shared on 3 September 2010 | 7:19 pm via: Delicious/edwingardner

platonic solids, geomtry drawings from Divina proportione

shared on 3 September 2010 | 6:40 pm via: Delicious/edwingardner

shared on 3 September 2010 | 6:25 pm via: Delicious/edwingardner

platonic solids

shared on 3 September 2010 | 5:00 pm via: Howard Roark

timolvo:

James Nares

(via rerylikes, 8o8, rusaman, kenmat, wwwalk)

shared on 3 September 2010 | 4:34 pm via: Twitter / edwingardner

edwingardner: wow! just discovered that J.N.L Durand's Précis des leçons d'architecture (1805) http://bit.ly/9hWYte is avilable online at archive.org

shared on 3 September 2010 | 10:44 am via: Twitter / edwingardner

edwingardner: Yester day I watched Sleep Dealer today I learn of the NeuroPhone: "the first Brain-Mobile phone Interface" http://bit.ly/980lrK

shared on 31 August 2010 | 11:42 pm via: Twitter / edwingardner

edwingardner: @TommyManuel nope, tell me more...

shared on 31 August 2010 | 3:09 pm via: Twitter / edwingardner

edwingardner: just read the '82 debate between Alexander and Eisenman: http://bit.ly/bhLZsb good stuff! 'who's fucking up the world?'

shared on 30 August 2010 | 11:17 am via: Delicious/edwingardner

Tom Wujec gives a TED talk on how meaning is created by the brain. The success behind sketching techniques are also touched upon.

shared on 30 August 2010 | 11:04 am via: Howard Roark

Intermolecular (by Shawn Knol)

shared on 30 August 2010 | 10:57 am via: Howard Roark

Canon T1i (by Shawn Knol)

shared on 30 August 2010 | 10:51 am via: Howard Roark

PSYCHO BUBBLE (by Shawn Knol)

shared on 30 August 2010 | 9:31 am via: edwingardner's shared items in Google Reader

The big news this week is the launch of a National Science Foundation-funded study aimed at "developing the NeuroPhone system, the first Brain-Mobile phone Interface (BMI) that enables neural signals from consumer-level wireless electroencephalography (EEG) headsets worn by people as they go about their everyday lives to be interfaced to mobile phones and combined with existing sensor streams on the phone (e.g., accelerometers, gyroscopes, GPS) to enable new forms of interaction, communications and human behavior modeling." More precisely, the research, being conducted at Dartmouth College, is intended to accomplish several goals, including developing "new energy-efficient techniques and algorithms for low-cost...

shared on 29 August 2010 | 6:31 pm via: Howard Roark

Hidden influences (by flight404)

shared on 26 August 2010 | 1:25 pm via: Howard Roark

Jason Peters

shared on 26 August 2010 | 11:21 am via: Delicious/edwingardner

shared on 25 August 2010 | 6:13 pm via: Staalvilla

The first serious 'Staalvilla garden' harvest. Who dares?

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shared on 25 August 2010 | 2:09 pm via: Delicious/edwingardner

shared on 24 August 2010 | 8:47 pm via: edwingardner's shared items in Google Reader

By infrastructure, one refers to every aspect of the technology of rational administration that routinizes life, action, and property within larger (ultimately global) organizations. Today, infrastructure can be argued to own a little part of everything. Infrastructure, at the very least, is the systematic expression of capital, of deregulated currency, of interest rates, credit instruments, trade treaties, market forces, and the institutions that enforce them; it is water, fuel, and electrical reservoirs, routes and rates of supply; it is demographic mutations and migrations, satellite networks and lotteries, logistics and supply coefficients, traffic computers, airports and distribution hubs, cadastral techniques, juridical routines, telephone systems, business district self-regulation mechanisms, evacuation and disaster mobilization protocols, prisons, subways and freeways and their articulated connections, libraries and weather-monitoring apparatuses, trash removal and recycling networks, sports stadiums and the managerial and delivery facilities for the data they generate, parking garages, gas pipelines and meters, hotels, public toilets, postal and park utilities and management, school systems and ATM machines; celebrity, advertising, and identity engineering; rail nodes and networks, television programming, interstate systems, entry ports and the public goods and agencies associated with them [Immigration and Naturalization Service, National Security Agency, Internal Revenue Service, Food and Drug Administration, Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms], sewers and alarms, multi-tiered military-entertainment apparatus, decision engineering pools, wetlands and water basins, civil structure maintenance schedules, epidemiological algorithms, cable delivery systems, police enforcement matrixes, licensing bylaws, greenmarkets, medical-pharmaceutical complexes, internet scaffolds, handgun regulations, granaries and water towers, military deployment procedures, street and highway illumination schemas; in a phase, infrastructure concerns regimens of technical calculation of any and all kinds.

- Sanford Kwinter and Daniela Fabricius, from “Urbanism: An Archivist’s Art?”, in that old standby, Koolhaas et al. Mutations.

shared on 24 August 2010 | 6:03 pm via: Twitter / edwingardner

edwingardner: love the new !!! http://3voor12.vpro.nl/speler/luisterpaal/43825583#luisterpaal.43825583

shared on 24 August 2010 | 11:45 am via: edwingardner's shared items in Google Reader

In Music, Space & Architecture staat in lezingen, concerten, film en een expositie de symbiose tussen muziek en architectuur centraal. Het project is een interdisciplinaire samenwerking tussen de Academie van Bouwkunst Amsterdam, de stichting Noorderkerkconcerten en ARCAM. 

De jubilerende stichting Noorderkerkconcerten organiseert in september een reeks concerten met ruimtelijke muziek van 1600 tot nu, met het eigentijdse commentaar daarop van compositiestudenten van het Conservatorium van Amsterdam. De concerten worden ingeleid door bekende architecten als Herman Hertzberger (18 september) en Sjoerd Soeters (25 september). Daarnaast worden in het Orgelpark verschillende concerten gegeven.

Een expositie en de Museumnacht 2010 bij ARCAM brengen bezoekers in contact met theorieën over muziek en ruimte, geluidskunst, stadsgeluiden en de beleving van het spelen en luisteren naar muziek – met Xenakis en Stockhausen, concertzalen, koptelefoons en stilte. De expositie is te bezoeken tussen 25 september en 13 november 2010.

Op zondagmiddag 3 oktober wordt in filmtheater The Movies de film ‘Berlin, die Sinfonie der Groszstadt’ (1927) van Walter Rutthman vertoond. Deze gefilmde symfonie van beelden en indrukken van een grote stad geldt als een uniek document uit de experimentele periode van de zwijgende film. De originele partituren bij de film zijn verloren gegaan, maar de componisten Kweksilber en Van Oostrom bedachten hun eigen muzikale invulling die zij live ten gehore brengen.

Kijk voor het volledige programmaoverzicht op de website van ARCAM.

shared on 24 August 2010 | 10:29 am via: Twitter / edwingardner

edwingardner: @nextnature http://bit.ly/906RYf animurbanism: Sudanese cities layed out like indigenous animals and even fruit from the region.

shared on 24 August 2010 | 10:21 am via: Delicious/edwingardner

Nikolas Quirke, designed a system known as Municipal Darwinism, where entire cities essentially become immense vehicles known as Traction Cities, and must consume one another in order to maintain themselves in a world deprived of most natural resources. Although the planet has since become stable again, Traction Cities are still used despite the fact that they were intended to escape from natural disasters, and the new world order continues.

shared on 18 August 2010 | 5:48 pm via: Delicious/edwingardner

The intranet market is, for good or ill, a supply-driven market: IT vendors and not end-user organizations define the market, drive the market, make the market. What end-user organizations, in the name of intranets, make, most often, are data junkyards: unplanned, managed and unmanageable tangles of web servers loaded down with the same over-elaborated, inscrutable junk that littered the predecessor "sharing" technology-of-choice: file servers.

shared on 18 August 2010 | 1:47 pm via: Howard Roark

““there are two kinds of purposes. The purpose of having a result, something that exists after the process is stopped, and does not exist until it has stopped,…and there is the purpose of carrying on, of keeping the process going, just as one may breathe so as to continue breathing. The purpose is to carry on.””

-

John Chris Jones

shared on 17 August 2010 | 5:22 pm via: Howard Roark

Make: Online : Lego crawler town

There it is, Archigram’s ‘Walking City’

shared on 17 August 2010 | 2:08 pm via: Delicious/edwingardner

Many have begun trading in CD, DVD, and book collections for digital music, movies, and e-books. But this trend in digital technology is now influencing some to get rid of nearly all of their physical possessions - from photographs to furniture to homes altogether.

shared on 15 August 2010 | 1:33 pm via: Delicious/edwingardner

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shared on 14 August 2010 | 4:37 pm via: Delicious/edwingardner

shared on 12 August 2010 | 7:29 pm via: edwingardner's shared items in Google Reader

Photographs from University of Illinois "Kite Derby Day," 1957 Title: William Faulkner Via Mondoblog Atley

shared on 12 August 2010 | 5:23 pm via: Twitter / edwingardner

edwingardner: Partizan heeft Vacatures: Project Manager & Internships: http://partizanpublik.nl/article/131/vacatures/ (via @partizanpublik)

shared on 11 August 2010 | 5:51 pm via: edwingardner's shared items in Google Reader

(Summer re-run: first published 16 June 2008)

Out-of-control buzzwords are like locusts: you can swat handfuls of them down with a bat, but more will come to take their place.

I've been swatting away for ages in this blog at all things Conceptual, Cultural, Clustered and (especially) Creative.

But now we're suffering a massive counter-attack by the word Innovation - 137 million uses of which are known to Google alone.

A good proportion of these mentions probably belong to the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA) in the UK.

Nesta's mission is to "make innovation flourish," and one way it does this is by using the world innovation in every second or third sentence of the emails it sends me.

Now Nesta is staffed by smart and well-connected people. And most of my clients think innovation is the very elixir of life itself. So I probably shouldn't say this. But I have to, because it's important:

INNOVATION IS NOT GOOD IN ITSELF - IN FACT, MORE INNOVATION DOES HARM, THAN DOES GOOD.

My evidence for this statement is contained in a breathless announcement from Mintel, the market research company, that a "Record-Breaking Number of New Products Flood Global CPG Shelves" and that (the numbers are for 2006) "close to 182,000 new products were introduced globally, with key booming areas focusing on mind, body, and general good health".

Well over half of these of these innovations - 105,000, to be precise - were food and drink products.

This flood of innovations enable us to profit from such trends as "brainpower foods, age-defying treatments, increases in portion control, and "just for you" customised products”.

Now I may have misunderstood something here, but surely the Mintel numbers mean that more than half the innovations that reach the market all over the world - 300 innovations, every single day of the year - decrease the resource efficiency and hence sustainability of global food systems?

Good, so that's Innovation dealt with. Bring on the next killer word!

shared on 7 August 2010 | 5:18 pm via: Howard Roark

Darren Wershler - McLuhan in Europe 2011 (by FutureEverything)

shared on 6 August 2010 | 4:25 pm via: Howard Roark

“We have the buzzwords – hive mind, economy of happiness, meta network. We need someone to stick out their neck and sketch us a future. The problem with the future – the real future, not the tech-inspired dream future – is that it shows up consisting mostly of the past. Always has, always will, and in this case the past brings deep woes and ingrained habits. We need concrete suggestions to move thinking forward.”

- The Problem with the Future - Quentin Hardy - Neural Net Worth - Forbes (via wildcat2030)

shared on 6 August 2010 | 4:21 pm via: Howard Roark

sevensixfive:

scipsy:

Diagram of a conversation – Lucas Reames

What if you could control a building with your mind? What if the buildings around you knew you were there? Not only that you were there, but what could be possible if buildings new the community of people that are present? In 2007, I presented a paper at the Shifting Positions: Bodies in Space Conference titled “Ambient Agents: Space, Architecture and The Self.” In this paper I think of a building to be very similar to how the physiology of the mind and body work, a series of mechanical, physical and biochemical reactions to an assumed set of circumstances. Buildings operate like this to some level already as a thermostat can control the airflow and temperature of a room. My interest though is how a more advanced version of assumed circumstances and reactions in a building can fundamentally change the space from both design and performance aspects by investigating “cognitive extensions of the mind in both physical and virtual spaces of a building” (Ambient Agents). There are two critical points that support this proposition. I used the following passage of the paper to describe how creating a building that acts as an appendage of the human body can create an very intimate relationship between a person and their environment:

“First, we must make a distinction between the mind and the body. The mind makes decisions and processes information. The body acts as an agent of the mind and executes the mind’s desires. Motor skills are then operated by commands sent through neural networks. We control our bodies implicitly because our muscles are directly connected to our mind. Because of this implicit and intimate connection, we associate the body with the self. We consider ourselves separate from our environment because all interactions with it are explicit and indirect, usually by means of our bodies.”

The second point has to do with my fascination with Gordon Pask’s Conversation Theory. Developing a Cybernetics System reinforces and develops the intimate relationship between a person and their environment. Breaking the mold of unidirectional communication of users opens a world of design and building performance opportunities.

shared on 6 August 2010 | 3:52 pm via: edwingardner's shared items in Google Reader

There's a good reason that the Victor Bike, designed by Christophe Robillard, looks so funky: The various bends allow it to use less metal, and less welds. Ergo, the bike frame is green, in a way. Usually, bikes have two metal tubes ("seat stays") running from the top of the seat tube to the hub; and another two metal pipes ("chain stays") running from the hub to the bottom of the seat tube. But that basic design is a relic of industrial manufacturing capabilities of the mid-20th century. We do a lot more with metal these days, and that's what Robillard did, using steel that was bent at an angle, so that the frame is made of less metal (since both the chain stay and seat stay are simple extensions of the frame). Robillard also lavished attention on an integrated reflector for the front, and a gorgeously curved fender for the back, with another integrated reflector: The frame's only downfall is the seat tube--the hollow pipe where the seat-post is fitted to the frame: Compare that design to something more traditional. The Victor has no traditional seat tube, that means you can't adjust the seat height very much--and that means that the bike has to come in myriad sizes, or be custom made and fitted every time someone wants one. You could drill a hole in the frame, allowing a seat post that could travel up and down--but that would undermine all of the open, airy beauty of the frame. A tough problem to solve.* *Check in the comments for a smart solution by reader Paul! [Via DesignBoom]

shared on 3 August 2010 | 5:07 pm via: edwingardner's shared items in Google Reader

Curiosity is one of those personality traits that gets short scientific shrift. It strikes me as a really important mental habit – how many successful people are utterly incurious? – but it’s also extremely imprecise. What does it mean to be interested in seemingly irrelevant ideas? And how can we measure that interest? While we’ve analyzed raw intelligence to death – scientists are even beginning to unravel the anatomy of IQ – our curiosity about the world  remains mostly a mystery. (According to one review of the literature, the amount of research on curiosity peaked in the late 1940s.) Einstein would not be pleased: “I have no special talents,” he once declared. “I am only passionately curious.”

Nevertheless, progress is occurring; our curiosity about the brain is even leading us to understand curiosity. One of the most interesting recent papers comes from the lab of Colin Camerer at Caltech, and was led by Min Jeong Kang. The experiment itself was straightforward: Nineteen Caltech undergrads were asked 40 trivia questions while in a brain scanner. After reading each question, the subjects were told to silently guess the answer, and to indicate their curiosity about the correct answer. Then, they saw the question presented again, followed by the correct answer. That’s it.

The results of the fMRI experiment are an intriguing, if limited, glance at the neural processes underlying creativity. The first thing the scientists found is that curiosity obeys an inverted U-shaped curve, so that we’re most curious when we know a little about a subject (our curiosity has been piqued) but not too much (we’re still uncertain about the answer). This supports the information gap theory of curiosity, which was first developed by George Loewenstein of Carnegie-Mellon in the early 90s. According to Loewenstein, curiosity is rather simple: It comes when we feel a gap “between what we know and what we want to know”. This gap has emotional consequences: it feels like a mental itch, a mosquito bite on the brain. We seek out new knowledge because we that’s how we scratch the itch.

The fMRI data nicely extended this information gap model of curiosity. It turns out that, in the moments after the question was first asked, subjects showed a substantial increase in brain activity in three separate areas: the left caudate, the prefrontal cortex and the parahippocampal gyri. The most interesting finding is the activation of the caudate, which seems to sit at the intersection of new knowledge and positive emotions. (For instance, the caudate has been shown to be activated by various kinds of learning that involve feedback, while it’s also been closely linked to various parts of the dopamine reward pathway.) The lesson is that our desire for abstract information – this is the cause of curiosity – begins as a dopaminergic craving, rooted in the same primal pathway that also responds to sex, drugs and rock and roll. This reminds me of something Read Montague,  a neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine, told me a few years ago: “The guy who’s on hunger strike for some political cause is still relying on his midbrain dopamine neurons, just like a monkey getting a sweet treat,” he said. “His brain simply values the cause more than it values dinner…You don’t have to dig very far before it all comes back to your loins.”

The elegance of this system is that it bootstraps a seemingly unique human talent to an ancient mental process. Because curiosity is ultimately an emotion, an inexplicable itch telling us to keep on looking for the answer, it can take advantage of all the evolutionary engineering that went into our dopaminergic midbrain. (Natural selection had already invented an effective motivational system.) When Einstein was curious about the bending of space-time, he wasn’t relying on some newfangled circuitry. Instead, he was using the same basic neural system as a rat in a maze, looking for a pellet of food.  I’ll let the scientists have the last word:

Understanding the neural basis of curiosity has important substantive implications. Note that while information-seeking is generally evolutionarily adaptive, modern technologies magnify the amount of information available, and hence the potential effects of curiosity. Understanding curiosity is also important for selecting and motivating knowledge workers who gather information (such as scientists, detectives, and journalists). The production of engaging news, advertising and entertainment is also, to some extent, an attempt to create curiosity. The fact that curiosity increases with uncertainty (up to a point), suggests that a small amount of knowledge can pique curiosity and prime the hunger for knowledge, much as an olfactory or visual stimulus can prime a hunger for food, which might suggest ways for educators to ignite the wick in the candle of learning.

Image: Wikipedia

shared on 3 August 2010 | 12:42 pm via: Staalvilla

To fill in the blancs during what is officially known as 'komkommertijd', here's news worth sharing.
Nico Lotte König, born seven days early at seven to seven on July 30, says hi to the world and planet Staalvilla.

Enjoy your holidays, if you know what I mean.
 

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shared on 2 August 2010 | 6:02 pm via: Howard Roark

COMPLEXITY GRAPHICS on the Behance Network

shared on 2 August 2010 | 2:05 pm via: Howard Roark

Creative Review - Remodelling the World

shared on 1 August 2010 | 2:32 pm via: edwingardner's shared items in Google Reader

Designer Bob de Graaf takes pleasure in collecting and combining objects from old nature & next nature in search for similarities. Surely a traditional biologist would not create a collection like this anytime soon, but then again, an extraterrestrial alien scientists who’s observations wouldn’t be burdened by established notions of nature and culture, might have. Peculiar image of the week.

shared on 31 July 2010 | 12:21 am via: edwingardner's shared items in Google Reader

Edwin Zwakman puts a new spin on the long standing tradition of recording the Dutch landscape. The images below are from his 2004 series titled "Backyards".

Fly-Over III, C-print plexi, reynobond, 220 x 161 cm 2003

Straat II, C-print, plexi, reynobond, 220 x 157 cm 2004

Tuin IX, C-print, plexi, reynobond, 220 x 146 cm 2004

Tuin I, C-print, plexi, reynobond, 220 x 146 cm 2004

Tuin III, C-print, plexi, reynobond, 220 x 146 cm 2004

Tuin V, C-print, plexi, reynobond, 220 x 146 cm 2004

Tuin V, C-print, plexi, reynobond, 220 x 146 cm 2004

Tuin V, C-print, plexi, reynobond, 220 x 146 cm 2004

Tuin VI, C-print, plexi, reynobond, 220 x 146 cm 2004

Tuin VIII, C-print, plexi, reynobond, 220 x 146 cm 2004

shared on 29 July 2010 | 9:45 am via: Howard Roark

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

- Aristotle, Metaphysics (via thequotecollector) (via teachingliteracy) (via wildcat2030)

shared on 29 July 2010 | 9:44 am via: Howard Roark

CBC News - Technology & Science - Phytoplankton vanishing from warming oceans

shared on 27 July 2010 | 11:49 am via: Howard Roark

““A display connected to a digital computer gives us a chance to gain familiarity with concepts not realizable in the physical world. It is a looking glass into a mathematical wonderland.””

- Ivan Sutherland - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia inventor of Sketchpad (the first CAD program and use of a genuine GUI)

shared on 26 July 2010 | 6:35 pm via: Twitter / edwingardner

edwingardner: @Rennydroog is looking for a PA - who needs a job?

shared on 24 July 2010 | 9:38 am via: Howard Roark

I think the tree is an element of regeneration which in itself is a… - but does it float

shared on 22 July 2010 | 9:35 pm via: Delicious/edwingardner

Groupthink is a type of thought within a deeply cohesive in-group whose members try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas. It is a second potential negative consequence of group cohesion.

shared on 22 July 2010 | 9:32 pm via: Delicious/edwingardner

Joy Paul Guilford (March 7, 1897, Marquette, Nebraska – November 26, 1987, Los Angeles) was a US psychologist, best remembered for his psychometric study of human intelligence, including the important distinction between convergent and divergent production.

shared on 22 July 2010 | 9:00 pm via: edwingardner's shared items in Google Reader

External Stimuli : John Grade Projects

shared on 22 July 2010 | 12:35 pm via: Howard Roark

xn—c1h:

Gif limits should be 800kb

shared on 22 July 2010 | 12:31 pm via: Howard Roark

nevver:

Chess Computers, Tom Gauld

shared on 22 July 2010 | 9:10 am via: edwingardner's shared items in Google Reader

Since BP’s oil incontinence in the Mexican Gulf the company tries to avoid brand damage by controlling media and by censoring maps and pictures. Photographers are told what can be taken pictures of and, more important, what not. Real maps of the environmental impact of the situation are banned. As a part of Grassroots Mapping Community, mapping specialists Stewart Long and Oliver Yeh have set up the Gulf Oil Mapping Project in order to get a real picture of the oil damage.

Grassroots Mapping is a series of participatory mapping projects involving communities in cartographic dispute, started by Jeffrey Warren of the MIT Media Lab’s Center for Future Civic Media. Over the last few months they built a global community of mappers who are engaged in civic issues and can contribute with low-cost mapping tools like balloons, kites and remotely controlled airplanes. The results are great. The maps and arial pictures are stylish and all tell a story somehow. Some results uncover information that was kept secret for our eyes before while others shed a light on the world from a different perspective. The project is an open source community which has produced an instruction guide for others to easily start with grassroots mapping.

“Seeking to invert the traditional power structure of cartography, the grassroots mappers used helium balloons and kites to loft their own ‘community satellites’ made with inexpensive digital cameras. The resulting images, which are owned by the residents, are geo-referenced and stitched into maps which are 100x higher resolution that those offered by Google, at extremely low cost. In some cases these maps may be used to support residents’ claims to land title. By creating open-source tools to include everyday people in exploring and defining their own geography, we hopes to enable a diverse set of alternative agendas and practices, and to emphasize the fundamentally narrative and subjective aspects of mapping over its use as a medium of control.”

shared on 21 July 2010 | 3:07 pm via: Howard Roark

nevver:

Shark Week

shared on 21 July 2010 | 12:01 pm via: edwingardner's shared items in Google Reader

Ik ben mijn avatar

Alter Ego, in boek verschenen in 2007.

robbiecooper.org

Bekijk ze alle twintig (klik Simulations, Alter Ego, klik Photos):

robbiecooper.org

shared on 21 July 2010 | 10:13 am via: edwingardner's shared items in Google Reader

You can find it here: http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12136

And here: http://www.amazon.com/Extended-Mind-Life-Philosophical-Psychology/dp/0262014033

shared on 17 July 2010 | 12:01 am via: Twitter / edwingardner

edwingardner: RT @DesignObserver: Humanitarian Design vs. Design Imperialism: Debate Summary http://bit.ly/9k2n0J (via @cdebaan)

shared on 16 July 2010 | 12:37 pm via: Twitter / edwingardner

edwingardner: It's here: Volume 24! http://twitpic.com/25qkzu (via @volume_mag)

shared on 13 July 2010 | 5:47 pm via: Twitter / edwingardner

edwingardner: please listen to the Rundfunk mix: http://i.mixcloud.com/CfU1 so we win the competition: to make compilation for the BBE label

shared on 13 July 2010 | 2:05 pm via: Action! Creating knowledge through practice

Independently this week, we have written elsewhere on the idea of the architect as urban explorer. Edwin’s piece ‘Intellectual Disaster Tourism‘ is featured over on Archined, where he casts the architect as contemporary urban archaeologist, continually seeking the ‘perverse pleasure’ of studying the next city in decline. With Detroit as his example, hollowed out by [...]

shared on 12 July 2010 | 10:51 am via: edwingardner's shared items in Google Reader

In the sticky summer heat of Detroit, Joost Janmaat, Reem Souma, Jasper van der Berg and Eric Rutten embarked on a new neighborhood project. In an attempt to get to grips with the street economy, we compiled something of a local yellow pages: an inventory of skills and businesses in the street.

They ranged from roofing and plumbing to dog training, professional pool playing, or the ability to take a toy apart and put it all back together again. Already during the interviews and talking to the neighbors, we hooked some people up: hope that our little back alley services guide will be a source of inspiration, new projects or just neighborhood help.

This Saterday, the Back Alley Services will be presented at a block pool party. We cleaned out the front yard of an abandoned house on Moran, got a pool from the suburbs, found a mobile barbecue on a local yard sale, painted the house in razzle dazzle, the crazy camouflage security painting scheme used by the American navy in the second world war.

A big American fridge will top it all off. And: we will be throwing a good old Dutch swap club, where everybody can swap there dearest belongings for things they like even better.

Pictures of the party will follow. Last thing to mention: Eric Rutten will be the first resident of the Power House residency project, a co-curated by Design 99 and Partizan Publik in collaboration with Fonds BKVB.

Eric in Action.

shared on 9 July 2010 | 11:03 pm via: Twitter / edwingardner

edwingardner: en route; from the beach of the hague to the city of a'dam

shared on 9 July 2010 | 12:47 pm via: edwingardner's shared items in Google Reader

Please check out this inspiring contribution by Ole Bouman to “In favour of Public Space, ten years of the European Prize for Urban Public Space, a new book by Actar

Few things are as driven by maximalism as architecture. The craft stands out for its almost boundless urge to prove itself. Success depends on the fullness of the portfolio, on the size of the projects, on prestigious clients, on a deluge of publicity, and, last but not least, on a certain type of personalities for whom enough is never enough. Unbridled ambition is the hallmark of the famous architecture firms and schools, where “going home” is considered tantamount to giving up. For anyone hoping to escape the drudgery of just meeting the client’s programmatic demands, sleeping under the desk is perfectly normal. If you want to become a thinking, creative architect, not only must you be capable of doing anything, you also have to do it. Work, work, work: that’s the motto. But architecture is maximalist not only in this quantitative sense. It also has a penchant for maximalist designs – not lots, but huge. Many projects that were realized in the heyday of the architectural icon, seem confrontational rather than adaptive, filling airtime and screaming for attention. Often, it seems these projects revolve around filling a traumatic absence, both physically and morally. As if the void is an unbearable evil.

But a counter movement has emerged. The movement of doing less, sometimes even doing almost nothing. Projects have come into existence which aim at the exact opposite. They are small, subtle suggestions that do not aim so much to negate the emptiness as to mark it. This is not an architecture of the complete makeover and grand strategies, of retouching reality rather than adding a subtle touch. This is about an architecture that discovers that tactics are often the better option, that doing things is a question of degrees, of the right dose.

A8ernA, a project for a public space under the A8 driveway right through the city of Zaandam, is such an architecture. Exactly where high-speed logistics of car culture seems to have prevailed over the public qualities of pedestrian street life, NL Architects have discovered and invented space to live and breath again. In this obtrusive environment they have projected a set of public facilities that turn out to be stronger and more attractive than the archetype of dehumanized wasteland: the neglected spaces under the notorious highway flyover. And so they made an environment for shopping, meeting, playing, relaxing, strolling andd skating, on top of a continued deck that connects all facilities in one single gesture.

They acknowledged the brief in their own creative way, redefining the aims, suggesting the hidden potentials of the site. Much better than maximal design this project can be called generous design. It doesn’t direct its use, it catalyses it. It encourages people to occupy and appropriate, a much more subjective version of using “facilities”.

So modest is the intervention that the clients even seem to have forgotten that they needed architects to do it or them, that they couldn’t do without architectural intelligence. On the official webpage that belongs to the area (http://www.zaanstad.nl/sv/a8ernahp/?view=Standard) , they don’t mention NL Architects at all. Perhaps that’s the strongest feature of this architecture of almost noting. The design of public space becomes so transparent, natural and logical, that is seems to have emerged out of the ashes of derelict terrain as a gift of fate, not the product of hard work by a very intelligent office.

Intelligent they are. They saw the opportunities in oblivion. They saw strength in decay. They saw joy in negative space. The most important quality of this design is to identify quality itself, where nobody expects it to be found. You need a supple mind, first of all; and then enthusiasm, bravura and determination to make it work.

Perhaps it is the European spirit that has inspired NL Architects. This mind shift becomes strongest, when it is directed to the transformations of public space. Against all odds, the European city keeps resurrecting as the urban DNA of the continent. Cost of the miracle this time: 2.7 million.

Ole Bouman, director of the Nederlands Architectuurinstituut (NAi), ­­ Rotterdam

shared on 8 July 2010 | 12:58 pm via: Twitter / edwingardner

edwingardner: very nice to see my piece translated into English on Archined. Voila! "Intellectual Disaster Tourism": http://bit.ly/cv2kw7

shared on 8 July 2010 | 3:00 am via: edwingardner's shared items in Google Reader

Serial Consign has posted an excellent short essay on the overlap between representations of cities in video games and representations of cities in architecture:

Exactly what common ground do the modular megastructure of Plug-In City and the instrumentalized cityscapes of Civilization share? Both of these frameworks propose that urban growth is an algorithmic or procedural operation whereby “the city” (rather than a singular edifice) embodies the essence of Le Corbusier’s technophilic proclamations that architecture should function as a “machine for living”. These examples encapsulate systemic thinking in paper architecture and game design by suggesting the possibility of an instrumentalized, “plug and play” urbanism founded on the notion of homogeneous citizenry and the possibility of infinite expansion. These reductionist approaches to reading the city are equal parts utopian and monomaniacal – one need only look as far as McKenzie Wark for some sage advice regarding such totalizing thought: “The delusion of God games is that the gamer is in control when at the controller … But it is the game that plays the gamer … the gamer who is an avatar, in the sense of being the incarnation of an abstract principle.” While Wark is levying this warning at the players of strategy games it could well be heeded by urban planning firms who find themselves enmeshed in the market forces and legalities that dictate the scope of most city-scale projects.

If you enjoy the essay, note that Greg has posted a handful of additional thoughts here.

[Readers of mammoth will recall that this -- particularly the parallel between the god-like control assumed by the gamer and the fetishization of control in modernist urbanism --  is a topic which we have occasionally discussed.]

shared on 7 July 2010 | 7:12 pm via: edwingardner's shared items in Google Reader

If you’re in search of inspiration, the Inspiration Pad might help. This fun twist on the traditional notepad was created by Marc Thomasset and is available to purchase here.

Via Swiss Miss.

shared on 7 July 2010 | 9:33 am via: edwingardner's shared items in Google Reader

 

shared on 7 July 2010 | 12:17 am via: edwingardner's shared items in Google Reader

Graphs: Gallery of the University of Florida Sparse Matrix Collection Title: Terence McKenna Folkert

shared on 6 July 2010 | 2:36 pm via: Staalvilla

Met dank aan Henk Huizenga

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shared on 4 July 2010 | 9:41 pm via: edwingardner's shared items in Google Reader

On the most expensive ground in the country an unexpected crop popped up: a vacant lot on the Zuidas turned into a cornfield. Making the most out of the crisis: Developer turning Farmer.

shared on 2 July 2010 | 5:53 pm via: Twitter / edwingardner

edwingardner: @davidvangemeren inderdaad, rode kaart voor de man zou ik zeggen

shared on 2 July 2010 | 5:52 pm via: Twitter / edwingardner

edwingardner: jaaaaaaaaa!!!!!

shared on 2 July 2010 | 2:49 pm via: Twitter / edwingardner

edwingardner: net lid geworden van de schaduwkamer http://www.schaduwkamer.nl/

shared on 2 July 2010 | 2:29 pm via: Twitter / edwingardner

edwingardner: de steenkool moord van onze energiebedrijven http://bit.ly/9kmlaZ (via @Fred_Gardner)

shared on 2 July 2010 | 1:50 pm via: Twitter / edwingardner

edwingardner: lazy fresh summer music. Allo Darlin' musichttp://3voor12.vpro.nl/speler/luisterpaal/43643656#luisterpaal.43643656

shared on 2 July 2010 | 12:02 am via: Twitter / edwingardner

edwingardner: @sevensixfive and i just bumped into this one: 'hopeful monsters' http://bit.ly/8YpCC3 Any more monsters under your bed?

shared on 30 June 2010 | 11:05 pm via: Twitter / edwingardner

edwingardner: @FromAMountain gefeliciteerd!! mooie cover ;)

shared on 29 June 2010 | 12:41 pm via: Staalvilla

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shared on 22 June 2010 | 12:24 pm via: Staalvilla

Dit is Freddie de microcontroller. Kijk, hij laat de actuele temperatuur zien.
Binnenkort bouwen we een device die een melodietje speelt als Joost de huurrekening stuurt.

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shared on 20 June 2010 | 7:23 pm via: Action! Creating knowledge through practice

A brief roundup of ‘extra/ordinary’, the Australian Institute of Architects national conference, Sydney, April 2010 Although delivered simply as an amusing anecdote, when taken out of context, this crude piece of wisdom from the elder statesman Peter Corrigan seemed to capture the essence of ‘extra/ordinary’. This was a conference about engaged practitioners; engaged in the [...]

shared on 17 June 2010 | 6:01 pm via: Staalvilla

We are happy to announce a very special open air summer edition of the Pecha Kucha Night Amsterdam. It will all be taking place on Wednesday 23 June at the fairy-like Tolhuistuin on the northern IJ bank, opposite Amsterdam’s Central Station.

The Japanese term ‘Pecha Kucha’ roughly translates as chit-chat or irritating chatter. As a happy crossbreed between an elevator pitch and speed dating, Pecha Kucha Night will present 12 people who will be sharing their work and ideas in 20 slides of 20 seconds. No more boring lectures, seminars or presentations. Pecha Kucha Night offers the audience the experience of a dazzling range of speakers, concepts and stories in the course of one evening. Breaks will be filled with drinks, funky tunes and visuals. We will astound you with fabulously inspiring presenters, great music to dance to and so many interesting people in one space at one time, you’ll wish you had more time to speak to all of them!

Line-up

Nalden (Nalden.net), Leonard van Munster, Rob Voerman, Zelda Beauchampet, David Mulder/Max Cohen de Lara (X-M-L), Walter Langelaar (Moddr), Joris van Tubergen (Protospace), Hessel Stuut, Menno van der Veen (Welcome to Youtopia), Piet Meeuws/Job Martens (Also Starring), Dim Balsem, Bram Esser.

Click here for the Facebook page.

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shared on 17 June 2010 | 5:45 pm via: Staalvilla

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shared on 17 June 2010 | 5:09 pm via: Staalvilla

Dear friends,

Hereby we'd like to sincerely invite you to drop by at the first official edition of the Nuit Blanche Amsterdamfestival. On Saturday night, five places across Amsterdam will be transformed into nightly platforms filled with art, design and fun.

For this occasion we developed a mind-blowing urban adventure game along with the people of Waag Society, entitled Gold Rush. The game will be taking place in the twilight zone between digital en physical spaces and will take you on a freaky trip through the city center of Amsterdam, in search of a treasure left behind by the desperate Russian mastermind Kurnan Iblovich and his accomplice Anatoli. During the game you'll stumble upon obstacles, tasks and mysteries that guide you to a final destination where the Grande Finale will be played at 2.00 am.

Gold Rush is based upon the 7scenes application and can be played with iPhones and Nokia smartphones. The game is accessible between 10 pm and 1.30 am, and it is possible to play in groups. No problemo. Get prepared for Gold Rush, click here to download 7scenes! There will be upload stations available across town during the night where you can recharge your battery and ask for help.

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shared on 15 June 2010 | 3:26 pm via: Staalvilla

hoiiiiii

Gister is de bee team uitgerukt naar betondorp, alwaar zich een wilde zwerm bijtjes had genesteld onder het afdakje van mijnheer Burger, instrumenten glasblazer in ruste.
In allerijl en met veel vertoon zijn ze overgebracht naar het rechterbalkon van de staalvilla, alwaar ze sinds vanmorgen hun eerste voorzichtige stapjes zetten in de tolhuistuin.

Hetvolgende: jullie zullen misschien af en toe een bijtje naar binnen zien vliegen (dat zijn de verkennerbijtjes). Niet spangen dan, de bijen zijn onze vrienden! Je kunt em rustig zelf weer buiten zetten, of je belt het bee team, dan komen we meteen in actie. Ze staan dus op het rechterbalkon: ga zeker af en toe een kijkje nemen, observeer de vlucht en de dansjes, zorg er alleen voor dat je niet recht voor het vlieggat gaat staan, en dat je de keukendeur dicht houdt.

Joost Janmaat / Partizan Publik / +31 6205 666 01 / +3120 4940 058 / skype: partizaantje

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shared on 14 June 2010 | 12:18 am via: Action! Creating knowledge through practice

From my archive, an essay I wrote in 2006, which is relevant to the theme of this blog. The essay deals with the discrepancies between theory and practice , and the role of criticality in this relation. Two of the main source texts which functioned as the point of departure for The Projective Landscape conference [...]

shared on 9 June 2010 | 6:04 pm via: Staalvilla

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shared on 9 June 2010 | 2:04 pm via: Staalvilla

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shared on 7 June 2010 | 5:36 pm via: Action! Creating knowledge through practice

A short fiction story on the architectural cognition laboratory and their findings ...

shared on 5 June 2010 | 3:20 pm via: Uploads from edwingardner

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shared on 27 May 2010 | 9:39 am via: Staalvilla

peultjes!

doperwtjes!!

worteltjes, radijsjes, spruitjes, boerenkool en brocolli!!!

Joost Janmaat / Partizan Publik / +31 6205 666 01 / +3120 4940 058 / skype: partizaantje

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shared on 27 May 2010 | 9:37 am via: Staalvilla

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shared on 25 May 2010 | 4:12 pm via: Staalvilla

luister naar jeroen, elmo en joost op
http://vergetenveldjes.nl/

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shared on 18 May 2010 | 6:40 pm via: Staalvilla

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shared on 26 April 2010 | 5:06 pm via: Staalvilla

Dear friends,

It took us two years, but it's here. Yesterday the Karel Appel House opened its doors in the east of Amsterdam. The Karel Appel House is a mixed-use housing and art project developed by housing association De Key with our collaboration and advice. It's a tribute to the famous avant-garde CoBrA painter Karel Appel who was born in the Dapperbuurt and started his tremendous international painting career there.

Right at the place of birth a renovated social house is transformed into a residence for international artists working at the Royal Academy of Visual Arts, where Appel himself used to study between 1942 and 1944. These artists will be staying for the period of 11 months. The last month of each year the artists will make place for a temporary mini-museum in the four apartments of the Karel Appel house. Yesterday the CoBrA Museum unveiled its first exhibition featuring an overview of Appel's life and work.

The apartments in the Karel Appel House are redesigned by our friends of DUS Architects, and the finishing touch of the project is an artwork by Martijn Sandberg. On the facade of the building a bronze Apple carries the text 'KAREL APPEL WAS HIER' to give expression to the special fact that one of the most influential painters of last century was born here.

Free guided tours are still available! Visit the website for more information.

Photos by Teo Krijgsman.

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shared on 13 April 2010 | 4:28 pm via: Staalvilla

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shared on 13 April 2010 | 11:57 am via: Staalvilla

Dear friends,

Come along on Wednesday night at Mediamatic for the 13th edition of the Pecha Kucha Night Amsterdam. We've selected some great presenters who can hardly wait to share their images and speak about new projects, brilliant thoughts and inspiring topics. Don't miss it!

Madje Vollaers/Pascal Zwart (Studio VollaersZwart), Melle Smets, Ronald Rietveld (Rietveld Landscape), Jo de Lange (Shapeways), Teun Castelein/Sylvain Vriens, Heleen Klopper (Woolfiller), Tjerk Ridder (Trekhaak Gezocht), Gijs Gieskes, Paul Wolterink (Department of Development), Sander ter Braak, George Gottl/Oliver Michell (UXUS), Tetsuro Miyazaki/Tom Niekamp (WeTapWater), Erwin Pols (Mwah)

Tip: bring a woolen sweater with holes in it if you would like to have your garments getting a special Woolfiller treatment by Heleen Klopper!

Breaks will be filled with drinks, funky tunes by Mediamatic's Nikos and visuals by Merel Das aka Blackbird Badger. Doors open at 20:20, presentations start at 21:00. Visit the Pecha Kucha Night Facebook page where you can invite your friends, and where you can let us know if you'll be attending.

Pecha Kucha Night Amsterdam Volume 13
Wednesday 14 April 2010
Open: 20.20 h., start: 21.00 h.
Mediamatic, Vijzelstraat 68, Amsterdam
Damage: € 7
pecha-kucha.org

See you tomorrow!

Joop/Jeroen
Golfstromen

"Pecha Kucha Night is worldwide in 299 cities!"

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shared on 7 April 2010 | 7:21 pm via: Staalvilla

We are proud to announce a new version of the one and only Pecha Kucha Night Amsterdam. It'll al be taking place next week, on Wednesday 14 April, at Mediamatic in the former ABN AMRO building at the Vijzelstraat. Come along, show and tell, get inspired, and have a great night out loaded with fresh mind food. Expect a stunning line-up with a wide, wide range of pioneers who can't wait to tell you about their ideas, motives and best projects in 20 slides of 20 seconds. Here they are:

Madje Vollaers/Pascal Zwart (Studio VollaersZwart), Melle Smets, Ronald Rietveld (Rietveld Landscape), Jo de Lange (Shapeways), Teun Castelein/Sylvain Vriens, Heleen Klopper (Woolfiller), Tjerk Ridder (Trekhaak Gezocht), Gijs Gieskes, Paul Wolterink (Department of Development), Sander ter Braak, George Gottl/Oliver Michell (UXUS), Tetsuro Miyazaki/Tom Niekamp (WeTapWater).

Breaks will be filled with drinks, funky tunes by Mediamatic's Nikos and visuals by Merel Das aka Blackbird Badger. Doors open at 20:20, presentations start at 21:00.

Visit the Pecha Kucha Night Facebook page where you can invite your friends, and where you can let us know if you'll be attending.

Pecha Kucha Night Amsterdam Volume 13
Wednesday 14 April 2010
Open: 20.20 h., start: 21.00 h.
Mediamatic, Vijzelstraat 68, Amsterdam
Damage: € 7
pecha-kucha.org

We hope to see you next week! Let's have a goooooood party.

"Pecha Kucha Night is worldwide in 299 cities!"

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shared on 29 March 2010 | 12:19 am via: Action! Creating knowledge through practice

Albena Yaneva took up Banham's challenge as formulate 20 years ago in his Black Box essay; to venture into what architects actually 'do'.

shared on 18 February 2010 | 6:39 pm via: Yarbus

De pen is machtiger dan het zwaard, maar een beeld zegt meer dan duizend woorden. Als je geduld hebt tenminste. Want meer dan duizend woorden maakt een lang verhaal. Dat wil zeggen; een verhaal dat langer is dan een ogenblik, om nog maar te zwijgen van een oogopslag. En wie heeft nog de tijd… Beelden zijn [...]

shared on 8 February 2010 | 4:19 pm via: Yarbus

Iedereen koopt wel eens iets om zich beter te voelen, om een gaatje in z’n ziel te vullen. Of veel grootster; in de hoop dat een aankoop het leven zal veranderen, dat de aankoop gaat verschil zal maken waardoor je wel succesvol of zelfverzekerd wordt. Deze ervaring is volgens mij aan het devalueren, mensen hebben [...]

shared on 26 January 2010 | 11:30 am via: Action! Creating knowledge through practice

On guiding, leadership, influence and motivation. Late last year we launched the latest issue of VOLUME, simply titled The Guide. As the blurb states, it ‘presents a diverse collection of guides and attempts to guide […] the guide is understood as not simply a service or selling point, but as an exploratory tool, a generator [...]

shared on 25 January 2010 | 10:50 pm via: Action! Creating knowledge through practice

or How theory stopped guiding architectural practice

shared on 16 January 2010 | 5:40 pm via: Action! Creating knowledge through practice

shared on 27 October 2009 | 1:44 pm via: Action! Creating knowledge through practice

The organisational conflicts of Studio Olafur Eliasson. A new book, The Fall of the Studio: Artists at Work, examines through a collection of essays the changing role of the artists’ studio as sacred space of creative genesis. Edited by Wouter Davidts and Kim Paice, psychedelic-ly designed by Metahaven, and published by the new imprint of [...]

shared on 26 October 2009 | 11:56 am via: Action! Creating knowledge through practice

IDEO /Tim Brown, Bruce Nussbaum and Stanford d.school call it Design Thinking. Michael Speaks, Michael Shamiyeh, Bruce Mau talk about Design Intelligence, Nigel Cross writes about Designerly ways of knowing (one of the best books i’ve read so far on design thinking). All these ideas deal with design as process rather than object. They all [...]