INSIDE Magazine #9, 2017-18

R R U P T E D S P A C

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 ft 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 frst 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 frst year flled with encounters, assignments and confrontations, the students return to their native countries where they defne 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.

Hans Venhuizen Head of INSIDE, master interior architecture

O R R U P T E D S P A

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 18

STUDIO CORRUPTED SPACE

Studio Corrupted Space at Floating University Berlin with Cloudcollective and raumlaborberlin 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 fows 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 41 - 44

Goda Verikaite & Farah Zamri 42

LEARNING BY TEACHING 45

USTA 46

TUTORS 47 - 49

CORRUPTED SPACE cover COLOPHON cover

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.

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.

USTA is an independent experimental platform developing tools of learning and unlearning, established by Arvand Pourabbasi and Klodiana Millona, alumni ofnside: master of interior architecture. USTAmaster, expert, old hand, workman, craftsman, adept, artist, connoisseur, constructor, dab, dabster, hand, journeyman, profcient, shark, whizz* *Babylon Turkish-English Dictionary Defnition(last visited 25th august,2017

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 fnd solutions which are within anyone’s reach, we want to change your way of thinking. Functions in architecture and

Designer,

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.

Mauricio Freyre, audio visual artist and flmmaker, that uses the flm medium to explore structures and systems of thought behind the constructed and projected, refecting on the mechanisms of cinema within the process of creation and representation. His projects and flms have been exhibited at Rencontres Internationales, Haus der Kulturen, Fundación Telefonica, TENT, W139, Nederlands FF, FIC Valdivia, etc.

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 feldwork and the design feld 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

Lucas Verweij SKILLS –Tutor presentation skills

Writer, Teacher

Mauricio Freyre SKILLS –Tutor flm narratives

Denis Oudendijk & Jan Körbes

REFUNC SKILLS –Tutor Hands on Design

Klodiana Millona & Arvand Pourabbasi –USTA SKILLS –Tutor Usta

Vincent de Rijk SKILLS –Tutor model making

Royal Academy of Art, The Hague

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 offce 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: Profle picture Fokke Moerel: © Allard van der Hoek REFUNC images – Ishka Michocka

As it was not possible to fnd all the copyright holders of the photos in this publication, INSIDE invites interested parties to contact INSIDE.

“’Corruption through Fiction’ by Jack Bardwell. A frst 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 specifes 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 specifc context. For an interior architect, ‘inside’ is never isolated but always connected to ‘outside’.

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 affliation 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 fnd 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.

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 signifcant 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.

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 offces 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.

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 fnd 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 specifc 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 offce and retail space; changing lifestyles; the industrialization of the food industry; attention for schooling and education; and increasing importance

through desire and necessity of self-organization. The spatial and social impact of these issues manifests itself in all areas of work of the interior architect. And moreover, students from countries all over the world at INSIDE prove capable of putting forward relevant social issues with a spatial component and with a cultural urgency we are unfamiliar with in the Netherlands, such as the seemingly unstoppable urbanization now taking place in China. INSIDE does not educate students to work exclusively in a Dutch spatial context. By enabling students to ‘pick up’ projects in their native countries and to develop them at INSIDE for their graduation, we open the door for an exchange of international experiences and mutual cultural infuencing.

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 defning 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

Arena at State of Design Berlin, June 2017, photo by Ishka Michocka

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

Visiting teachers/lecturers/guests/guides

Observatorium – Geert van de Camp & André Dekker

REFUNC – Denis Oudendijk, Jan Körbes

USTA – Klodiana Millona & Arvand Pourabbasi

EuroMoonMars Team – Bernard Foing

STUDIO THE NEW WORKSPACE

In the frst 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 fows which were present in these frms (for instance energy, waste and money), interview the owner or employees to fnd out the work fows 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 defnition 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

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-Chieh & Yunkyung Concreet Design B.V. – Rene Bollen

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 company’s daily routines, we created a fows 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 fows, such as main fow, material fow and movement fow. All these fows are interconnected. The main fow reveals the offcial steps of making concrete panels including all the details of the ingredients and equipment that are needed in order to do that. The material fow provides materials to the main flow. The map shows where the

ingredients come in and go out again. The other fows we mapped show the current situation in the ‘ConcreetDesign’ workplace. We included some proposals to improve the working environment of the company.

http://concreetdesign.com/language/nl/ concreetdesign/

The InsideFlows approach to spatial design was originally developed by Jan Jongert of the Rotterdam based architecture offce Superuse Studios. This approach aims for a ‘systemic’ understanding of the working fows in our environment and the ways of giving resource fows a positive contribution to design, delivering innovative and sustainable solutions that respond to users needs and clients interests.

Spatial changes are complex by defnition. They consist of numorous conditions involved such as clients demands, suppliers possibilities and not the least: spatial qualities, fnancial 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 specifc elements through focussing on materials or construction, on colors or tactility, on budget or usability, on emotion or fexibility etc etc. The focus on one of the elements involved can create a welcome hierarchy in complex situations.

The Flows approach does not create a hierarchy in complex spatial situations but focusses on the complex system itself that lies underneath every spatial situation. In het systemic approach InsideFlows distinguishes three sections of fows: physical fows, energy fows and fows of value, and determines 14 different subcategories within these sections. In recent years Superuse developed and gathered various Flows tools that enable designers to observe, document and study the various fows in the space, and as a result of that, establish a systemic view of the context. Flows helps designers reasoning the reality and understanding the world not through simplifcation and isolation, but through establishing a ‘systemic view’ of our environment. By mapping the dynamic and complex relationships of the designated fows, designers are capable to maneuver and understand the numerous layers involved and their connections and fnally bring these together to the core of their design process.

Flows thus not only manifests itself in the research phase of a project. By applying the Flows approach also to design, designers are able to include numerous and even elusive elements in their design and unexpected opportunities pop up and are discovered that can lead to a new aesthetics. In recent years various Flows tools were further developed, among others in China with the alumni INSIDE student Junyuan Chen, who graduated in 2015 with a Flows approach for the future ruralization of a small village in Southwest China.

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 foor 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 refrigerator connects the kitchen with my living room. The northern part of my kitchen is connected to a small two square meter balcony. Here you can fnd a washing machine and a gas heater equipped with a water supply and drainage system. In case I want to renovate my kitchen, what should I do? First of all, I would like to enlarge the space and double it in order to have more room for cooking activities as six square meters for a kitchen is too small and too restrictive. I fnd the bright green PVC cabinet door too glaring and prefer a wood fnish. Furthermore, I don’t like so much the stainless countertop because it has an uneven surface, a marble top would therefore be a good alternative. Under the closet above the stove I prefer some extra lighting because cutting vegetables in the dark is unhandy and not a funny thing. The last thing to fx would be the gap under the lower cabinets where dirt is accumulating. At the same time, I would like the balcony not only to be used for washing and heating, but also as an extra space for vegetations.

So, let me describe my kitchen by one systematic language: as a starting point I need to take into account that the kitchen system is meant for the needs for two human beings. The current system combines cleaning, preparing, cooking, storage and some other facilities that all make routinely use of Flows like water, electricity, natural gas, heat and organic and inorganic systems. Let’s take the organic system as an example: food enters the kitchen system from outside and is stored in a freezer that requires external electrical

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 frst 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 fows of resources and fows of energy and is clearly a waste production line where various fows passes through the system to become waste. At the same time these waste fows 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 selfsuffcient kitchen system where I can both cook and

Flows map by 1st year INSIDE students Adriel, I-Chieh, Hande and Yunkyung

A new perspective on the old structures of education

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.

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?

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.

Tutors Fokke Moerel, Aser Giménez Ortega, Mick van Gemert (Architects MVRDV) Anne Hoogewoning(Theory), Vincent de Rijk (Model maker & Skills workshop) 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)

THE SCHOOL AS AN ADVENTUROUS CITY

Over-controlling parents restrict children’s independence

by

According to The Independent’s journalist Charlie Cooper over-controlling parents cause their children lifelong psychological damage [1]. Cooper based his fndings 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.

city smaller scale

SCHOOL

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 fght 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 feld as a designer.

Text

Daniele Valentino parents excessively concerned

of children’s identity and self-belief children are not free

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 foors and is confgured 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 defnes 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 foor 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.

‘The Apollo school in Amsterdam by Herman Hertzberger’

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 Beneft Assessment is a procedure that takes into account risks, especially for children [8]. It provides practical methods for conducting riskbeneft 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 beneft 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 confgured 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 confguration: 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 refected 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.

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 effcient and valid alternatives for childhood education of today. I looked back to my personal experiences in order to refect 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 confgure schools as small cities, where children can be young citizens and adults are just guides whenever children need help.

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 Beneft 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 offce 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/

by Laura Frias & Hande Öğün

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 fve, days. In this way the students can really work on their assignment and fnally come up with a resin model of the design they work on that specifc 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 frst 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 fnish 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 offces, 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 fnding out what could be the main elements to show in the model.

Sharp fnished 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

INTERVIEW WITH VINCENT DE RIJK

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 fnally 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.

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 fnally, 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 fnd 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.

So it was basically his idea to see the potential of making models in volume instead of surfaces and to become a three-dimensional diagram of space. This is very useful especially for competitions: in one model you can show the view from inside as a section with an idea of what it looks like. Although the foor plans are quite abstract you can give an impression of the feeling of the senses. And fnally with colours in combination with other materials you can make a sort of diagram: what is more important or less, what is empty and what is full etc. So the model is quite sketchy but at the same time very sharp. I like this combination of sketchy ideas with sharpness of perfecting techniques and materials.

You are specialized in the casting of polyester for model making, are you also experimenting with other materials and new techniques?

Not so much actually, because at some point you get your repertoire, let’s say (laugh). I am more into redefning what I know instead of learning new

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 keep up the knowledge. Like the casting techniques is something I have always been doing but I can still refne more. You can compare it with a piano player and ask ‘why don’t you play another instrument?’ There’s too much to improve once you know you can do something better. That’s also the reason why you are never fnished to learn. So the basis of my work is the casting technique, especially resin, I used to do a lot of plaster and ceramics, but that is also casting. We started the model making for offces like OMA, but sometimes they ask us to make something special like a resin furniture, and that’s actually what we are doing now. It’s a challenge and it takes a lot of time for research and calculations because to make a model is completely different from a 1:1 piece furniture. The furniture cannot be produced industrially, because most of it is handwork. So it is very special.

Resin model by Adriel Quiroz Silva

Resin model by Hande Öğün

Complex systems are more vulnerable to deliberate and accidental corruption than we expect.

After this investigation the students continued their research at the site of Tempelhof. The students visited the site for the frst 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 (fows). 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 students presented their projects on corrupted systems and utopian models within the setting of a symbiotic Nation. How would a utopian society on the site look like and how are its inhabitants provided with energy, water, mobility, food and take care of waste?

The Floating University laboratory by raumlaborberlin is located in the centre of a pool and forms an arena around a foating 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.

INTERVIEW WITH KATHERINE BALL

by Laura Frias & Hande Öğün

When did you become curious about fltering 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 traffc 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 flter polluted water.

Later on there was a call by the Indianapolis Museum of Art for a project to inhabit Indy Island, a kind of igloo, foating in the lake near the museum. The water of the lake is polluted because of the river’s connection running through the city of Indianapolis. When there is as little as .6 cm rain, the city mixes the sewage with the rain and puts it into the river. I lived on the island and tried to take the pollution out of the water by using long ‘mycobooms’, a mushroom flter shaped like a giant sausage. There was no electricity at the island or running water but that was ok for me. Actually I enjoyed it a lot. I stayed in the summer so I didn’t need heat. One thing you do need is time because you spend a lot of 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

There is one thing I had to sacrifce 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

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

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 fnd 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

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 flter the polluted water in the basin at the site of the Floating University?’. I try to address this question and to intervene and do something. Just the other day I learned at the Floating University site something new about the membrane flters. I spoke to a person from a membrane company and proposed him to hook up the membrane flter at the end of a series of bathtubs that will contain biological water flters at Floating University. He told me that it would be better to put the membrane flter directly from the rainwater versus the end, because when the water fows to the other flters bacteria and dirt will be added. So by making and experiencing and by trying out new questions, new problems will arise and you will be able to ask better-informed questions for new issues.

Katherine Ball is the artist-in-residence at Floating University’s Performative Water Filtration Laboratory. Her artwork explores the infrastructure of everyday life.

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.

One of the things I hope to learn more about is not just the technology behind water fltration 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 atmosphere in which people feel open to getting back in touch with our relationships with water. I hope Floating University can be a space where we relate with the ecosystem and eachother.

What I also hope to learn is all the things I don’t expect to learn. I started this process to learn how to use design to make ecological systems more appealing, engaging and inspiring. In that sense I’d like this place to become 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.

Water can be cleaned by using flters 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 flters. Here in The Hague there is a place where a giant sandflter is installed and I am very much interested in the scientifc aspects of this flter. 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.

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.

When the Floating University program comes to an end, how do you hope the site will be developed? Do you have any utopian vision that could be applied here?

I have a fantasy that the pond could become a place where you can swim in the middle of the city where species like frogs, birds, ducks can live too. My utopian vision is that the main road, the Columbiadamm, will be closed for traffc and the Tempelhof airport will become a giant garden.

‘Water system at Floating University’

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

The passport photo-booth that enables Floating Nation members to draw eachother.

Hande Ögün mapped misplaced objects in the neighbourhood of the Floating University site. Hande aims at rescueing these objects from being destroyed by making

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 ineffcient coffee making where even the necessary fre is made with the ancient techniques that I-Chieh redeveloped.

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 flled 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 ceremony to bless food.

Lotti Gostic focused on the large amounts of insignifcant 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.

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.

Yungkyung Lee provides the Floating Nation with a strategy for acquiring energy. Yunkyung mapped all public electrical outlets and designed a battery car, disguised as a planter box, to cunningly mask the act of stealing.

WHERE THE WATER FLOWS

A mobility story

Text by Jack Bardwell, illustrations by Guy Field

The recent rush towards autonomous vehicles and automation in general seems to be based on the idea that effciency 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 fctional 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 fctional short story. Fictional writing, especially science fction 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 fow. 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 confnes of the pipe. What does it make of this fork in the road? Is it just a feeting 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?

I close the tap. I’m late for work.

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 fowing 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,

although the speed of transport was getting close to making that a reality, but my presence was in the offce. 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 signifed the end of email checking and my day at the offce began. You could really hit the ground running and since signing up the AVR scheme I was more productive than ever.

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 fuctuations 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, traffc 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.

Surface Tension

The next morning I was late again, I didn’t even have time to splash water over my face. I grabbed my laptop and rushed out of the door to the usual spot. I ran over to the door and jumped in.“phew” I gasped. “Really thought I wasn’t going to make it.” My speaking was met with awkward glances, the usual response to someone breaking the unspoken code of Travel Silence. But it seemed longer and more tense than usual. There were no conversations, just fickering of eyes from me to the foor. In an attempt to change the scene I reached out

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 fnd 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 foor 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 flling my lungs and a sense of calm came over me. For the frst 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 never been so present. Like the water leaving the tap I was no longer constrained, only a distant gravity of past experience was guiding me, I began to fow.

I had purpose now. Not some location that I was to reach but rather each step became my destination, became home. Everything felt so crisp at this speed, there was so much detail and texture to the surfaces. The sound of cars became a distant ambient tone that soon disappeared along with their streaks of colour. I felt heavy, yet buoyant, like I was swimming through its

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 fat I slumped down on the heated foor. 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.

grabbed the towel from the side and rammed it into the overfow and watched for a moment as the sink began to fll. 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, fowing out across the counter over the edge and onto the foor. As it seeped into the foor boards it would begin to fnd 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 fows 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 fow 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.

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, was not split between realities could not be achieved while in The next morning I woke up at

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 fnding no form of transport.

packed my bag with supplies for a longer journey than usual and splashed my face with the my hair and cooling the back 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

As I walked through the city, the morning sun lifting the dew from the asphalt, I imagined the moment when the swelling crowd fnally broke out into the street and had to walk to work too.

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.

Especially at the start of your career, it is diffcult 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 offce with others has a lot of

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

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

able to reveal different scenarios. There are clients who know what they want (an offce, a square, a road) and they want you to do that as quick and as effcient 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.

How did the collaboration between you and Raumlaborberlin for the studio of The Floating University arise? Did you frst 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 fnd 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 fve 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

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 fnd 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

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

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 frst thing the participants of the workshop did was to buy cleaning products and frmly brush the hallway of the building.

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.

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.

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 fnd 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 fgure 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 offcials.

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.”

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 fickr, obfuscates the social cruelty in Detroit’s dramatic decline.

Hotel Jakarta, Amsterdam (SeARCH architects) Renders, offcially accepted ‘architecture’. Unrealistic visions of shiny surfaces in dramatic settings, flling 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.

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

René Boer/Failed ArchitectureRUINPORN vs RENDERPORN

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, offce 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 offce 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.

A temple survives in a tight cornerI-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 ft 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.

Refned brutalism - Hans Venhuizen

The large scale not very refned 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 refned decoration.

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.

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’.

Warrior on a horse... the Great - Hans Venhuizen

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.

And there is a lot to see and feel everywhere: newly designed spaces that you only know from renderings in magazines, and places that are on the brink of change. Famous monuments and meaningful places you didn’t know yet. Highlights and inbetween spaces. Well designed as well as poorly designed spaces. Special and ordinary ones. And spaces that make you refect on social issues, history, politics, religion and economic situations, or that are simply fascinating in their own right. With our TRAVEL programme we excercise the ability to observe, analyse and interpret

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 what you actually saw and discover all kinds of fascinating observations that start your curiousity.

In the third phase you bring these observations back to the core idea that you frame into various PADIDEH, the Persian word for ‘phenomenon’. These Padideh will be confronted with eachother through placing them on two sides of a matrix thus creating a ‘feld of change’.

Finally you explore the possibilities that are hidden within this feld

The USTA group is an experimental and independent pedagogical

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 defned relationship between teachers and students, but an open possibility for students to defne 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 signifcant in alternative systems of education.”

From that perspective Klodiana and Arvand developed Usta as an integral programme that runs parallel with the main study agenda; it is not a teaching programme, though it

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.

Usta Group https://ustagroup.tumblr. com

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. Benjamin FoersterBaldenius –Raumlaborberlin STUDIO 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.

Fokke MoerelMVRDV STUDIO & Graduation tutor

Gerjan

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.

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

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.

Aser Gimenez-OrtegaMVRDV STUDIO & Graduation tutor

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

Hans Venhuizen deals with the culture of spatial planning. In his search for a more specifc 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

Lotte van den Berg Coordinator INSIDE

Erik Jutten STUDIO Practice tutor

Streng – Cloudcollective STUDIO & Graduation tutor

Mick van Gemert –MVRDV STUDIO tutor

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).

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. Frans Bevers SKILLS –Tutor exhibition design

architecture site of the Netherlands.

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 fnd connections. The Studio is extremely interested in the future of the new working landscape, they introduced a new online magazine; Prooffabmagazine, that aims to defne the future working culture.

Benjamin Foerster-Baldenius is an architect from Berlin and partner at raumlaborberlin that develops artistic projects in public space. Presently he is preparing the foating 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. Studio

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 ZandvlietI 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.

Junyuan Chen –SUPERUSE STUDIOS FLOWS tutor

Frans Bevers currently works as an independent designer and consultant. Until 2012 he was co-director of OPERA Amsterdam, a design frm with an international portfolio in the feld of interior architecture and exhibition design which he founded in 1981. He was tutor and head of the department of

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

Makkink & Bey –Jurgen Bey & Chester Chuang STUDIO tutor

Anne Hoogewoning THEORY tutor

Louise Schouwenberg THEORY tutor