bothered by the arbitrariness and the thoughtlessness with which many things are produced and brought to the market. There are so many unnecessary things we produce, not only in the sector of consumer goods, but also in architecture, in advertising. We have too many unnecessary things everywhere. And I would even go as far as to describe this as inhumane. That is the situation today. But actually, it has always been a problem.
Interview with Dieter Rams
JAN GEHL: «ARCHITECTS KNOW VERY LITTLE ABOUT PEOPLE»
by Matthias Oppliger
He likes high-rises only from far away, he thinks cars should be banned from city-centers and he wants the public space to be the «living room of a city»: The danish urban planner Jan Gehl visited the Swiss City of Basel on an official mission.
As adress of welcome Jan Gehl hands a business card. Printed on its back is a photography. It shows the typical yellow-red tram from Baselland. «This should be in Switzerland.» Gehl gathered the various pictures on his business cards during numerous travels.Despite his hometown Copenhagen being one of the most liveable places of the world, the danish architect Jan Gehl gets about a lot. With his company «Gehl Architects» he helps cities around the world to build «cities for people». A few days ago, he visited Basel on invitation from the local planning department. We met him outside the «Gundeldingerfeld», where he held a well attended public lecture about sustainable cities the day before.
Kopieren ist etwas Gröberes. Ein Künstler, der kopiert, ist vielleicht so etwas wie ein Neandertaler, der herumläuft und ein totes Mammut findet. Das Mammut ist fast vollständig verrottet, aber es gibt ein paar Teile, die man noch essen kann. Und der Neandertaler nimmt sich diese Teile und verleibt sie sich ein.
Pier Paolo Tamburelli Editor of San Rocco Magazine - interviewed by Kristina Herresthal und Lisa Kadel from Baunetzwoche on originality, copying and authorship.
„D.I.Y. ist gestohlen worden, und wir scheinen es nicht mal bemerkt zu haben. Mit dem Ideal der Selbstermächtigung auf ihren Fahnen fegte eine Seuche über unser Land und hinterlässt von beschissener Heimwerkerei entstellte Wohngebiete, von schlecht gekochten Gourmetmahlzeiten zerstörte Familien und haufenweise kaum benutze Werkzeuge, übrig gebliebene Verbrauchsmaterialien und unvollendete Projekte. Dieses eigenartige Elend erreicht uns unter den vertrauten Initialen D.I.Y., was “Do it yourself” bedeutet. Die Idee war gut gemeint, aber ihre Wirklichkeit ist unheimlich“
PROTOCOLS OF ATHENS. Swiss Architecture Museum (SAM) presents Aristide Antonas
via SAM
With the exhibition “Protocols of Athens”, SAM is breaking new ground, because despite its innovativeness, contemporary Greek architecture has been paid little public attention until now, and has been the subject of hardly any academic reflection. In continuation of the exhibition series "Spatial Positions", which was initiated in 2013 and focuses on works by contemporary architects and artists at the boundary of the architectural discipline, this exhibition addresses the oeuvre of the Greek architect and philosopher Aristide Antonas (born 1963 in Athens). On the basis of his primarily speculative projects and theoretical writings, it deals with the issue of the critical potential of the financial and sovereign debt crisis (which has been ongoing since 2009) with regard to contemporary building culture in Greece: at the latest, it is since the crisis began, that the Greek architecture scene has been forced to rethink the role of its profession, to conduct a reassessment and to add a social dimension to architecture.
Interview with Aristide Antonas by Evelyn Steiner on Uncube “Protocols of Athens” from 07.03.2015 to 26.04.2015, Swiss Architecture Museum Basel. Steinenberg 7, Basel, Switzerland
THE DARK LANDMARK - The Palace of Justice of Brussels
Today the debate on architectural landmarks is more or less led by urban marketing campaigns. Even the city administrations based in faraway province towns wish for just a little "Bilbao effect" to take place in their hometowns. In this genuine context, landmarks are supposed to generate a sense of identity and consciousness for a city or even a country. But this positive view shows only one side of the coin. What happens if the semantic meaning of a landmark turn against these well worded narratives, prescribed by local authorities? If it begins to symbolize an alternative historiography, which has been expelled from the official discourse? The strong effect of such an unintentional turn away became apparent in Brussels, the Belgian capital. On the top of what was once the gallows mountain of the city, high above the Marolles neighborhood, the Palace of Justice was built in 1883 on the initiative of King Leopold II.: A giant built from stone and marble, and the biggest building of its time. 26,000 square meters of megalomania, whose immense mass opposed all attempts to be put into service for the official reading of what Brussel is all about – a cosmopolitan, creative and modern city. The Palace of Justice creates a meaning out of itself. This „unique architectural monstrosity“, as W.G. Sebald called it in his novel Austerlitz , is connected to the Belgian history like no other building. It was built with the bloody gold, which Leopold II. pressed out from the Congo Free State. His reign in the heart of Africa was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 2 to 15 Million Congolese. Only at first sight the Palace of Justice was a symbol of a civil society and the supremacy of the common law. In reality, it was just a democratic looking Potemkin Village for the occult absolutistic power at his back. After the occupation of Belgium by the German Armed Forces in 1941, the collosal appearance of the Palace of Justice attract the admiring looks of Adolf Hitler, who was shocked by facing the real dimensions of this, „largest accumulation of stone blocks in Europe“ – to quote Sebald a second time. And finally, the building became the iconic background of the trial against the child abuser Marc Dutroux and his accomplices – a symbol of a country close to a moral abyss. The fiction of a democratic nation state that is represented in this building, turned into a symbol of the darkest parts of Belgium's history. Still today, his dimensions appear gigantic. Eight inner courtyards, 27 big and 245(!) small courtrooms are arranged around the central hall, the Salle des pas perdus. The already labyrinthian impression of his interior was intensified by random set breakthroughs and additional false ceilings. In this building the rationalistic design of the architect Joseph Poelaert has turned to the opposite. He also paid a high price for the realization of his visions: he went mad.
DEFENSIVE ARCHITECTURE
via Defensive Architecture and Design Archive
"The phenomenon of “defensive” or “disciplinary” architecture, as it is known, remains pervasive. From ubiquitous protrusions on window ledges to bus-shelter seats that pivot forward, from water sprinklers and loud muzak to hard tubular rests, from metal park benches with solid dividers to forests of pointed cement bollards under bridges, urban spaces are aggressively rejecting soft, human bodies.[...] By making the city less accepting of the human frame, we make it less welcoming to all humans. By making our environment more hostile, we become more hostile within it."
Alex Andreou on "Anti-homeless spikes: ‘Sleeping rough opened my eyes to the city’s barbed cruelty"
Atlantropa and the draining of the dutch Zuiderzee - „Weltbauen“ in the modern age.
In 1932 the german architect Herman Sörgel presents his plans of the „Atlantropa“-project, a fully man made continent. By lowering the surface of the Mediterranean Sea up to 200 meters, Sörgel wants to open up new land for settlement and agriculture. The search for living space (Lebensraum) for the People of Europe - which leads to the east-expansion of the Nazi Regime during the Second World War - was a crucial theme for Hermann Sörgel as for many of hin contemporaries. But unlike the nazis and their predecessors, Sörgels intention was to create a peaceful and pacifist world at the junction of the two continents. In his eyes the combination of Europe and Africa should lead to one of three gigantic "great continents": Asia, America and Atlantropa.
The early years of the 20th century are characterized by the image of an omnipotent world creator - men like Sörgel, who doesn’t dare to change the surface of the world through utopian terra-forming. These macro projects are political architecture that create a new geography, a new economy a also a new society. These plans like Atlantropa and Bruno Tauts Alpine Architecture never have been realized, but the draining of the dutch Zuiderzee has become real.
Eines Tages erhielt ich einen Anruf der Deutschen Regierung. Man sagte mir, Frankreich und England würden einen Pavillon bauen und Deutschland auch. Ich sagte: "Was ist ein Pavillon? Ich habe nicht die geringste Ahnung." Mir wurde gesagt: "Wir brauchen eine Pavillon. Entwerfen Sie einen, aber nicht zuviel Aufwand!"
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 1959