Ways of Seeing, Acts of Looking
Madeleine Maaskant
Marijke Hoogenboom
Seeing is a Creative Act
Jeroen Musch
‘Architects are transmitters, photographers receivers’
Arjan Klok and Jeroen Musch
On Site Sequence
Rick Groenenberg and Roel van Loon
Dis Order Ed
Flavius Ventel and Stijn Dries
Borderline
Lindsey van de Wetering and Philippe Allignet
Awake
Ginevra Melazzi and Henry Holmes
Safeguarding Values
Liesbeth Jansen
Thijs Meijer
ME Seeing is a Creative Act
Winter School
Amsterdam Academy of Architecture
Artist in Residence Jeroen Musch
Ways of Seeing, Acts of Looking
When we appointed the photographer Jeroen Musch as the new Artist in Residence at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, we could not have known that the start of his term would coincide with the death of one of the most influential writers that has changed our idea of seeing, the English art critic John Berger, who died aged 90 on 2 January 2017. In his seminal essay Ways of Seeing he writes: “Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak. But there is another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world.”
Although Berger was initially concerned with how we perceive art, he quickly called our attention to the wider world and introduced looking as a political act that challenges us to exercise our sensibilities and to ask ourselves: ‘What do we see? How are we seen? Might we see differently?’ For Berger, the relationship between what we see and what we know is never settled, and therefore the act of looking becomes an effective tool to discover something (else) about ourselves and the situation in which we are living.
It might be obvious that it is of vital importance for designers to develop their capacities to observe, to examine with the eye, and to see and discover things that initially went unnoticed. Specifically within the disciplines of architecture, urbanism and landscape architecture ‘looking closely at things’ and viewing them on a different scale, or from a different point of view, is conditional. It forces the designer to keep asking questions and to see connections between things that are not seemingly related to each other. But how is this necessity of the profession reflected in our education and how can ‘learning how to look’ become a subject of teaching at the Academy of Architecture?
The central Artist in Residence programme of the Amsterdam University of the Arts offers the possibility to respond to such topical questions and to invite a guest artist whose practice could be an important impulse for our education. Since 2004, the Academy has received guest artists and built an impressive collection of projects with choreographers, writers, visual artists or designers, all of them different and all of them exploring the interaction between our curricula and the international ‘state of the art’. However, there is still no blueprint for an Artist in Residence at our Academy. Each time we take the
opportunity to produce a unique situation for a limited period of time and carefully define what kind of encounter, and what kind of interaction with students, teachers and the issues at stake, we want to achieve.
In that sense Jeroen Musch was an Artist in Residence who answered our invitation – and our desire to explore ‘learning how to look’ – with a very clear proposal that can be regarded as his personal mission statement: ‘Seeing is a creative act.’ He was educated at the Rietveld Academy, works internationally, lives in Rotterdam and is a photographer with a proven track record in various fields of photography. In his view seeing is more than looking. He is convinced that it is a skill that needs to be trained. It fosters the attentiveness and brings one in touch with the sensual world. In Musch’s own words: ‘Seeing is about understanding, about feeling, about valuing.’
In order to allow Jeroen Musch to reach out to the entire community of the Academy, we asked him to curate and inspire our interdisciplinary pressure cooker, the Winter School, an intense two-week programme with more than 150 students. The choice was to displace the workshop and take the Marine Etablissement (Marineterrein) in the centre of Amsterdam as the site for experimentation, an area in development, with 400 years of history, which only recently became accessible to the public. Musch was aware that the place therefore attracts much curiosity among citizens and he did not hesitate to formulate an ultimate task for the students: What was hiding behind the walls all this time? How might the place be used in the future? How could it connect to the neighbourhood? ‘We are going to help them to truly see it.’
With his contribution to the Winter School, as well as his imagination, generosity and enthusiasm, Jeroen Musch has once more proven that an Artist in Residence is a gift to the Academy, but also a gift to everyone, even beyond the grounds of the school. He or she is a temporary presence that throws our students off balance by asking the unusual, the unorthodox, and by creating a certain uneasiness, an exception. In Jeroen Musch’s case, it has made our students experience time and space through the sensors of the photographer.
Madeleine Maaskant, Director of the Amsterdam Academy of ArchitectureMarijke Hoogenboom, Professor and head of the AIR programme, Amsterdam University of the Arts
Seeing is a Creative Act
Jeroen Musch interview Piet VollaardI wanted to be a war photographer, like Capa, or a famous architect, or, if the truth be told, a film director. I was eager, tangled up in my dreams, with no sense of direction. If you read someone’s biography, his or her career appears to be the result of a series of logical steps, but if you’ve only just started on the first page, the story may still take off in any direction. I have always been mesmerised by pictures, what you can do with them, what has already been done with them. A picture is writing a novel using just a few words. I’m really into cinematic art, so I always wanted to do something involving movies or photography. Then I went off to study architecture at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. That world, with its appeal to your imagination, and the promise it holds, has always been a draw and a driving force for me. What’s more I was good at architecture – all that spatial puzzling. When I was studying, I started tinkering around a bit with photography and I found I was really quite good at that too. Photography is made up of a combination of distancing and engaging yourself, a mix that I find fascinating. You can evoke extraordinary, intense feelings through pictures but at the same time you have to distance yourself in your role of photographer, despite being totally implicated.
I graduated as a fully-fledged interior architect. At the time, I was really planning on becoming an architect, the sort that makes films and takes photographs, someone who understands the world and bends it to his own will. The only problem was I didn’t have access to the world of architecture, because in the 1980s the Netherlands were in the middle of an economic crisis, hard times everywhere. At the sort of academy I attended, few tips were provided about how you were supposed to present yourself in practice. However fantastic the fishbowl (a fitting metaphor for an academy) in which you are allowed to create your superb little works of art, it turns out to be a completely different story when it comes to relating what goes on there to the outside world.
Half my final exam project consisted of an architectural design, by the presentation date the other half consisted of a machine with a photograph. The assignment was to make an object that transformed from two-dimensional to threedimensional. I had made small fold-up houses
attached to a frame called ‘Perfect Machine to Live In’, a reference to Le Corbusier. I wanted to comment on the claustrophobia of striving to achieve perfection. Initially, my final presentation was to be a sort of structured experience machine, but at a certain point I decided to take a photograph of the machine with a vulnerable type of person inside it. And that photo was quite simply it. Straight away. The photo was the experience. It had become a picture and in that sense a cinematic image, and as such, more of a registration of all these elements. All at once, all these worlds melted into one another. The photo itself had become the work. In the end, I folded the structured experience machine flat, packed it up in a smart box, and put it on show next to the photo. It was the first picture that really was absolutely spot on. That is why the photo is the key to accessing my later work.
Moving through architecture is a dynamic experience; you are permanently in a state of flux. In cinematic art, similar experiences are taken for granted. However, neither a photo nor a painting is something that reveals itself as time moves on in a linear way. Nevertheless, a photo can work as a moment taken from a series of moments, as a still. If a photo or painting is good enough, ‘the narrative’, the complete series of pictures – containing moments before and after – is absorbed into that single moment. That specific picture must have depth and a ‘moment of connection’ to enable this distillation to take place. You know this depth has been achieved as soon as different people can read their own layers into it, impose their own narrative onto it, coloured by their own experience. That link-up moment, yanking the viewer into the photo, that is what I’m in search of. The second you get it right you know that you’ve captured it in a nutshell, but all the same the fascinating thing about photography is that it cannot really ever be controlled.
My first real series of photos that I made during a study tour to Japan backed by the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture was a quest to find that moment. I shot from the hip when photographing there, using a very oldfashioned, mechanical camera. I thought that I would better be able to capture these small introvert people in this way as they would not feel inhibited. I was extremely interested in the constant stream of people in Japan, in the energy this produces, and how it is connected to their architecture. The series I made was a sort of architectonic-cum-sociological study, a way of capturing this connection. I thought about the photographic method in advance, aiming at achieving a composition with no instinctively acquired
correction mechanisms. I wanted to soak up as much about Japan as I could and saw myself as an architect, filmer and photographer. I still feel that way to a certain degree.
I came back from Japan with pictures that were bewildering and surprising to me. I phoned landscape architect Adriaan Geuze, who was also on the trip with me, to show them to him. Adriaan came round straight away with a case full of slides of the Schouwburgplein in Rotterdam, which he had just started to make a design for at the time. He was thinking of incorporating photography in the Schouwburgplein plan. But in fact both of us soon landed up in another project. Adriaan asked me to make pictures for the Wildernisproject (Wilderness project), a part of AIR Alexander. AIR Alexander was an international research-by-design project dealing with the problems of large-scale housing projects from the 1950s and ’60s on the outskirts of the city. For this project, he sent me out to the sticks, to Ommoord, to take photos in the same way as I had in Japan. The reality of the city outskirts brought me down to earth with a bump, and after three days of disappointing attempts at photographing it, I went home. I did, however, make those blue collages about the present-day city-dweller. As it turned out, these were the pictures Adriaan had been looking for. That is of course a typical architect’s problem. An architect has an idea about the future that dovetails with the present, it is true, but it won’t yet have come into existence and therefore cannot be photographed. The most natural thing seemed to be that idea of making a collage. Those pictures did in the end link up with the Japan series as well, because these too were very collage-like, influenced by artists and designers like Moholy-Nagy and Hirsch.
Eventually our collaboration gave rise to a long and engrossing work-friendship. Adriaan had vision when it came to what he wanted to achieve as an architect and what he wanted to change in terms of policy to achieve it, but he didn’t exactly know how he should show it. I did, and together we were able to present a honed vision. For each project we started on, we had to find a way to represent that idea. Of course, that often involved using a camera, and that was my field, but the form was not invariable. For the ‘In Holland staat een huis’ (In Holland there is a house) project, which aimed to give an impression of an everyday suburban housing area, I didn’t even do the camera work myself. My job was to direct the visual process. For that reportage, we thought up the idea of sending other people out to take photographs
‘open-mindedly’. But these people came back with contrived, well-meaning, but unsuitable pictures. For this reason, we made a list of the spots to go to and see, places that occur everywhere in different neighbourhoods. The system was that you put your camera on a tripod and you leave it there. You then walk to the spot indicated on the list, and the moment you see the ‘local restaurant’, or even more disconcerting the ‘local work of art’, you place the tripod right there – camera pointed straight in front of you and click. That’s how it’s done. No looking through the camera lens, no directing the shot with your eye. This method yielded a series of photos revealing a sort of cursory glance at reality, in an ostensibly undirected style, in which the ‘narrative’ emerged from this ‘non-directed’ repetition.
My other ambition was to take narrative photos for West 8 (first a research laboratory, later an agency for urban design and landscape architecture projects). They were to be as clear as road signs, red circles with men in the middle, thus actively communicating, in full-blooded colours, indicating the type of ambiance – that was it, full stop! In the case of Schiphol airport, this meant a family with a luggage trolley walking through a wilderness full of birch trees in all their glory, and flyovers; in the case of the Schouwburgplein in Rotterdam, mentioned above, people kissing in the patch of light created by the gigantic lighting system projected onto the theatre square.
The special quality of cinematic art and photography, and everything in picture form, is that it becomes a new reality. Eisenstein’s film about the Russian revolution is the visualisation of what happened according to communist reports. The film has taken over from reality; originally it probably happened somewhat differently, but looking at that image you can understand that moment in time. The image has replaced the original event. A photo can also have this fascinating authority, as once you have seen it you can never shake it off. Thus it is made into a living entity in itself. An implanted memory. Those photos
of the houses were unbiased images, which I thought you would forget just like that, but that is not what happened.
That’s why I don’t believe in the idea of being nondirective or objective in photography. Anyone who takes hold of a camera, professional or amateur, manipulates the reality in front of him. This manipulation of reality is an essential aspect
of all creative activity, exactly what I am searching for. At the academy, I was involved in architecture projects that dealt with manipulating the feelings and experience of the user. With my projects, I wanted the user to go through an experience machine. In a certain sense, I do that in my photography too.
At a certain point, a research agency like West 8 changes from being a laboratory into a firm that primarily builds. The exhibitions we made were less and less about what needed to be done and more and more about things that were there: the realized work. You cannot go on for ever doing that type of investigative work for an agency like that. At the agency, I slowly moved from being a paper general to production employee and documentalist.
After West 8, I worked on the Architecture in the Netherlands Yearbook for five years, in a similar position to that held at West 8. Together with the editorial staff, the designer and publisher, I worked on a total book, up to and including the visual fine-tuning of the printed work and the layout. It was teamwork, and in that sense I have perhaps always been a team player. Those visual essays that I made for each Yearbook, launched by the editorial staff, increasingly began to take on the character of an independent assignment. In addition to this, I was commissioned more and more frequently to do ‘conventional’ architecture photography. That was quite a step, from participating in the making and design process in a team to being autonomous and photographing newly finished buildings on commission. The odd thing is that architecture photography and that very special type of tinkering about with pictures that I took part in at West 8 are not so very different from one another. Those architects also want you to see and photograph their finished work as it exists in their ideal world. You are still creating a fantasy. There is a reality and you have to make use of it, and you have to demonstrate that it exists, but at the same time, as an architecture photographer you are taking a picture that fits into the intangible world of the idea. You have to remember that you are only in the last stage of the project, you aren’t the scriptwriter anymore, you’re more of a camera director. There is a great difference between the two.
Nevertheless, I am engaged in the entire course from start to finish as far as possible and taking a photograph is only a small part of it. How a photo is placed in a book or magazine is possibly even more important than the photo itself: it is always about contextualisation.
If I look back, I see that time and again it is a matter of reciprocal reflection between the work and myself. More generally speaking, I try in my work to show the influence of mankind on his environment, and vice versa, the imprint of the environment on mankind.
The Perfect Machine, my final study project, was a commentary on that impossible pursuit of perfection, and of course a self-portrait in claustrophobia.
And the photos in the suburbs that I made for West 8 are also a careful study into the unimaginative environment in which I grew up. The first time I was in Japan, I photographed the Japanese in their often mechanised daily environment. When I went there later on, I changed to close-ups of faces, as a sort of never-ending landscape of skin. Shortly afterwards, I made a series of aerial photographs of landscapes for the Yearbook. And I tried to see the scars in the earth, the landscapes, as portraits.
I have always kept a close watch on painting and cinematic art, and have sometimes been inspired by them. In the old paintings of the city you can see how the artists, using the lessons from Western perspective, design a scene, and by positioning the figures in it in a certain way, evoke a specific mood. Creating a space, populated with living beings, on a flat surface is of all times. I still have a lot to learn!
I often do commissioned work and enjoy doing it too, but it has to entail a certain challenge for both myself and the client. I have to be fascinated in a specific way by the position of the client. He/she lends me, in a manner of speaking, his/her eyes, and I look through them, in awe at his/her world. In my best work, there is a dialogue and I am successful in capturing or revealing what architecture is all about, its hidden iconographic importance or meaning. Sometimes, the picture comes to stand so alone that even the architecture gets literally pushed to some extent into the background. This is true of my photo of the housing project the Sphinxes by the architects Neutelings Riedijk. That picture appealed so much to a shared fantasy among architects that in the world of publishing it has acquired a dynamism all of its own and has been shared all over the world. Those children in the water are a marvellous example of that ‘moment of connection’ which I am constantly searching for. The photo pulls you in for a short time, making you a part of the narrative. There is no escape.
(This interview was published previously in: Photography of Architecture, City and Landscape in the Netherlands. Rotterdam, 2010)
‘Architects are transmitters, photographers receivers’
Arjan Klok and Jeroen Musch interview Lotte HaagsmaWe are sitting in the restaurant of Pension Homeland at the Marine Etablissement Amsterdam. All around us, the tables are being set for coming evening. I am speaking to Arjan Klok, urbanist and head of the Urbanism Department at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture for the past five years, and Jeroen Musch, photographer and Artist in Residence at the same school. The topic is the Winter School that they organised together at the end of January 2017. Pension Homeland is where the students gathered after exploring the site in order to warm up and share experiences. It was very cold that week.
‘We wanted to send the message to the students that you need to open yourself up sensorially in order to be able to truly understand a place’, tells Jeroen. ‘That every place has secrets and hidden meanings that..., well, characteristics that go beyond the merely visible. In addition to that, my personal motivation was that I wanted to bring them into contact with their own artistic intuition.’
‘When I started as head of the Urbanism Department at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture five years ago, the profession seemed to be on its last legs,’ tells Arjan, ‘it appeared that urbanism was becoming an irrelevant profession. The prevailing idea was that everything would be created from the bottom-up. Above all, you shouldn’t interfere with the process in a designers way.’ However, as a passionate urbanist, he felt compelled to make it clear that designers can do more than just organise complex processes to produce generic cities. ‘In my opinion, designers are good at imparting, or inciting discussion about, meaning. As obstinate as I am – that is also our (gestures to Jeroen) history to some extent – I think that designers should not leave that to architectural historians, journalists or clients.’
‘We’re very good at chatting,’ he continues, ‘but...’ ‘Chatting and solving problems,’ Jeroen adds. ‘Solving problems and intertwining puzzles,’ agrees Arjan. ‘But architects and urbanists must also contribute to the discussion about the character of a place.’ The programme for the Winter School arose from the desire to let students experience how they could increase their awareness of a place.
‘Architects are transmitters, photographers receivers’, continues Jeroen. ‘When you are working as a photographer, you are just receiving. Everything is taken in: the surroundings, sounds, colours, how people behave or do not behave. You try to be open, in order to be able to better receive the image you are seeking. At the beginning of my career, I desperately chased after the perfect photo, but I gradually became more of a receiver. We wanted to work with that sensibility in the Winter School.’
By leaving the Academy and first staying three days at the edge of the Marine Etablissement, they tried to create a kind of vacuum. All attention was devoted to the unique area, which was explored by foot and boat, both during the day and at night in the dark. They ate, drank and watched films together. Some of the students even walked around blindfolded in order to use the other senses optimally, not only the eyes. ‘Step by step, we let the students get lost,’ tells Jeroen, ‘but we also had them discover new points of reference at the same time.’
‘The sequence of films we selected was well chosen’, says Arjan. ‘The first one was Visual Acoustics and was about the American photographer Julius Shulman. ‘He makes you doubt the traditional perception of modernism as a rationally organised movement; a kind of alternative lecture on architecture through the eyes of a photographer. We subsequently showed the documentary A Bigger Picture about the painter David Hockney, who works outdoors on a series of detailed paintings of the landscape from his youth day in day out.’ ‘Totally dedicated’, adds Jeroen.
Finally, the film Down by Law by Jim Jarmusch was shown, with camera work by Robby Müller. ‘Time, rhythm and space are important elements in that film’, tells Jeroen. ‘It appears to be made in an amateurish way, as a result of which you quickly think: I could do that too. However, the film is actually carefully thought out.’
Julius Shulman photographed all the famous architecture of American modernism and understood the buildings better than the architect, according to Jeroen. ‘Shulman says at one point: “As a photographer, it is better if you love dogs”. To me, that comment communicates essential, deep philosophical values. I was once taking photographs somewhere. In that instance, I have chosen a composition for the building and wait until the right configuration of people and animals enter into the frame. I suddenly saw two small boys walking close to me. They see me and see that I am the only one who sees them. Those children, but also dogs, some old people and crazy people find themselves in an invisible time; they are completely in the moment.
All other people are on their way to arrive somewhere on time, an interview or the dentist; their attention is somewhere else. Designers are also often busy making plans in this way, in the sense that they are not in the here and now of a place.’
‘It seldom happens that designers stay at a location long enough’, adds Arjan. ‘It often involves a short visit in the company of a traffic engineer who points out where everything is going wrong, or with a director who wants a beautiful building. There are always a thousand problems that demand attention, but as an urbanist you must also devote attention to the character of a place; its immaterial significance and value.’
‘At the end of the two weeks, late at night, one of the students was cycling home and spontaneously recorded a poem on his telephone underway’, tells Jeroen. The next day, his group edited that poem into the short film. ‘That is the essence of where I wanted them to be. That they are subsequently able to translate that sensitivity for an environment. That they develop a poetic ability to do something with a place.’
‘What also makes me very happy,’ concludes Arjan, ‘are the amazing aesthetic notions which the students collected and shared, after those eight days in which they appealed to their senses and dove deep into their emotions. The results were much more varied this time than normally present in their design projects, important because one of the values designers should at least be able to add to a project is aesthetics. Something truly beautiful was created in the films through a combination of images, sounds and music!’ ‘Not only beautiful,’ believes Jeroen, ‘but also something that is ineffable and at the same time very convincing.’ And he hands out the last two croquettes at the table, which we were consuming with a jasmine tea, a glass of buttermilk mixed with orange juice and sparkling water with lemon.
On Site
The challenge is an ambitious one: change the outlook on the Marine Etablissement _ Steer the debate on the Marine Etablissement in a new direction _ In a way that suits this formal white spot on the map of Amsterdam _ How does this white spot relate to the city, how does the city relate to this white spot?_ How do you feel here?_ This spot is loaded with history_ How does one capture all this in a narrative movie lasting 3.13 minutes?_ Inconvenient truths, unwanted answers or just a very poetic interpretation_ How do you value this enigmatic white spot and how would you connect it to the city?
Your only weapon is the eye of a camera Be like an explorer, look at everything as if for the first time, let go of preconceived ideas and everyday thoughts Enter with a clear mind Go into the night Scan the area and the adjacent domain Talk as little as you can and scan with all your senses_Seeing, receiving, how can you open up yourselves?_ Start by mapping the area in Sensescapes: soundscapes, smellscapes, touchscapes and feelscapes_Check the borders, inside and outside, go round, look from and to_Search for the connections, physically and mentally, define the core_ Explore its surroundings, north, south, east and west _ Seeing, experiencing, capture, narrate_That’s how to start
You circle the object, the sun at your back, tripod under your arm, all sensorial perception is on You take it all in while listening, feeling and looking with gentle eyes You tentatively place your camera. One metre more, half a metre less Branch and bird, cloud or hurried cyclist completes what you capture The exploration continues. The people rush past you_Completely occupied, their route already determined_ All in conversations that still need to be held, bothered by the shopping later on _You stand in a timeless moment and wait until things come together_Only animals, the elderly, crazy people and boys hanging around are surprised_They recognise you, it’s their world, they are in this zone with you_ Experience time and space through the sensory perception of the photographer
To structure your narrative, you make a storyboard_ Define what you need, plan where to start Be open to the situations, let the actual conditions lead you, do not be headstrong Go, you’ve got limited time Work in groups Check and compare Does it coincide with how it came to you? Accept changes in plan during the process Communicate with your team and adjust the storyboard Define where to start the next day, go again, and again, and again.
Sequence
HaagsmaIn Rick Groenenberg’s opinion, the Efteling is an example of successful architecture.
‘Yes, everyone always laughs at me when I say that!’
‘Amsterdam is also becoming a bit like the Efteling’, reacts Roel van Loon drily.
‘Each detail, each plant, each pavement slab in the Efteling has been carefully considered,’ explains Rick, ‘with the aim being to convey a certain feeling of magic to the visitors of the theme park.’ The idea that a design can influence the experience of a place was one of the reasons why he wanted to become an urbanist.
The two students of the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture suggested meeting each other at Pension Homeland at the Marine Etablissement. My first question was immediately reflected back by Rick: ‘What impression did the site make on you?’
I look around me and hesitantly begin: ‘I entered the site from the Kattenburgerstraat. You experience it then as a closed courtyard..., a little bit like the small courtyards in historic city centres. They are often green oases in the city. This is a larger area, less picturesque, but it also has that enclosed quality.’ ‘Exactly!’
Fortunately, I passed the test.
‘That is also what we experienced. It is an oasis of calm in contrast to the hustle and bustle of the city on the other side of the water. During the Winter School, we examined how we could capture that feeling in images.’
During their first exploration of the site, someone from the group, Justyna Chmielewska, began to photograph details of the environment. The following evening, she hung up her photos on the wall. The whole group was moved by the beautiful pictures. The students had initially approached the site as architects and urbanists in particular, but when they saw the detailed photos and were struck by their beauty, they started looking differently, as if through a lens. ‘You normally look with a specific objective as a designer,’ explains Rick, ‘you analyse an area in order to make a design for it, which you must subsequently sell. Now we looked, took pictures, looked once again and sometimes held a picture upside down. That was very liberating. It was no longer about the story that had to be told with the pictures, but about the pictures themselves.’
The Marine Etablissement is partly closed off from
the rest of the city by a fence. That fence became the defining factor in their pictorial story. ‘We puzzled with the detailed pictures until that boundary was clearly expressed’, tells Roel.
‘Behind the fence, the site has a 400-year history that is largely a mystery to the outside world’, says Rick. The fence became the personification of present and past, open and closed, public and secret.
The experience of the Winter School primarily influenced the choices made in the design process for Roel. ‘I now dare to work based on my feelings more. Sometime, you make a design and then you notice that you actually don’t like it. Throwing everything overboard and starting over again, based on that emotion; that is something that I have learnt.’
‘It is especially important to me as an urbanist that something works well in space’, tells Rick. ‘The colour of a brick or the details of a facade are of secondary importance in that case. However, now I suddenly see the beauty of the shadow that an air grille cases on the wall.’
Rick talks about the film Down by Law by Jim Jarmusch, which was shown during the Winter School: ‘That film went on forever... I was in the front row, so it was difficult for me to leave. But I gradually started to see more and more in those slow images. I’ve now been converted. I think it’s totally great.’ ‘Yes, that was cool’, agrees Roel.
That concentration in images is reflected in the film Sequence, which they ultimately made with their group. A split screen divides the picture vertically. Sometimes, the border shifts slightly to the right and even inclines diagonally at a given moment. An atmospheric soundtrack reinforces the dreamy, zoomed-in character of the images. Halfway through, the music stops and the border disappears. A rope gently touches the water and therefore its reflection. A border is drawn once again.
Rick Groeneveld and Roel van Loon formed part of a group with Ivo Susi, Aneta Ziomkiewicz, Erik Wueg, Steve Schaft, Roxana Vakil Mozafari, Justyna Chmielewska and Jaap Duenk. Ricky Rijkenberg was the group supervisor.
Rick Groenenberg and Roel van Loon interview Lotte
Dis Order Ed
Flavius Ventel and Stijn Dries Lotte HaagsmaFollowing the introduction about the military history of the Marine Etablissement at the start of the Winter School, Flavius Ventel was surprised to find a well cared for, almost sweet environment. The sober, dark picture, which the history of the area had evoked in him, was not reflected in the place for him. That was also due to the clear weather, he admits: the sun was shining and there was a glittering layer of ice on the water.
‘However, there are guards at the gate,’ counters Stijn Dries, ‘and part of the site is still used by the Ministry of Defence. In my experience, it is a strongly demarcated area.’
‘But the fence and the security could just have well been from a government service or a company’, insists Flavius. ‘And those ships and the water, that’s what you see everywhere in the Netherlands, that is not per se characteristic of a naval base.’
I suddenly wonder whether his view is also determined by his background and I ask him where he comes from. ‘From Romania’, he answers.
‘Is it possible that you have a different outlook because of that? As Dutch people, we are used to an –outwardly – relatively relaxed contact with security’, I continue. ‘The Dutch army does not flex its muscles generally, but operates in the background, hidden behind ordinary city streets and pretty forests. The war is waged far away from here.’
‘I know the Dutch navy from Sail Amsterdam in particular,’ laughs Stijn, ‘where the navy ships take part in the parade of seagoing vessels. That is all about jollity and fun!’
‘This proves that there is indeed a difference in culture’, concludes Flavius.
A difference in outlook also played a role within the group of nine students which Flavius and Stijn formed part of. The creation of their film Dis Order Ed was far from an easy process. There were major discussions. Nevertheless, both of them are very happy with the result. According to Stijn, it is even conceivable that the complex group dynamic led to a better film: ‘During the filming, we tried to capture the place from as many points of view as possible. The fact that different people took different views may have worked extra well.’ The work was subsequently divided: one group selected the images, another group thought about the story line, and yet another group edited the fragments. And someone came up
with the idea of showing the film divided over three screens, a brainwave that added an extra dimension. ‘There was constantly the viewpoint of someone else, who made, selected and edited the image. It was precisely that shifting perspective that led to the creation of a film that leaves room for the gaze of others. A film which anyone can connect with or impart his or her own meaning onto.’
Looking further than you are accustomed to; that is what Flavius learnt from the Winter School - or he preferred to use the word ‘observe’, because it is more concentrated than commonplace looking. ‘And when you are almost ready, go back, look again and allow yourself the liberty to choose another form.’ The Marine Etablissement has, as it were, lodged itself in his system: if he cycles past it, he is aware of that unique place, there behind the walls, on the other side of the water.
In Stijn’s case, the result of the Winter School is that he has learnt to reflect better on what he sees. ‘Looking with attention is not, in itself, difficult. Being able to capture the right moment, image or idea, that is the art. But what has stayed with him above all is the experience of creating something together that is so strong and appeals to so many others. That this ultimately succeeded provided an enormous sense of relief and victory. In his experience, there is always a hierarchy in the architecture practice, even in the firms that strive to create a flat organisation. The chief architect has the final say. ‘That was what was interesting about this Winter School: a place was created where the hierarchy could genuinely be sabotaged.’ The best ideas were accepted and elaborated on, and that led to a unique film that was judged to be the best, both by the jury and the public.
Flavius Ventel and Stijn Dries formed part of the group of Niels Geerts, Koen Karst, Corné Bloed, Jakub Jekiel, Serge van Berkel, Paulina Kapczynska and Ana Pessoa Somaglino. David Kloet was the supervisor of the group.
interview
Borderline
HaagsmaThe young man on the quay in the film is not one of them. Nobody from the group came forward so individually; everything was decided on together right up to the final choice. That was how it went. The process began boisterously, with many different and sometimes conflicting opinions and positions, but gradually developed into a constructive collaboration.
Philippe Allignet comes across as a tidy, downto-earth Frenchman. He had just arrived in the Netherlands for an Erasmus exchange when the Winter School began. He liked Amsterdam so much that he stayed. He is studying landscape architecture and works for H+N+S Landscape architects. Lindsey van de Wetering chooses her words carefully, with a soft voice. She is studying architecture and works for MOPET Architects. They complement each other and confirm each other’s observations.
‘That we had to become a team was one of the most difficult aspects’, believes Lindsey.
‘I had already made a film before,’ tells Philippe, ‘but it was much easier to tell a story on my own.’
They had to deal with such different personalities, they tell. Slava Kukharenko made very dreamy, poetic images, for example, while Casper van Deelen sought more pragmatic solutions. The assignment was a personal view of a place, but the various perspectives of the eleven members of their group had to come together in one film.
Philippe: ‘The Winter School was not really about architecture, urbanism or landscape architecture.’
Lindsey: ‘No, but in my opinion it did have a lot to do with architecture. About how you experience space through the senses. If you design something, you must have a sense of how the future user will experience the space. You incorporate your own experience in the design.’
Philippe: ‘It was more about a place. We only had to explore and experience that particular space. There was not a project that had to be designed.’
Lindsey: ‘However, that experience can form the starting point of a design. It would be really good if the people who are making plans for the Marine Etablissement would see our films.’
After the introduction of the Winter School, they explored the area. Lindsey: ‘We walked around and I wrote down what I experienced: sound from cars that
came out of the tunnel below the river IJ, the sound of a passing boat, the crackling of the frozen grass under my feet – it was very cold that evening – noise from the city in the background, the splashing of water.’ They subsequently started working on the film together.
‘It was really, really messy’, laughs Philippe. ‘We started rather chaotically, yes’, agrees Lindsey. In addition to collecting images, they also sought words to characterise the site. ‘Like upside-down,’ says Philippe, ‘in the sense of a negative: it is as if you are in the city and cut off from it at the same time.’
‘Like an inverted city. The site is like Atlantis,’ adds Lindsey, ‘a hidden treasure surrounded by water, instead of underwater.’
Someone from the group filmed the boy on the quay. He became their guide for the project: the perspective based on which the site is explored in the film and based on which the students selected film fragments and made new images. In the film poetic images of a falling maple seed and birds flying out of the water are interspersed with rapidly changing fragments of walls, street and quay borders. They ultimately presented their film with a performance. Banners with words on them were hung up in the space: homeland – it’s crowded – people are moving – glittering lights – undefined – upside down –unseen – lost in his mind – borderline. They sat and stood themselves as extras or passers-by spread out in front of and between the banners. Teachers and fellow students had to push past them in order to be able to see the film; an alienating experience that became part of watching it.
‘That there are many ways to discover and experience a place was an important experience for me’, according to Philippe. ‘And that a place can stir up so many stories and provide so many perspectives –because how many groups of students were there: eighteen? In that sense, Jeroen Musch really lit a fire within me.’
‘I had expected to feel very comfortable with this assignment’, tells Lindsey. ‘I was always interested in film and photography, albeit in a more poetic way. But the location was so unusual and working with a group required so much attention, that everything was completely different to what I expected.’
Philippe Allignet and Lindsey van de Wetering formed part of the group with Tom Bruins Slot, Theo Brouwer, Sjoerd van de Reep, Iaroslava Kukharenko, Edgars Rožkalns, Joske van Breugel, Casper van Deelen, Juliette Gilson and Roy Straathof. Abdessamed Azarfane was the supervisor of the group.
Lindsey van de Wetering and Philippe Allignet interview Lotte
Awake
HaagsmaIt is night time.
The site is poorly lit. Where am I?
Who is walking there?
At the agreed time of the interview, I only come across Henry Holmes. Also after waiting a while: no Ginevra Melazzi. Henry sends her a message and she turns out to be ill. We carry on the conversation with just the two of us. That may have been good in retrospect: a stream of words come out of Ginevra, while Henry is more closed. He interlaces his sentences with nuances. His first impression of the Marine Etablissement was a place that didn’t really welcome you, but rather pushed you away. ‘The opposite of the lively and packed Amsterdam. It was quiet and cold there, as if time had stood still. It was alternated with light and dark spots. We didn’t really feel at ease. We wanted to capture that experience. ‘We soon came up with the idea of making a thrillerlike film,’ he tells, ‘in which the contrast between the quiet island in a busy city, with the trains, the boats and cars that rumble and race past, is experience from one viewpoint: a character with whom the viewer can connect’.
He was already used to handling camera, but looking so long through a frame at an area and discovering how you can put together a story was something completely new. It is also important as a designer to convey what you see to others. In this instance, it was not so much about the physical space, but about the senses. About feeling and atmosphere, light and dark. He and Ginevra ultimately played an important role in the editing process: ‘I had a laptop with the right software. She had crazy ideas about filming abstract images and provided the sound together with someone else.’
A door closes...
What are these dark corridors hiding?
Am I lost?
A week later, Ginerva buys a bottle of water and asks for two cups, one for me and one for her. We talk to each other on a mezzanine of the Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ. Central Station is behind us with its new hall, the ferries sail there to Amsterdam Noord, with the Eye Filmmuseum and the former Shell tower, further along there are the new housing blocks of IJdok and
Westerdok – in between the vast, glistening water of the river IJ.
The fact that the Marine Etablissement is partly a closed-off area where – she had heard – the civil legal system does not apply, was what made an impression on her in particular. If someone would climb over the fence, he or she would perhaps be shot. That knowledge meant that she had experienced the site as repellent. The idea to make a horror film stemmed from this. ‘I actually hate horror films, but because of the way the idea arose, I suddenly thought it was an amazing idea!’ Someone from the group, Martijn Beemsterboer, was a fan of horror films and knew everything about them. The decision to make a horror film gave a real sense of direction to the creative process. ‘At a certain moment we were not busy with the prize that we could win at all, but just how we could evoke fear in people with our film.’ She recorded most of the sounds in the film herself, tells Ginevra: ‘I made a radio programme for a while, so I had recording equipment and know you can put sound underneath something.’
The city watches outside, the people are sleeping, a train rides past...
It is obvious that Ginevra enjoyed the Winter School. She admits that if she could do an extra study, she would go to the film academy. ‘In my opinion, the impact an image can have is enormously important. I also try to use that in my work as an urbanist. However, you have a lot less freedom there, because you have to sell a design.’ Rem Koolhaas once started as a filmmaker and became an architect later, she recalls. Maybe she is taking the opposite route. Henry always wanted to be an architect actually. He doesn’t remember anything different.
Ginevra Indiana Melazzi and Henry Holmes formed part of a group with Adan Çardak, Daniël Ankoné, Magdalena Stan´czak, Annely van der Berg, Manon den Duijn, Martijn Beemsterboer, Simon Verbeeck and Emma Morillon. Abdessamed Azarfane was the supervisor of the group.
Ginevra Melazzi and Henry Holmes interview Lotte
Safeguarding Values
In which global city are you still given the opportunity to develop 13ha in the city centre? That would be Amsterdam. And even more unique: with a clean slate and rich maritime history. Whereas zoning plans are almost always a constant factor in such developments, there is actually no explicit final picture for the Marine Etablissement Amsterdam.
The development strategy is an adaptive approach. It is important, therefore, to clearly define the ambitions and the values in order to be able to continue guiding it explicitly. This strategy recognises and embraces the rapidly changing, and consequently uncertain, future by not programming the successive steps in advance. The interventions are organised in such a way that there is an ability to respond. In this way, you can make progressive plans and simultaneously adjust plans according to current developments and issues.
The property assignment as a means, therefore, instead of an end. An assignment to guarantee good urban design and architecture continues to exist unabated, just not straight away. This consideration was also the basis of the assignment for students from the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture. What did the Winter School 2017 do with this? A decision was made not to take the development strategy as the subject, but rather the unique character of the site. This unique character is a recurring element in each argument relating to the development of the Marine Etablissement Amsterdam.
It was extremely valuable for us as Bureau Marineterrein that so many eyes from the Academy examined the site. The assignment of Jeroen Musch has led to poetic productions that, in our view, will only increase in value. As the site changes more drastically, and the new situation becomes public knowledge, the word ‘unique’ will continue to be enshrined in the story. But it does run the risk of being devalued in terms of significance. In this way, we will safeguard the valuable character of the site, even under pressure from the planning process. The images that have now been recorded by you will form a timeless manifesto for the unique qualities of the Marine Etablissement Amsterdam. We are extremely grateful to all participants in the Winter School for that. We will gladly show the films where possible.
Liesbeth Jansen, Thijs Meijer Bureau Marineterrein AmsterdamWinter School participants
Students
Bengin Abdullah
Xander Albers
Philippe Allignet
Liza van Alphen
Daniël Ankoné
Joep van Baast
Andrej Badin
Lourdes Barrios Ayala
Martijn Beemsterboer
Chantal Beltman
Esther Bentvelsen
Annely van der Berg
Serge van Berkel
Alex Berkmann
Marilu de Bies
Corné Bloed
Karel de Boer
Bastien Botte
Imane Boutanzit
Joske van Breugel
Theo Brouwer
Tom Bruins Slot
Heleen Bults
Adan Çardak
Francesco Carrasso
Salaheddine Chekhibrahim
Justyna Chmielewska
Andre Cramer
Ruben Dahmen
Casper van Deelen
Stijn Dries
Jaap Duenk
Manon den Duijn
Renee Duijzers
Stephanie van Dullemen
Lejla Duran
Wellae El Rowidi
Mickael van Es
Stephanie Ete
Lynn Ewalts
Jennifer Fauster
Agnese Fiocchi
Daan Foks
Robin Frings
Arne de Gans
Niels Geerts
Julia Gersten
Joris Gesink
Juliette Gilson
Jacopo Grilli
Rick Groeneveld
Wouter Grote
Nyasha Harper
Veerle Hendriks
James Heus
Sebastiaan van Heusden
Koen Hezemans
Wouter Hoevers
Henry Holmes
Angelina Hopf
Jako Hurkmans
Sanne Janssen
Jakub Jekiel
Lieke de Jong
Bart Jonkers
Rosa Jonkman
Paulina Kapczyn´ska
Koen Karst
Nina Kater
Danijela Kirin
Thom Knubben
Dennis Koek
Kristina Košic
Stefan Koster
Kim Krijger
Eek van der Krogt
Iaroslava Kukharenko
Tobias Kumkar
Ergin Kurt
Fenia Lagouda
Elise Laurent
Sybren Lempsink
Cas Ligthart
Olivier Lodder
Roel van Loon
Iris Lunenburg
Philip Lyaruu
Hoeshmand Mahmoed
Sander Maurits
Ginevra Indiana
Melazzi
Jesse Mommers
Emma Morillon
Daan van Mousch
Shant Moushegh
Andreas Mulder
Jeroen Müller
Carolina Nunes Pereira
Chataignier
Dirk Overduin
Despo Panayidou
Matteo Paris
Ilona Pauw
Ana Pessoa Somaglino
Bart van Pinxteren
Lucas Pissetti
Sjaak Punt
Steven van Raan
Sjoerd van de Reep
Marlena Rether
Kiwa Riel
Iruma Rodríguez
Hernández
Laura Rokaite
Jordi Rondeel
Ewout van Rossum
Edgars Rožkalns
Bram Ruarus
Oscar Sanders
Quita Schabracq
Steve Schaft
Joost van der Schoot
Marieke Schut
Veronika
Skouratovskaja
Niek Smal
Anna Sosin
Maarten Spaans
Magdalena Stan´czak
Elena Staskute
Roy Straathof
Ivo Susi
Fabien Tardivel
Viktoria Tashkova
Pimm Terhorst
Wouter van der Velpen
Flavius Ventel
Simon Verbeeck
Martijn Verhoeven
Piero Vidoni
Silko van der Vliet
Lindsey van de Wetering
Erik Weug
Anne Wies
Simon Wijrdeman
Huub de With Charlotte van der Woude
Lauren Wretham
Robert Younger
Lu Yu
Anna Zan
Inga Zielonka
Aneta Ziomkiewicz
Laurens van Zuidam
Studio Supervisors
Abdessamed Azerfane (Architect)
Lada Hršak (Architect)
David Kloet (Landscape Architect)
Hein van Lieshout (Architect)
Ricky Rijkenberg (Architect)
Herman Zonderland (Urbanist)
Consultants
Marina van den Bergen (Editor)
Marieke Berkers (Architectural historian)
Nik Berkouwer (Public relations)
Lard Buurman (Photographer)
Bart Gorter (Artist, Architect)
Zef Hemel (Planner)
Michiel van Iersel (Founder Failed) Architecture
Harold Linker (Visual Artist)
Tracy Metz (Journalist)
Sanne Peper (Photographer)
Michael Snitker (Graphic designer)
Bruno Vermeersch (Editor-in-chief, Masters of Form)
Ramin Visch (Architect)
Jeff de Wolf (Adman)
Colophon
Publication
Editors Jeroen Musch, Arjan Klok
Editor-in-chief Klaas de Jong
Interviews Lotte Haagsma, Piet Vollaard
Translation Richard Glass (Alphabet Town), Wendie Shaffer, Kate Williams
Design Studio Sander Boon
Printing Pantheon drukkers
Winter school
Curator Jeroen Musch
Coordination Arjan Klok, Patricia Ruisch, Barbera Boelen, Marjoleine Gadella
All 18 movies from the Winter School can be seen on Vimeo vimeo.com/album/4384954
The Winter School 2017 was made possible thanks to contributions of:
- Amsterdam University of the Arts –AIR programme
- Pakhuis de Zwijger
- Mediamatic Foundation
- Bureau Marineterrein
Special thanks to Liesbeth Jansen and Thijs Meijer of the Bureau Marineterrein
The Artist in Residency of Jeroen Musch is a cooperation between the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture and the AIR programme of the Amsterdam University of the Arts.
The Amsterdam University of the Arts invites the Artist in Residence to inspire students and teachers by confronting them with topical developments and issues from arts practice. These tailor-made AIR programmes focus on innovation and connection in an international and multidisciplinary context.
Publisher
Amsterdam Academy of Architecture
Waterlooplein 213
1011 PG Amsterdam
The Netherlands
T +31(0)205318218
info@bwk.ahk.nl
www.academyofarchitecture.nl
ISBN 978-90-827761-1-9
© 2017 Amsterdam Academy of Architecture and the authors
9-789082-776119