C O R R U P T E D S P A C E # 9
CORRUPTED SPACE Exploring corrupted spaces, the year theme of INSIDE, reveals the idea that in most built environment elements of corruptedness can be determined. Due to crises and other unexpected changes or circumstances, like changing habits and trends, spaces often lose their original integrity and get corrupted and do not necessarily function as they were meant to be. Even places that seem to function properly, like shopping malls and airport terminals, can only uphold that image by manipulating and conditioning the users and, even more important, by excluding the ones that do not fit the ideal picture. All in all: there is no such thing as uncorrupted space. These are some of the insights the students gained by exploring the theme of space corruption during their travels through The Netherlands, The Balkans and Germany and by invited artists and architects, like David Helbich wand Rene Boer (Failed Architecture) who shared their views on the topic. Besides, together with the German architect and scenographer Thomas Rustemeyer the first year students observed the public space of The Hague to discover aspects of corruptness. And in the Studio ‘The Floating University’ the students dealt with utopian corruptions of public space; what happens if self-evident systems like the supply of water, energy, food, mobility and waste get corrupted and appear not to be reliable partners in the design of the built environment? At INSIDE we do not denounce corrupted situations or initiate a Don Quichote battle, on the contrary, we take this 'dirty reality' as a point of departure for designing spatial change. The basic assumption is that especially in adapting the built environment to its real circumstances a society can show it's unique strength and creativity. Spatial designers play a crucial role in developing that strength and by implementing these as tools for the transformation of the urban fabric. While guiding the students in discovering and mapping the corrupted space of The Hague, Thomas Rustemeyer himself explored the situation around the INSIDE Studio. Rustemeyer mapped the 'ally-relationship' INSIDE has with the backside of a local sushi restaurant. His drawings show how the kitchen staff uses and pollutes the ally during pause and how they claim the space with their crappy furniture and left behind cigarette butts. After a first year filled with encounters, assignments and confrontations, the students return to their native countries where they define an assignment with which they complete their course at INSIDE by the end of the second year.
This year we proudly present 12 graduating students: Janneke Derksen - Farah Zamri - Shinyoung Kang - Cam Liu - Goda Verikaite - Yu-Chin Ku - Zara Bennett - Jo Basset - Jaja Puapoomcharoen - Jinaa Baek - Dylana Kim - Eva Gonzalez, all started their graduation projects from the 'real world' and its challenging conditions. Their commitment resulted in a wide variety of projects reconsidering the built environment on many scales and in many countries. From the intimacy of the South Korean family home, where playful furniture can relieve the immense pressure on young adults to the unexpected utopian qualities of 'soviet style' mass housing areas in Lithuania. And from the revitalization of the typical Aruban shacks to the challenge of repositioning the soon to be unemployed highway gas stations in the Netherlands. I hope you enjoy this wealth of student proposals for spatial change that are included in this magazine and I am especially grateful to all our tutors, advisors, lecturers and facilitators who supported its creation.
INSIDE Magazine 2017/2018 #9 Social and Cultural Challenges in Interior Architecture
Hans Venhuizen Head of INSIDE, master interior architecture
C O R R U P T E D S P A C E # 9
INDEX INSIDE PROFILE Social and cultural challenges in interior architecture
01 - 03
STUDIO THE NEW WORKSPACE Studio The New Workspace with Studio Makkink&Bey
04 - 08
Jo Basset & Zara Bennett
06
FLOWS Superuse Studios
09 - 10
STUDIO THE SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE Studio the school of the future with MVRDV
11 - 14
Jinaa Baek & Yuan-Chun Liu
12
The school as an adventorous city - Text by Daniele Valentino
15 - 17
Interview with Vincent de Rijk by Laura Frias & Hande Öğün
18 - 19
Yu-Chin Ku & Janneke Derksen STUDIO CORRUPTED SPACE Studio Corrupted Space at Floating University Berlin with Cloudcollective and raumlaborberlin
18
20 - 23
Interview with Katherine Ball by Laura Frias & Hande Öğün
24 - 25
Studio process and projects
26 - 29
Eva Gonzalez & Dylana Kim
26
Where the water flows Text by Jack Bradwell, illustrations by Guy Field
30 – 32
Interview with Gerjan Streng by Laura Frias & Hande Öğün
33 - 34
Corrupted Space Parade:
35
The Oberhaus with REFUNC and kitev
35 - 36
Shinyoung Kang & Pichaya Puapoomcharoen
36
Corrupt the space with Thomas Rustemeyer
37
René Boer and David Helbich
38
Corrupted observations
39
TRAVEL Travel with Hans Venhuizen Goda Verikaite & Farah Zamri
41 - 44 42
LEARNING BY TEACHING
45
USTA
46
TUTORS
47 - 49
CORRUPTED SPACE
cover
COLOPHON
cover
TUTORS
Lucas Verweij SKILLS – Tutor presentation skills
Is a cultural anthropologist and works at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment of the TU-Delft and the Design Academy in Eindhoven. He explores creative links between ethnographic fieldwork and the design field of (interior) architecture, urban design and urbanism. His main interests are in the anthropology of urban space, the meanings and practices of home, narrative mapping and the relations between architecture/ planning and the everyday.
Leeke Reinders SKILLS – Tutor observation
Mauricio Freyre, audio visual artist and filmmaker, that uses the film medium to explore structures and systems of thought behind the constructed and projected, reflecting on the mechanisms of cinema within the process of creation and representation. His projects and films have been exhibited at Rencontres Internationales, Haus der Kulturen, Fundación Telefonica, TENT, W139, Nederlands FF, FIC Valdivia, etc.
Mauricio Freyre SKILLS – Tutor film narratives
Designer, Writer, Teacher Lucas Verweij is a versatile man who moves across design in all its facets. He worked for the Dutch design institute and was dean of the Academy for Architecture and Urban Design. In the last decade Verweij has lived in Berlin, where he was a teacher and acts as initiator and curator of events. He writes for ‘Dezeen’ and published a book about design.
Re-Connecting People and Material We create pilot projects in architecture, interior design and public spaces. By changing people’s perception of functionality we try to find solutions which are within anyone’s reach, we want to change your way of thinking. Functions in architecture and
Denis Oudendijk & Jan Körbes REFUNC SKILLS – Tutor Hands on Design
USTA is an independent experimental platform developing tools of learning and unlearning, established by Arvand Pourabbasi and Klodiana Millona, alumni ofinside: master of interior architecture. USTA- master, expert, old hand, workman, craftsman, adept, artist, connoisseur, constructor, dab, dabster, hand, journeyman, proficient, shark, whizz* *Babylon Turkish-English Dictionary Definition(last visited 25th august,2017
Klodiana Millona & Arvand Pourabbasi – USTA SKILLS – Tutor Usta
design are temporary and often have a limited lifespan. By shifting functions between objects, components or spaces, we are questioning the standard design approach where form follows function. It is this approach where our method meets the goals of circulair thinking. By shifting functionality of existing objects, components or spaces we try to achieve an endless lifespan.
Vincent de Rijk has been working as an industrial designer, furniture maker and model builder for more than 20 years. He is trained at the Academy for Industrial Design in Eindhoven where he graduated in 1986 and started his Werkplaats Vincent de Rijk in 1987. He became famous with a series of bowls in ceramic with polyester resin and realized many architectural models, primarily for OMA.
Vincent de Rijk SKILLS – Tutor model making
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Royal Academy of Art, The Hague www.enterinside.nl
COLOPHON INSIDE Magazine #9 Is the ninth publication by INSIDE Master Interior Architecture 2017/2018 INSIDE Master Interior Architecture Royal Academy of Art Prinsessegracht 4 2514 AN The Hague www.kabk.nl www.enterinside.nl h.venhuizen@kabk.nl l.vandenberg@kabk.nl Editors/Contributors: Hans Venhuizen (Head INSIDE) Anne Hoogewoning (Tutor THEORY programme) Lotte van den Berg (Coordinator INSIDE) Student Editorial team: Laura Frias Muñoz del Cerro Hande Öguñ Graphic Design: Dana Doorenbos Nina van Tuikwerd Design office KABK Graduating students 2017/2018: Jo Basset Zara Bennett Yu-Chin Ku Goda Verikaite Farah Zamri Jinaa Baek Janneke Derksen Eva Gonzalez Shinyoung Kang Dylana Kim Pichaya Puapoomcharoen Yuan-Chun Liu First year students: I-Chieh Liu Daniele Valentino Jack Bardwell Laura Frias Muñoz del Cerro Hande Öguñ Lucinda Zhang Yunkyung Lee Lotti Gostic Adriel Quiroz Silva Printing: Lenoirschuring INSIDE would like to thank: Herman Hertzberger
David Helbich René Boer Kay Wilson Lorraine Wittenberg Jero Papierwarenfabriek De Binnenstad garage Den Haag Paladin Studios Studio Duel Tiddo de Ruiter Repro– van de Kamp Concreet Design Studio Hendriksen Copyright INSIDE, KABK The Hague/ The Netherlands, June 2018 Most photos were made by students and staff of INSIDE. Exceptions are: Profile picture Fokke Moerel: © Allard van der Hoek REFUNC images – Ishka Michocka As it was not possible to find all the copyright holders of the photos in this publication, INSIDE invites interested parties to contact INSIDE.
“’Corruption through Fiction’ by Jack Bardwell. A first year student project at the site of The Floating University, Berlin led by raumlaborberlin. Participants wore headphones and simple costumes. While following the story’s protagonist through the space, they were transported into the character’s world through an accompanying audio. Along the journey, participants experienced the character’s struggle to break out of their everyday routine and discover new realms.”
INSIDE – Master in Interior Architecture at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague Social and cultural challenges in Interior Architecture INSIDE is a master’s course for interior architects who start every assignment by conducting a wide-ranging exploration of a spatial context undergoing change. Wideranging here means that through observation, research and theoretical study, students chart and analyse a whole array of issues that are relevant to the spatial change that the context is undergoing. That wide range consists not only of spatial aspects but also of social, historical and ecological issues at play in the wider surroundings. After setting up and carrying out their investigation, the INSIDE students hone their skills in using the acquired knowledge to determine essential qualities that are of decisive importance for the spatial changes taking place. They then learn to incorporate those qualities in a spatial proposal grounded in a realistic perspective and in their social implications From inside to outside The term INSIDE not only specifies the space in which and on which interior architects work but also indicates the mentality with which they do it. These designers engage fully with society and have a keen awareness of social, economic and technological changes. They are capable of using their position to shape the relation between the space that relates most directly to people and the world that encompasses that specific context. For an interior architect, ‘inside’ is never isolated but always connected to ‘outside’.
Cultural urgency A focus on the cultural and social challenges that face designers brought INSIDE to formulate a number of principles that determine the nature of the study course. For instance, at INSIDE we initially work on projects concerning spatial change with an explicit social relevance and, moreover, a significant cultural urgency. For instance, a student charted from a variety of perspectives the history of a mountain village in China threatened with abandonment. Drawing on her analysis, she then proposed interventions at the scale of the economic and collective places of encounter. These interventions enable the village to make better use of its resources. At the same time, a tight-knit community forms around the new collective places of encounter, reducing the necessity to relocate to big cities. By approaching the spatial and social issues in the village in an integrated manner, this student creates new collective places. In this way she succeeds in assuming the role of bridge builder between research, design and practice. Voyage of discovery The interior architect who graduates from INSIDE displays a sense of connection with ‘the urgencies and
INSIDE magazine cover 2016 – 2017
challenges of contemporary society’ not only in the nature of the projects he or she does but also in how he operates. This designer does not approach a spatial context in isolation, as though it were an unrelated assignment or a tabula rasa, but always tackles it in relation to existing patterns of use and current occupants, and in relation to its wider context. An extended exploration of the characteristics of the spatial context undergoing change therefore forms an integral aspect of the design process. INSIDE sees plenty of opportunities for designers who take responsibility for the society in which they live and work, a responsibility that can express itself in various ways: from the enthusiastic idealism of the designer who dreams up visionary plans for a possible sustainable world, to the socially responsible commitment of the pragmatic designer who devises solutions for current urgencies.
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The architects at SUPERUSE have been involved in the course at INSIDE from the very start. In all their work they acknowledge their responsibility for the ecological dimension of spatial interventions. The real world The relation with the real world is expressed in all parts of the INSIDE course and thus certainly in the choice of architects and offices that head the core studios. After all, they represent that real world and draw naturally from their practices in choosing real contexts and approaches as the basis for every studio project. Among the studio tutors at INSIDE are designers from MVRDV and OMA.
INSIDE PROFILE
To emphasize the relevance of the surrounding world to interior design, INSIDE started by embracing the motto ‘Design for the Real World’. This motto references a 1971 publication by the Austrian-American product designer and tutor Victor Papanek. Some forty years ago, Papanek sketched a picture of a practice he detested, in which designers produced useless, attention-grabbing, polluting, purely commercial and even dangerous products. INSIDE feels an affiliation with the line of reasoning developed by Papanek for product designers and translated its principles to the world of spatial design within which we now find ourselves. In this way, INSIDE searches for the topicality and urgency of interior architecture in the ‘real world’, and thus for the contemporary cultural and social challenges for the interior architect.
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By focusing on urgent themes affecting society, we highlight issues in today’s world that are also relevant to current professional discourse. As far as the intended research and results are concerned, students are encouraged to think beyond what is possible. Idealism, imagination and sense of reality must find the right balance at the Royal Academy of Fine Art, where challenging the impossible is an everyday ambition. INSIDE aims to educate interior architects as autonomous minds, working in an applied context, who succeed in deploying the built environment as material for the imagination. They are designers who explore with an organic intelligence and act on the strength of a strong sense of responsibility to improve the built environment spatially, and thus also socially. The interior space INSIDE focuses on design with social relevance, hence we do not respect the boundaries of specific physical or programmatic areas of work but, instead, concentrate on current thematic issues such as: changes in the health care system; the rise in the ageing population; the consequences of ‘the new world of work’; vacancy of office and retail space; changing lifestyles; the industrialization of the food industry; attention for schooling and education; and increasing importance
Klodiana Millona - The unfinished house, What if this was great, 2017
have become more vocal, and no longer consist of individuals but they consist of professionally organized collectives that cause the need to approach social and spatial issues in an integrated manner and not in isolation. More than has been the case up to now, commissioning in these processes entails working together with various parties with various interests. INSIDE attaches great importance to the skill of future interior architects in being able to explore such processes and, within them, to be able to define relevant interventions. At INSIDE, entrepreneurial skills stand for the successful running of a design office as well as instigating processes at the personal initiative of the designer. For INSIDE, the interior architect of the future is someone who, when commissions for desirable or even necessary spatial changes are not forthcoming, is capable of initiating them himself.
INSIDE PROFILE
The structure of our course The INSIDE course is structured in a similar way to a research and design office. The main features of the course are the Studios in which students complete the entire process of a research and design project: orientation, research (through design), analysis, Arena at State of Design Berlin, June 2017, photo by Ishka Michocka concept development, design (through research), presentation and evaluation. In the first year students through desire and necessity of self-organization. are allotted four to eight weeks (comparable to The spatial and social impact of these issues manifests a competition submission) or eighteen weeks itself in all areas of work of the interior architect. And (comparable to a regular commission) for the main moreover, students from countries all over the world at projects in the Studios. Within the research and design INSIDE prove capable of putting forward relevant social process, various aspects are explored in depth in four issues with a spatial component and with a cultural parallel programmes: Theory, Flows, Skills and Travel. urgency we are unfamiliar with in the Netherlands, such These programmes form an integral part of the design as the seemingly unstoppable urbanization now taking process in practice, but they are given added emphasis place in China. INSIDE does not educate students to during the INSIDE course in relation to the Studio work exclusively in a Dutch spatial context. By enabling projects, and are supervised by specialist tutors. In this students to ‘pick up’ projects in their native countries way, the analysis of the dynamic nature of a spatial and to develop them at INSIDE for their graduation, context undergoing change is scrutinized closely in we open the door for an exchange of international Flows, while the various theoretical aspects of a project experiences and mutual cultural influencing.
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Entrepreneurs and instigators Within the nature of commissions available in interior architecture, the highlighting of social relevance and cultural urgency in design projects is not always apparent; in fact, they often recede into the background. In such cases, we educate INSIDE students to enrich existing projects with that relevance and urgency or to take the initiative in defining such assignments for themselves. The role of the interior architect as a connector and bridge builder between research, design and practice would seem to be more relevant than ever. It is a practice in which citizens
Sisi Li - Reactivate the Hutong, 2016
Tutors 2017-2018 Studio Makkink&Bey – Jurgen Bey & Chester Chuang MVRDV – Fokke Moerel, Aser Giménez-Ortega, Mick van Gemert Superuse Studios – Junyuan Chen Raumlaborberlin – Benjamin Foerster-Baldenius Anne Hoogewoning and Louise Schouwenberg Cloud Collective – Gerjan Streng Samira Boon Barend Koolhaas Erik Jutten Hans Venhuizen
Studio The Studios form the backbone of the course, where students cover the entire process of orientation on the research and design of a selected spatial context undergoing change, research (through design), analysis, concept development, design (through research), presentation and evaluation. In the studios the students work on a concrete project under the supervision of a renowned designer, or under the supervision of a team assembled by this designer. The project assignment is determined by the studio tutor in consultation with the head of the course. The project can be purely academic in character or it may relate directly to current projects within the tutor’s private practice.
Exam 2017-2018 David Mulder – XML Architects
Theory At INSIDE, research means deepening understanding, strengthening basic and essential research skills, and developing an individual approach to research themes. That is done by enabling students to conduct as much independent theoretical research as possible. Theoretical research here is taken to mean: systematic, critical reflection on the basis of a concrete question and definition of problem by consulting literature and other sources, with the aim of acquiring knowledge that offers answers to the question and problem posed. Skills Skills are advanced competences and techniques that enable students to carry out projects within the Studios more proficiently. INSIDE does not educate interior architects to cover a strictly defined field but, instead, focuses on the position that architects, responsible for the space that people relate to most directly as users of space, adopt in a process of spatial change. The skills are offered in such a way that students learn to practice them to such an extent that they can refine them on their own. Travel At INSIDE the basis of every design lies in observing, researching and analyzing a situation. The best attitude for doing that is to travel to places and thus experience ‘a tremendous sense of liberation and, at the same time, to be very aware of all the dangers and limitations that surround you’. (Lebbeus Woods, as quoted in an interview with Jan Jongert). At INSIDE we aim to foster this state of mind through experiencing the real world in the Travel programme.
Arvand Pourabbasi - The Room of an Architect, 2017 photo by Ishka Michocka
Flows Contemporary interiors increasingly depend on a complex of (inter)connecting flows. At the same time the growing awareness of the limits to our resources forces designers to reinvent the performance of spaces we inhabit. This has led to interior designers rapidly becoming dependent on external specialists and losing one of their primary capacities: to integrate. Flows aims to support interior designers retaking an active integrating role in the execution of their profession.
Visiting teachers/lecturers/guests/guides Observatorium – Geert van de Camp & André Dekker Kitev – Kultur im Turm Frans Bevers Gert Dumbar Leeke Reinders REFUNC – Denis Oudendijk, Jan Körbes Vincent de Rijk Lucas Verweij Mauricio Freyre Tim Devos XML Architects – David Mulder OMA – Mark Veldman Alexandra Landré Peter Zuiderwijk Jacob Voorthuis René Boer Melle Smets Renske Maria van Dam David Helbich Boris Sieverts Herman Hertzberger Katherine Ball USTA – Klodiana Millona & Arvand Pourabbasi Peter Zuiderwijk Karolina Thel Thomas Rustemeyer Traumnovelle STEALTH Kosovotwopointzero Vala Osmani Arbnor Dragaj Vilic Nebojsa Mila Tesic EuroMoonMars Team – Bernard Foing
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INSIDE PROFILE
are explored in Theory. An introduction to specific skills required in a project and to the approach of a particular tutor is offered in Skills, and relevant projects are visited in Travel. In the second year a Graduation Studio is organised to assist students in drawing up individual graduation projects. Students work independently and cover the entire process of orientation, research (through design), analysis, concept development, design (through research) and presentation by themselves, under the individual supervision of the tutors.
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STUDIO THE NEW WORKSPACE In the first studio of the INSIDE programme the students were invited by Studio Makkink & Bey to design their workspace on the basis of their own terms and conditions. The starting point of the design process was a 1-day internship at a nearby company in The Hague. These companies were not all aligned with design, like a car garage and a paper factory. The students had to research and analyse flows which were present in these firms (for instance energy, waste and money), interview the owner or employees to find out the work flows and conditions and to gather rest material which they could use for their own new workspace, like paper, car parts, concrete etc. It was a struggle for the students to create space with not so obvious materials, instead of chairs and desks, as these were not allowed to be an initial element of the design. In the end, the students succeeded to extend the definition of ‘a working space’ and went through experimental hands-on experiences by building with re-used materials their ideal space to work in at INSIDE. As part of the theory program the students had to write a manifest to strengthen their ideas about their ideal, personal workspace with clear statements as a call for change. In collaboration with Studio Makkink & Bey (Jurgen Bey and Chester Chuang), Superuse Studios (Jinyuan Chen) and Anne Hoogewoning. With special thanks to Jero Papierwarenfabriek, Concreet Design, Binnenstad Garage Den Haag, Studio Duel, Tiddo de Ruiter, Repro– van de Kamp, Paladin Studios. I N S I D E 2 0 1 7 2 0 1 8
STUDIO THE NEW WORKSPACE
Jero Papierwarenfabriek
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Flows Map I-Chieh & Yunkyung Concreet Design B.V. – Rene Bollen
ingredients come in and go out again. The other flows we mapped show the current situation in the ‘ConcreetDesign’ workplace. We included some proposals to improve the working environment of the company.
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For the new Workspace Studio we researched the working environment of ‘ConcreetDesign’ in The Hague by doing a one-day internship in the company. While working and observing the http://concreetdesign.com/language/nl/ company’s daily routines, we created a concreetdesign/ flows map and through that documented the whole process of making costumized concrete panels, the core business of the company. We categorized the production proces into different types of flows, such as main flow, material flow and movement flow. All these flows are interconnected. The main flow reveals the official steps of making concrete panels including all the details of the ingredients and equipment that are needed in order to do that. The material flow provides materials to the main flow. The map shows where the
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! The cement industry is one of the main producers of CO2, which is the major greenhouse gas.
someome comes to the company and takes remained dirts
Clay
Limestone
remains
Mixer
Rotterdam / Maastricht / Velsen-Noord
Clean-Out
water 100
30min. Heater
?
package
reduced CO 2 emissions
create new kinds of concrete panel
in order to reuse the water for the next clean-out.
recycling
make cement
remove residual products
In the future, is it possible for the company to have their own waste water treatment,
Concrete mixer
saving on primary fuels
Grinder
Sewer
combution grinding with other material Mining Spot in the Netherlands
water 80 Water Tank
use them as an alternative fuel
UNEP FSC
collected by company
PEFE Nudvang
collect residue products from other industry
Waste Management System
make something new
collect together & throw away
!
Sand
Filter Bag
In the long term, finding alternative way for cement production and replacing the ordinary
(locally purchased)
(Construction) Aggregate Pile
Cement
Stones water 60
portland cement in order to reduce consumption of natural raw materials, water, and energy.
sustainable process in ENCI company - making cement
Reuseable Water
Water
Clean out waste water flow from the Netherlands
Reuseable Aggregate for Concrete
Cement Sand
throw away to the recycling bin
Portland Cement CEM I 42.5 N
Small Stones
}
!
Paper Cylinder
sand and small stones could be replaced by 1. the crushed ceramic
Grinding Machine
2. crushed building 3. Industrial by-products and wastes ex. iron slag .etc
MIXING
Scratched mold
Rubber gloves
Paper bag
A piece of waterproof sheet
Material flow
Used white foam
Dirty Water
10% of failure
100% recyclable
1 tank per 1 day
MAIN FLOW PROPOSALS
FIND MAKE
for clients
suitable molds
PREPARE
PREPARE
the molds
the materials
: CONCRETE
POUR
the concrete into the molds
TAP
COVER
the surface of the concrete
with waterproof sheet
FIX
PUT
the molds to the table
DRY
styrofoam on the molds
new molds
REMOVE
the molds
PACKAGE
CLEANUP
PREPARE
for transportation
TRANSPORT
INSTALL
to the construction site
binder if it works,
if it doesn’t work,
STONE
FIBER GLASS
ARTIFICIAL OIL
SAND
CEMENT
WATER
0mm-4mm
workers don’t participate this stage now. they are focusing on providing good quality concrete panels. clean the molds with air compressor
repair it
Letter mold
sanding & polishing air compressor with water
5 min.
reuse
Remove the bubbles!
Make concrete paste flat
covered with white foam individually
Keep the temperature *Early hydration
effects on the quality of the concrete panel spread artificial oil
Bee hotel mold
make molds stable
bubbles are coming out to the suface
- prevent to be twisted
1 mixing = 6 panel 1 panel = 20kg concrete GRINDING MACHINE
8H / 24H
MIXING 15min.
panel hole cover
1.30h - temporarily dried 8h - completely dried 24h - waiting
Working continues consistently - about 3H
Different type of concrete panel Bee hotel Hanging plants For toilet For kitchen Square panel Letters Panel hole cover
All the process should be done immediately! Due to the characteristic of concrete!
MOVEMENT FLOW
? How can we change the workspace to make the worker's movement
ELECTRICITY FLOW
!
WATER FLOW another controller
There is no hierarchy in the space! Everyone do same thing at same time.
?
more efficient?
1st zone : entrance
2nd zone : preparation & rest area
There is no lighting in the workspace ! Use sunlight!
3rd zone : working area
{
{
{
WATER TANK
GRINDING MACHINE
WATER TANK
TOOL
STORAGE
the water tanks that should be thown away
! There is no air purifier for the dusty environment.
Water accessible area
GRINDING MACHINE
WATER TANK
TOOL
STORAGE
TOOL
STORAGE
TOOL
STORAGE
TOOL
STORAGE
CONTAINER BOX
STORAGE
CONTAINER BOX
MAIN ENT.
CONTAINER BOX
MAIN ENT.
move to 2nd zone
MAIN ENT.
COFFEE TABLE
COFFEE TABLE
COFFEE TABLE
TOOL
TOOL
CARRIAGE
TOOL
CARRIAGE
MAIN CONTROLL SYSTEM
STORAGE
STORAGE
CARRIAGE STORAGE
STORAGE
STORAGE
STORAGE TOILET
TOILET
TOILET
the flow of the electricity
!
electricity for lighting
narrow corridor too many tables confusing circulation
most electricity is used for machines and tools! not for lighting!
For the worker's well-being, the water
old clothes for working came from workers’ home
messy storage
tool box
!
In terms of the workers' well-being, the dressing room could be improved. The company could provide work clothes and also outsource the laundry service.
eco-friendly ceiling windows
!
sink could be added close to the coffee corner, in order to avoid going through the dirtiest zone in their workspace for getting water.
2nd entrance
GRINDING MACHINE
TOOL
This is reason why workers should do their work near here.
STUDIO THE NEW WORKSPACE
wooden mold
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STUDIO THE NEW WORKSPACE
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STUDIO THE NEW WORKSPACE
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STUDIO THE NEW WORKSPACE
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FLOWS
Spatial changes are complex by definition. They consist of numorous conditions involved such as clients demands, suppliers possibilities and not the least: spatial qualities, financial limitations, and applicable regulations, to name a few. Spatial designers have to get ‘grip’ on the situation in order to be able to propose a change. There are many ways of getting grip of a situation: you can symplify a situation for instance by isolating specific elements through focussing on materials or construction, on colors or tactility, on budget or usability, on emotion or flexibility etc etc. The focus on one of the elements involved can create a welcome hierarchy in complex situations.
The Flows of my Kitchen by Junyuan Chen To introduce a Flows narrative I take my kitchen as an example. Currently I live in a residential building in Beijing, China; the kitchen in my apartment measures six square meters. It has a rectangular floor plan and is 1.80 meter wide. On the west side of the kitchen there are double-stores cabinets and a worktop with a mobile metal shelf resting on the east part, with pots and pans on it I daily use. The surfaces of the cabinet are bright green, made of PVC with 20 millimeter stainless edging. The counter, which is 0.60 meter deep, is made of similar stainless metal. It has a sink on the north side of the kitchen and a stove on the south. A chamber with a The Flows approach does not create a hierarchy in refrigerator connects the kitchen with my living room. complex spatial situations but focusses on the complex The northern part of my kitchen is connected to a small system itself that lies underneath every spatial situation. two square meter balcony. Here you can find a washing In het systemic approach InsideFlows distinguishes machine and a gas heater equipped with a water supply three sections of flows: physical flows, energy flows and drainage system. and flows of value, and determines 14 different In case I want to renovate my kitchen, what should I do? subcategories within these sections. In recent years First of all, I would like to enlarge the space and double Superuse developed and gathered various Flows it in order to have more room for cooking activities as tools that enable designers to observe, document six square meters for a kitchen is too small and too and study the various flows in the space, and as a restrictive. I find the bright green PVC cabinet door too result of that, establish a systemic view of the context. glaring and prefer a wood finish. Furthermore, I don’t Flows helps designers reasoning the reality and like so much the stainless countertop because it has an understanding the world not through simplification and uneven surface, a marble top would therefore be a good isolation, but through establishing a ‘systemic view’ of alternative. Under the closet above the stove I prefer our environment. By mapping the dynamic and complex some extra lighting because cutting vegetables in the relationships of the designated flows, designers are dark is unhandy and not a funny thing. The last thing capable to maneuver and understand the numerous to fix would be the gap under the lower cabinets where layers involved and their connections and finally bring dirt is accumulating. At the same time, I would like the these together to the core of their design process. balcony not only to be used for washing and heating, but also as an extra space for vegetations. Flows thus not only manifests itself in the research phase of a project. By applying the Flows approach also So, let me describe my kitchen by one systematic to design, designers are able to include numerous and language: as a starting point I need to take into account even elusive elements in their design and unexpected that the kitchen system is meant for the needs for opportunities pop up and are discovered that can lead two human beings. The current system combines to a new aesthetics. In recent years various Flows tools cleaning, preparing, cooking, storage and some other were further developed, among others in China with the facilities that all make routinely use of Flows like water, alumni INSIDE student Junyuan Chen, who graduated electricity, natural gas, heat and organic and inorganic in 2015 with a Flows approach for the future ruralization systems. Let’s take the organic system as an example: of a small village in Southwest China. food enters the kitchen system from outside and is stored in a freezer that requires external electrical
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FLOWS
The InsideFlows approach to spatial design was originally developed by Jan Jongert of the Rotterdam based architecture office Superuse Studios. This approach aims for a ‘systemic’ understanding of the working flows in our environment and the ways of giving resource flows a positive contribution to design, delivering innovative and sustainable solutions that respond to users needs and clients interests.
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power. The cleaning process of food needs water and detergent to remove “dirt” from the food after which it becomes a mixed waste system. Preparation, cutting and removing the non-edible parts such as skins go first directly to the disposal area and through the public waste management system of my residential area. The rest of the organic material is cooked with heat produced by burning natural gas, while ventilation consumes electricity. Thus, both systems create waste by extra heat and smoke. Above I have shortly described my kitchen as an open system; it causes both flows of resources and flows of energy and is clearly a waste production line where various flows passes through the system to become waste. At the same time these waste flows are completely dependent on the external system supply that makes the current situation very unsatisfactory. My goal to redesign my kitchen is to create a selfsufficient kitchen system where I can both cook and
produce food. To do so, my priority is to understand the in- and output of each process, for example: organic food production requires water and fertilizers and the output-flow, as the dirty water and organic waste are called, can be used for plantation. A small scale vegetable garden on my balcony can also make use of waste water from other cleaning programs like the shower and the washing of clothes, herewith creating a circular water system. Moreover, a biogas digester could compensate the energy needs while generating nutrients for the plants. All in all, with a small space like a kitchen different narratives can be told resulting in two spatial designs. In my opinion this systematic approach reveals more opportunities for designers that exceed just the visual changes. (In the 2017-2018 academic year Junyuan Chen was the Flows programme tutor)
FLOWS
Flows map by 1st year INSIDE students Adriel, I-Chieh, Hande and Yunkyung
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A new perspective on the old structures of education
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Shifting demographics, rapidly developing technologies and ever changing visions on learning are constantly challenging education. Schools are subject to continuous transformation while buildings seem to remain a static backdrop for generations to grow up with.
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In collaboration with MVRDV the students of INSIDE sought to apply new strategies, concepts and designs to a very concrete context, two international primary schools in The Hague. Asking the question, what could the school of the future be like?
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With Thanks Kay Wilson (Head of School, Van Nijenrodestraat VNS, HSV International Primary School) Lorraine Wittenberg (Head of School, Koningin Sophiestraat KSS, HSV International Primary School)
Tutors Fokke Moerel, Aser Giménez Ortega, Mick van Gemert (Architects MVRDV) Anne Hoogewoning(Theory), Vincent de Rijk (Model maker & Skills workshop)
The ‘School of the Future’ is a project in the frame of the ‘Toekomstfestival – Leren in 2050’ of the Dutch Ministery of Education, Culture and Science.
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THE SCHOOL AS AN ADVENTUROUS CITY Over-controlling parents restrict children’s independence Text by Daniele Valentino According to The Independent’s journalist Charlie Cooper over-controlling parents cause their children lifelong psychological damage [1]. Cooper based his findings on surveys by doctors of the Medical Research Council and experts from the University College London [2]. Another expert, Dr Mai Stafford, proclaims: “parents also give us a stable base from which to explore the world” and “psychological control can limit a child’s independence and leave them less able to regulate their own behaviour”[3]. Recent similar surveys in the US show a severe decline of the creativity of American schoolchildren: “Over the last 20 years children have become less emotionally expressive, less energetic, less talkative and verbally expressive, less humorous, less imaginative, less unconventional, […] and less likely to see things from a different angle”[4]. This analysis also takes into consideration the change in the social behaviour of children due to the increase of new technologies as new tools for their creativity. However, I do not dive into that topic as it is less relevant for the point I would like to make which is: the over-control behaviour of parents reduces children’s identity and their self-belief. Children should have the opportunity to learn doing things by themselves and the school ought to be the place where experimentations are allowed and over-controlling parents are compensated.
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I keep good memories of my childhood. My parents enrolled me in the kindergarten because they believed it was the best environment for me. It was also convenient: the kindergarten was next to our house. Anyway, it was great and I loved that place. I remember I used to observe the older children of the primary school close by, running around the garden and playing in the large sandpit. A few years later I went to that primary school myself. From that moment on I had the chance to discover the ‘new world’ and all the risks involved. I was an overactive kid and my mum often reminds me of the times I came back home with my dirty, ripped clothes, blue knees and scratches all over my face because I had a fight with some other kid. My childhood at school was a mixture of experiences and activities and thanks to that I gained freedom and independence. I remember the group activities like playing with each other, with which the school was trying to enhance children to speak their own language and to envision how it was like in the real world. Spaces at school that adults take for granted, like the sandpit, were for me challenging and occasions to learn. I am not a sociologist and not an expert in social education, however, I am sure that my own experiences at school gave me inspiration for my professional field as a designer.
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For my research for the studio ‘The School of the Future’, besides my own experiences, some views on education inspired me like the Reggio Emilia Approach[5]. Since its existence in the 60’s, this model for childhood education is spread all over the world and still studied for further development and elaboration. According to this philosophy children are considered capable to construct their own learning skills and should be treated as active collaborators and to learn through the experiences they share with their peers. Loris Malaguzzi (1920-1994), the founder of the Reggio Emilia philosophy, believes that children are the bearers and creators of knowledge and as creators they should be encouraged to express themselves. This is also known as the concept of The Hundred Languages [6]. Within this curriculum the design of the school plays a major role, for instance a classroom acts as a ‘third teacher’ and should provide new challenges for children. Inside spaces and outside spaces ought to be well interconnected while schools are regarded as living and learning organisms. With this studio I had the opportunity to visit one of the Apollo Schools in Amsterdam designed by the Dutch architect Herman Hertzberger [7]. This school, also known as the Montessori School, represents a pure example of what is stated above: the school consists of three floors and is configured as a large detached house. The classrooms are grouped around a central communal hall that functions as a space for all kind of events. The staircases, or “learning promenades” as Hertzberger defines them, are a core element of the school and all the time used by the children in a playful way. Every space in the school is designed as an occasion for children to gather and to exchange. Some small tables are placed on the second floor in a position that they can even create a dangerous situation, but the director of the school said that this risk was quite low. In this school children are given the optimum opportunity to move around freely without any restrictions, which follows the concept of Montessori education that the school should provide circumstances for learning even though they could provide a possible risk.
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‘The Apollo school in Amsterdam by Herman Hertzberger’
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The harshest challenge for designers is to understand which risks can become opportunities for children to learn then children can become protagonist of their own learning path, through exposure to the controlled risks. In my opinion children should be allowed to test their environment without fear and concern for their own safety. The Dynamic Risk Benefit Assessment is a procedure that takes into account risks, especially for children [8]. It provides practical methods for conducting riskbenefit assessments. Some architects who are commissioned to design a school use this procedure, like Assemble Studio for the Baltic Street Adventure Playground in Dalmarnock, East Glasgow [9]. The free, but supervised playground, is a place where children are in close contact with the urban environment and the outside world. Other architects who work with the risk benefit assessment as a design principle are Sasa Randic & Idis Turato [10]. Although their design is less adventurous, I would like to mention two of their projects in Croatia at the Island of Krk: an Elementary School and a Kindergarten [11]. The Primary School is configured as a city close to the old city wall. The whole complex refers to the urban matrix of the village; corridors are designed as urban streets and ramps as playgrounds. These spaces-inbetween are the core of the school. Children can use these spaces, with an unlimited freedom for their own activities. The Kindergarten has a similar concept that has a different configuration: it is designed as an enclosed insula. Inside this small town-kindergarten, units-houses are combined with open gardens, placed next to pedestrian routes. Also here, the urban matrix provides small streets ending up in the central square that serves as a location for manifestations, events and celebrations. These two projects represent the concept of the school as a city-like structure and the urban-school elements encourage young children to walk around like a grown up citizen and discover their ‘kindergarten-city’. The Italian architects Cappai Carlo & Alessandra Segantini (C+S Architects) are widely known for their educational design [12]. For instance, the Ponzano Primary School in Treviso (Italy) is a further elaboration of the approach by Randic & Turato. Here the idea of a city has a social implication: the school constitutes of a new nodemeeting place for the whole community. Part of the building is open to the public after school hours. This idea of a school as a public place for every citizen in the city is reflected in the structure of the building. All spaces are gathered around a central square with a reference to the typology of the monastic cloister as a place for multiethnic exchanges and interactions.
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FOOTNOTES 1. Article of The Independent, written by Charlie Cooper: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-andfamilies/overly-controlling-parents-cause-their-children-lifelong-psychological-damage-says-study-10485172. html 2. University College London (UCL): https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ 3. Article written by Dr Mai Stafford: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0915/040915-caring-parentshappier-lives 4. Article written by Dr Kyung Hee Kim for the Creativity Research Journal: https://www.nesacenter.org/ uploaded/conferences/SEC/2013/handouts/Kim_Creativity-Crisis_CRJ2011.pdf 5. Loris Malaguzzi is the founder of the Reggio Emilia Approach, the Reggio Children International Centre bears his name: http://www.reggiochildren.it/centro-internazionale-loris-malaguzzi/?lang=en 6. The Hundred Languages concept: http://www.reggiochildren.it/2011/09/2617/notizia-di-provaconsulenza/?lang=en 8. Dynamic Risk Benefit Assessment: https://www.ltl.org.uk/spaces/dynamicriskassesment.php 9. Baltic Street Adventure Playground in Dalmarnock, East Glasgow is realized by Assemble Studio, with other collaborations: http://assemblestudio.co.uk/?page_id=776 10. Architectural office founded by Sasa Randic & Idis Turato: http://www.randic-turato.hr/ 11. Elementary School Fran Krsto Frankopa, Krk, Croatia: http://www.randic-turato.hr/new/skola%20krk/ SKOLA%20KRKeng.htm Katarina Frankopan Kindergarten: http://randic.hr/?p=321#.WlzN767ibDc 12. C+S Architects: http://web.cipiuesse.it/
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All previous projects are based on the idea that the school is not only a place where children learn new things but they also offer opportunities to enhance social behaviour and self-belief. I mentioned some educational approaches more or less experimental or innovative, but still efficient and valid alternatives for childhood education of today. I looked back to my personal experiences in order to reflect on them as a solid base for comparison and to ask myself what kind of school and school environment I would like to design for the new generations. If schools, in the eyes of the children, are the “doors of the world”, it is the task of designers to bring the world into the schools instead of creating bubbles where over-protection and restriction are the rules. One of the possible solutions is to configure schools as small cities, where children can be young citizens and adults are just guides whenever children need help.
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INTERVIEW WITH VINCENT DE RIJK by Laura Frias & Hande Öğün
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Vincent de Rijk has been working as an industrial designer, furniture maker and model builder for more than 20 years. He is trained at the Academy for Industrial Design in Eindhoven where he graduated in 1986, a year later he started his Werkplaats Vincent de Rijk in Rotterdam. His best known works are a series of bowls in ceramic with polyester resin, and many architectural models, primarily for OMA. The INSIDE students were invited to his studio for a model making workshop dedicated to Studio The School of the Future.
When and why did you decide to open your studio for the INSIDE students? It is about seven years ago since I start to give workshops on model making at INSIDE. Before that I taught at Design Academy Eindhoven and other academies but the courses were usually quite short. When Hans Venhuizen (head of the department) asked me to join INSIDE, we decided to have a workshop of at least three, or preferably five, days. In this way the students can really work on their assignment and finally come up with a resin model of the design they work on that specific moment. It is still quite a short time to really make something but when the workshop is scheduled at the right moment for the students to work and they have a general idea already, it works out well. This year most students had a concept, so it was easier for them to get an idea of what to make. This is always a challenge because the students first need to learn the techniques of making a resin model but if that’s done, then you can relatively work fast. We didn’t really have much time this year but I still think the products you made were quite nice, effective and quickly made. It is not always like that, sometimes half of the group give up and don’t finish the model. I prepared the workshop this year to try to avoid that and every student could make something. Although some of the models were more like objects, and thus not containing a lot of information, they are still nice pieces to explain your project and to use in your presentation.
In the workshop you told us to simplify the information we want to show and reduce the complexity of the project in order to make a good model. How much information is needed to produce a conceptual model? It is not always easy to make a translation from a concept to the actual project or product. In any case I think it is important that students start to make something without knowing everything and to reduce the complexity, else you don’t have a model at the end. That’s what I learned from my collaboration with architectural offices, like OMA. They will never say ‘Ok, we know what we want and here is the information.’ There is always a huge stack of information, but not very clear and nothing decided yet. This is quite common. To create a starting point I try to make an interpretation of the project by finding out what could be the main elements to show in the model. Sharp finished models are usually perceived as presentation objects. Do you consider that a resin model could also become a tool for architects to rethink their projects? Many architects work in this way and yes, it can be really helpful. That’s what I learned in, let’s say, “the OMA school”; they start as soon as possible with very sketchy materials like foam and as soon as there is more information, they try it out with making more models. This process is nowadays less usual because of renderings, drawings and 3d printing models. It is
good that these are there, but they cannot visualize all information. Of course computer models can be less time consuming, but still I think the making of models and the drawing of models should be better balanced. You could argue that the resin model is finally less necessary, at least as an information piece, that’s for me the reason that the quality of the model as an object is getting more important.
Resin model by Adriel Quiroz Silva
Resin model by Hande Öğün
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You have a background in industrial design. How do you apply this knowledge to architectural models? And is the process of making the same with design furniture for instance? Yes, more or less but in an industrial design process I always start which techniques I will use and what kind of materials and how the product will be made finally, by a machine or by hand? That’s a different approach from the architectural world. During my studies I tried out many materials, like ceramics and later on resin, to find the potential of these materials. When Koolhaas saw the products we were making out of resin he suggested that it could be used for models as well. techniques. It is also sort of specialism that means that if you are good at it, you have to spend a lot of time to So it was basically his idea to see the potential of keep up the knowledge. Like the casting techniques is making models in volume instead of surfaces and to something I have always been doing but I can still refine become a three-dimensional diagram of space. This is more. You can compare it with a piano player and ask very useful especially for competitions: in one model ‘why don’t you play another instrument?’ There’s too you can show the view from inside as a section with an much to improve once you know you can do something idea of what it looks like. Although the floor plans are better. That’s also the reason why you are never quite abstract you can give an impression of the feeling finished to learn. So the basis of my work is the casting of the senses. And finally with colours in combination technique, especially resin, I used to do a lot of plaster with other materials you can make a sort of diagram: and ceramics, but that is also casting. We started the what is more important or less, what is empty and what model making for offices like OMA, but sometimes is full etc. So the model is quite sketchy but at the same they ask us to make something special like a resin time very sharp. I like this combination of sketchy ideas furniture, and that’s actually what we are doing now. It’s with sharpness of perfecting techniques and materials. a challenge and it takes a lot of time for research and calculations because to make a model is completely You are specialized in the casting of polyester different from a 1:1 piece furniture. The furniture for model making, are you also experimenting with cannot be produced industrially, because most of it is other materials and new techniques? handwork. So it is very special. Not so much actually, because at some point you get your repertoire, let’s say (laugh). I am more into redefining what I know instead of learning new
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STUDIO CORRUPTED SPACE AT FLOATING UNIVERSITY, BERLIN Floating University is set up by raumlaborberlin at the site of the former Tempelhof Airport Berlin as a visionary and temporary inner city offshore laboratory for collective, experimental learning. The site is an almost forgotten place in the center of Berlin: an old concrete rainwater basin next to the airfield with a landscape on the verge of disappearing. How can practices be adapted to the rapidly changing cities to keep the water affordable and abundant? These were one of the many questions raumIabor poses within their search to experiment with utopian water fantasies and re-envision an urban water infrastructure that invokes public participation.
Complex systems are more vulnerable to deliberate and accidental corruption than we expect.
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After this investigation the students continued their research at the site of Tempelhof. The students visited the site for the first time in March when it was almost like a tabula rasa investigating temporary urban systems to rethink the city of the future, led by Junyuan Chen (flows). They returned in June for a two week workshop led by Benjamin Foerster-Baldenius (raumlaborberlin) when the area already functioned like a selforganized community. Within this lively community opening up to the public and professionals, the From April 2018 onwards gradually students presented their projects The Floating University campus on corrupted systems and utopian was build up at Tempelhof test models within the setting of a site with temporary structures like symbiotic Nation. How would a a discursive kitchen, a bar as a utopian society on the site look like protest generator, classrooms for and how are its inhabitants provided workshops and a performative with energy, water, mobility, food laboratory tower for experimental and take care of waste? water filtrations systems. Besides the nurturing of plants, mushrooms, mussels etc. the water of this system is reused and separated in four different types for experimentations: rain water, basin water, grey water and black water.
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Numerous universities and academies, INSIDE being one of them, were asked to participate in the Floating University campus to challenge the routines and habits of urban practices. In the 2nd semester the 1st years students prepared this workshop by a research on invisible systems in the city of The Hague, led by Gerjan Streng (design) and Anne Hoogewoning (theory). How are the residents of The Hague provided with energy, water, food and transportation modes? And how about the waste system?
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The Floating University laboratory by raumlaborberlin is located in the centre of a pool and forms an arena around a floating stage; it swims if the water level rises after heavy rain. A structure of walkways across the pond ensures that all workshop spaces and facilities for the students working at the site and visitors are accessible despite weather circumstances. The rainwater detention pool thus functions as a living organism.
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INTERVIEW WITH KATHERINE BALL by Laura Frias & Hande Öğün Katherine Ball is the artist-in-residence at Floating University’s Performative Water Filtration Laboratory. Her artwork explores the infrastructure of everyday life.
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When did you become curious about filtering water? When and where did your interest started? I guess I became interested in water pollution from growing up in Detroit, Michigan. There is a river called ‘River Rouge’ because sometimes it turned red of all the chemicals put in by car factories. When I was a kid, every week my parents and I would drive over a bridge crossing the River Rouge, and they would tell me how the bed of the river was made out of poured concrete to bring the chemicals away from the factories. From each side of the bridge you could see all the factories extending out into the horizon…like a sea of factories, sliced in two by this big interstate bridge with traffic whizzing past in 8 lanes. This has always been kind of in the back of my mind. Then, when I read this book by the scientist Paul Stamets titled ‘Mycelium Running’ about how mushrooms can help to save the world, I learned that you can use mushrooms to detoxify soil and to filter polluted water.
interested in how the act of trying to answer questions – by making interventions – can reveal deeper insights. First I ask for instance the question ‘How to filter the polluted water in the basin at the site of the Floating Later on there was a call by the Indianapolis Museum University?’. I try to address this question and to of Art for a project to inhabit Indy Island, a kind of igloo, intervene and do something. Just the other day I learned floating in the lake near the museum. The water of at the Floating University site something new about the the lake is polluted because of the river’s connection membrane filters. I spoke to a person from a membrane running through the city of Indianapolis. When there is company and proposed him to hook up the membrane as little as .6 cm rain, the city mixes the sewage with filter at the end of a series of bathtubs that will contain the rain and puts it into the river. I lived on the island biological water filters at Floating University. He told me and tried to take the pollution out of the water by using that it would be better to put the membrane filter directly long ‘mycobooms’, a mushroom filter shaped like a from the rainwater versus the end, because when the giant sausage. There was no electricity at the island or water flows to the other filters bacteria and dirt will be running water but that was ok for me. Actually I enjoyed added. So by making and experiencing and by trying out it a lot. I stayed in the summer so I didn’t need heat. One new questions, new problems will arise and you will be thing you do need is time because you spend a lot of able to ask better-informed questions for new issues. time rowing things back and forth from shore: drinking water, clothes, materials. I became aware that you always need a plan and ask yourself ‘What am I going to need?’ There is one thing I had to sacrifice and that is space. I lived in a very tiny and minimalized space and it always took me a lot of time to keep everything tidy and organized. I found that more problematic than not having water or electricit Artists nowadays relate more and more to societal problems. But you go a step further and even try to contribute to solve some of these problems. Did you take this position right from the start of your artist practice? I have always been curious about ‘how things work’. When there is a problem I not necessarily try to solve it but I start to search for other possibilities and to find out what could work. Benni Foerster-Baldenius of Raumlabor always says: ‘We are not trying to make solutions, we are trying to ask questions’, but I am not interested in the pure activity of asking questions. I am
Indy Island
How did you get involved in the Floating University program? What do you expect to learn from it and from its participants? I got involved with Floating University because I knew Benni from a previous project The Garden of Biological Sabotage in Graz. And when I got a scholarship last year for an art project in Germany, I wrote to Benni. He knew I was working with water so he invited me to participate in this project as an artist in residence.
Do you believe that the Floating University is a good platform to share your experience to reduce waterwaste? Could it be a starting point to spread your knowledge? Yes, I think so. I am much looking forward to the Floating University being a place to debate the water use, the water supply, where does it come from and where does the waste go. I am also excited about the space for public forums where people can come together and talk about urgent issues we face in urban space today. I hope that these forums can bring people together to talk about how issues like water use could be developed in a really authentic way without preconceived plans. Unlike the urban planning processes with these massive participatory events where neighbours talk about a future development but in reality architects, planners and developers have already their own ideas and don’t really listen.
One of the things I hope to learn more about is not just the technology behind water filtration or water systems, but also how to create a relationship or connection with water. This touches upon the rules of habit that could solve a lot of problems, if we’d just change our habits. I believe if people feel connected with water, we would change our habits with how we use and impact water. We would act and design differently if we had a more intimate relationship with water. What I am trying to do right now is to get to know people and create a friendly When the Floating University program comes to atmosphere in which people feel open to getting back in an end, how do you hope the site will be developed? touch with our relationships with water. I hope Floating Do you have any utopian vision that could be University can be a space where we relate with the applied here? ecosystem and eachother. I have a fantasy that the pond could become a place where you can swim in the middle of the city where What I also hope to learn is all the things I don’t expect species like frogs, birds, ducks can live too. My utopian to learn. I started this process to learn how to use design vision is that the main road, the Columbiadamm, will be to make ecological systems more appealing, engaging closed for traffic and the Tempelhof airport will become and inspiring. In that sense I’d like this place to become a giant garden. more engaging, not necessarily beautiful, but weird and inspiring. I am really looking forward to the students as teachers and I am excited about the ideas they are going to bring up. I think it is important that students raise questions and bring up new ideas to let us stop and think. When you are young you have a certain power and questioning is a way of giving strength to that power.
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Water can be cleaned by using filters like fungi, sand or bacteria. Most of your projects include this idea on a small scale (a kitchen sink) and on a medium scale (a house). Do you think it will be possible to apply this system in the near future on a larger scale (like in cities)? There are already a lot of wastewater plants with this technology using natural filters. Here in The Hague there is a place where a giant sandfilter is installed and I am very much interested in the scientific aspects of this filter. But actually I am more interested in getting people engaged with water within their homes, so on a smaller scale and not being part of a larger centralized system. My utopia is that there are parallel centralized and decentralized systems so there is a bit redundancy in case something happens. I would very much like to dive into a project not on a civil scale but on a community or neighbourhood scale, or a whole building. In that case it is more about bringing people together in this process of making ecological infrastructures and joining forces in the community. ‘Water system at Floating University’
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PROCESS
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Daniele Valentino provides the participants with an admission document for the Floating Nation by taking them through a parallel bureaucracy designed by him. A key element of his document is the image of the bearer that is provided by a drawing by a fellow Floating Nation member.
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Hande Ögün mapped misplaced objects in the neighbourhood of the Floating University site. Hande aims at rescueing these objects from being destroyed by making
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Adriel Quiroz Silva turned the necessary action of watering the plants during periods of drought into a relaxing and social activity. His water pumping bench provides the plants with water and the performing participants with interaction.
I-Chieh Liu created a situation dedicated to inefficient coffee making where even the necessary fire is made with the ancient techniques that I-Chieh redeveloped.
The passport photo-booth that enables Floating Nation members to draw eachother.
I N S I D E 2 0 1 7 Lotti Gostic focused on the large amounts of insignificant plastic waste that she found on the Floating University site. The plastic bottlecaps and packing materials were reused by her in games or melted into souvenirs.
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Lucinda Zhang recorded all sounds that are characteristic for the Floating University territory. With these sounds Lucinda created an immersive audio experience that she performed in a building filled with fog.
Laura Frias Munoz del Serro celebrates the fascinating history of dropping food on the Tempelhof Airport area during the air siege in the Cold War. With her New Cargo Cult she provides the Nation with a
Yungkyung Lee provides the Floating Nation with a strategy for acquiring energy. Yunkyung
ceremony to bless food.
mapped all public electrical outlets and designed a battery car, disguised as a planter box, to
Jack Bardwell takes you on an exploration on the Floating University site. Through costume and soundtrack he succeeds in making you part of his own experiences in an intensive way.
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cunningly mask the act of stealing.
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WHERE THE WATER FLOWS A mobility story Text by Jack Bardwell, illustrations by Guy Field
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The recent rush towards autonomous vehicles and automation in general seems to be based on the idea that efficiency and convenience are the only criteria for travel. In the framework of the Studio The Floating University I wanted to take a look at this seemingly inevitable path towards a driverless future and what this might mean for the experience of the city. While researching the topic of mobility with a particular focus on utopian ideas and corruption it became apparent that there was a media narrative appearing, driven by large corporations such as Google and Tesla towards their version of a driverless utopia. Seeing as these future speculations are fictional narratives spun by companies to spark imagination and generate hype around their brand and ultimately increase sales I decided that the best format for a counter argument would be that of fictional short story. Fictional writing, especially science fiction has a brilliant way of getting us to ask the questions of today disguised as questions of the future. Are we able to operate on another plane to this emerging future and create a utopia of our own and if we did what would this feel like? Walking is the least corruptible form of transportation. The more we rely on technology for our mobility within the city the more opportunity there is for the manipulation of that process and therefore control of how we experience it. Walking is the least corruptible form of transportation. The more we rely on technology for our mobility within the city the more opportunity there is for the manipulation of that process and therefore control of how we experience it. The Commute I turned the tap and waited, the water was always slow coming through this time of year. I heard it start somewhere above me, the cracking of the pipes readying themselves for the flow. I could hear its journey through the house until its release in front of me, crashing out into the basin like a river reaching a waterfall. I splashed the cool water over my face imagining I was out in a lush green landscape pausing for a moment’s refreshment. How free the water must feel when it is released for that moment from the confines of the pipe. What does it make of this fork in the road? Is it just a fleeting moment before returning into the next pipe below? Just a moment across my skin? Or, caught by my mouth, the start of a new journey into my body?
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I close the tap. I’m late for work.
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I was going to have to catch the next ride from the spot just around the corner from my local pickup point. I was beginning to get a reputation for being the outsider in this AVR (Autonomous Vehicle Rota) and a recent software update meant it was no longer possible to squeeze an extra person inside if it was already full, but they usually had a spare place. The cameras inside the car also made me feel uneasy. It’s not like anybody did anything worth watching inside, however. The morning commute rarely consisted of a nod to each other, although this seemed to be enough for them to communicate their distaste for me getting on at the
wrong location. These AVRs may be referred to as car ‘sharing’ but the atmosphere was anything but. The sense of ownership that had been lost with the demise of the automobile seemed to have been replaced by a strange form of territorialism. The rest of the journey was an audio tapestry of separate conversations playing out simultaneously resulting in an incomprehensible whole. I sometimes liked to play a game where I imagined that they were engaging in some sort of new complex conversation with each other. In reality this overlapping of speech in physical space was a new form of silence. Just the illusion of sound, a shadow if you like, of sound produced for another space, it was not present there, it belonged somewhere else. The more I thought about this the more it was not just about sound but the physicality of the people. Each person not present in their physical space but existing for another location for another conversation another place. In this way, within these modes of transport we became invisible. The streets were full of ghost cars, an empty city where the only real presence was the data streams themselves flowing from one place to another. We were merely the producers of the information, sometimes unaware of what we were even producing. I called this disappearing act travel silence. Once inside, screens were out and within seconds of entering the AVR you were at work. Not physically,
I joined the scheme coming up to a year ago now. It was a no-brainer really. Petrol and diesel vehicles were banned in many places, prices were consistently rising, before even thinking about tax or insurance, which for non-automated vehicles became ridiculously expensive as automated vehicles were almost 100% crash free. On top of that I’d only be using the car for the small time I was driving it and then having to pay a stationary fee while it sat empty in the street. Less and less roads were free to use and so unless I took a really long route into work I would be paying that on top of everything else. Whereas with an electric vehicle, I would be paying €1 maximum to fully charge up, which would cover the journey to work and back a couple of times. However, if I signed up to one of the AVRs it cost only a little bit more a month and everything was covered. I don’t have to worry about fluctuations in the road pricing, insurance, tax or any stationary fee as the AVR would always be in use for other journeys while I was at work. Just like my phone contract it means that we always get upgraded with the latest vehicle. All with the added bonus that no one has to drive, hence all the extra time to work. Unlike public transport it’s never late and now that there are more and more automated vehicles on the road, traffic is no longer a problem. Some of the public transport was now also automated but it took the longest routes via all the advertisements and they were so large that the amount of stops became ridiculous. Not to mention that my premium monthly AVR pass from Google was only nominally more expensive than a public pass. Come to think of it I didn’t know anyone who had a public pass now.
to try and close the doors.“It won’t move” said a voice, breaking the tension momentarily. As soon as I heard their voice I understood the stupidity of my action.“of course” I mumbled, realising how futile my attempt to pull close an automatic door was.“No, it’s not going to start moving until you leave.” I fumbled for my phone in my pocket and passed it against the reader. It turned red with a clunk. Those territorial bastards had turned on their location services meaning only people in their catchment area could use the AVR. They could see I was paying for the service in my area. What difference did it make?“no problem” I snapped, trying to keep my voice as insouciant as possible, even though I bubbled up with rage inside. I stepped outside.The door immediately hissing behind me, the vehicle snaking off into the city. The air was cold and a light mist fell, doing little to cool my face, now hot with rage. I began walking but I had no clue as to the direction I should walk to get to work. I could perhaps find the nearest public transport hub but I didn’t have a pass and you could no longer pay for single journeys. My feet carried me on regardless, my head still in a haze of rage. I pulled my phone from my pocket trying to remember the address of my work, did I ever know it? I typed in the company name but there were more than six locations across the city and I had no idea which address I worked at. Trying to squeeze my phone back into my pocket I tripped and it went tumbling to the floor the glass smashing immediately. I froze. Looking down, I felt light headed and sick with anxiety. I folded over reaching for my phone but then, feeling the blood rushing to my head I steadied myself and slowly unfurled lifting my head up and drawing a deep breath. I felt the cool air filling my lungs and a sense of calm came over me. For the first time I looked around.
I was stood in the middle of a junction, an untouched patch between paths of speeding vehicles. They did not notice me. Now more blurs of colour than moving objects, I could walk straight through them. As I began to move again I realised my power. Vehicles slowed automatically as they approached me or changed course to avoid me, their passengers oblivious to their manoeuvrings and to my presence. I was invisible to them now, I was no longer producing data and yet I had Surface Tension never been so present. Like The next morning I was late the water leaving the tap I again, I didn’t even have time was no longer constrained, to splash water over my face. I grabbed my laptop and only a distant gravity of past experience was guiding rushed out of the door to the usual spot. I ran over to the me, I began to flow. door and jumped in.“phew” I gasped. “Really thought I had purpose now. Not some location that I was to I wasn’t going to make it.” My speaking was met with reach but rather each step became my destination, awkward glances, the usual response to someone became home. Everything felt so crisp at this speed, breaking the unspoken code of Travel Silence. But it there was so much detail and texture to the surfaces. seemed longer and more tense than usual. There were The sound of cars became a distant ambient tone that no conversations, just flickering of eyes from me to the soon disappeared along with their streaks of colour. I floor. In an attempt to change the scene I reached out felt heavy, yet buoyant, like I was swimming through its
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although the speed of transport was getting close to making that a reality, but my presence was in the office. Each person disappearing as their screens sparked to life. It became quite impossible to use the space for anything but working. It was my moment to catch up with stuff that I had left loose from the day before. I would listen to my emails, the same soothing voice in themorning, my responses adding to the on board travel silence. The bing and hiss of the doors signified the end of email checking and my day at the office began. You could really hit the ground running and since signing up the AVR scheme I was more productive than ever.
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streets, slowed by its viscosity. I was out of my usual habitat but immersed in it. Not merely an observer to the city’s activity, I was the city itself. I don’t know how much time had passed but at one point I found myself back at my block’s door. When I entered my flat I slumped down on the heated floor. Buzzing and spent I drifted into a sleep. When I awoke I immediately grabbed a pen and a scrap of paper and began trying to draw the journey out, which now felt like a dream, the scraps of which were collected in my puffy eyes. It was useless.
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However hard I tried I could only represent the journey as different lines from one place to another. Distortions of the image that I was so used to seeing on the dashboards of the AVRs. A loading bar of travel. How could I possibly depict this experience? Perhaps there were others that had left their commutes behind for this rich, gritty view of the city. How would I find them? I began looking online for others but I found nothing. If they were to be found anywhere it was surely the street itself. The presence that I experienced was not split between realities I was there in my totality his could not be achieved while in two places at once. The Flood The next morning I woke up at 4am to leave the house with enough time to try and get to work using only my feet. I packed my bag with supplies for a longer journey than usual and a piece of paper as totry and take better note of the journey. I turned on the tap and splashed my face with the cold water pulling it through my hair and cooling the back of my neck. A golden light caught the drops as they fell into the sink. I felt a rush of adrenaline and tried to steady myself with a deep breath, my hands now clasped behind my neck covered with goosebumps. I reached out and plugged the sink, I
grabbed the towel from the side and rammed it into the overflow and watched for a moment as the sink began to fill. Then I left. I slammed the door and I imagined at that precise moment the surface tension holding the water at the edge of the sink breaking. Like a golden balloon popping in slow-motion the water released once again, flowing out across the counter over the edge and onto the floor. As it seeped into the floor boards it would begin to find its way around the cables. The cables which were relentlessly transporting the information of the city. Unlike us, the data was invisible to the eye but omnipresent in its effect. The new decision makers shaping our cities. The two flows meet. One free in its movement the other restrained in its path, sure of its destination. Along one of the cables a sparkle of optic and copper was visible, a break in the cable’s insulation. Perhaps from an rodent intruder or a mistake in the laying of the cables, a distant memory of human error uncorrected. Whatever the cause, it was there. It was the opportunity for this digital flow to escape and join the other on its uncertain journey to be free. The water touched the copper with an electrifying buzz and a bright light spread out across the surface. Causing the whole block to short circuit. No one was awake yet, but devices started beeping. Alarms, switching to their battery, stayed poised, ready to wake their bedside companions. Their lights, however would not gradually fade up and the heating that was triggered by this would no longer turn on. The signal for the kettle to activate with the heating would never arrive. This in turn would not trigger the ordering of the breakfast car to leave the depot to the housing block. The AVRs, not getting the signal that the block had woken up would only prepare to take one passenger that morning, the only one that had woken up according to its message at 4am. It was now 8am and the whole block was waiting on the corner for their ride. A single seated pod arrived but its passenger was nowhere to be found. Each curbside commuter tried to squeeze into the vehicle but every attempt was met with a clunk and a red light. For a moment they were gathered together, confused, the crowd swelled as more and more people left their block finding no form of transport. As I walked through the city, the morning sun lifting the dew from the asphalt, I imagined the moment when the swelling crowd finally broke out into the street and had to walk to work too.
INTERVIEW WITH GERJAN STRENG by Laura Frias & Hande Öğün Gerjan Streng is an architect and researcher. He co-founded Bright / The Cloud Collective, which explores urban challenges caused by changes in climate, mobility, economy and energy. Data analyses, spatial scenarios and prototypes are used to get a grip on uncertainties. Recently, this has been done with Ministry of Food, a research into the future of food, and several projects showing possible outcomes of the energy transition. You are one of the partners of The Cloud Collective. What are the advantages to work as a collective? How do the different departments within the collective complement each other? The Cloud Collective was set up while I was studying Architecture at Eindhoven University of Technology, about ten years ago, and collaborating on competitions with some fellow students. After graduation we started our professional career at different companies but we soon figured out that it is much more fun to work for ourselves. So we put all our individual projects together to give the impression to the outside world that we had a big office, as the economic crisis just started and there was not much work. We took part in competitions and realized some small public sculptures, like the ‘Section House’: a 1:2 scale fictional house with a fireplace, all made of concrete. We made everything ourselves, it took a lot of time, but it was just an excuse to work on a project.
Especially at the start of your career, it is difficult to build up a portfolio that convinces clients whom would like to see some realized buildings. Besides, there is a tendency to give assignments to companies instead of individuals. To start an office with others has a lot of advantages. In 2013 we were with ten people and realized that some of us were more interested in designing public buildings, others in exhibition design and me, together with Thijs van Spaandonk, liked to work on an urban scale. We decided to split up and establish different companies: Bright, Civic and Matters, the last one located in Paris. We are all members of the cooperation The Cloud Collective but we run our own company and sometimes we collaborate to combine different expertise. The projects you work on are usually related to urban conditions like energy and mobility, systems that nowadays are constantly changing. How do you respond to these changes and plan new design strategies? This studio about Corrupted Space and Utopia is closely related to the projects we deal with in Bright, my department within The Cloud Collective. A lot of research needs to be done and mostly there is not a single design solution. At the same time, you can use design to expand your horizon to think about possible futures. In our profession it is a valuable skill if you are I N S I D E 2 0 1 7 -
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able to reveal different scenarios. There are clients who know what they want (an office, a square, a road) and they want you to do that as quick and as efficient as possible. But if the topic is the future of housing for instance it is more valid to design different options and to show that there is not just one design. Recently I read this book ‘Speculative Everything’ by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby in which they show four scenarios that are all feasible and imaginable for one brief. This is an interesting way of thinking: how to generate new ideas based on different political grids, from very authoritarian to anarchistic or radically democratic. We try to work in this way on a city level and to speculate on what the design brief will be the coming ten or twenty years.
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How did the collaboration between you and Raumlaborberlin for the studio of The Floating University arise? Did you first select the topic (corrupted urban systems and utopia) or choose the site near Tempelhof Berlin? At the end of last year the head of INSIDE (Hans Venhuizen) asked me if I would like to guide a studio. So far I was only involved in a skills workshop and when I heard the year theme would be ‘corruption’ with Raumlabor, I got interested. I spoke to Benjamin Foerster-Baldenius of Raumlabor who told me they wanted to build a Floating University. We were talking about the site, located right at the heart of Berlin, thinking about new urbanism and what kind of projects the students could work on. We picked the topic of both corruption and utopia as tools to find out what is wrong with the city nowadays and to use the Floating University as a test site. If you just turn the site into a new neighbourhood, you know what you get, the municipality will start to build roads, dig a sewage system and people will live there. But what can you do as a designer to stimulate other ways of living? How do people actually want to live? In an apartment you don’t have any impact on how to deal with waste, there is no garden and no way of growing your own food. So we came up with five obvious infrastructures: mobility, energy, water, food and trash for the students to work. Keeping in mind the theme of corruption, the students were asked to come up with new ideas about what is going on in the Netherlands and Germany where it seems as if all systems are taken care of. In this studio we have learned that the current urban systems (food, water, energy, trash, mobility) are corrupted, because they don’t work the way they should. Which system requires more urgent change in our cities today? All of them. Right now there is a lot of attention for energy, obviously, usually this is triggered by external conditions like the Paris Agreement and the fact that we need to deal with our energy in a different way. The
same counts for how we deal with our food. Nowadays people are more aware what kind of food they eat and it is much easier to buy organic food. Besides food, mobility is another issue in transition because of the increase of technology. Water is also facing quite some challenges because of climate changes. The crisis has also been an opportunity to dive into these topics. If it is not known in which direction things are moving, we as designers have a lot of power. This thinking of flows in systems is transforming from a super centralized organized system into a system empowered by producers and consumers. Consequently the users will have more impact on the system and can initiate discussions about how to rearrange the infrastructure. I don’t know where it goes yet but things are definitely changing by giving more control to the people and thus for the society at large. From 0 to 10 how much do you live a sustainable life? Do you think sustainability is also corrupted? (Laughs) That’s a difficult question. I am definitely not a 0, but I am also not a 10, because I live in a small house that is poorly insulated and I have a gas heater. I travel to Amsterdam every week, I partly eat meat so that’s a plus (laughs). I have a bike, I buy organic products depending how much money I have at that moment (laughs), I do not have a car. So I try to be sustainable but I also want to live a comfortable life. I am not going to sit on the couch in my house with extra sweaters on, which I used to do in the past. It feels like a kind of a failure but if you want to live a super sustainable life and to grow your own food, it is basically a job and takes all your time. All in all I guess I am a 7.
Places_of_Hope © Erikjan Koopmans
CORRUPTED SPACE PARADE In the INSIDE year programme, exploring corrupted space, we established that most of the built environment contains elements of corruptedness. We learned not to denounce this situation or initiate a Don Quichote battle against that but to enjoy the examples and discover unexpected qualities in this ‘dirty reality’ of the built environment. The basic assumption is that especially in adapting the built environment to its real circumstances a society shows it’s unique strength and creativity. On the next pages you will find a collage of the corrupted spaces we met. Our journey started in the German city of Oberhausen and continued in The Hague. We organized a lecture series where artists, architects and researches shared there experiences with corrupted space and end this overview with a selection of observations and interpretations we gathered on our travels through, among other places, the Balkan region. The Oberhaus Our year began in the German city of Oberhausen, in the formerly prosporous Ruhr Area. Now the area suffers massive unemployment and debt. We participated in The Oberhaus, an initiative by the Oberhausen based artists group kitev to develop an artistic approach to upgrade a neglected building near the Oberhausen train station. It focuses on fostering the intercultural dialogue between current and future neighbours to create a better life. INSIDE students,
guided by REFUNC, participated in the project by designing and realising four collective ‘services’ with materials they harvested in the direct environment of The Oberhaus. These new collective ‘services’ support the inhabitants that mostly have a refugee background, to create a stronger ‘sense of belonging’ in their new Heimat. INSIDE students, in cooperation with local refugees, developed and realized several proposals for improving the building.
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be a signal for the lack of collectivity in the building. The Oberhaus is a ‘halfway house’ a place people come with no other housing options. The first thing the participants of the workshop did was to buy cleaning products and firmly brush the hallway of the building.
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Dirty reality At first entry the students could not help to be somewhat shocked by the garbage in the hallway, the dirt on the floor and the walls and the unpleasent smell in the collective spaces of the Oberhaus. This turned out to
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Beauty for free When entering the building you can not avoid the piles of advertising folders that the distributors did not even care to stick into the individual mailboxes. Students started researching the qualities of these packages of printed sheets of paper wrapped in plastic. When rolled up (cleaverly held together with rings of rubber cut from old bicycle tire a local shop donated) these packages turned out to be a buidling material with unexpected potentials.
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Playful guestroom To enable the intercultural dialogue, kitev recently rented two of the apartments in the building. In future kitev plans to develop collective spaces in these apartments. As an invitation to participate, in one of the apartments students developed a ‘playful guestroom’ with hammocks created from found rope. A space that can be used by the inhabitants to ‘hang out’ with guests.
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Corrupt the space With German architect and scenographer Thomas Rustemeyer students observed the public space of The Hague to discover aspects of corruptedness. Rustemeyer asked the students to find a way to corrupt the space and to design a choreography, a performance including an object or a costume that belonged to their bodies. Cleaning performance Yungkyung Lee spent three days in public space next to the The Hague City Hall trying to figure out the spatial dynamics in the area. Although the surroundings of the City Hall is meant for pedestrians, many vehicles used this space and create their own choreography. Yungkyung Lee mapped this choreography and executed a cleaning performance by using the urban vacuum cleaner of the city officials. Be more human Laura Frias Munoz Del Cerro chose a well-known situation with wide stairs in the city centre of The hague that is not used for circulation purposes anymore because of the installation of an escalator. As an effect of that you can always see people sitting, smoking, having a snack or waiting for someone...but no people going up and down the stairs. Laura choreographed the performance ‘Human carpet’: directing her fellow students to cover the Adidas ad with their bodies, but carefully leaving the last sentence that reads “be more human, clearly visible.” 1
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René Boer/Failed Architecture RUINPORN vs RENDERPORN
East Market, Detroit (photo: Bryan Debus). Ruins, the cliché ‘failed architecture’. When photographed in an extreme way, with dark clouds and lots of debris, the images will quickly become easily shareable clickbait. This one-dimensional aestheticization, popular on flickr, obfuscates the social cruelty in Detroit’s dramatic decline. I N S I D E 2 0 1 7
Hotel Jakarta, Amsterdam (SeARCH architects) Renders, officially accepted ‘architecture’. Unrealistic visions of shiny surfaces in dramatic settings, filling the social media feeds of Archdaily and Architizer. In a similar fashion, this catchy-but-easy imagination keeps the important debates about Amsterdam’s urban future decidedly out of sight. David Helbich - Belgian solutions or: How people deal with stuff.
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If Rome is the open museum of the antique, Paris the open museum of the 19th century and New York the open museum of the 20th century, then Brussels is the open museum of the last 5 minutes. In Belgium traces of on-the-spot decision making are integral part of the urban environment and even architecture. Their seriality suggests that not every solution is an answer to a problem. Still, the individual situations are shining as signs of care-taking within a place were the feeling of the temporality of communities is stronger than the authority of traditions. I am still wondering if the underlying aesthetics of Belgian solutions are their unvarnished functionalism, or if we can read it as a new way of ornamentation. davidhelbich.be - IG: davidhelbich - belgian-solutions. be - IG & FB: Belgian solutions - book volume 1&2 at Luster, Antwerpen
Corrupted, corrupted, corrupted - Adriel Quiroz Through a corrupted process, this building as part of the remodeling of Macedonia was intended to show the power of the government over the people. None whatsoever, the people proved their incomformity during a protest by throwing paint at it. Lastly, the government reclaimed this proof of opposition and wants to preserve it.
Selling Champagne - Hande Öğün The ‘Belgrade Waterfront’, a master plan consisting of luxury residential buildings, office units and a shopping mall in one of the most expensive areas of Belgrade. The photo is taken in the main hall of the developer’s office with this giant model hanging at the wall, decorated with luxury furniture, shiny surfaces and bar with champagne to be served to possible future residents. There is a lot of opposition against this project by Belgrade’s citizens, architects, urbanists and civic activists. We discussed this project and the frustration it created with opposing architects and members from an activist group. We were not there to buy ‘the luxury life’ offered by the investors, so weren’t served any champagne, but we were using the media and space that they designed to sell their projects.
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A temple survives in a tight corner I-Chieh Liu Shuang Lian Temple is an intriguing temple located on the border of Taipei city under an intersection of infrastructures. The temple shares the same retaining wall as the river dike under the elevated road. This seemingly illegally-built temple is just one of the common sights in Taiwanese cities. Due to social change and rapid urban development residents shifted their emphasis in life and their reliance on faith weakened. The temples seek gaps to fit themselves in the leftover space of urbanization and start to shrink to a minimal occupation. These temples are not intentionally planned by any architects; however, they seem like creatures that struggle through live in various forms in the society and naturally evolve in the concrete jungle.
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Refined brutalism - Hans Venhuizen The large scale not very refined brutalist building in Prishtina, formerly housing the Kosovo printing industry, is now being used as an event location. The raw brutalist detailing now offers space to present use of storing garbage from the party people that currently use the space. Thus combining brutalist detailing and party garbage to refined decoration.
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Warrior on a horse... the Great - Hans Venhuizen The former yugoslav republic of macedonia is working hard to reframe its nations identity. The main source of inspiration for this is Alexander the Great, the king of the ancient Greek Kingdom of Macedonia in the fourth century b.C. Alexander was born in a part of Macedonia that is now in Greece. Greece opposes the claim of the new republic on Alexander the Great as they also oppose the use of the name Macedonia. Because of that Greece blocks the participation of Macedonia to the NATO, where Macedonia deperately wants to be a part of as a defence against Russian threat. As a gesture of compromise Macedonia does no longer call her airport Alexander the Great and also renamed the main sculpture in the city, impersonating Alexander the Great, to ’warrior on a horse’.
CORRUPTED SPACE - Laura Frías A space is corrupted when it allows external conditions related to people’s behaviours to change the whole premeditated meaning or planned function of the original space. Here the art piece is organizing the space in a way that manipulates the presence of people bringing them to its projected shadow. Then in this case, instead of having people around admiring the monument, it involuntarily brings them together against the heat. So shelter is organizing the scene because of the weather condition. And this organization may vary depending on different weather conditions such as wind or rain.
TRAVEL the world around us and mobilize these observations to make them of use in the designing of spatial change.
The TRAVEL programme every year starts with ENDEM and ends with STOFFWECHSEL. Endem is the Albanian word for ‘feeling happily lost’ and invites you to gather all sorts of impressions without actually knowing what for. In the next phase of the TRAVEL programme HÀOQÍ is the key emotion. HÀOQÍ, the Chinese word for ‘curious’, makes you look back at And there is a lot to see and feel everywhere: newly designed spaces what you actually saw and discover that you only know from renderings all kinds of fascinating observations that start your curiousity. in magazines, and places that are on the brink of change. Famous monuments and meaningful places In the third phase you bring these you didn’t know yet. Highlights and observations back to the core inbetween spaces. Well designed idea that you frame into various as well as poorly designed spaces. PADIDEH, the Persian word for Special and ordinary ones. And ‘phenomenon’. These Padideh spaces that make you reflect on will be confronted with eachother social issues, history, politics, through placing them on two sides religion and economic situations, of a matrix thus creating a ‘field of or that are simply fascinating in change’. their own right. With our TRAVEL programme we excercise the ability Finally you explore the possibilities to observe, analyse and interpret that are hidden within this field
through combining seemingly uncombinable elements, exploring the observations by merging them and thus using them for your metamorphism, or STOFFWECHSEL as the German architect Gottfried Semper (1803-1879) framed this phenomenon in architecture.
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TRAVEL
The basis of every design lies in observing, researching and analyzing a situation. The best attitude for doing that is to travel to places and thus experience ‘a tremendous sense of liberation and, at the same time, to be very aware of all the dangers and limitations that surround you’. (Lebbeus Woods, as quoted in an interview with Jan Jongert). Only by travelling somewhere you can see and feel the real spaces, smell the real odours, and meet the real people.
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LEARNING BY TEACHING Learning is an active process. Students become more conscious about their knowledge and the questions they have about their project, if they take others with them in their research process. INSIDE believes teaching about your project will help you understand your project better. AT INSIDE we use ‘learning by teaching’ as part of the graduation process.
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LEARNING BY TEACHING
The graduation students prepare a SKILLS workshop for the first year students in which they explore the essential SKILLS needed for their graduation project. These SKILLS workshops take place at the beginning of the graduation process. At that point, the students formulate their graduation project and explore their main topic. They decide which locations are worth visiting to get more knowledge about their project, but also which SKILLS will play a role. The students formulate in pairs a research question based on their own graduation project, they instruct their fellow students and guide them in the exploration and development of a skill regarding their subject. With this process they mobilise their fellow students to contribute to the learning by teaching process.
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USTA
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The USTA group is an experimental and independent pedagogical platform developing tools for learning and unlearning founded by two INSIDE alumni who graduated in 2017: Arvand Pourabbasi & Klodiana Millona. Usta originates from a shared self-practice during their graduation journey. By sharing knowledge, connections, resources etc. they succeeded to keep their process on track. Apart from the word Usta, or Turkish for master, the group shares a strong belief that the master level of education should not be just a defined relationship between teachers and students, but an open possibility for students to define their own path. Klodiana and Arvand state that: “Today learning of architecture is changing, from
uniquely academic knowledge, from the practices of big masters, to more tangible practices and everyday conditions of regular people and architects. Architecture as a form of knowledge has a privilege to learn from everyday practices of people in diverse environments. Likewise in education, the materiality, aesthetic and functionality are not the main matters anymore; but learning from the immediate environments and observations of existing phenomena are becoming more significant in alternative systems of education.”
aims to support practicing the act of learning among the students. Usta strives for to hold a critical attitude on the conventional architectural education system, focusing on the enhancement of self-study practice within the existing courses. Through organizing ‘Freudian Sessions’, ‘Fanzines’, ‘Workshops to create workshops’, ‘Reading rooms’ and ‘How to party after a reviewsessions’, Usta explores different ways of doing, thinking, feeling and sharing the graduating students’ experiences in their act of becoming a master.
From that perspective Klodiana Usta Group https://ustagroup.tumblr. and Arvand developed Usta as an com integral programme that runs parallel with the main study agenda; it is not a teaching programme, though it
TUTORS
Lotte van den Berg Coordinator INSIDE
Hans Venhuizen deals with the culture of spatial planning. In his search for a more specific identity for cities and areas, Venhuizen links the worlds of culture and space to each other in different ways. In this, his focus is always on the culture of spatial planning itself, and the game is his most important instrument. The relation between playfulness and seriousness is a key feature in all of Venhuizen’s projects.
Hans Venhuizen Head of INSIDE & tutor TRAVEL programme
Erik Jutten works with students on projects in ‘a real world’-context and on a one to one scale. Erik graduated in 2004 in Visual Arts at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague. He works as initiator of and partner in art projects in public space. He is founding member of City in the Making, an activist organisation working at reclaiming empty buildings for living-working and commoning. www.stadindemaak.nl
Erik Jutten STUDIO Practice tutor
Lotte van den Berg studied Media & Culture in Amsterdam and graduated with a Master in Film Documentary in 2011. After graduating she worked as a producer and volunteer coördinator at Cinekid, a Media festival for children. After that she started working at Sports & Culture TU Delft as a Programme assistent for the Culture courses and projects. In February 2016 she started working at INSIDE. In addition to her task as Coördinator, Lotte works with the students on the visibility and PR of INSIDE.
Aser Gimenez-Ortega - MVRDV STUDIO & Graduation tutor
Gerjan Streng is architect and researcher. He co-founded Bright / The Cloud Collective, which explores urban challenges caused by changes in climate, mobility, economy and energy. Data analyses, spatial scenarios and prototypes are used to get a grip on uncertainties. Recently, this has been done with Ministry of Food, a research into the future of food, and several projects showing possible outcomes of the energy transition.
Gerjan Streng – Cloudcollective STUDIO & Graduation tutor
Fokke Moerel holds a Masters in Architecture from the Academy of Architecture, Rotterdam. Since January this year Fokke became Partner at MVRDV, and has been working in the studio for over 15 years. Founded in 1993 by Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries in Rotterdam, the international practice of MVRDV realizes exemplary, outspoken projects all over the world. MVRDV
Fokke Moerel - MVRDV STUDIO & Graduation tutor
Aser Giménez-Ortega is a Spanish architect and associate at MVRDV. He is involved in theconceptualization and execution of projects of various scales including the DNB Headquarters in Oslo,Hongqiao CBD and Roskilde Festival High School in Denmark. Aser regularly conducts student workshops and gives lectures worldwide. He graduated with a Master degree in architecture from Universidad Politécnica de Valencia in 2005.
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Benjamin FoersterBaldenius – Raumlaborberlin STUDIO tutor
Mick van Gemert has been at MVRDV since 2010 where he is working as an architect/urban planner on different projects. Mick also teaches as a guest teacher at the Faculty of Architecture at the Technical University Delft where he graduated in 2002.
Mick van Gemert – MVRDV STUDIO tutor
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Studio Makkink & Bey – Jurgen Bey & Chester Chuang STUDIO tutor
Anne Hoogewoning studied architectural history and cultural heritage. Besides being a theory and writing tutor at the KABK and other academies like Design Academy Eindhoven, she is co-founder and partner of AB Cultural Producers and coordinator of the artist-design residency of the Van Doesburghuis at Meudon/Paris. Hoogewoning is committee member for the design and architecture sector at the Dutch Council of Culture and board member of ArchiNed, the
Junyuan Chen – SUPERUSE STUDIOS FLOWS tutor
Louise Schouwenberg is an art and design theorist, who has contributed to a range of publications, including ‘Beyond the New. On the Agency of Things’ (2017), and ‘Robert Zandvliet - I owe you the truth in painting’ (2012). She leads the master department Contextual Design at Design Academy Eindhoven, and since 2012 she is one of the theory tutors at INSIDE.
Frans Bevers currently works as an independent designer and consultant. Until 2012 he was co-director of OPERA Amsterdam, a design firm with an international portfolio in the field of interior architecture and exhibition design which he founded in 1981. He was tutor and head of the department of
Frans Bevers SKILLS – Tutor exhibition design
Junyuan Chen graduated from INSIDE in 2015. Her design approach is to start an encompassing research based on her own observations and analysis. In her work, she’s including political as well as environmental issues, and integrates technology and social needs. In 2016, she starts collaborating with Superuse studios (Netherlands), and sets up the Superuse Studios China in Beijing. Currently she teaches the FLOWS study programme at INSIDE, Master Interior Architecture.
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Louise Schouwenberg THEORY tutor
architecture site of the Netherlands.
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Anne Hoogewoning THEORY tutor
Are known as critical designers, driven to understand the world and to question it in a unique manner. To this end, their design team analyses content in search of the relation between objects and their users through composing narratives to find connections. The Studio is extremely interested in the future of the new working landscape, they introduced a new online magazine; Proofflabmagazine, that aims to define the future working culture.
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Benjamin Foerster-Baldenius is an architect from Berlin and partner at raumlaborberlin that develops artistic projects in public space. Presently he is preparing the floating university berlin, an offshore campus for cities in transformation. He was Professor at the Academy of Art, Architecture + Design,Prague and transdisciplinary Design at Folkwang University of Arts, Essen. Currently he is teaching at University Witten/Herdecke, Designacademy Eindhoven and the Kabk.
TUTORS
Architectural Design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy (1979-2007) and lectured at Parsons School of Design (NYC) among others. He also teaches at the master departments Information Design and Contextual Design of the Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE).
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