B Nieuws 07, 2012-2013 - 4 Februari

B NIEUWS

#07 04 MARCH 2013

PERIODIEK VAN DE FACULTEIT BOUWKUNDE | TU DELFT

BANGKOK ADAPTIVE CITY 2045 Keeping future cities dry

PAGE 04

8/9 Research

10/11 Essay Contest

12/13 Alumni

Heart of the City History of an urban design concept

Euthanasia and Abortion A Critique of Recently Unrealized buildings

Surrendering to China You can't change China, China changes you.

2 NIEUWS

B NIEUWS 07 4 MARCH 2013

KORT NIEUWS

Afscheidscollege Gerrie Hobbelman In maart a.s. wordt Gerrie Hobbelman 65 jaar en dat betekent dat hij met pensioen gaat.

Als afsluiting van 42 jaar werken als docent mechanica bij Bouwkunde geeft hij nog een laatste, openbaar afscheidscollege. Noteer de datum in je agenda als je hierbij wilt zijn!

12 april 2013 | 14:00 BK City, Zaal A

Open dagen bachelor Kunnen steden in Nederland nog uitbreiden? Hoe hoog kan die nieuwe toren eigenlijk worden gebouwd? Is het materiaal dat we gebruiken voor dat huis duurzaam? En welke nieuwe functie kan dat leegstaande monument krijgen?

Ken jij scholieren die alles over deze vragen en de opleiding Bouwkunde te weten willen komen? Laat ze dan op donderdag 4 en vrijdag 5 april 2013 naar de open dagen voor de bacheloropleiding Bouwkunde komen!

4 april 2013 - 5 april 2013 | Aula TU Delft en Faculteit Bouwkunde

Het geluid van BK City Sounddesign for Architecture maakt vanaf 4 maart in BK City de openbare ruimte hoorbaar met een klanklandschap (soundscape) dat mensen op hun dagelijkse routes door het gebouw begeleidt, stimuleert, inspireert, verrast en nieuwsgierig maakt.

De authentieke geluiden van de locatie worden opgenomen en digitaal verwerkt tot klankcomposities die de eigenschappen van de ruimtes weerspiegelen met als doel de gebruiker een totale ervaring te bieden.Recente opnames zijn te beluisteren op

facebook.com/ sounddesignforarchitecture

GEBIEDSONTWIKKELING

ANNO 2013

DE HUIDIGE ECONOMISCHE OMSTANDIGHEDEN MAKEN DIEPGAANDE VERANDERINGEN ZICHTBAAR IN DE PRAKTIJK VAN DE GEBIEDSONTWIKKELING. IN DE AANLOOP NAAR HET CONGRES VAN DE PRAKTIJKLEERSTOEL GEBIEDSONTWIKKELING OP 14 MAART SPRAK BNIEUWS MET PROGRAMMAMANAGER AGNES FRANZEN OVER DE STAND VAN ZAKEN IN HET VAKGEBIED. DOOR MANON SCHOTMAN Dat er door de crisis weinig meer wordt gebouwd, is geen nieuws. Wat betreft architectuur is het plaatje betrekkelijk simpel: potentiële opdrachtgevers nemen minder risico’s en investeringen worden uitgesteld of afgeblazen, waardoor bouwplannen geen doorgang vinden. Architecten en aannemers zien de vraag naar hun werk afnemen.

Bij gebiedsontwikkeling is het plaatje veel complexer: niet alleen is de schaal groter en de doorlooptijd vaak langer, er zijn ook veel meer verschillende partijen bij het proces betrokken. Bij gebiedsontwikkeling heb je naast de eindgebruikers te maken met overheden, beleggers, banken, corporaties, gebiedsontwikkelaars, aannemers en ontwerpers. Deze partijen, met elk hun eigen agenda en verantwoordelijkheden, bepalen gezamenlijk het krachtenveld van de huidige gebiedsontwikkeling.

Niet meer vanzelfsprekend

laars, banken en beleggers, zijn door de recessie behoudender geworden en minder bereid grootschalige voorinvesteringen te doen. Ook bij projecten die al voor de crisis waren opgestart, en waaraan afspraken tussen bijvoorbeeld publieke en private partijen ten grondslag lagen, moeten de gemaakte afspraken nu vaak worden aangepast.

Spoorzone Delft De spoorzone Delft is een goed voorbeeld van een gebiedsontwikkelingsproject in het huidige klimaat. In 1999 kwam er een “in beton gegoten plan”, zoals Franzen dat noemt, van de Spaanse stedenbouwkundige Joan Busquets. Door de vraaguitval op de woningmarkt zijn veel woningbouwplannen uit het masterplan in de ijskast gezet. In plaats van een ontwikkeling die grotendeels door projectontwikkelaars zou worden gedaan, heeft de gemeente Delft de touwtjes in handen genomen voor wat betreft de gebiedsontwikkeling. De uitgangspunten van het plan van Busquets blijven behouden, maar er is via een prijsvraag gekozen voor een veel flexibeler masterplan, uitgewerkt door bureau Palmbout.

Het ontwikkeltempo wordt aangepast aan de veranderende markt en er is ruimte gekomen voor tijdelijke initiatieven op kavels die anders voor lange tijd braak zouden blijven liggen.

“IN ZEKERE ZIN GAAN WE TERUG NAAR DE SITUATIE VAN VOOR 1901.”

In dat krachtenveld zijn een aantal duidelijke verschuivingen waar te nemen, zegt Franzen.

De grote opgave in de gebiedsontwikkeling lag voor lange tijd bij de grote VINEX-locaties.

Dit waren door de overheid aangewezen locaties, waar publieke en private partijen contracten aangingen waaraan een nauwkeurig uitgewerkt en gefinancierd masterplan ten grondslag lag. De grote vanzelfsprekendheid van dit soort gebiedsontwikkelingen is door de economische situatie erg afgenomen. Partijen die bereid waren om dergelijke ontwikkelingen te financieren, zoals overheden, ontwikke-

Veranderingen Het voorbeeld Spoorzone Delft geeft goed weer waar de veranderingen liggen in de gebiedsontwikkeling. Een masterplan voor een

NIEUWS 3

KARIN LAGLAS

gebied geeft niet meer een weergave van hoe het er exact uit zal zien, het is meer een richtlijn geworden. Wat er uiteindelijk van het plan overblijft is bij de start onzeker. “Daarmee wordt het concept van het plan belangrijker,” zegt Franzen.

Een tweede verandering is dat er meer ruimte ontstaat voor bottomup initiatieven. “De vorige eeuw was, dankzij de Woningwet van 1901, de eeuw van de overheid.

De VINEX-notitie die de overheid

in de jaren negentig bedacht, paste in die lijn. Nu schuiven we op richting een civil society”, aldus Franzen. Er komt steeds meer ruimte voor burgerinitiatieven. Vóór 1901 waren burgerinitiatieven overigens veel gebruikelijker, zoals het Rotterdamse tuindorp Vreewijk dat is opgericht door bankier Mees. Franzen: “In zekere zin gaan we dus terug naar de situatie van voor 1901.”

Congres Het zijn allemaal thema’s die aan bod komen in het Praktijkcongres Gebiedsontwikkeling, dat op 14 maart in Utrecht gehouden wordt.

Het thema van het congres is ‘werkzame ontwikkelstrategieën’.

Dat zijn strategieën waarbij het grote verhaal centraal staat, maar wordt ontwikkeld in kleine

stappen. In het ochtendprogramma worden een aantal inspirerende gebiedsontwikkelingen besproken. In de middag wordt vervolgens gezamenlijk gereflecteerd op enkele praktijkcasussen.

Over gebiedsontwikkeling Praktijkcongres gebiedsontwikkeling 14 Maart, Utrecht Meer informatie via bk.tudelft.nl/actueel/ agenda/ Platform voor gebiedsontwikkeling Gebiedsontwikkeling.nu

FIVE YEARS LATER...

WALKING AROUND JULIANALAAN 134, ONE WOULD NOT BE AWARE THAT ONLY FIVE YEARS AGO A DEVASTATING FIRE DESTROYED THE FORMER HOME OF THE FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE. WHILE MOST CURRENT STUDENTS HAVE NOT KNOWN THE ICONIC BUILDING DESIGNED BY VAN DEN BROEK EN BAKEMA, SOME STUDENTS AND MOST OF THE TEACHING STAFF DID AND THEY STILL HOLD FOND MEMORIES OF THE BURNED DOWN BUILDING. A LOT WAS LOST - FROM YEARS OF RESEARCH TO PERSONAL BELONGINGS - BUT MUCH HAS BEEN GAINED AS WELL. BKCity — In 2008, Nina Verkerk, then a first year student, had begun to question her decision to study architecture. The enormous workload, the overly critical design teachers and the intense competitiveness between the students made her feel out of place. She was on the verge of leaving architecture when the fire broke out. "While the faculty did their best to pick up where they left off, not everything could continue as it did." explains Nina.

"Courses were adapted and some assignments were cancelled. This gave me some time to think and I realised that it wasn't Architecture itself that made me question my choice, but the way we were being educated and the way I reacted to it. I needed some distance from the faculty in order to give architecture a second chance."

Architecture also got a second

chance when it moved into a monumental building on the edge of campus. It wasn’t an easy transition, but the staff and students managed to overcome this enormous setback and BK City rose like a phoenix out of the ashes. Now the time has come to reflect.

Gerrie Hobbelman, popular teacher of Applied Mechanics, was the first to express a desire to pay tribute to the BK City’s past.

The faculty agreed and has put into motion plans for the 13th of may 2013.

by staff and students in an attempt to move on. The new faculty is a testament to that energy and, while the building is still evolving, its inhabitants have managed to make it their home.

(DB)

BK City will organise a weeklong photographic exhibition devoted to Van den Broek en Bakema designed building, the fire that consumed it and the aftermath, which showcased the extraordinary energy expressed

For more info on the exhibition:

bk.tudelft.nl

Zijn er te veel architecten?

Kortgeleden stuurde de Bond van Nederlandse Architecten een bericht de wereld in met de oproep aan de architectuuropleidingen in Nederland om eens wat minder studenten op te leiden. De BNA komt tot dit idee vanwege de zeer slechte situatie in de Nederlandse bouw en de sterk afgenomen werkgelegenheid die zij voor architecten in Nederland zien. En passant kregen wij nog een pluim: doe als Delft, stel een Numerus Fixus in.

Een geval van “klok en geen idee van klepel”. Wij hebben de Numerus Fixus niet ingesteld om het aantal afgestudeerden af te remmen, maar om de kwaliteit van het bacheloronderwijs te borgen. Vijfhonderd tot zeshonderd studenten instroom in de bachelor was gewoon te veel. Ook is er geen directe koppeling tussen instroom in de bachelor en afgestudeerden uit de master. Bachelor en master zijn twee opleidingen. Sommige studenten besluiten met ons bachelorsdiploma op zak elders verder te studeren, er even tussenuit te gaan of helemaal iets anders te gaan doen. En ook stromen - buitenlandse - studenten in onze master in. Omdat de masteropleiding door de diversiteit en meer decentrale structuur ervan een grotere capaciteit heeft dan onze bacheloropleiding kan dat prima. En niet al onze afgestudeerden worden architect. “Achitecture” is één van onze vijf afstudeertracks.

Weliswaar de grootste en tegelijk ook de meest internationale.

Afgestudeerden van de Nederlandse Architectuuropleidingen 1 op 1 aan de Nederlandse markt koppelen is een heel ouderwetse gedachte, zover ie al ooit juist geweest is. De wereld van het ruimtelijk ontwerp is een globale wereld. Nederlandse architecten en andere ruimtelijk ontwerpers werken all over the world. Ja, als puur op de Nederlandse woningmarkt gerichte architect heb je het nu slecht. Maar als de wereld je speelveld is, zoals bij een groot aantal vooraanstaande Nederlandse bureaus, dan is het een heel ander verhaal.

Nederland heeft van een uitstekende internationale reputatie wat betreft architectuur, ruimtelijk ontwerp en ruimtelijk ontwikkelen. Daarbij past een internationaal vooraanstaande kennisinfrastructuur die niet alleen Nederlandse studenten opleidt voor Nederland, maar een internationale kennisgemeenschap vormt die uitwaaiert over de hele wereld. De omvang daarvan zal altijd de behoefte van de lokale Nederlandse markt overstijgen. Dat willen afbreken omwille van de huidige situatie op de lokale markt is kortzichtig en vooral ook heel dom.

4 REVIEW

Jago van Bergen and Fokke Moerel (far left) with their Thai colleagues during the workshop in 2012.

BEYOND BANGKOK WHILE BK CITY IS PHYSICALLY BOUND TO DELFT, ITS INHABITANTS OFTEN VENTURE OUT INTO THE WORLD. OUTSIDE THESE BRICK WALLS, THEY NOT JUST SHARE THEIR OWN EXPERTISE, BUT GAIN NEW KNOWLEDGE THEY CAN TAKE BACK WITH THEM. THIS WAS THE CASE WHEN FRANSJE HOOIMEIJER FROM URBANISM, ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGY AND DESIGN, AND JAGO VAN BERGEN FROM PUBLIC BUILDING WERE BOTH PART OF BANGKOK ADAPTIVE CITY 2045, A WORKSHOP AND SYMPOSIUM ON WATER ADAPTIVE URBAN PLANNING AND ARCHITECTURE IN BANGKOK.

BY DAPHNE BAKKER It all started in june 2012, when Jago van Bergen and Fokke Moerel (MVRDV), together with Silpakorn University, set up a weeklong workshop entitled “Bangkok, a vernacular metropolis, running on water”. The seventy participating students were asked to work out seven different water-managing strategies, from water storage to dykes or floating constructions for managing dynamic water levels on a single location in Bangkok.

While van Bergen and Moerel guided the students through the design process, both Fransje Hooimeijer and Bas Jonkman, professor of Hydraulic Engineering at Civil Engineering, were present to provide expert knowledge on urbanism and construction. The workshop was a fruitful and positive experience for both

the students and the organizers.

“Thailand can learn from Dutch knowledge about water and cities. The Netherlands can learn from the traditional Thai water architecture and its resilient people,” explains Hooimeijer.

Being abroad didn’t just provide access to foreign knowledge, but also helped them realize the potential in their own backyard.

Both faculties of Architecture and Civil Engineering have long expressed the desire to increase their collaboration, especially when it comes to the urgent need to develop solutions for the rising water levels in both the Netherlands and Bangkok. Bangkok Adaptive City provided Hooimeijer and Jonkman with the opportunity to work together in the creative setting of a work-

shop. “It was nice to collaborate in a completely different environment,” explains Hooimeijer. “Civil engineering students are used to working on projects outside of their faculty, while ours might have a two month internship during their minor. It’s a shame that there aren’t more opportunities for the architecture students to learn outside the confines of our faculty.” But next year Hooimeijer will provide her students with those opportunities, when the Aquaterra Urban Design course visits Bangkok and Silpakorn University. Aquaterra is a course that focuses on how technical knowledge can inform a design. Aim of the trip is to do field research and to learn from the Thai counterparts. The Dutch students can get a head start with the publication of the results from

last year’s workshop. The book, out next April, will feature essays from everyone involved, including the students, and will provide another view on architecture. One essay is devoted to the ingenious use of discarded materials to make slum housing. The publication is another way of bringing the world to Delft.

For more info: vanbergenkolpa.nl

UPCOMING 5

HOTSHOT

CLOSE-UP

Stylos Masterclass with Herman Hertzberger in 2011

BY WING (YINJUN WENG)

“ONE SUBJECT. ONE PROFESSOR. ALL DAY LONG.” THE MOTTO OF STYLOS MASTERCLASS UNDERLINES ITS AIM TO BRING PROFESSORS CLOSER TO THE STUDENTS AT THE FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE. PROFESSOR JÓN KRISTINSSON WILL KICK OFF THIS YEAR’S FIRST MASTERCLASS ON THE 8TH OF MARCH, FOLLOWING PREVIOUS LECTURES BY, AMONGST OTHERS, HERMAN HERTZBERGER, ROB KRIER, AND SATOSHI OKADA. Jón Kristinsson, labeled the godfather of sustainable building in the Netherlands, will tailor a one-day teaching program for twenty students from the faculty. “We give our lecturers total freedom to design their course without any limitation of the curriculum,” explains Pierre Mostert, chairman of the Stylos board. “There are no rules for the program, except that it is not a competition. The essential value of the workshop lies in open-minded discussions, interactions, and feedback, instead of a competition-driven result.”

The intention to offer one-on-one contact with prestigious professors addresses a common concern among the students. “Although we have big-shot professors at the faculty, most students don’t get to see them so often. This triggered our initial idea to bring them together in the form of a master class.” says Mostert.

Increasing student interest has now allowed Stylos to also approach lecturers outside of the faculty. Stylos chose Kristinsson for his expertise in integrated sustainable design, a topic of great interest for many students. Meanwhile, the committee also selects the students who take part in the workshop, to ensure a diverse and open-minded group.

Mostert: what makes our Masterclass different from others organized by studios is that we are open for students in all study year and study programme. For the coming Masterclass for instance, we have one student in his Master graduation year and someone who just joined the

Bachelor programme. We hope to trigger conversation and interaction among people with different interests and points of view.

Stylos’ effort in shaping a better educational environment has sprouted many other initiatives. With fifteen committees and more than ninety members, the student association produces workshops, symposiums, exhibitions, and, to the delight of many, over a dozen excursions each year. “We are not a student fraternity. Besides the fun things we do, we are also serious about improving the quality of education,” Mostert reminds. “We work closely with the Faculty Student Council (FSR) and the Education and Student Affairs (E&SA) at the faculty with the aim of a better education.”

More workshops are already being planned for the coming months.

Mostert and the Stylos committee are busy brainstorming for the upcoming Masterclasses. If you missed out on Hertzberger or Krier, take the chance to get a close-up of the next star professor at Stylos Masterclass.

For more info: stylos.nl

Stylos Masterclass VIII: Jón Kristinsson Masterclass on intergrated sustainable buidling design Price: 18, - including lunch Time: 8 March, 9:00 - 17:00 Contact: masterclass@stylos.nl Subscribe at Stylos

6 BACHELORHERVORMING

B NIEUWS 01 MAAND 2011

NIEUWE TECHNOLOGIE

WAT VERANDERT ER IN HET NIEUWE BACHELORCURRICULUM? VAKKEN WORDEN MINDER VERSNIPPERD EN ER IS MEER LEERLIJNOVERSTIJGENDE SAMENWERKING. DAT ZAL OOK IN DE COLLEGEBANKEN TE MERKEN ZIJN. IN DEEL TWEE VAN DE SERIE ‘BACHELORHERVORMING’: DE LEERLIJN TECHNOLOGIE. DOOR MANON SCHOTMAN Integratie is het codewoord van de nieuwe bacheloropzet. Zo ook bij de leerlijn Technologie. Waar het huidige programma veel losse vakjes van twee of drie ECTS bevat, die soms zelf ook weer uit verschillende onderdelen zijn opgebouwd, worden in het nieuwe bachelorprogramma vijf modules van vijf ECTS aangeboden. Om de integratie binnen een module zo veel mogelijk te garanderen, komt er één verantwoordelijke docent. “In de huidige opzet is er vaak een gedeelde verantwoordelijkheid van verschillende vakgebieden.

Dat liep niet altijd goed. In de nieuwe opzet is er één leerlijn, met één eindverantwoordelijke”, zegt Maarten Meijs, die samen met Ulrich Knaack verantwoordelijk is voor de hervormingen in de leerlijn Technologie.

Naar voren In de nieuwe opzet wordt meer technologiekennis aangeboden en dat gebeurt eerder in het bachelorprogramma. Daardoor hebben studenten voldoende technische kennis wanneer ze aan het tweede ontwerpproject (ON2) beginnen. Een nadeel van

deze opzet is dat er in het tweede en derde studiejaar minder technologie wordt gegeven dan nu het geval is, wat enigszins ten koste gaat van de continuïteit van het onderwijs. “Als je goed onderwijs wilt geven, moet je eerder opgedane kennis later weer aan de orde stellen en uitdiepen. Daarvoor is nu in het tweede en derde jaar te weinig tijd”, zegt Meijs. Weinig tijd voor technologie is er sowieso, beaamt Meijs, want de leerlijn technologie beslaat in totaal slechts 25 ECTS, zo’n 14 procent van het totaal in de bachelor, de ontwerpprojecten uitgezonderd. Ter vergelijking: bouwkundestudenten in Eindhoven krijgen 41 ECTS aan techniekvakken. Meijs: “We hadden graag ergens in het tweede of derde jaar nog wat extra techniekonderwijs willen geven, als herhaling en verdieping van het voorafgaande.

Helaas is daar binnen het huidige programma geen ruimte voor.”

Opbouw De 25 ECTS worden verdeeld over vijf modules van vijf ECTS, die een duidelijke opbouw hebben. In de eerste module, ‘Technischwetenschappelijk fundament 1’, wordt de natuurkundige basis

gelegd, bestaande uit kennis over bouwfysica en krachtswerking.

De daaropvolgende module, ‘Materiaal en constructie’, bevat een nieuw element in het technologieonderwijs: de analyse.

Voor deze analyseopdracht moeten studenten een woonhuis technisch ontleden. De derde module, ‘Technisch-wetenschappelijke fundamenten 2’, bouwt voort op de eerste module en geeft een verdieping van de kennis. De technisch-wetenschappelijke fundamenten vormen samen de voorbereiding voor het tweede ontwerpproject, ON2. De daaropvolgende module ‘Constructie en klimaatontwerp’ bevat een combinatie van colleges en een analyseopgave en bereidt voor op ontwerpproject ON6, dat later in het curriculum aan bod komt. De vijfde module tenslotte, ‘Woningbouwtechnologie’, sluit aan op het vierde ontwerpproject, dat ook over woningbouw gaat.

Het is een oefening gemodelleerd naar het vak BK3041, maar de opgave is in dit geval niet gericht op technische uitwerking van een woongebouw maar op hergebruik. Studenten moeten bijvoorbeeld bedenken hoe aan een bestaand gebouw een extra balkon kan worden bevestigd of

hoe een bestaand gebouw een extra dakopbouw kan krijgen.

Samenwerking Ulrich Knaack heeft veel vertrouwen in de curriculumwijzigingen.

Aanleiding voor zijn enthousiasme is mede de verbeterde samenwerking met de andere vakgebieden. Waar er vroeger vaak strijd was tussen de verschillende afdelingen, waardoor eilandjes ontstonden binnen de faculteit, is er nu meer bereidheid tot samenwerking.

Wat deze cultuurverandering precies heeft veroorzaakt is onduidelijk. Meijs denkt dat het gebouw aan de Julianalaan wellicht ook een rol heeft gespeeld, met zijn opener ruimtelijke structuur. De bereidheid tot samenwerken vertaalt zich naar een betere integratie in het onderwijs. Een voorbeeld is het bouwkundig tekenen, dat in het huidige bachelorcurriculum nog nauwelijks in het onderwijs aanwezig is, en nu samen met de leerlijn overdrachtstechnieken wordt opgezet. De studenten profiteren dus van de verbeterde verstandhoudingen in de faculteit.

Knaack: “Wat positief is voor het proces, is ook positief voor het resultaat."

7

A SMARTER BRICK AS SOCIETY’S DEMAND FOR A BETTER WORKING AND LIVING ENVIRONMENT INCREASES, SO DOES ITS EXPECTATIONS OF THE WAY OUR BUILDINGS FUNCTION, ESPECIALLY THEIR ENVELOPE. THIS IS WHAT PROTECTS US FROM THE HARSH OUTSIDE ELEMENTS. PHD STUDENT AHMED HISHAM HAFEZ IS TWO YEARS INTO HIS RESEARCH ON INTEGRATING BUILDING SERVICES INTO MASSIVE BUILDING ENVELOPES, WITH A SPECIAL FOCUS HOW TO IMPROVE THE VERY UBIQUITOUS BRICK.

BY DAPHNE BAKKER A facade used to consist almost solely of brick and mortar, but with today’s demands on efficiency and comfort, the facade has evolved into a complicated set of layers, all with their own function. Of course just adding more and more layers is counter to the pursuit of reducing the use of building materials and making constructions more sustainable. A layer should be able to insulate, breathe and provide heating or cooling, in short, perform multiple functions. Besides cutting back the use of building materials, other advantages would be reducing construction time and gaining more space due to the slimmed down facade.

While this kind of research is not completely new, especially when it comes to concrete, it has yet to be applied to brick. Another reason why Hafez will devote part of his research on optimizing the brick is because he believes he can make a business out of it.

Hafez: “While Dutch architecture is very much linked to bricks, it is a material that is used worldwide.

The layers of bricks might be plastered and not visible, but they are there. There is a huge

potential for a smarter brick.”

According to Ulrich Knaak, supervisor of Hafez’s research the conventional production of brick is very efficient. “We’ve been making it for thousands of years.

We know how to make it fast and cheap. The only thing to improve is the brick itself and the industry has been looking for ways to do this.” Especially the concretebrick industry has expressed interest in Hafez’s research and this might give way for a new project based on his findings.

Now, almost two years into his research, Hafez is on the verge of starting his own experiments, based on his knowledge culled from other fields of science. “The idea is not to create new technologies, but to use what we have and use it in the facade,” explains Hafez. “The scientists who have done research on concrete have only applied it to the material itself and they do not understand its potential when implemented in the building envelope. That’s where we come in.”

Workshop On 3-5 June 2013, Hafez will lead a workshop on integrated facade elements. It will be part of a travelling workshop series for building technology students from all over Europe. Interested in joining? Please email Hafez for further inquiries: A.H.Hafez@tudelft.nl

8 PROJECT

THE HEART OF THE CITY

BY IVAN THUNG

“THE HEART,” SAID THE PHILOSOPHER PETER SLOTERDIJK, “EVEN IN THE AGE OF ITS TRANSPLANTABILITY, IS STILL VIEWED AS THE CENTRAL ORGAN OF INTERNALIZED HUMANITY IN THE DOMINANT LANGUAGE GAMES OF OUR CIVILIZATION.” IN THE DISCUSSION ON GOOD TOWN PLANNING TOO THE THEME OF THE HEART HAS CONTINUES TO PREOCCUPY URBAN DESIGNERS. LEONARDO ZUCCARO MARCHI, WHO WAS CONFERRED HIS PHD FEBRUARY 4, INVESTIGATED THE CONTINUITY AND COMPLEXITY OF THE HEART THEME AS AN URBAN DESIGN CONCEPT. HE WAS INITIALLY INSPIRED BY THE IDEA THAT THE SHOPPING MALL IN MANY WAYS IS AN IMPORTANT MODEL FOR THE CITY.

9

“

If it is true that, as the urban planner Margaret Crawford states, that the world of the shopping mall has transgressed the boundaries of the shopping mall and has become a model for the city, than to understand the contemporary urban condition, we should study the first architectural experimentations with the malls in the fifties. As a student at the Politecnico di Milano I started to study the work of Victor Gruen, who was famous as a pioneer of shopping malls in the United States. I discovered that Gruen rethinks the design of shopping centres, and used the lessons learned from this endeavour for new ideas for the urban renewal of American cities. The result was the book ‘the Heart of our Cities’ and I was really fascinated by how the ‘heart’ theme for him came to be of vital importance.

As I investigated further during my PhD in Venice and Delft, it seemed to me that the theme takes a special place in the urban discourse as a design concept, and I was interested in it’s continuity in this discourse. I knew that CIAM (Congrès Internationale Architecture Moderne) was discussing the same theme in their ’51 conference ‘the Heart of the City’ (‘CIAM 8)’. So I tried to trace a line from CIAM 8 passing through Gruen's ‘the Heart of our Cites’ in ‘64, to now, but I immediately discovered that it was impossible.

There was not one theoretical line but a thousand of them creating different layers of significances and discourses going from the USA to Europe and back again. To get a grip on this vagueness and still missing a frame of interpretation for the Heart theme I used the image of a ‘cultural phylogeny tree’, which represents a collection of lines of development of a concept stemming from the same root, in this case CIAM 8. However, such a tree does not have natural branches because between the branches are crossconnections, ‘semi-lattices’. Because it is impossible to describe each branch, I used three representative actors – Gruen, Bakema and the ‘Venice CIAM summer school’ - in order to dissect the most important development lines of the theme. These three actors represent three different concepts of the heart through both their theories and projects: the Heart as Urban Design, the Heart as Relationship, the Heart as Context.

These different interpretations highlight the complexity of the heart theme, which fascinated me. The difficulty of interpretation of the heart theme is mainly caused by it’s Janus-faced semantic load: it can act both as a metaphor and a symbol. A metaphor is used when we need to give meaning to what we don’t understand, but it is always a partial description and in that sense incomplete. As such a simplification, it can be deployed to obscure a lack of knowledge. The philosopher Lefebvre argues for example that a society tends to describe itself as organic when it loses the knowledge of its birthplace, its origin.

In this situation representatives in power evoke the notion of the body, the heart, the nerves to recapture a feeling of safety.

Even among the members of the CIAM, there

was confusion about what the heart should amount to in an urban plan. Used as an organic metaphor, it prescribes a physical form: a dimension, a position, a function – such as pumping blood – which makes the organic metaphor in fact a functional description. This is one of the reasons that Aldo Rossi, a critic of CIAM’s functionalism stated that organicism and functionalism share the same roots, which is the reason of their weakness.

Another way that the heart theme has been taken up in urban discourse is as a humanistic symbol. This is also how we use the image of the heart in everyday life. In opposition to the metaphor, the symbol does not prescribe a form.

For example, Sigfried Gideon, an architecture critic who has been a secretary for the CIAM, argues that Michelangelo’s Capitol in the master plan of XVI Century Rome is not considered to be a heart because it is a beautiful, particularly good functioning central square, but because the form expresses the desire for a future better condition. The Capitol in Rome is thus a symbol of democracy, even if democracy is not present because of the Popes despotism. Similarly, the agora in Greece is, as a heart of the city, a symbol of freedom, even if the Greeks have lost theirs.

The heart as a symbol is so strong, can immediately be understood and works directly on our emotions. We can see that this emotional load pervades the whole discourse of the CIAM. Ernesto Rogers, a participant of CIAM for example preferred the notion of the heart in favour of the core because it “implies the physiological and biological values of sentiment”, since it is the “symbolic center of love.” The heart is thus considered as an emotional abstract idea and because it does not give a pre-arranged form, this symbol needs to be actively be translated by an architect into a physical project.

Architects tend to mix up metaphorical and symbolic use of the Heart. Gruen, for example, uses it as a as a metaphor to emphasize there is a right size, a system of circulation, etcetera, but at the same time uses it to project a new social ideal. This is clear for instance in his projects for Fort Worth or Louvain la Neuve. Other architects, such as Bakema, don’t give an image of the heart, but uses the image of a human core, for instance in his students` project for St. Louis, to express the necessity of the right overlapping of society and the city, through the relationships of the three-dimensional design. So he uses an abstract cultural idea, but the final physical form is really very different from the normal functionalist use. I really appreciate this clever attempt of Bakema to translate this theoretical idea, in a far from banal way, to a physical project, which highlights the continuity of CIAM thought even after it’s dismissed.

The idea of the heart continuously plays an important role in discourses on power, and historically it has been alternately used as symbol of oppression and symbol of freedom. In Leiden in 1747, de La Mettrie published the

seminal book l’Homme Machine, in which conceives the man as a machine. Sloterdijk notes about this book that until the 17th century the heart is used as a symbol for the king, because both the heart and the king work in the mode of radiation. Just like heart was considered to pump blood from the centre to the outer limbs without return, so too the power of the king radiated from is throne as middle point to the extremities of his kingdom. With the book l’Homme Machine, de La Mettrie could free the idea of the human body ruled by the heart-king by substituting it for a machinery. Three hundred years later the heart fulfils an opposite function: Gideon considers the heart as a symbol of men’s liberation from the functionalist machine. So in the eighteenth century the machine has to free men from the heart of power, the king, and in the twentieth century it is the heart that has to free the men from the machine.

The image of the heart is still abundantly used and abused. I recently heard that in Dubai someone proposed to use the image of the heart because the heart is the organ that never sleeps, which would make Dubai the city that never sleeps. There are infinite uses of the heart theme, some with a deep meaning, and others as superficial advertisement or even as traditionalist nostalgia.

I found the symbolic use of the heart most interesting. While the organic heart clearly expresses a type of power that is now obsolete or dangerous, the heart as a symbol still expresses the idea of public space as target for the “reform and restructure of the city”. The idea encompasses a right balance between private and public spheres and an ideal overlapping of the social and physical structure of the city. As constituent urban element, elementary and complex symbol, the heart of the city remains a contemporary progressive idea that touches on issues of identity and centrality, but not anymore as the traditionalist metaphor of the powerful centre that generates a strictly hierarchical structure.

LEONARDO ZUCCARO MARCHI

Leonardo Zuccaro Marchi obtained his Diploma at Alta Scuola Politecnica in 2008 with a double Architecture degree (Cum Laude) from Politecnico di Milano and Politecnico di Torino. In 2008 he worked in Croatia and in 2009 at CZA- Cino Zucchi Studio in Milan as architect. He conducted his PhD research entitled "The Heart of the City both in IUAV University in Venice and PhD and at TU Delft. His promotors and copromotors were prof.ir. M. Riedijk, prof.dr. P. Viganó, prof.dr.ir. T.L.P. Avermaete and prof.dr. A. De Magistris.

10 ESSAY CONTEST

B NIEUWS 07 4 MARCH 2013

The neighborhood that dissappeared: Bo

01 KOP

03_AUTEUR

THE NEIGHBORHOOD THA TIM PEETERS, WINNER OF THE B NIEUWS ESSAY CONTEST ARGUES THAT WITH THE CURRENT STATE OF THE BUILDING INDUSTRY, IT BECOMES INCREASINGLY IMPORTANT TO CONSIDER WHAT ARCHITECTURAL PROJECTS SHOULD BE DESTROYED OR NOT BE BUILT.

BY TIM PEETERS Prologue. Abortion: the building that didn’t happen The design proposal for Rotterdam Central Station that won the commission in 2004 included not only the design for the station itself, but also an office (?) tower situated on the triangular square next to the Groothandelsgebouw created by the folding away of the monumental silver roof of the station towards the streetcar tracks at the other side of the plot. Shortly after picking the winning entry the municipality made clear that this tower (and an additional building volume on the Kruisplein) would not be part of the commission, and it disappeared from consecutive drawings.

By not building the tower the municipality saved itself the potential embarrassment of adding even more unmarketable square footage to an already impressive collection of empty buildings in Rotterdam. With no real demand for new space to back up many building projects the city runs the risk of cannibalizing its own programme, as demonstrated by the municipality itself: the rental contract that made the Rotterdam building by the city’s most prodigious son (the largest building under construction site in Europe) happen might have sealed the fate of the Marconi towers, the former municipal headquarters.

The design for the silver roof of the station did not change shape when the tower got cancelled; its sharp top edge and strong diagonal cut straight across the square still at least partly formed by a building that never left the drawing board.

Euthanasia: Bloemenbuurt Heilust, Kerkrade Heilust, Kerkrade-West. A blue-collar neighborhood built to house miners shortly after the Second World War. Small, dark brick row houses and four story apartment buildings without elevators, a number of streets they line

named after flowers (tulip, crocus, poppy, lupine). At least that is how it used to be: the past two years almost all the buildings in the neighborhood have been demolished, the streets simply separating plots of grassland.

Heilust is a thriving community until 1965, when an announcement by then prime minister Joop Den Uyl that coal production in the Netherlands will be ceased heralds forty-five years of decline for Heilust – and indeed large parts of the province of Limburg. Ten years later the last coal cart leaves a Limburg mine, taking an industry that at that point almost seems to be the sole raison d’être for the province with it. Government attempts to find substitutes for the mines and revitalize the economy fail, partly because of the bad economic climate at the end of the seventies, partly because of the government not really trying hard enough. Many communities like Heilust slowly spiral into social and economic poverty: unemployment and a general lack of perspective force those who can to leave – and those who can’t to stay behind in a world slowly falling apart.

In 2010, Kerkrade is amongst those cities most confronted with population decline and ageing in the Netherlands. The municipality launches, besides a citywide planning document, a special master plan for Kerkrade West aimed, essentially, at slimming down or even dismantling over half of the city districts. The document is, slightly ironically, dubbed ‘West wins space’.1 Heilust, being one of the neighborhoods hardest hit by the bad side effects of population decline, is pointed out as one of two pilot areas in the city where measurements against further ghettofication are to be tested out. Euphemistically labelled ‘development’ (the municipality refrains from using negative terminology altogether out of fear of catalysing negative opinion), this exercise basically means that all houses (about 600 in total) on a number of the flower streets have been demolished, leaving only tarmac and grass. In the middle of the newly created green space stand not one but two brand new, run-of-the- mill retirement homes housing many of the former residents of the torn down streets. The space that has been ‘won’ will eventually be transformed into a big park, but the plans to do so are still quite vague: it is ob-

11

AT DISAPPEARED Corner Lupinestraat-Anemonenstraat in Heilust, around 1960.

vious the whole undertaking is primarily one of demolition and not so much (if at all) of creating green space. One wonders how much of the city is going to be left when all is done.

Heilust is not exactly the only shrinking neighborhood in the country, and its elevation to pilot project has sparked nationwide interest. From all over the country city officials have requested tours of the neighborhood – much to the dislike of the municipality of Kerkrade, who does not want to turn Heilust into a human zoo. Nevertheless, local TV station and newspaper initiative mijnheilust.nl openly speculates on Heilust becoming the most well known neighborhood in the country soon.

Relevance The project of adaptation and remediation of the existing urban landscape might prove to be just as important and at least as formative as the construction of new buildings in many Dutch cities the coming decades.

The benefits of the architectural project in general will (and must!) be questioned and challenged; Cedric Price’s maybe you do not need a new house, maybe you need a divorce is more suitable an architectural mantra than ever. This will lead to the cancellation of building projects (abortion), and the demolition of edifices that no longer fulfil a meaningful role (euthanasia). The next generation of architects and urban planners in the Netherlands might become known and be remembered not for what they added to the city, but for what they deliberately didn’t add and – even more radical - for what they consciously subtracted from the urban landscape. In some cases, demolition seems to be a constructive act. Not building, but unbuilding might be the way forward. Less is more indeed – definitely in Heilust.

In the beginning of 2009, American theorist Benjamin Bratton mentioned the notion of a subtractive architecture briefly in his lecture ‘the Program is not on the Floor’. I vaguely remember him propagating an architecture that takes the act of removing just as seriously as that of adding. I wholeheartedly agree: it seems time to seriously develop and test techniques, approaches and design tools specifically aimed at removal and subtraction. The act of demolition, and its design, can and should become just as rich, refined, discussed and, above all, meaningful as the act of building can be but so often isn’t. Michelangelo comes to mind – I saw

the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

As long as the tools for proper analysis of demolition projects are still wanting one can only conclude that the flower streets of Heilust have suffered a rather cruel but inevitable fate. As with recently realised buildings only time will tell how the ‘new’ neighborhood will perform. Has the angel of Heilust been set free?

As for the euthanasia itself, the municipality did take a look at Las Vegas, where they know you say farewell to obsolete buildings with a very loud but dignified bang, but opted for a slower, less spectacular method of demolition for safety’s sake. In a way it would have been a better way to deal with the rich history of the neighborhood to blow it up like that most iconic of US housing projects, St. Louis’s Pruitt-Igoe2 - itself also having become a possible poster child of an obsolete typology. What is certain, however, is that the legacy of the miners and the flower streets will forever be linked to a specific spot in Kerkrade – be it physical or psychological. Let us hope the simple two-story single-family houses with their elongated backyards somehow get imprinted onto the next future. Much like how the shape of the roof of a certain train station still reflects the contours of a high-rise tower that was never there.

Winner B Nieuws Essay Contest 2013 Winner: 'The Neighburhood that Disappeared' Jury comments: original and relevant/urgent topic of ‘subtractive architecture’, strong composition – this ‘catches’ eye & mind of the reader. The essay deals with a surprising choice of projects. The text shows a potential for future architecture criticism.

Honorable mention: 'I Am Because I Do' Jury comments: very strong and clear, rhetorically effective statement, a typical case of “J’accuse.”

B Nieuws wants to thanks all the contestants of the essay contest 2013. The full jury report can be found at bnieuws.wordpress.com.

12 ALUMNI

B NIEUWS 07 4 MARCH 2013

SURRENDERING

TO CHINA

EIGHT YEARS AFTER HIS MOVE TO BEIJING, ARCHITECT JOHN VAN DE WATER PUBLISHED HIS STORY OF BRINGING DUTCH DESIGN TO CHINA. AS A NO-NONSENSE DUTCHMAN, HE SUMMARIZED HIS FIRST YEARS AS AN ARCHITECT IN BEIJING IN THE BOOK’S TELLING TITLE: “YOU CAN’T CHANGE CHINA, CHINA CHANGES YOU”. A YEAR AFTER ITS PUBLICATION, B NIEUWS EDITOR WING WENG CHOSE TO PUT HIS THESIS TO THE TEST AND SPOKE TO VAN DE WATER ABOUT THE CHALLENGES OF WORKING IN CHINA, THE DOWNSIDE OF DUTCH CRITICISM, AND WHAT IT MEANS TO SURRENDER IN ORDER TO WIN.

BY WING (YINJUN WENG) You have been running the Beijing office of NEXT Architects for almost nine years. Do you still collaborate a lot with the Amsterdam office for your projects in China?

It depends on what type of projects we are working on.

Currently, a large share of our Chinese projects is developed under typical Chinese conditions.

They are usually extremely urgent and developed based on a myriad of uncertainties. These projects are done in our Beijing office, as it is simply better equipped to develop these kinds of projects. If we are involved with a more steady or international developer however, the offices develop designs together. Occasionally, I send sketches and ideas back to Amsterdam for their feedback.

The Amsterdam office has more or less developed into a critical mirror for me.

With these projects independently developed in Beijing, do you think NEXT Beijing is turning into a purely Chinese firm?

That is an interesting question. I think the potential for foreign offices in China lies in the fact that they are not completely foreign anymore, but will never be able to become Chinese either.

I believe that as a western architect in China, you ought to get out of your “ivory tower” and allow yourself to be influenced and changed by the context you work in. You need to really try to understand what Chinese people appreciate, or at least develop understanding for it. Only then can you transcend western ideologies and theoretical understanding of China.

In our case, I came to China nine years ago after working in Amsterdam for five years. My time here as an architect is almost double the time I worked in Holland. I am influenced by this environment on a very daily basis.

In that sense, our office, myself included, has grown organically in China. Although I believe we are still foreign, our long embedment here seems to set us apart from many other western practices in China.

NEXT is known to many for its integration of design and

research. Are you also able to incorporate research in your projects in China?

When we just started, we brought our research methodology from Amsterdam and envisioned to put this theoretical thinking in practice in China. It wasn't successful because the theories and research we developed in Europe were hardly applicable here, sometimes even completely not or misunderstood.

The reason may be more simple than obvious. As a western architect, I value rational and analytical thinking. “Thinking and designing with brains,” as a Chinese colleague puts it. But in China, I came to discover that people tend to think and value more with their hearts. I was only able to draw this conclusion after experiencing real construction projects, by going through the whole process of making architecture. For me, this was in itself a research project that cumulated in the book I wrote.

Only now, after nine years in China, we are more extensively setting up a research framework in our Beijing office. I believe only

now we have obtained sufficient experience from building real projects to avoid our research remaining alien and superficial.

And to compare it, in Amsterdam our research mostly enriches our architecture. In China, it's the other way around: here our architecture enriches our research.

The relationship between architects and clients is also described in your book. It seems that Chinese architects mostly serve at the request of their clients, while western architects have a more autonomous role in making design decisions. Has this passive role of architects in China changed over the years?

It has, and it’s still developing.

The China experience in the book starts in 2004 and I believe there have been considerable changes since then. Something very interesting is the emergence of the second generation of Chinese developers, many of whom have studied abroad in prestigious universities, traveled, and basically have visions of what they want. Their world is much

13 larger than that of their precedents, who accept ideas just because they are foreign without much appreciation of architecture as a profession.

At the same time, there is a second generation of architects flourishing in China as well.

This is an incredibly intelligent group of architects who are obviously able to understand their own culture much better than western architects working in China will ever be able to.

When educated abroad, they harvest the great potential of being able to combine different design approaches.

You titled your book “You Can’t Change China, China Changes You”. In your case, do you think you fought enough to make a change? Or did you surrender too quickly?

There is a Chinese saying: “Sometimes in order to win, you need to surrender.” We don’t have this concept in Europe and it seems like you always need to fight. So it’s difficult to accept that you may first need to give something up in order to get somewhere.

Have you surrendered enough to win now? (smiling) Winning is not the right word. It also depends on your criteria. If you are looking at the amount of projects we are executing now, I think what we are doing is increasingly appreciated by our clients and users. We have around thirty people in our Beijing office now and I still have the idea that we are just gradually developing in China. And any possible development can be related back to the moment I was able to open myself up, let go of all the things I have learned, and accept things I was taught not to accept.

Do you still wish to change China?

I recently had a meeting with my Chinese publisher, who told me that there was a biography of Jiang Zemin [former president of China, red.] after he stepped down from office. It was titled ‘I Changed China’. My publisher smiled at me, referring to the

title of my book 'You Can't Change China, China Changes You'.

Obviously I am not comparable to anyone that influential. I’m just a western architect in this incredibly big country with an incredibly long history. I believe there is a Buddhist belief that everything you do has some influence, in one way or another. So what I do doesn’t necessarily need to bring change, it could also be a contribution. The idea of radical change is again a very western concept.

You have met with Wang Shu, the first Chinese architect to win the Pritzker Prize. What was your impression of him?

I met him already before he won the prize. It’s both beautiful and distressing to see that the prize has projected him as such an important person that he hardly has any time to work the way he used to. He had a relatively small office in his campus in Hangzhou.

In the morning, he always worked by himself and prepared things for his employees who came in the afternoon to help him out. He was really careful with his time, his peace and silence. This is of course changed by all the attention drawn to him.

Now, he is on national television, explaining architecture to ordinary Chinese people.

What is your take on Chinese architecture identity?

I think China has space for many more different architectural approaches and identities. A small country like Holland is internationally renowned for its diverse architecture. If all Chinese architects start having different points of view, China would become incredibly rich in architecture.

This would also result in more diverse Chinese cities, rather than cultural identity being limited to taglines like “pier city” or “flower city”. The intriguing question is where to start developing from?

It’s not always easy, because so many cultural heritages were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, and hundreds of new cities are built from scratch. It is intriguing because of the challenge. It's too simple to instantly acquire a “modern identity” as a new city. It is far more interesting and potentially valuable to develop from local context and allow urban space to transform organically.

“SOMETIMES IN ORDER TO WIN, YOU NEED TO SURRENDER. WE DON’T HAVE THIS CONCEPT IN EUROPE AND IT SEEMS LIKE YOU ALWAYS NEED TO FIGHT.”

Wang Shu seems to be very concerned about the history and identity of Chinese cities.

Do you think he’s making an impact on this issue after winning the prize?

I think he is, but it is difficult to measure how much. The Pritzker is an international prize. From a western perspective, Wang Shu is appreciated because he is doing something radically different from most Chinese architects. He wasn’t interested in designing Central Business Districts or large office towers. The prize has aroused some interest, at least with certain clients, in the idea of using local materials, building techniques, and questioning local identities.

I feel that there is space in China for this new thinking and experimenting with new interpretations. It is because of fierce competition, but, perhaps surprisingly, also because of the potential value of lack of criticism.

For architects, this is especially exciting, for we are seemingly limited in this kind of open exploration in the West. Places like Holland, with a strong historical identity, are easily overcrowded with critics. There are so many examples. The renovation of Rijksmuseum for instance, was recently subject to a large amount of discussion and

debates. Even after its completion, there seems to be more critique than appreciation. We have always learned to have an opinion in the West, but too often it’s criticism for criticism’s sake.

Talking about other western practices in China, I read that you are living in Linked Hybrid – a residential building designed by Steven Holl. What do you think of his design?

I like it a lot. It is amazing what he achieved, especially if you compare it to other residential compounds in Beijing. But I also must be critical now. (laughing) There is a large discrepancy between the design ambition and what is actually achieved. His idea of linking all the residential buildings together, introducing public life on higher floors, and creating a three-dimensional urban space is poorly appreciated in China. It simply does not suit the Chinese notion of public space. They prefer quiet places to live: if I am living on the 20th floor, why should there be a theater next to my door? For years now, the bridges between the buildings are actually closed.

Looking back at the years in Delft, what do you miss in your education?

What I discovered is that I hardly learned to design with uncertainties. During my studies in Delft, I learned to design with constraints, instead of parameters.

Dealing with uncertainties is something I learned in China. It is difficult to imagine now that I worked a whole year on my graduation project, developed step by step and valued mainly on the rational and analytical thinking behind it. All conditions during the design process where static, stable - far from reality in China. But paradoxically, it is exactly the confrontation with this other reality that became the foundation of our development in China.

John van de Water graduated as an architect from TU Delft in 1999. He co-founded NEXT architects in Amsterdam. In 2004, he moved to China and set up the NEXT architects annex office in Beijing, China.

For more info: nextarchitects-china.com

14 FORUM

B NIEUWS 07 4 MARCH 2013

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Deep-rooted sentiments? Interesting views? Use forum as your discussion platform! Send your articles and letters to bnieuws-bk@tudelft.nl.

React on bnieuws.wordpress.com!

THE QUESTION OF ETHICS PETER SMISEK

B*tch ‘n’ moan There are plenty of opportunities to learn things about real life, and I’m beginning to think school is not one of them. While I may have taken Dutch lessons in high school since I was eleven, I am ashamed to say my awesome Nederlands came mostly from watching Sponegbob SquarePants and Yu-Gi-Oh. And it’s not only skills, but also life lessons that you pick up from non-educational platforms. Who could forget that Simpsons episode, where President Clinton delivers this valuable moral: “Keep on complaining until your dreams come true.” And to a certain extent he’s right. Don’t complaint for sympathy’s sake, but if you can genuinely help something by filing a complaint, do it.

Take every other candy/drink/ coffee dispenser that doesn’t work.

For the longest time, I’ve been walking around, throwing murderous glances at the broken automaton, passively-aggressively slamming my debit card into its barren depths and sighing more deeply than a parent whose eldest son has decided to study architecture instead of law or medicine, hoping it will one day realize the error of its ways. It took me more than five years to gather up the courage and walk down to the service point to finally file a complaint about the two worst offenders. Within two weeks, they were fixed. Within other two, one of them stopped working (again).

Nevertheless, I have discovered a new secret power, one that requires a great responsibility.

Naturally, the next chance I got to complain, I didn’t, but only because I’d like teachers of that one course think they have at least one fan (one must be mindful of their feelings too).

At the moment, some of the staff and students are exposed to a course on intellectual integrity, the ethics of publishing. To protect oneself from bad press caused by plagiarism and the like, serves understandable institutional self-interests. But these interests arose through a university wide initiative, and did not ostensibly provoke more localized reflections at BK – such as: what is plagiarism, in architecture? What does it mean to copy, or take on board someone else’s design, in the absence of clearly established canons of crediting? And is it ethical to do so?

This is hardly the only avenue for ethics to enter architecture. As a client oriented discipline, frequently enough in the service of a public, architecture is open to appraisal and critique from professional ethics.

Where are the attempts to bring that ethics into BK today?

At a time when professional ethics, questions of rightness and responsibility, have entered the core curricula of aerospace, civil, and 3MI engineers at Delft’s Masters program, the idea that architects ought to engage with a systematic, trained reflection on questions of ethics has met skepticism, if not resistance. A special conference calculated to question that situation was held in Delft in 2008, entitled ‘Ethics of Architecture and Urbanism: a missing link in the curriculum?’. Five years on, ethics is still lost in the background of other concerns. Is that a refusal to take the question seriously? Or is it taking quite a strong stance on it? If so, who is taking it?

At the same time, ethics is certainly not entirely absent from the studios.

Students are happy to use terms such as ‘post-occupancy analysis’, there are P5s with design attention to the needs of the handicapped or societally disadvantaged, and a thousand more details and themes that, on the face of them, look ethical. But where is the overarching context that can

provide the conceptual tools to help students deal with such topics adequately – not to say, profoundly?

gained a maturity level to become a prestigious monograph with Wiley-Blackwell.

Apparently there is a strong interest to raise ethical questions – but an equally strong reluctance to deal with such questions in greater seriousness. People are willing to quote; B Nieuws itself (Nov 2010) happily featured on its title page in capitals, ‘A university should never be a place where just skills and styles are taught. The university should bring up fundamental beliefs and ethics in architecture.’ But those words were those of an outsider, and they were put in quotation marks for a reason.

Are there any efforts to make good on such words?

It’s this kind of development – long term, earnest, searching, and serious – that could be really interesting to try out with Delft’s architecture students and staff.

What’s needed is not a blanket set of indoctrination lessons, of being told as to what the right and wrong things in architecture are, but a series of encounters in which these questions are probed, tested, and refined -- no matter how primitive or silly they appear at first. There’s no other way. We really have to start from the ground up. Here is one question: Can buildings be evil – or only the architects behind them? What harm can architecture inflict on people, beyond physical harm we are familiar with in building law?

Do we even have the right vocabulary to talk and reflect on such harm?

There’s perhaps a latent suspicion that ethical training would detract from architects’ core curriculum. If so, that is itself open to ethical scrutiny.

What is ‘core’ in the first place, and what does it take for something to have earned its place there? Why, for instance, do students get trained in brands of CAD software that, by the time they enter the market, has met the fate of obsolescence? [1] There is no similar sense in which ethics is subject to obsolescence.

What ethics is subject to, however, is the question of relevance. The precise varieties of where ethics enters architecture – over and above the professional dealings with clients alluded to before – need probing, need discussion in the classroom, need searching and skeptical questions, reactions, and rejections from the student body itself. The "ethics for engineers" material used at Delft’s engineering faculties was developed between their students and philosophy staff over an extensive period of mutual probing and refinement. Ten years on, the material

Hard questions require hard thinking, and hard thinking requires public exposure. Unless we push for venues to voice such questions in public, they will never garner the attention they deserve. Ethics is more than a question, and it’s time it got a bit more of an answer at Delft.

Stefan Koller is a PhD researcher at Delft’s philosophy section, and part of a team that brings an international conference and summer school on architectural ethics to Delft in the summer of 2013.

[1] See the article ‘The Next Generation of Obsolete Professionals’, published at Bimstop, Feb 7, 2013

ANNA WOJCIK

But now I shall unleash my powers again. How is it that our faculty, which aims to be sustainableh does not have proper recycling facilities? Paper bins are nice, but what about glass, plastics and biodegradables? It might not be required by the law, but shouldn’t we try to go above and beyond that. Seriously! Can somebody do this already? Or at least give me a valid reason why this isn’t already in place. (Inb4 Vitra doesn’t make recycling bins)

WHAT’S THE PLACE OF ETHICS IN ARCHITECTURE TODAY? DELFT’S ARCHITECTURE FACULTY HAS, BY ACTIONS RATHER THAN WORDS, APPEARS SEVERAL STANCES ON THIS QUESTION OVER THE PAST YEARS. IT’S WORTH LOOKING AT THEM.

STREETS OF BK CITY 15 IN EACH EDITION, WE ASK STUDENTS AND TEACHERS IN THE STREETS OF BKCITY A QUESTION. THIS TIME WE ASKED THEM:

WHAT IS PLAGIARISM IN ARCHITECTURE?

Darlene Tsai, recent bsc-graduate It’s hard to say when something is plagiarism, because you never make something completely new. I think it’s really plagiarism if you copy something directly, without improving it to make it fit to a specific environment.

Rohan Varna, msc4 I saw a recent example of Chinese developers making a direct replica of Zaha Hadid’s work. That is a real example of plagiarism. But in most cases there is a fine line between plagiarism and being influenced by someone.

Pim Severien, Bsc4 Prosecuting and punishing copiers within architecture is too difficult to prove, so its not worth the effort. When is something authentic or not?

There’s not one single answer.

COLOFON B Nieuws is a four-weekly periodical of the Faculty of Architecture, TU Delft.

Faculty of Architecture, BK City, Delft University of Technology Julianalaan 134, 2628 BL Delft room BG.Midden.140

Ebru Tung, Msc1 Copying someone else work shouldn’t be allowed, but its not something that can be easily proven.

bnieuws-bk@tudelft.nl b-nieuws.bk.tudelft.nl bnieuws.wordpress.com

Cover illustration Bangkok Adaptive City

Editorial Board Edo Beerda Yinjun Weng Manon Schotman Ivan Thung Daphne Bakker Sue van de Giessen

Contributors Tim Peeters Anna Wójcik Robert Nottrot Peter Smisek

Sebastiaan Prause, Msc4 It’s hard to define copying. I do know an example of a student at the faculty who copied an existing building for a project.

In the context of education it’s really plagiarism, but in the building practice I think it’s a different story, because buildings don’t have patents.

Benjamin Groothuijse If something is designed for a certain place in time and space, then it can’t and shouldn’t be copied. It won’t fit anywhere else. Is it plagiarism when you copy something and adapt it to a new situation?

Susan Sontag wrote that within literature we’re continuously rewriting the same story. All her books are made up of all the other books she has read. I think it can be applied to architecture as well.

Charlotte Guy, Msc2 When someone takes advantage of someone’s intellectual property and doesn’t give them credit for their ideas, that can be defined as plagiarism.

Its really hard with architecture, because within this field, plagiarism can be unintentional. You can research historical or contemporary designs and they can be sitting in your subconscious and then come out in your own design without you even realizing it.

Harish Ramakrishnan, msc4 What differentiates copying from influencing is time. If you copy something after 200 years, you call it influence. If you copy something after a couple of months, then it’s copying.

Editorial Advice Board Marcello Soeleman Robert Nottrot Linda de Vos, Pierijn van der Putt

Next deadline March 8, 12.00 PM B Nieuws 8, April 2013 Illustrations only in *.tif, *.eps or *.jpg format, min 300 dpi

Print Drukkerij Tan Heck, Delft

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The editorial board has the right to shorten and edit articles, or to refuse articles that have an insinuating, discriminatory or vindicatory character, or contain unnecessary coarse language.

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AGENDA B NIEUWS 07 4 MARCH 2013

WEEK 10 Lezing

Thomas Dieben (denieuwegeneratie) 05.03.13 Dieben werd opgeleid in Parijs en aan de TU Delft, waar hij cum laude afstudeerde. Hij werkte bij Jean Nouvel en Claus en Kaan en richtte in 2009 Denieuwegeneratie op. Dit Amsterdamse ontwerpbureau is onder meer varantwoordelijk voor diverse spraakmakende woningontwerpen en de recente verbouwingen van De Kleine Komedie en De Appel Arts Centre.

Amsterdam / De Brakke Grond / 20:15 / € 7,50 arcam.nl

Lezing

The Cycle of Japan: Yushi Uehara 07.03.13 The Cycle of Japan is de titel van een nieuwe reeks Capita Selecta in de Academie van Bouwkunst.

De reeks wordt georganiseerd door Jarrik Ouburg, hoofd van de opleiding architectuur, die in Japan heeft gewoond en gewerkt. De centrale vraag in de vijf lezingen is wat we in Nederland van de Japanse conditie kunnen leren?

Amsterdam /Academie van Bouwkunst / 20:00 - 21:30 / English spoken ahk.nl

Lecture

Atmospheric Fog 08.03.13 Stefano Graziani is a photographer living and working in Trieste. Trained as an architect, he teaches the history and technique of photography at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Trieste and at the Forma Foundation in Milan. He is a regular contributor to architecture magazines and other publications. He is the cofounder of the architecture magazine San Rocco.

BK City /The Berlage / 14:00 16:00 theberlage.nl

SPOT !

T LIGH

WEEK 11 Lezing

Duurzaamheid die de architectuur bevordert 12.03.13 Dinsdag 12 maart wordt de volgende interactieve lezing van de groep 'Passie bestaande woonomgeving' gehouden. Deze lezing zal gegeven worden door Arjan van Timmeren. Deze interactieve lezing gaat verder op het onderwerp van de vorige bijeenkomst: 'Duurzaamheid die de architectuur bevordert'.

Georganiseerd door Elgar Slooten en Hans Trip, studenten van de groep 'Passie bestaande woonomgeving'.

Faculteit OTBM / zaal J / 17:00 -19:00 bk.tudelft.nl

Lezing

The Cycle of Japan: Yushi Uehara 14.03.13 The Cycle of Japan is de titel van een nieuwe reeks Capita Selecta in de Academie van Bouwkunst.

Vanavond Hidetoshi Ohno (hoogleraar Department of Architecture, Universiteit van Tokyo) Amsterdam /Academie van Bouwkunst / 20:00 - 21:30 / English spoken ahk.nl

Psychology behind Architecture There is a growing interest in the field focussed on the relation between people and their surroundings. To answer this need, a week full of Psychology behind Architecture takes place from 18 - 22 March. There will be eight lectures on the application of psychology in architectural design. From monday to thursday,

WEEK 12 Thesis Defence

Passive Houses 20.03.13 Thesis defence by Mr. E. Mlecnik: "Innovation development of highly energy-efficient housing: opportunities and challenges related to the adoption of passive houses".

Aula TU Delft / 15:00 bk.tudelft.nl

Lecture

The 10th Peer Review Colloquium 22.03.13 The Department of architecture will hold the 10th Peer Review Colloquium, on March 22nd 2013. The Presentations will be given by: Esin Kömez: An Inquiry into Architectural Contextualism Negar Sanaan Bensi: Rethinking the Architecture of the Bazaar Karan August: Project from Bad Architecture; cultivate aesthetic judgment Ana Conceição: From city's station to station city: an integral approach to the redevelopment of station areas BK City / Lecture room Q / 11:45 - 17:30 bk.tudelft.nl

two lectures a day will discuss a

wide variety of subjects. On Friday, the week will be concluded with a collaborative workshop with the University of Amsterdam and Leiden University. More information on the Facebook Event page.

Lectures: BK City / Various locations / 12:30 - 14:30 Workshop: BK City / Zaal F / 09:00 - 18:00 / RSVP -psychologybehindarchitecture@ gmail.com

WEEK 13 Symposium

Ruimte Denken 27.03.2012 Een symposium over nieuwe inzichten die vrijdenkers kunnen bieden bij ruimtelijke ontwikkeling. Het symposium Ruimte Denken geeft het woord aan architect/kunstenaar John Körmeling, Paul Roncken, landschapsarchitect en verbonden aan de Wageningen UR als wetenschapper en docent, Arie Voorburg, specialist in culturele en economische waardestromen, Rudy Stroink, onorthodox ontwikkelaar en filosofe Joke J. Hermsen.

Ede / Frisogebouw / 10:00 - 16:45 / studenten € 25 / RSVP ruimte-denken.nl

TENTOONSTELLINGEN Mike Kelley

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam / till 01.04.2013

From Holland With Love Nederlands Fotomuseum / 09.03.2013 - 20.05.2013

Junya Ishigami de Singel / till 16.06.2013

POWER / Prix Pictet 2012 Huis Marseille / 22.03.2013 - 16.06.2013