maHKUzine #3

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Editorial

design solutions Strategies Of Suggestion GABRIEL LESTER

The Unexpected JOOST GROOTENS

The Ambiguity Of The Golden Section ALBERT VAN DER SCHOOT

research essays It Happens In Between ANNE ANDRIESEN

Airportal Importance ELLEN RUBEL

Hand Vs. Mouse CORINN WEILER

research reports Fashion Design Field Meeting Spatial Design Field Meeting Shelter 07: The Freedom Of Public Art In The Cover Of Urban Space

M mahkuzine

journal of artistic research SUMMER 20 07

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Contents – 3 –

Editorial

design solutions

Strategies Of Suggestion

GABRIEL LESTER

The Unexpected

JOOST GROOTENS

The Ambiguity Of The Golden Section

ALBERT VAN DER SCHOOT

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research essays

It Happens In Between

ANNE ANDRIESEN

Airportal Importance

ELLEN RUBEL

Hand Vs. Mouse

CORINN WEILER

research reports

Fashion Design Field Meeting Spatial Design Field Meeting Shelter 07: The Freedom Of Public Art In The Cover Of Urban Space

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Editorial

In this issue, design solutions are not necessarily linked to design problems. Such a rigid, dualist solution-problem connection would not fit a visual world connoted by fluent notions such as interconnectivity, network cities, and streaming information. Rather, the concept of design solutions is connected to a visual process of morphology, in line with today’s design world, where topological forms such as Möbius strips and Klein bottles produce liquid forms of design aided by BLOB software. Therefore, design solutions instead signify a process necessarily bound up with the process of finding form, the process of morphology, as a process of visualization and ultimate source of creativity.

How did those processes emerge in the new series of transdisciplinary workshops called Design Solutions? In Strategies of Suggestion, Gabriel Lester introduces the notion of pantomime as a strategy of finding form in a process of suggestion. In The Unexpected, Joost Grootens stresses the creation of world maps and atlases as forms of systematization and classification in the process of visualization. In The Ambiguity of the Golden Section, Bert van der Schoot dismantles the Romantic view of the golden section, where its allegedly divine proportion produces ideal forms of visuality. Astonishingly, today, the golden section could serve as a tool in finding form while producing reminiscences of earlier golden section conceptions.

In the Research essays section, the process of morphology acquires fascinating forms of visual morphing. In It Happens In Between, Exploring the value of the hallway in the interior, Anne Andriesen embarks on an intellectual, almost filmic, report through hallways where places, non-places, spaces, corridors, border zones, doors, thresholds and even skateboarders serve as mobile tokens in a network of neutrality, while producing stirring series of visuality. In Airportal Importance, Ellen Rubel creates reflective processes of visualization, where interiors turn into “personal-transit places” while serving as “pathways from exterior to exterior.”

The notion of airport lounges leads Rubel to the concept of unaware time. Corinn Weiler embarks on an analysis of the differences between designing on screen and designing on paper. Is computer design crafting? No it is not. Yet Weiler’s essay Hand vs. Mouse demonstrates that the computer as an imaginary toolbox produces novel tools such as keyboard, mouse, and digital data.

The Research reports portray attempts to find intellectual and reflective forms for backing up the processes of morphology and visualization throughout Masters’ programs for visual art and design.

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design solutions

In the context of the cross-cultural studies program, the MaHKU ( Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design ), in collaboration with Casco, Office for Art, Design, and Theory organized for the start of 2007 a new series of interdisciplinary workshops called Design Solutions. The workshop series focused on how design solutions can emerge in the context of a transdisciplinary perspective.

Three speakers were invited to shed their light on the problematics: Gabriel Lester, who works on the interface of Fine Art and Spatial Design; Joost Grootens, who combines the areas of Editorial Design and Spatial Design; and Bert van der Schoot, whose theorizing implicates Fine Art as well as all design fields.

Strategies of Suggestion GABRIËL LESTER

The subject of my talk is the notion of suggestion, which I like to connect with the idea of pantomime - a very essential element in my own work. Mime ( or pantomime ) relies completely on suggestion, codes and our cognitive condition - providing us with an understanding of what is suggested.

There are strong moments of suggestion in cinema, some of which I would like to share with you. For example, in Pulaski’s Rosemary’s Baby when smoke suddenly seeps from under a door, we do not need to see a person standing behind the wall to know he is there. That is the power of suggestion. In fact, by leaving things out, or by referring to a form, a narrative, an identity or a statement, the spectator is able to merge information into a personal experience. In so doing, spectators become more involved and even sometimes find themselves in the special position of witnesses.

Speaking about art, design or film always creates two possibilities that may be fused: we either turn a subject into an image, or we turn an image into a subject. In other words, you can make stories in images and make images that tell stories. An example of the first form is the blockbuster movie, where the images serve the story line. In the second form, the images suggest a narrative. The latter is the form I find particularly interesting.

What do I like about pantomime? Today, we face a world where many things we deal with we only know by function. For example, we use computers, but we cannot fix them. Somehow, pantomime goes beyond the point of understanding things. We can create relationships on the condition of understanding how certain things are implemented.

I think that for art and design the notion of suggestion is a very strong tool to say something without being very explicit; things touched upon, without being screamed in people’s faces.

In my work, I do continue to create installations. What I like about installations is how they bring the spectator inside an artwork, similar to how one reasons one’s way out of it. If you think about a classic body of art such as paintings, you can stand outside of it, but mentally reason yourself into it, or you can even project yourself into the picture.

My works function the other way around, since you reason yourself out of the process. Most of my work is very close to scenography and architectural interventions.

I am fascinated by silent movies and sound compositions. In its earliest days, cinema was either spectacle or documentary. What we call exper-

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• • imental cinema today is actually a third direction. The spectacle was primarily a sort of theater in front of the camera. But of course people missed the dialogues. For that reason, the best composers of the day were asked to supplement the lack of dialogue. They had to compose narratives, sometimes very close to the dialogue. In a way, the story was cloaked in music. Perhaps that is why the piano as a visual and narrative element recurs so often in silent movies. In an instant, there exists the possibility to create synchronicity between sound and vision.

Note how often a piano is used as a prop in silent movies.

I researched compositions for silent movies in the New York Public Library where I specifically looked for generic compositions made for scenes, not films. That resulted in a cd with tracks like “Music for love scenes”, “Music for disputes” and so forth.

I also do projects in public spaces, including an intervention in Cork ( 2005 ). I played with the idea of inside/outside, which architects always do. In this case, the windows looked out on the park, which experience I wanted to reverse. So I made a cutout of leaves, also a reference to cinema. If a movie shows a shot looking through bushes, or through leaves of a tree, then that implies looking through the eyes of someone who does not want to be seen. Also in other works I am addressing this suggestive iconographical knowledge.

I address an obvious subject explained through different sorts of works such as sound pieces. That is exactly the subject I want you to work on.

Search for a way to visualize suggestion. Certainly you could take a picture of something that is actually something else: a tree that looks like a man, or a cloud that looks like a castle. But please go ahead, and find suggestion yourself.

To summarize, I started with the notion of pantomime which, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is a “theatrical technique of suggestion, suggesting action, character, or emotion, without using words, only involving gestural expression and movement”. The assignment does not imply creating theater, but you can easily start from the assumption that you are going to tell a story without using a narrative.

You can use characters, emotions or suggestions, expressions or movement. In short, I want you to investigate how to tell something by using suggestive methods.

• Presentation Gabriël Lester •• Gabriel lester

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The Unexpected JOOST GROOTENS

Over the last ten years, I have been doing projects that are all labeled differently: architecture, art, graphic design, interior design, product design, public space. Either my work is schizophrenic or some labels are applied in error. Everything I do is on some interface ( figure 1 ).

I am a designer, not an artist, but there are a lot of connections. If you look at my work, you can say that there is a move from spatial design to more graphic design ( figure 2 ). So if I have to map my practice more specifically, then I would say it is - if you look at figure 1 again - the sausage located in research, and most of all connects education and architecture. Regarding the other domains ( product, interior, and art ), I like being an outsider. I like looking in.

In collaboration with the theoretical architect Raoul Bunschoten ( Chora ), I designed my first book Metaspaces in 1998. It is a book with images that represent dynamic environments; it wants to map them and ultimately even wants to control them. For that reason, I developed a graphic design based on diagrams as well as the architectural idea of horizon. I became aware that I liked designing architectural books.

Thus, I continued with a series for 010 Publishers in Rotterdam. At Work ( Neutelings Riedijk Architects ) was a long-term, collaborative project in which we discussed the process of the design on a weekly basis over many months. What the book on Neutelings and Riedijk basically does is document their methodology. I realized the same process in the artist book I made for Erik Odijk, Bron 1.

So what is the designer’s role in finding design solutions? I think you have to decide this for each specific project. Sometimes the designer takes over and has a strong presence in order to make a project as clear and understandable as possible; sometimes the designer works as a servant. The latter function is one I experienced particularly in developing projects for public space. In the Netherlands, there seems to be an urban consensus that suburbia is always the ideal building type, whatever the function: housing, asylum center, prison etc. I received a commission from the Rijksgebouwendienst to add something to this ideal situation in a prison landscape. I decided to confront the nice, politically correct suburban environment with something ugly. I made a cage; an outside space in a closed environment with benches and trees. So it was rooted in that specific prison site.

A freer situation is the competition arena. One project I did together in 2006 with Guldemond, in the context of the competition Eenvoud/ Simplicity in Almere, was a proposal for an experimental villa. We won that competition. We did not design a house, but we designed a frame or a structure, or a foundation of what a house can be. It was an anarchist proposal, where outside the house you can find elements you can add if you want. Such a proposal was possible, because the competition was exempt from building regulations. So there you see a specific role for the designer. In the end this trajectory becomes a sort of participatory design; somebody else has to finish it.

Recently, I have started to work on statistics and mapping in order to produce atlases. For example the Metropolitan Atlas of Global Patterns, largescale cities from all over the world, shows data in the same scale, so that you can compare global networks, water, land, elevation, local networks, and urbanization. My design project dealt with how I might make all these data visible. What if we give these numbers shapes? A proportional shape, so if you read the page, intuitively you start to see how a city is, and you can compare it easily with other cities? So with a

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world map where the size of the city expresses a specific field of interest ( e.g. crime ) you can easily see how this rates on different places on the globe. Another project, the Limes Atlas, shows the transformations of the Dutch landscape between 200 and 2000. It consists of five phases: 200, 1200, 1600, 1900 and 2000, comparing, for example, the form and structure of the historical cities, water etc. An atlas I made for the Arnhem-Nijmegen area is a conceptual atlas. What I tried to do is to show that these two big cities and the small cities in between them in fact work as one big city, by framing the KAN-region and mapping it based on the concept of network city.

The atlas has eight different chapters all showing different aspects: culture, agriculture, leisure, water, infrastructure, elections, statistics of the soccer clubs, schools, locations of artists, and so on. Each section always starts with a world map, showing a specific aspect in a global perspective, for example the problematics of flooding. And of course the icon of a metropolitan city, the London subway system, transformed into the local bus network system.

This project was perhaps somewhat conceptual, but I also realized a more poetic map: the connection between Amsterdam and Almere. A map of the future of Almere and Amsterdam in the year 2030. In the next thirty years, Almere’s population will double. Then the city will turn for the first time to the waters of the IJmeer and the Markermeer. The design for Almere Pampus will transform Almere at its core and produce at the same time a maritime living condition unique to the Netherlands, accompanied by the increase of natural impact on the area.

Commissioned by the communities of Almere and Amsterdam, I studied the western development of Almere for three years. I searched for a cohesive perspective on the development of nature, environmental differentiation, and the connection to Amsterdam and the northern wing of the Randstad metropolitan area. An atlas presents the outcome of this conditioning design process. However, its goal was not a definite, final solution. In each phase of the design development new conditions are added to allow for a flexible and adventurous transformation of landscape and city. The innovative scenario expresses confidence in the future of Almere Pampus as a sign of a new era. Large-scale, integral, daring, and realistic. Assignment: choose a specific subject and develop an entirely novel systematic where all possible aspects of the subject are classified, conceptualized, and/or quantified so that they then can be mapped through a clear system of visualization ( poetic or conceptual ).

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REFERENCES Book Design

Metaspaces, Raoul Bunschoten/Chora, Black Dog Publishers, 1998

The Big KAN Atlas, Luuk Boelens, Wies Sanders, 010 Publishers, 2003

At Work, Neutelings Riedijk Architects, 010 Publishers, 2003

Metropolitan World Atlas, Arjen van Susteren, 010 Publishers, 2005

Source / Bron, Erik Odijk, 010 Publishers, 2005

Atelier IJmeer 2030+, Teun Koolhaas, Ellen Marcusse, Gert Staal, 2006

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Architectural Design

Prison Yard women’s prison PIV Amerswiel, Heerhugowaard, 2000

Website

www.grootens.nl

• ‘Geuzentuinen’, Amsterdam •• Limes Atlas ••• Metropolitan World Atlas

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The Ambiguity of the Golden Section ALBERT VAN DER SCHOOT During the workshop on the “golden section” I invited the students to create something in which the proportion of the golden section would be recognized, but also challenged. This could occur by having it compete against other proportions, or by exaggerating its use, or by showing it to be pretentious, or in any other way they considered meaningful.

I was surprised by the results; not only did every group succeed in giving its own twist to the assignment, but each solution showed some relationship to the actual vicissitudes of the golden section in earlier historical periods. Each group related the golden section ( originally nothing more than the division of a line in such a way that the larger segment is to the smaller segment proportionally as the whole line to the larger segment ) to a different field of significance. One group mapped the city of Utrecht on a golden section grid – to find that the grid indicates significant nodes in the build-up of the city once the city is viewed through the scope of the grid. Another group tried to relate the consonance of musical intervals to the golden ratio – an experiment doomed to failure if one wants to do justice to one of the most striking aspects of that proportion: its endless continuity. Yet another group investigated the aerodynamic consequences of the application of the golden section to ( paper ) airplanes, something György Doczi did in his analysis of the Boeing 747. But most surprising was the attempt to create a calendar out of the dodecahedron, the regular solid that best exemplifies golden section proportions. The group wrestled with the problem of dividing each of the twelve surfaces into thirty equal parts ( to find an equivalent for the days in a month ), unconscious of the fact that Plutarch’s description of the dodecahedron as consisting of twelve pentagons composed of thirty equal triangles had already led him to interpret this solid both as the zodiac and as the year.

The reason why I invited the students to show the golden section in an ambiguous light corresponds to an ambiguity in the actual history of the idealized proportion. The fact of the matter is that this history shows little resemblance to what the vast majority of the literature about the golden section tries to make us believe. In order to gain insight into the real course of its career we will have to go back to the primary sources.

Johannes Kepler, in his Mysterium Cosmographicum ( 1596 ), says, “There are two treasuries in geometry: one is the relationship of the hypotenuse to the sides in a right triangle, the other the division in extreme and mean ratio. The first is like a nugget of gold, the second like a jewel.”

The gold is the Pythagorean proposition, widely known as a mathematical theorem. The jewel is the ratio now known as the golden section.

Euclid called it the division in extreme and mean ratio, and in Kepler’s days it was also known as the divine proportion. Although the mathematical explanation of its structure immediately precedes the Pythagorean proposition in Euclid’s Elements, the reason why this ratio also acquired a Pythagorean connotation has little to do with mathematics.

Many authors, Matila Ghyka for one, suggest that the golden section has been an aesthetic ideal since the days of Pythagoras, having given way to more mundane proportions only during the last few centuries.

Encyclopedias and numerous studies of art confirm this picture; Renaissance architecture in particular is supposed to be nothing short of a cultivation of the divine proportion.

But how well does the venerated ratio fit in with Pythagorean thinking as this has come down to us – mainly through treatises and citations

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of Neo-Pythagorean offspring? Pythagorean number theory is often depicted as remarkable progress in mathematical discovery, unfortunately laced with a dash of mysticism. In reading the few remaining ancient texts that give some substantial information on the Pythagorean way of numerical thinking, however, one finds that this is not just another numerology but a numerical ontology. Numbers ( rather than fire, air, water or earth, as other ancient philosophers maintained ) are the prime elements of the cosmos. They make up its rational order; it is through their logos, not through matter, that the cosmos is an order.

Numbers ( arithmoi ), therefore, can only be rational; a proportion such as the golden section, which cannot be expressed as a ratio of two integers, simply does not fit in with this ontology.

The first true glorification of the golden section can be found in Luca Pacioli’s Divina Proportione, printed in 1509. This book must be read in its own context; its author is a mathematician and a Franciscan monk, venerating the hidden secrets of God’s creation. The fact that the printed edition of the Divina Proportione also contains a treatise on architecture has led most authors on the golden section ( the majority of whom have never read this book, or any of the other main sources on the subject ) to believe that Pacioli recommends it as a proportion in architecture. But by calling the golden section a divine proportion, Pacioli implies that it is of a superhuman nature, belonging to the accidentals of God, not to the means of the architect.

The true initiator of the idea that the golden section is a proportion regulating both nature and art is Adolf Zeising, a German philosopher deeply influenced by the Romantic philosophy of nature that had been prominent a generation ago. Schelling’s ( and Goethe’s ) influence can easily be detected in his conception of natural shapes as being led by ideas rather than material processes. Zeising claims to have revealed a law of proportion that regulates form in any field by bringing about the right proportion between two polar opposites.

Do nature and art follow the rules that Zeising claimed to have revealed?

Given the number of Zeising’s followers, the desire to recognize some type of proportional ( if not numerical ) order is still as strong as it was in ancient days. This desire craves satisfaction, and sets out to find it.

Unfortunately, despite Zeising’s persistent claims, nature herself is not very interested in the golden section. Very few natural shapes reflect anything approaching the golden figures revealing this proportion.

There is one notable exception: the case of phyllotaxis, the implantation of leaves and other primordia. First investigated in the early nineteenth century by Alexander Braun and the Bravais brothers, the exact structure of phyllotaxis has come to be known only recently. The consecutive order in which primordia like petals on a pine cone or seeds on a sunflower come into being is in exact concordance with the division of stem or flower head according to the golden ratio, for reasons which may otherwise also be accounted for in terms of a mechanical process.

In art, the merits of the divine proportion generally depend on the intention of the creating or evaluating subject, rather than on the measurable properties of the object. Moreover, they turn out to be subordinate to the shifting of conceptual paradigms. Contrary to common opinion, it was not until the nineteenth century that the golden section was hailed as an aesthetic ideal, and only in the twentieth century do we find a large number of artists following this preference. But even if it does not meet the Pythagorean demand for purely rational proportions, it is nevertheless in line with the ( Neo- ) Pythagorean longing for harmony by means of integrating opposite poles.

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• Euclid’s division in extreme and mean ratio.

•• Cusanus’ aurea propositio.

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The aesthetic ideal of the golden section, then, is a Romantic projection, belonging entirely to the nineteenth century and its aftermath.

Dealing with the golden section is not dealing with the most beautiful proportion, but with the most beautiful idea; the idea that such a proportion should exist, and make our ideal image accessible to the senses. The divine proportion is nothing more than that – but certainly nothing less.

An extensive account of the history of the golden section can be found in Albert van der Schoot, Die Geschichte des goldenen Schnitts, FrommannHolzboog, Stuttgart 2005.

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Leonardo da Vinci’s illustration of the open dodecahedron •• Zeising’s golden dissection ••• Workshop Albert van der Schoot •••• Workshop Albert van der Schoot

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It Happens In Between.

Exploring the value of the hallway in the interior ANNE ANDRIESEN In our contemporary world everything seems to overlap. So many things are happening in the interior at the same time that it starts to be an almost confusing multiplicity. But, if everything is overlapping and being juxtaposed, if everything is open and defined, is there still a spot in the interior where everything comes together? Is there an area that is hybrid, empty but full of potential, an area where nothing and everything can happen?

LE FRES NOY, TOURCO ING , FR A N CE

In one of his projects, an international center for the contemporary arts in Le Fresnoy, Tourcoing, France, Bernard Tschumi combined a school, a film studio, a médiateque, spectacle and exhibition halls, two cinemas, laboratories for research and production ( sound, electronic image, film and video ), administrative offices, housing, and a bar/restaurant. All of this is brought together under one roof. Literally, because over an old leisure complex from the 1920s, Tschumi placed a large steel roof.

Between the steel of that new roof and the tiles of the old, a new space arises: the in-between which “becomes a condenser of interdisciplinary investigations between teaching and research, art and cinema, music and image.” ( Tschumi 1994: 397 ) The scheme for the building activated an undefined area not in the client’s initial program and with no measurable cost. The architects could do whatever they wanted. “Yet the charge from the program underneath the new roof literally brought into existence the in-between space. ( … ) that unbelievable landscape of residual space.” ( Tschumi 1994: 399 ) The juxtaposition of events in a building continues to be fascinating.

However, is the context, the built environment, just a third party to the conversation or could we see it in another way? Could we see the context as the moderator of a discussion between events? Like a human moderator, the context seems to lead the discussion by creating certain circumstances to which the other partners in the conversation could specifically react. The juxtapositions also seem to influence each other, i.e. a conversation between events arises. We see that happen everywhere; but especially in urban planning, there has been an emerging crossover trend. There is a search for crossovers within the current structures of the city ( Vrolijk & Hemker 2005 ).

This multidisciplinarity so often applied in urbanism also occurs in buildings, but with one difference. The different events have little space to interact in a natural, i.e. in an unforced, coincidental way. Why are, for example, even in creative “breeding places” such as the TPG building and Loods 6 in Amsterdam, the doors of the studios always closed?

Walking through those hallways during an internship at an architectural office situated in Loods 6, my curiosity level increased. What might be behind those closed doors? A lot of inspiring people must

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have been working in the studios but no one ever appeared in the hallways. Why is the hallway, that network of neutrality running through so many buildings, still so anonymous? Aren’t hallways pre-eminently designed for interaction?

In my view, coincidental interaction between different events does not take place in every square inch of a building. There is interaction where different people, creators of different events, intermingle. It often happens in neutral zones and what we would call the “non-places” of the interior. ( Augé 1995: 101 ) These non-places as parts of the network of neutrality could consist of hallways and staircases, like the little vestibule where people started to smoke together. One can go there easily but one does not feel the urge to stay. Non-places are used in a subjective way, since all approach them from their own perspective. Bobby Young, architect and former skateboarder, illustrates the subjective view of space by sketching a skateboarder gliding through an urban setting.

“The average pedestrian engages architecture and urban space at only one level, while skateboarders engage on multiple functional levels. An ambler sees a bench and sits on it? ( … ) A skateboarder sees a bench and contemplates. How many different ways can I engage the form of this bench with my wooden board, metal trucks and four rubber wheels?

First, I’ll do a rail slide. Then a grind, regular then goofy-footed, maybe into a rail slide. Last maybe a tailskid or a foot plant and then continue down the street until the next obstacle. They operate tactically, adjusting to the environment like a soldier in the jungle. This modus operandi is the essential difference between the pedestrian and skateboarder.” ( Young 2004 ) It seems to me that people look at the neutral spaces of a building, like the hallway, similar to the skateboarder in Young’s story. They perceive the given context and think, “How can I use this space for what I am doing now?” The door jamb is used to lean on and the steps of the vestibule become chairs. “What does architecture become when it no longer performs its intended function? Or when it performs several functions, not built into the design, and how do we map these relationships which are not static but dynamic exchanges between the architecture and user?” ( Young 2004 ) THE H A LLWAY. T HE CORRIDOR CONNECTS !

At what given moment can a space be defined as corridor? When does a corridor metamorphose into residential space? Is a corridor that functions as residential space no longer a corridor by definition?

In my view, the hallway is a crucial element of that network of neutrality in a building. The last syllable of the word hallway emphasizes that it is a place of movement, of not-staying. The Dutch word for hallway, gang, suggests that same movement; with gang, the Dutch word also indicates flow or paced movement. And the French couloir shows a resemblance with the verb couler, which means “to flow”. Thus, the movement seems to be everywhere. Nevertheless, I do believe that the hallway must also be used to alter one’s speed for a moment, to wander around, to contemplate or start a chat. Yet how could these movements, conversations and interactions be combined and facilitated?

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BOUNDA RIES , BORDER ZONES , DOORS A ND T RES HOLDS

“When we think about space, we have only looked at its containers. As if space itself is invisible, all theory for the production of space is based on an obsessive preoccupation with its opposite: substance and objects, i.e., architecture.” ( Koolhaas 2001 )

When zooming in further on “in-between spaces” or zones, could it be said that they are actually defined by their border zones? As Koolhaas states in the quote above, is it about the containers or about what is contained within? Is an in-between zone, a hallway, in itself already a border zone, or does the importance lie with the places where one goes back ( and forth ) into ( and out of ) the world of concreteness, the world where actions are defined and almost prescribed? Opposed to this world of concreteness, the hallway could be seen as a world of abstraction, where actions are undefined and not proscribed. Could the whole journey through the hallway from A to B, from concrete to abstract to concrete, be divided into different levels of “threshold-ness”, starting with an intense moment when entering, and going through a more stabilized threshold moment, being in the hallway, moving again toward a higher level of threshold-ness when leaving the hallway zone?

In order to answer those questions, it is necessary to define a threshold.

According to Aldo van Eyck, “the ‘in-between’ or the ‘threshold’ is the moment where the meeting of two polarities becomes concrete”. ( Strauven 1987: 12 ) This meeting of polarities can be seen in his Burgerweeshuis in Amsterdam, where “the spaces were not just autonomous beings, but also had a connection with the adjacent space.” ( Hageman 2004: 320 ) Maybe then the hallway could also be seen as an extended threshold where the meeting of multiple polarities becomes concrete. Multiple events are in contact with this zone, making it an ambivalent one. A journey through this hallway is then an extended threshold moment full of ambivalence created by the events the hallway connects and, moreover, the events that might occur in it.

Yet, I do believe that the moment also consists of a range of intensities, the levels of threshold-ness mentioned before, which the presence of doors greatly influences. The door is the object ( or moment ) that actually initiates or ends the threshold moment of the hallway, making one aware of entering. In the Deleuzian sense, a threshold is also seen as the moment where a change of being takes place. Compare that transformation to ice becoming water becoming steam. Two thresholds are being crossed. “Each multiplicity is defined by a borderline functioning as Anomalous, but there is a string of borderlines, a continuous line of borderlines ( fiber ) following which the multiplicity changes. And at each threshold or door, a new pact?” ( Deleuze & Guattari 1996: 249 ) In my view, one of the qualities of doors lies in the fact that they can be opened and closed. It appeals to one’s curiosity. How tempting is it to pass by a half-open door and peak in for a second? And even if doors are closed and it is not possible to look inside in any other way, one starts to wonder. The results of a competition to design a door held on www.designboom.com also showed various designs concerning the door as a separation object and how to overcome this. How to open it, what is behind it, what is the level of transparency? In all entries, the door needed adjustments to be able to connect the areas it separated.

“How concrete everything becomes in the world of the spirit when an object, a mere door, can give images of hesitation, temptation, desire, security, welcome and respect.” ( Bachelard 1994: 224 ). But seen from the other side of the door there can be curiosity as well, towards the hallway. What happens “outside”? “And then, onto what, toward what, do doors open? Do they open for the world of men or for the world of solitude?” ( Bachelard 1994: 224 )

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Again, it is not only about the hallway zone but even more about its relationship with the spaces it is connecting. So, for the benefit of being in contact with the adjacent spaces, maybe the quality of being closed, being opened but also being half-open, is even more important than the archetypical form of the door itself. “Then, on the surface of being, in that region, where being wants to be both visible and hidden, the movements of opening and closing are so numerous, so frequently inverted, and so charged with hesitation, that we could conclude on the following formula: man is half-open being.” ( Bachelard 1994: 222 ) Border zones are defining the in-between zone, in this case the hallway.

By designing those border zones and their ability to open and close, a dynamic in-between arises automatically. The in-between in Tschumi’s Le Fresnoy also arose after putting a second roof over the old structure. And the status quo of the hallway in Loods 6 is very much influenced by its doors being open or closed. In Hertzberger’s office building for Centraal Beheer in Apeldoorn, the balance between openness and enclosure is very clear. “The building is recognized by its network of walking and traffic routes with semi-open office spaces in tower-like formations.” ( http://www.kunstbus.nl/verklaringen/ herman+hertzberger.html ) In this building, it seems important to have a space where nothing is between the office spaces. The interaction between this space and the office spaces is made possible, inviting and challenging by the semi-openness of the adjacent spaces.

• NEU TR A L VS . NON - NEU T R A L OR NON - P L ACE VS . P L ACE?

Much has been written on the subjects of space and place, and from this discussion several different ideas may be distilled. Various writers seem to say the same thing but use contradictory notions which sometimes causes confusion. According to Michel de Certeau, “space is practiced place” ( De Certeau 1990: 173 ). He concludes that “space is a crossing of mobiles” and continues with the comparison of the word. “Related to place, space would be what the word becomes when it is being spoken, when it is seized in the ambiguity of a becoming, evolved into a term depending on multiple conventions, posed as an act of a present ( … ), and changed by the transformations caused by successive vicinities.” ( De Certeau 1990: 173 ) Steve Harrison and Paul Dourish seem to elaborate on the space/place issue somewhat differently; by saying that “space is the opportunity; place is the understood reality” ( Harrison and Dourish 1996 ), they seem to oppose Michel de Certeau. He argued that place is something static that becomes space when it is used. “We are located in space, but we act in place,” they claim ( Harrison and Dourish 1996 ). Here, it seems to be not place but space that is something neutral. By acting, we can create a certain place within a space. “Place derives from a tension between connectedness and distinction, rather than from three-dimensional structure.” ( Harrison and Dourish 1996 ) Both De Certeau and Harrison and Dourish make a distinction. There is a zone that is neutral and just there, and within that zone dynamics such as use, velocity, and people create another layer. Whether this layer is called space or place, in both cases the distinction is made. In my view, the hallway is a neutral zone that can temporarily be taken out of its neutrality when something happens in it, when something “takes place”. Maybe a comparison can be made with the notions of place and non-place according to Marc Augé, in which context the hallway would be a sort of small-scale non-place. If these notions are connected to the hallway, things begin to make sense. Non-places are what hallway zones in the interior actually are. They are not constant places because of continuous change and being a pass-through. If people temporarily relate themselves to a non-place, this non-place starts

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Contact with adjacent spaces: interior of Centraal Beheer office, Apeldoorn. By Herman Hertzberger.

•• Dutch Embassy by Rem Koolhaas

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to become a place. One could argue that a hallway that is being used is switched on, and one that is unused, is switched off.

The zone, the non-place that one crosses when going from A to B or C, can be seen as the in-between zone or the threshold zone. The door, not its concrete form but its features, are a part of that in-between system. An important part, though, because it can or cannot make a connection with an adjacent space. An in-between zone can be two seconds or two hours, two meters or two miles; it is that string of moments where you start to leave behind where you came from and move toward your destination. Le Corbusier valued this movement by formulating the idea of a promenade architecturale, “a route through the house with constant change in space and light” ( Van Gameren 1999 ).

It can be seen in Le Corbusier’s own Casa Curutchet ( A rgentina ) where a long ramp leads the inhabitants of the house and visitors of the adjacent doctor’s office from street to terrace to living spaces. A perfect interaction between the trajectory and the living spaces. Fifty years later, Rem Koolhaas used that same concept of the “promenade architecturale” for the Dutch Embassy in Berlin. An upward route leads along the offices, leisure spaces and other areas in the building. Although, just as in Casa Curutchet, the intention was to interact between trajectory and working spaces, this turned out to be impossible because of safety measures. Like in Hertzberger’s Centraal Beheer, being able to see and interact with the adjacent spaces is very important. It makes the promenade even more dynamic than it already is. In this route along the different events and parts of a building, I see a resemblance with a Deleuzian line of becoming. And if that “line of becoming has only a middle” ( Deleuze & Guattari 1996: 293 ), let’s value that middle ground.

IT ’ S A LL A BOU T MOV ING T HROUGH

“Crossing is for Stalker a creative act that means creating a system of relations within the chaotic juxtaposition of time and space ( … ).” ( Stalker, Laboratorio d’arte urbana, Rome )

In fact, interior design is all about moving through a building and the way this is done and experienced. Not a new concept, but one that remains fascinating. Would we still experience the building if we didn’t move through it? What should be added, I think, is the extra value given by an independent factor providing movement. This independent factor has not always been there and it seems to me that the way the movement runs through the house is a “format for a distinctive way of life”.( Evans 1978, 275 ) Moving through the interior has to do with the way people interact, in the living space but also in society.

Being convinced that the hallway is a place to meet, it is striking to read that the introduction of the hallway went together with a certain shift in interaction between people. If Palladio’s sixteenth-century houses and their sequence of living spaces are compared with seventeenth-century English country houses, we see that those living spaces are connected with each other by another, distinct space: the hallway. This shift from a “way through halls” toward a “hallway” in the seventeenth-century country houses also had a lot to do with a need for privacy. The lady and lord of the house did not want their servants moving through the rooms all the time. Therefore, a separate space was invented: the hallway.

Public and private are quite ambivalent notions. In our three-dimensional world, there are different levels of public and private. The square for example is quite a public zone; coming from that crowded square into a narrow street already gives a feeling of leaving some of the public behind. Entering the privacy of one’s own house introduces the next level of privacy. Within the protecting walls of that house more of

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those levels can be seen. Would we ever have coffee with the neighbor in the bathroom? Or in the bedroom? Probably not, because these are private areas. People we do not even want to have coffee with are being spoken to in the hallway. Here, another identity is being added to the hallway’s wide ranging functions; that of a catalyst between public and private but at the same time that of public zone in the interior. The hall­way can be a transition zone between that mad world outside and the private world of the inside but also the connection between the different zones of the interior.

What I, as an interior designer, would like to achieve is a certain flexibility within structure. The opportunity to retreat but also to open up. With a hallway as a catalyst, or buffer zone, this must be possible. That zone connects but also separates, stands still but is also in motion. What once arose in the seventeenth century is long gone; the hallway as separator no longer exists. Since its birth some 400 years ago, the hallway has moved through total abolishment of interior hierarchy in the seventies towards more closure as we see it today. What we need now, I believe, is that “half-open” described by Bachelard. When he speaks of a “region, where being wants to be both visible and hidden, the movements of opening and closing are so numerous, so frequently inverted, and so charged with hesitation, that we could conclude on the following formula: man is half-open being.” ( Bachelard 1994: 222 ) And those “half-open beings” need transparency with an ability to close.

Sometimes.

CH A R ACT ERIS T I CS P U T TO T HE T ES T

After many contemplations and studies on what architects, poets and philosophers said and did on the topic of the hallway, several characteristics emerged essential to designing an interior in which the hallway zone plays an important role. The hallway zone and the movement through it seem to be ongoing.

The flow of the skateboarder mentioned earlier in this essay can be compared with how a movement through the interior should actually be in my view. “Whereas in the past, liminal space was more of a linear pattern, ( … ) liminal space may also be spiral, network, radial and free-flowing in form.” ( Paredes-Santillan, 2006 ) Thus, out of the rigid linear entity from which the hallway began, it now seems to have evolved into an almost abstract flow of liminality within the interior.

In an ideal situation, the network of neutrality would then become a network of liminality. Like in Tschumi’s Le Fresnoy, the liminal zone becomes a condenser, a zone where things come together. I still feel, though, that this zone must retain some of its autonomy, some of its old characteristics of being a pass-through zone that, of course, has connections with adjacent spaces. Connections that can be established, or taken away, an open-door mentality or a closed one. A non-place with the ability to become a place by means of interaction, curiosity, thresholds and doors. The beauty is that this place-ness is temporary, and disappears with its place-makers, the users of an interior. As “halfopen beings”, those users of an interior are in a constant search for public-ness and privacy. From the public-ness of the street outside, they move in toward the different levels of privacy present inside the building. Sometimes seeking contact, sometimes solitude. In my opinion, the hallway can be seen as a catalyst for that. As a facilitator of the connection and the withdrawal of people within the interior. Inhaling and exhaling, like a living creature.

When parameters and characteristics are set, it is useful to compare them with the real world. Four buildings are put to the test.

1 Loods 6, Amsterdam: hive of creativity with a network of neutrality running through. Loods 6 “was built in the early 1900s by the Royal Dutch

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From a way through halls towards a hallway: Barlborough Hall, England •• Warkworth Castle, England ••• In-between-space

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Steamboat Company, the KNSM, and is located on the KNSM Island in Amsterdam.” ( w ww.loods6.nl ) Striking in this building are the long, five-meter high empty hallways. Especially on the top floor, they are sterile, silent and anonymous. For a few decades, this warehouse has contained studios. The doors of these studios are ( almost ) all hermetically closed. Artist Anton Martineau, who has rented a studio in Loods 6 since the late 1960s, is not very positive about the Loods. “The Warehouse ( … ) is like a prison. Long, empty hallways, no objects allowed in them because of the fire regulations, closed doors and deadly silence.

I hardly see the other artists in the building. They sneak through the hallways and lock their doors. This used to be different. We visited each other to talk about the business, model for a colleague or just to rest with some wine and cheese.” ( Het Parool 1-6-2002 ) 2 City Hall, The Hague: public building with hidden processes located behind white walls. In the center of The Hague lies Richard Meier’s imposing white palace housing The Hague’s city hall and numerous offices for the many civil servants working there. In an enormous atrium, two sets of eleven bridges connect the offices on eleven floors on two sides of the building overlooking the atrium.

3 Haags Montessori Lyceum, The Hague: high school with an open plan.

Entering this school, a striking resemblance can be seen with the city hall. Here too, we see an atrium, a condenser of what happens around it, and a structure of hallways, roads, collaborating. Three floors of working niches break the linearity of the hallways and have a connecting view to the central hall. Stairways are behind glass walls so that every movement can be seen from this middle of the building. So again, the great condenser is the central hall but the hallways opening up to the hall participate as well. This school gradually moves from a central, public part along the hallways toward the more private classrooms.

4 NAi, Rotterdam: wandering through architecture. This quite awkward building in Rotterdam houses three galleries, a library, an auditorium, a café and a shop, all devoted to architecture. The stroll through the building, facilitated by a three-story ramp, and the one through the exhibition spaces seem disjointed. A clear distinction seems to be made between the public zones of the museum ( shop, cafe, auditorium ) and the more private ones ( the galleries ).

MOV ING T HROUGH RE A LIT Y

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What is striking in the analyses of different buildings and their hallway zones is the way the form influences the movement in and through it. Of course, this seems a quite logical given, but an important one as well, when we look at the opportunities form does ( or does

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not ) offer. Both in Loods 6 and The Hague city hall, the linear form of the hallway and the bridges ( city hall ) offer no other possibility than to move, forward ho! It seems that strict linearity in combination with clear goals evokes haste and kills place-potential. Still, it depends on what the building is meant for; the NAi ramp is also very linear though this linearity offers some more elements to stimulate imagination. People wander calmly along this ramp toward the gallery of their choice.

In the Haags Montessori Lyceum, there are working niches along the hallway and even though the whole is still quite linear, it is more in motion, more like the condenser in Tschumi’s Le Fresnoy, mentioned earlier in this essay.

Both the city hall and the school have another zone that can be seen as a real condenser: an atrium. In both buildings, traffic space is gathered around the atrium which creates a pile of horizontal movements ( hallways, bridges ), vertical movements ( staircases, elevators ) and rhizomatic movements ( atrium ). Through a construction like this, the visitor moves gradually from the public toward the private zones of the building. A good catalyst, also seen in the NAi, where access to the galleries happens gradually. Here, the traffic space is really placed as a buffer zone between the public-ness of the shop and the café and the galleries.

In Loods 6, the quite rigid hallway is a catalyst as well but in a less gradual way. It works as a kind of interior street connecting the outside with the studios inside. In this linear structure, there is practically no room for liminality, hybridization and ambivalence, whereas in the city hall and especially in the school this is much more present. It seems as if an increase in liminality decreases the hallway zone as an obstacle: the more opportunity there is, the slower people seem to move through; the hallway becomes a kind of twilight zone. Both the city hall and the school offer such a zone. The latter almost becomes sedentary, where the balance is quite fragile and dynamic. It also depends on the interaction with adjacent spaces and how interaction works in practice.

The ramp in the NAi is also a kind of twilight zone, because of the lighting and dark color of the whole, but it stops at the moment the gallery

• NAi, Rotterdam •• City Hall, The Hague ••• Haags Montessori Lyceum, The Hague •••• NAi, Rotterdam

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or the café starts. It would be nice if this walk would continue into the walk along the galleries instead of being as segregated as it is now.

In the school and Loods 6, there is some difference in the boundaries.

Classrooms are separated from the hallway by glass, studios by high white walls. Where the school leaves too little room for curiosity ( everything is clear ), Loods 6 is too closed for any interaction. Studio doors are scrupulously closed and turn the hallway into a silent, almost meditative zone. This meditative quality recurs in the ramp section in the NAi, though this space has some interaction with the adjacent spaces, by text on the walls, by sight lines, or by a megaphone hanging on the walls. It should be possible to find a balance between an entirely meditative zone and one that is almost completely opened up. The silent neutrality of the Loods 6 hallway does illustrate the difference between the hallway being a place or a non-place. There is little noise or distraction like in the city hall or the school, so when someone enters, the ambience changes; whereas in the cacophony of, for example, the school, this is hardly noticeable. In the last case, the hallway has almost lost its non-place quality. Even though in the city hall the bridges are also opened up toward the atrium, they do not dissolve into it as much as the school hallways do. They retain a certain autonomy and continue to be a non-place.

Thus, the more neutral the network of motion through a building is, the more it differs in its being a place or a non-place. In my view, there can be a balance: between open and closed, between anonymous and known, between silent and cacophonic, moving and standing still; between public and private, between continuous and temporary. But this balance depends on the people using the hallway. Therefore, I would like to plead for a dynamic way through the interior by means of a network of liminality called the hallway zone. A space that does not imply more than itself, connects but separates, stands still but is in motion; that leads along the things that happen in the interior when interacting with them, not being a linear structure but a winding stroll through, sometimes open and almost dissolving in its surroundings, sometimes closed and autonomous. I don’t want to see this part of the interior as a residual or purely functional one. I will take it as seriously as the rest of the interior. Let us battle against a hierarchy that creates residual spaces but let us also value the differences between sedentary and circulation space. Let us value that balance, a balance of ambiguity.

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REFERENCES Books Augé, Marc ( 1995 ), Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, New York: Verso.

Bachelard, Gaston ( 1994 ), The Poetics of Space, Boston: Beacon Press.

De Certeau, Michel ( 1990 ), L’invention du Quotidien, Paris: Gallimard.

Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari ( 1996 ), A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, London: The Athlone Press.

Eyck, Aldo van & Cannon, Henry ( 1986 ), Niet om het Even; van en over Aldo van Eyck, Amsterdam: Van Gennep b.v.

Hageman, Mariëlle ( 2004 ), De Nederlandse Architectuur 1000|2005, Bussum: Uitgeverij THOTH. Strauven, Francis ( 1987 ), Het Burgerweeshuis van Aldo van Eyck: een modern monument, Amsterdam: De Oude Stad/Stichting Wonen.

Tschumi, Bernard ( 1994 ), Event Cities ( praxis ), Cambridge, Massachusetts/London: MIT Press.

Articles Carr, C ( 2003 ), “World of Interiors; In the house with Do-Ho Suh” at www.lehmannmaupin.com/files/696642bc.pdf Evans, Robin ( 1978 ),”Figures, Doors and Passages” in Architectural Design 4/78, pp. 267-278 Gameren, Dick van ( 1999 ), “Gang-Ruimte” in Forum 39/4 Harrison, Steve & Dourish, Paul ( 1996 ), “Re-Place-ing Space: The Roles of Place and Space in Collaborative Systems” at http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/external/p.dourish/ place Hengeveld, Marleen ( 2002 ), “Het KNSM-eiland leeft niet meer” in Het Parool.

Horwitz, Jamie ( 2005 ), “Beyond Net-to-Gross: analog tools for thinking with non-architects about the design of circulation- and other shared spaces” at http://www. aia.org/SiteObjects/files/Horwitz_color.pdf Koolhaas, Rem ( 2001 ), “Junkspace” at http://www.btgjapan.org/catalysts/rem.html Paredes-Santillan Caryn ( 2005 ), “Architecture in-between: liminally bridging the gaps in the bazaar city.” at http://www.stacj.org/forum/layoutv2.pdf Schwartz, B. ( 1968 ), “The Social Psychology of Privacy” in The American Journal of Sociology, pp. 741- 752 Schwartz, Ineke ( 1999 ), “Op Weg/On the Way” in Forum 39/4 Schwartz, Michiel ( 2004 ), “Op zoek naar kruispunten” at http://www.virtueelplatform.nl Tilman, Harm ( 2004 ), “Fascinerende processieruimte; Nederlandse Ambassade in Berlijn ( D ) in De Architect 1/35 Vrolijk, Denise & Hemker, Anne ( 2005 ), “Geplande spontaniteit: creatieve steden, een nieuw tijdperk?” in S R/O Young, Bobby ( 2004 ), “A Skateboarders Guide to Architecture or an Architect’s Guide to Skateboarding” at http://www.loudpapermag.com

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Airportal Importance ELLEN RUBEL

Pedestrians talking to themselves in a crosswalk, train travelers with a laptop on their knees, conference rooms at Utrecht Central Station: public space seems to become more and more an extension of the interior and may even turn into the interior itself. Public space is becoming interior space; we no longer feel embarrassed when discussing personal topics in public to our lover on the phone. We do not feel uncomfortable transferring huge amounts of money by laptop, while being surrounded by many others in a crowded train. Private affairs take place more and more in non-private areas. Public space serves nowadays as a playing field for several private activities previously done anonymously.

DOMES T I C E X T ERIOR

“Because of the ever-increasing mobility, an always larger radius of action is developed. But space becomes reduced into an area constituting a crossing zone, an in-between moment in an ongoing movement, which is at the most interrupted by a short break.” ( I belings 1995: 36 ) With these words, Hans Ibelings translates public space into “a collection of transit places” floating on the waves of mobility. Nevertheless, these words relate also to interior living spaces. In public space as well as in interior living, an ongoing movement is noticeable. Why do we need our interior living spaces, and why do we still consider them private?

Regarding domestic places, half the day we are physically not at home but somewhere else. Since I view screen-related activities as being active in public space, for example watching a political debate on television or sharing thoughts with an international friend on Hyves, an online social networking site, I could argue that, in such cases, we are at home but act as if in public space. Thus, the amount of time we are conscious of domestic interior surroundings is perhaps only two or three hours a day. At least for the common civilian citizen, with a nine-to-five job, who commutes daily. So, how important is our home, our shelter?

Has it become our personal transit place: a place in between movements; a place transformed into a motel where we rest from traveling around; a place used mainly as transfer station?

Indeed, I could argue that the interior living space has become just a passing through, a pathway from one exterior to the next. The inhabitant rushes through it, merely glancing inside while moving on. When staying longer inside, the biggest amount of movement will consist of traveling as well: virtual travel. The opportunity is always there to open a window to another reality in the living quarters. In Open Sky, Paul Virilio writes about Virtual Reality and living a real life. “If not being here and now, how can we really live? How can we survive the instantaneous telescoping of a reality that has become ubiquitous, breaking up into two orders of time, each as real as the other: that of presence here and now, and that of telepresence at a distance, beyond the horizon of tangible appearances?” ( Virilio 1997: 37 ) Apparently, inhabitants live in both worlds and have found a way to connect the real with the virtual by simply adapting the Internet into their living space.

Communication-related inventions ( telephone, radio, television and Internet ) gave domestic places myriad windows on the public place.

Window after window or window over window can be opened. There-

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fore, a domestic place is no longer guaranteed to be a non-public environment. At most times spent in private domains we open a window to public space.

It is most likely that the many windows to another reality, creating an entrance from public domain into the private interior domain, and the increasing amount of mobile inventions helping the public places to become extensions from the interior domains, have produced a new interior lifestyle. The lifestyle exhibits three characteristics: 1. mobility ( mainly speeding up ), 2. transformation ( change of personality ), and 3. experience ( entertainment-related ). An interior should then satisfy the urge for mobility, transformation, and experience. Mobility: quick time arrivals and departures, resulting in a short stay at home - related to our highly economic system where time is money. Transformation: being someone else at home, in the virtual world, and in public space.

Experience: a home cinema system or karaoke bar, a golf course within walking distance. All three characteristics, mobility, transformation and experience, have to fit into or be closely related to our domestic areas.

But aren’t we searching for a less complex, more open and simple space perception inside our living quarters to put us at ease? A further analysis of the notions of speed, role transformation, and experience in relation to domestic places might answer the question of what we are looking for in our domestic environments and how we can recognize them as interior lives rather than semi-public playgrounds.

DE VO ID OF IM AGIN AT ION OR E XP ERIEN CE- RI CH DULLNES S ?

Though the domestic or personal transit place has become more open and transparent, it is still a place to recuperate while sleeping or resting during the night or daytime. However, after “recharging”, if not already done in a sauna, beauty salon or oxygen bar, the embodied rush for movement into the exterior reappears. The feeling of having no time to offset the outside world overrules the mindless minutes. This is because of the “time is money” and the very important “time has to be experience” mentality of our Western society. Recreation, shopping and sport are leisure activities. The precious free hours have to be experienced in order to count in the world of leisure. Spinning, cunning, carting, bungee jumping, paragliding, hitchhiking contests, festivals or singles’ midweek events: all kinds of leisure entertainment have emerged - or have re-emerged, in forms of yoga, visiting a spa, and skeet shooting. There is an enormous array of different kinds of leisure activities, but the purchase is even bigger. People want experiences in their precious spare time. Moreover, now that everything around us is under control and connected - online, mobile phone in one’s pocket - something new has to be encountered; jumping out of a plane or from a bridge, and some new ( V R ) body has to become a friend in order to expand the world of interaction. In the world of architecture, we can notice that designers anticipate the user’s desire by making the interactive architecture users of that specific location expect. The desire is to live as close as possible or, most ideally, among the hectic jumble of entertainment, recreation, and consumption. Interaction with others and the surroundings is manifested in many experiment-loaded activities located close to the domestic area or embodied in urban architecture.

The media - read here television, radio and the Internet - play the major role in the quest for increasing input and connect the inside living area with the outside world. We might miss all the fun, news, and experience, when not partaking in the stream of information from all over the world entering our living area through one of its windows. People feel emotionally abandoned when their windows are closed to the outside world.

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In the context of zones without media disturbance and digital media, Ginette Blom writes: “We can look at the exterior, all public places, transit places, offices, retail and so on, as plugged zones. The latest news, cultural events, stock exchange reports and train schedules are provided in the outside world. In these plugged zones, people can react to information and each other. Plugged zones are dynamic spaces, where it all happens. An unplugged zone should then be a place where your own individual experience can be the initial point for personal contact. Unplugged zones are spaces which don’t tolerate media intervention.” ( w ww.blomdontwerpen.nl ) In view of the fact that satellites circle around our globe and spread and receive a continuous stream of information, I could argue that the world is one big plugged planet, where we have to create our own unplugged niches in order to recharge.

DECELER AT ING

Ginette Blom calls places plugged when digital media informs the occupants of a place, through which people react to their surroundings and each other. In contrast with plugged places, unplugged places must then be places without any interference in place-related human behavior from a media source. But what do unplugged places look like in this world of television, the Internet and mobile phones?

Today, media interventions can take place almost anywhere. Only by creating awareness of the unplugged/plugged status of a certain place, will the users act as if being in a plugged/unplugged place. Blom calls unplugged places “information-free safe havens” which is a utopian description. Utopian, because these havens simply don’t exist in nature. A strip of beach, or nature preserve can become plugged, when in the silence a mobile phone rings. These originally tranquil, unplugged places today run the risk of becoming plugged. With the term plugged, I refer to the ongoing opportunity to connect with places or people who are not in the same area. Places will become unplugged when an entrance sign warns against using mobile devices. Therefore, unplugged places will also always be sign-related.

The Internet, e-mail, satellite television, mobile phones: these communication and information media gave the world a sense of not only expanding, but also shrinking at the same time. Everything is far and near, unknown and known and constantly under surveillance by the globeencircling satellites detecting all places including the unplugged, signdesigned places. The signs command people to turn mobile phones off and to leave laptops at home. Unplugged places rarely exist in uncultivated forms. How is it possible to free our minds occasionally in this time of increasing complexity resulting from media attraction? How to free ourselves from over-input addiction? We need unplugged places, where media do not continuously interfere with our thoughts.

Digital media brought public space and motion into living areas by creating a constant, open source relation with the whole world. The Internet providers promote their products with ads such as “For the smallest price, you choose our fastest speed to reach the world. We install for free in a minute.” Providers show on television and in magazines how annoying waiting or stagnation can be while sitting behind a computer. Downloading, surfing, speed-dating: the new verbs from this decade show the rush in activities with instantaneous connotations. Opening window after window, getting as much information as possible from the outside world into small inside living spaces must take no longer than necessary.

Did we feel as if at a standstill when we were tied to a table or wall when making a phone call? Were we cut off from the outside world, in times that the only screen in our living space was a small, cubic, color televi-

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sion? Mobility and screen-related inventions entered the house and made the inhabitants spend less unaware time in the house. I consider unaware time as unplugged time for doing nothing but recuperating while not being aware of the time going by. Unaware time is most of all private time without connection to the outside world. Today, the best example of an unaware time moment seems to be sitting on a toilet.

Indeed, the only possible way to have some unaware minutes is locking yourself in a bathroom and slowing down in the silence of three square meters.

P ERCEI V ING S PACE T HROUGH MOV EMEN T

The various ways of time and space perception in one location say a lot about the asynchronous way of living and behaving in the rich Western world. Religions, ages, cultures, and sexes live together in ‘banlieuelike’ apartment blocks while sharing the same front door. A family with six children is playing a board game around their dinner table, while at the same time, a couple downstairs is watching Bollywood porn and their male neighbor is kneeling down to pray, facing east.

This is an example of the literally asynchronous way of common activities taking place in the same time at the same location. In one apartment block, people are living among different cultures and religions and, therefore, within different time schedules produced, for example, by dinnertimes or prayer frequencies. But there is also another kind of asynchronous living. We receive all sorts of private information of others such as life stories and personal emotions, because of the constant interruption by several kinds of media into our living quarters. The difference with the apartment-related story is that, through the media, we receive details from lives and people we will never meet; who will sleep when we work, who might even be made-up characters. In the latter case, we live asynchronously in place and time ( c.f. Virilio’s: “Here and Now” ), while in the apartment-related example it only has to do with the mind’s eye ( religion, age, culture or gender-related ).

This doubly asynchronous lifestyle - through the mind’s eye or through place and time - is based in globalization and media and travel technologies. Traveling around the world and living in other time zones and among other cultures turns the traveler into a stranger on the home front. Because of today’s high-speed movement, the traveler can have noodles for breakfast in Tokyo, dinner in a bistro in Paris, and six hours later enjoy scrambled eggs for breakfast in Denver, and that all in one day. Surroundings and culture change every few hours with the speed of a TGV or airplane. As a result, travelers smoothly adapt to changing surroundings, countries, and cultures. Something similar happens while traveling virtually. In Virtual Reality, travelers can go intercontinental every second while being able to choose whatever character they wish to be for that day. Traveling and role modification could be a flight from real life. Here we are faced with convenient transformation into another personality while the environment transforms along with it.

We can change roles and behavior through different surroundings, but also by simply changing clothes. Fashion can even show speed, without being in motion. Somebody can look “fast”, because of trendy, stylish clothing. Through changing roles in different surroundings, when moving from home to work, into the street, into the pub, personalities tend to become hybridized. “The double mobility – the desire for the far and unknown, and the way home – becomes manifest in clothing.” ( Terreehorst 1997: 53 ) Looks and living spaces started to become interchangeable. It is becoming increasingly clear that interiors must have the capacity to adapt to different situations. After all, our interior is our third skin. The change of clothes showing how we feel while covering our body is similar to how the interior skin could transform while pro-

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ducing domestic areas showing moods and roles.

The third characteristic, transformation, completes the picture of what we want in domestic places. The experience-rich places, in between movement, have to be transformable as well. The characteristics of motion, experience, and transformation are notions related to the era with freedom of choice, and create a complex environment when put together. All three notions refer to mobility and change of viewpoint. When we design an interior living space, we imply the three characteristics rather than that both ongoing movement and haste have entered the house. The amount of time spent at home will probably increase when we create mobile, transformable leisure accommodation, but there will be less time to unplug, to turn off the outside world, and to enjoy unaware minutes. Emptiness for time unawareness is needed in interiors to prevent the emergence of undefined living spaces filled with nothing but motion.

S IMP LIFI CAT ION BY MOV EMEN T

Mobility is becoming an almost overruling element in interior living spaces. Think of mobile phones, laptops, sliding walls, tables with wheels, and couches morphing from a loveseat into four cubic seats.

While the outside world gets more mobile, the place in-between this motion, the personal-transfer place, also fills with mobile novelties.

The rush through the interior living spaces will only be reinforced by mobile accessories. To prevent an over-acceleration in the interior living space, we need to take a closer look at the concept of movement in order to understand how a deceleration might occur.

Through our ability to move around in environments and to run our hands over surfaces, we receive a vast amount of information about the world. We learn the contours of our world and the possible ways in which we can interact with it via movement. Movement can be seen in its most honest human form in an infant’s first steps and its tumbling down, caused by the laws of gravity, when discovering its surroundings. As Maxine Sheets-Johnstone has argued, “In the beginning, we are simply infused with movement – not merely with a propensity to move, but with the real thing. This primal animated quality, this original kinetic spontaneity that infuses our being and defines our aliveness, is our point of departure for living in the world and making sense of it.” ( Sheets-Johnstone, 1999: 136 ) Most of the time we aren’t aware of the fact that we move; movement seems to happen unconsciously as if programmed. We can see our bodily movements just as breathing or blinking. Still, there are a numerous kinds of different movements through which we all can uniquely experience the world. We feel accelerations or decelerations and stops in between motion; smooth or choppy movement and changes in pace depending on the vehicle. These differences in motion divide our experience from our surroundings, and transfer our surroundings from micro-detailed when standing still, into vagueness when in high speed.

In actually moving or BWM ( body-within-movement ), we explore how we interact with our environment in acceleration and deceleration. Alongside BWM perception, we move through the places in-between, the public transit stations. The places in between the movements are not endpoints but intersections. Theoretically, we are here in an undefined state of place, because of not being in motion, but also not being in the final location. I call these “non-places” in line with Marc Augé, for they exist solely for reasons of changing direction, view or speed. Several vectors meet at a non-place, while the place will never become the endpoint of a vector. A non-place is mostly a transfer place or passage, a location in between movement, a place where people can wait.

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WA IT ING V ERSUS WAS T ING

The everyday phenomenon of waiting in our rushed Western society can be seen as the prize we have to pay for our hyper-dynamic lifestyle and mobility. We seem unable to slow down, even while waiting.

A careful estimate shows that we waste at least thirty minutes of our time on an average day in a waiting situation: in the supermarket, in the line at the cash machine, on the Internet or on the telephone. We end up in traffic jams or wait at a traffic light, wait at a bus stop or at a station, annoy ourselves at an airport, and suppress our irritations in the hospital or at the doctor’s office. Over fifty years, say from age 15 until retirement, it will add up to one year of wasted time. In labor terms, it amounts to three years of lost productivity. Waiting is the torment of our modern existence and rated the single most irritating circumstance. One feels at the mercy of the failed efficiency of a poor system. PanelChannel is a company which perfectly anticipates the negative feeling caused by waiting. The company tries to distract waiting people from their daily rhythm, so that they will not become irritated and frustrated while spending time doing nothing.

Remarkably, airport lounges seem to be the only places where waiting does not turn into frustration. Andy Warhol claimed to know why.

“Airplanes and airports have my favorite kind of food service, my favorite kinds of entertainment, my favorite graphics and colors, the best security checks, the best views, the best employees and the best optimism.” ( Warhol 1977 ) A closer look at airports, especially at the usage of the terminals, will provide more inside information of these kinds of transit places; places located in between the complexity and movement of the infrastructural surroundings and the hidden aviation system.

CH AS ING T HE EMP T Y HORIZON

Thousands of passengers pass through Schiphol airport each day en route to their destinations. Before boarding they enter a controlled vacuum: the departure lounge. Besides eating, shopping, strolling around, or watching the information boards, they can daydream about their destination. Fantasies of the most perfect locations arise in the lounges. In these lounges people relax. They know that they are safe, watched, and waiting, surrounded by others.

The airport is a transit place par excellence. From all kinds of levels and directions people gather in this anonymous area. However, an airport is not the endpoint. Having arrived at this non-place, another vehicle will take the passenger further, either to their final destination, or to another infrastructural suburb. I named an airport lounge a non-place because these spaces are only used by travelers briefly in passing and not for visiting the place in order to be there. Marc Augé notes, “If a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place.” ( Augé 1995: 77-78 ) Augé’s description of a non-place also suits an airport.

No other description is more fitting for an airport than an architectural passage or pathway built for temporary users, the passengers. Although architecture is very much involved, an airport can still only be seen as a passage. Airport architecture implies waiting time – either long or short. Marlaina Read says that “the airport is a place that serves to move people on their way, it does not exist of and for itself, but instead only as a means of delivering people to their destination.

The airport is a place of transition; it does not need to describe history or culture because no one is coming to an airport to be at the airport.” ( w ww.invisiblecity.org, 2004. ) From these words we can conclude that

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Augé’s words indeed imply the airport. It is a non-place.

In airport lounges, the paradox of non-activity taking place in a non-place reigns. This is a place of waiting, consuming, over-communicating and passing through. The memory in the airport lounges goes back to the previous 24 hours of flight arrivals and departures. History is not to be found in an airport; instead there is an excess of images, commerce, and space. The airport becomes a non-place of travel characterized by three figures of excess: “overabundance of events, spatial overabundance, and the individualization of references.” ( Augé 1995: 109 ) The exhibition “Non-Places” in 66 East in Amsterdam ( c urator Janna Bystrykh ) showed pictures, paintings and a six-minute movie. All of them showed architecture without users. As if nobody wants to live in non-places or non-places are not meant to live in. Typical non-places – hotels, shopping malls, airports – are commercial places which do not depend on identity in order to attract their customers. They often rely on location, accessibility or attractive prices. Lounges in airports are places where people are forced to stay for some time. The choice isn’t theirs, but imposed by the check-in procedure. Therefore, I do believe that airport lounges are non-places, with or without passengers. Nevertheless, they are also the only waiting areas on earth where people seem truly happy.

Here I have arrived at a contradiction in theory and practice. When talking about non-places, I actually refer to the entire abundance of them in today’s world. But when these excesses all coalesce in a lounge, how is it still possible for those who wait to relax? We have to look back to the relaxation described earlier, the unaware minutes, because of the fusion of the two horizons. The futuristic or virtual vision about the moment above the horizon puts the passenger at ease and, as argued earlier, makes him bewildered but not tense. This means that the loss of identity, orientation and freedom which can be felt in the lounges is overruled by the knowledge of what lies in the near future; take-off.

That future possibility creates a presentiment stemming from air travel; the heroic feeling of meeting the horizon. The seemingly unreachable horizontal line is crossed, and vanishes under the clouds. Only emptiness remains.

Alain de Botton wrote about thoughts and views people can have while flying. “And to think that all along, hidden from our sight, our lives were this small: the world we live in but almost never see; the way we must appear to the hawk and to the gods.” ( De Botton 2003; p.41 ) In planes, we are almost totally disconnected from earth; the captain is the only one in contact with earth by radar signals. We are above the clouds, with loosened seatbelts, in the hands of the aviation system. Moving forward incredibly fast ( over 2000 kph ), conquering gravity by human inventions and traveling with the possibility to go back or forward in global time. When aloft, one perceives space and time differently than on earth. The fact that other viewpoints and perspectives can be seen in the airplane is already visible in the restless bodies before departure. Eager for take-off, the restlessness shows no haste, only excitement. In the airport lounges a disconnection from earth and its system is already made. While waiting and being captured in the departure lounge, the in-between vacuum, the mind is already flying to faraway and unknown places.

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IM - MOB IL A IR

The main question in this essay emerged when I noticed the rush through public space and also through interior living spaces. I wondered why we still talk about our domestic interiors as being private, and for what reason do we consider the domestic environment according to the amount of time spent in it?

The interior living space has become just a passage, a pathway from exterior to exterior. Most of the time we spend in our private domain is with several windows open to the public space. After writing this essay I have reached the conclusion that the private places from the past have become personal-transit places located in public domain. But how is it possible for us to rest, in an in-between place, a place in which we continuously shift from the real to the virtual, and from private to public?

Though the domestic or personal-transit place has become open, transparent and semi-public – because of the many windows inside– it still needs to be a place to recuperate during the night or at daytime. The three characteristics of modern life, i.e. experience, movement, and transformation, explain why the interior has become a crossing zone.

The domestic has tapped into an experience-rich world in between movement and it needs to become transformable as well.

These three characteristics transformed the interior living space almost into a “small” non-place: a place stuffed with entertainment and images, windows to other domains and mobile furniture. Chaos came into a place meant to offer human beings relaxation. In the domestic place, some addict-free zones should remain. Addict-free zones are zones where screens are hidden, entertainment is limited, and mobility of furniture and inventions is minimal.

The problem is that people themselves either introduce media-related experience and motion or stop those from entering the house. Everyone can push the button or take the remote control to shut down the input from public life. But still, for the weak and the addict, it is hard to surrender to the silence of the house. For those weak VR-travelers, experience-addicts, and speed-freaks, solutions have to be found. Inventions and designs must find ways to hide the windows and make it easier for the inhabitants to maintain that moment of transit without continuously shifting worlds.

Above I argued that it is impossible to unplug places without sign-related information. Places cannot be cut off from media interferences without informing the users of that place. Therefore, interior living spaces, or at least one area inside the living quarters, must be redesigned for simplicity while hiding complexity. Designing interior living places where inhabitants can breathe without constant stimuli. Where the ongoing movement from the outside is negated because downshifting brings one to a real endpoint. Standstill in transit does not have to cause high irritation like waiting, when these in-between moments in the personal transit places have become unconscious. An inhabitant should have the possibility to lean back, without any role transformation, but to transform precious time in unaware time, while being surrounded by motion.

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REFEREN CES Augé, Marc, ( 1995 ), Non-places. Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, London: Verso.

Blom, Ginnette, Plugged/Unplugged. ( T he concept for the fused Space assignment ).

At. www.blomontwerpen.nl.

Botton, de Alain, ( 2003 ), The Art of Travel, London: Penguin.

Brouwer, Petra, ( 1999 ), Form Follows Lifestyle, Amsterdam: Archis, 1999/11, p. 13/14.

Ibelings, Hans, ( 1995 ), Supermodernisme, Architectuur in het Tijdperk van Globalisering, Rotterdam: Nai Publishers.

Johnson, Mark L., ( 2002 ), Architecture and the Embodied Mind, Amsterdam: OASE # 58, SUN Publisher.

Kerckhove, de Prof. Dr. D. ( 1996 ), Gekoppelde intelligentie. De opkomst van de WEB maatschappij, Den Haag: Origin.

Kloos, Maarten & Maar, de Brigitte, ( 1996 ), Schiphol Architecture. Innovative Airport Design, Amsterdam: ARCAM in conjunction with Architectura en Natura press.

Lenaerts, Johnny. De Tijd Bewonen, at www.buitendeorde.nl.

Read, Marlaina, ( 2004 ), Starting Points and Destinations, Honours research paper at www.invisiblecity.org.

Sheets-Johnstone, ( 1999 ), The Primacy of Movement, Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co. Terreehorst, Pauline, ( 1997 ), Langzame Stad, Snelle Mensen. Leven in een Informatietijdperk, Amsterdam: Van Gennep.

Thackara, John, ( 1994 ), Edge Effect, Lost in Space of Flows, at www.doorsofperception.com Virilio, Paul. ( 1997 ) Open Sky. New York: Verso.

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Hand vs. Mouse CORINN WEILER OP EN

The first thing one does in the morning most likely involves the computer. Whether it’s checking e-mail or finding a partner online.

It has become a natural routine in our everyday lives to sit behind the monitor. This tool covers all categories of activity from leisure to work. No one main purpose of the computer exists. A graphic designer may use the computer for making his design, while a marine biologist could be using it to input his data. The computer as a tool does not have a specialized field like the people sitting behind it. I view it as a tool box. The outer structure remains constant, but what is held inside varies from owner to owner. This is why the computer has quickly become a family member, colleague, and friend to many people — it’s accessible to everyone and its uses are wide-ranging. This has positive and negative consequences.

Through my exploration of trying to figure out why the computer plays such a powerful role in the designing process, I have tried to discover its strengths and weaknesses. I have specifically conducted this research in the realm of graphic design and have compared it to previous traditional analog methods of design, especially the printing press.

I want to --share my findings of the pros and cons of the working process in the digital form and the analog form. I delve into how designers view the difference in process through various elements. These elements are divided into three categories: i tools ii evidence iii accidents How do designers view the digital tools that were derived from the analog tool and how do they identify with them? What type of evidence is left behind in the two processes? Finally, do designers embrace accidents or recognize them as they happen in both instances?

According to Peter Dormer, editor of the Culture of Craft, there are ingredients that characterize modern technology such as: i simplicity ii distribution of knowledge through systems and organizations iii ubiquity ( sameness ) Simplicity in technology allows every user from marine biologist to graphic designer to create things on the computer. It takes difficult procedures and simplifies them for broad usage. Systems are the second ingredient, dealing with pre-designed templates. Interfaces and templates are pre-designed and tested for anybody to input their own information; for example the template for business cards in Adobe Illustrator. Ubiquity refers to all results looking the same. Anywhere in the world people can open an application and have similar results. ( Dormer: 141-142 ) It is arguable that other methods of designing such as the letterpress or silk-screen also transfer ubiquitous results, but the outcome has a prior, more complex process that does not include “simplicity and a distribution of knowledge through systems and organizations” My research does not denigrate computers, but is rather an analysis of the difference between designing on screen and designing on paper.

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Clear advantages of the computer, such as quickness and accuracy, may have repercussions. What type of knowledge do our bodies lose from sitting behind the monitor? Alberto Perez-Gomez, Director of PostProfessional Programs at McGill University wrote, “At a more personal level, we recognize that spending all our time in front of a computer screen has rewards, but we suspect that it also carries a price. We lose other kinds of knowledge, usually related to the body and the senses, other potential sources of wisdom.” ( Oase: 38 ). What knowledge are our fingers losing by the repetitive movements they make and what knowledge do our senses lose, especially touch and smell? Some of the natural capabilities of our bodies, senses in particular, have been “numbed or amputated”, as Arjen Mulder, author of Understanding Media Theory, refers to it, by the blow of computers. The interaction of various materials activates the senses, which become almost dormant while producing digitally. Why is this important, to be able to smell the ink, for example? There are little experiences and scenarios occurring at every stage of production that are sparked due to the use of materials.

Does the computer rob us of these experiences, or are they replaced by other experiences?

W H AT IS CR A F T

To elucidate the difference between handmade work and digital work, I would like to establish as much as possible what crafting/handmade really means. There is no fixed definition of the term but the existing definitions seem to carry the similar messages. The Arts and Crafts Movement that began in the 1820s remains a milestone for what ideals and elements crafts hold. The godfather of the Arts and Crafts Movement, William Morris, describes it as “Work without division of labour” ( P ye: 12 ). David Pye, author of The Nature and Art of Workmanship, comments on Morris’ explanation that existed in the medieval period, “The workman worked for himself and not for any capitalistic employer and he was accordingly master of his work and his time. This was a period of pure handicraft.” ( P ye: 12 ) Morris was a strong believer in that whatever work one performs, the duties around that task are also a responsibility of the maker.

Yet another way to determine what craft is lies in the popular meaning also contributed by Pye. “The essential idea is that the quality of the result is continually at risk during the process of making; and so I shall call this kind of workmanship ‘the workmanship of risk’: an uncouth phrase, but at least descriptive.” ( P ye: 4 ) Along with “the workmanship of risk”, “the workmanship of certainty” exists as well. “Workmanship of risk” means not having a set permanent result but experiencing continual risk throughout the process. It relates to the defining moment, the point of no return. Once a mark or cut is made, it exists forever, whereas on the computer one can always go back. In “the workmanship of certainty” every process is predetermined and the outcome is not in the hands of the designer. It is based on a more capitalistic notion of “quantity production.” For me all of these definitions are valid.

I see crafting/handmade as the act of having results through a process where the designer is specialized in a certain skill. The quality of skill reaches far beyond an individual that has the same opportunity to use the tools involved but not at the level that the designer is using them.

Though I believe specialized skill is the goal, from my experience it can also be valid as a student learning a craft such as the letterpress.

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IS THE COMP U T ER A CR A F T?

Isn’t a designer who is very familiar with the software and who can demand anything possible from that machine a crafter? I compare it to a carpenter that can maneuver his chisel as if it was another limb attached to the body. Aren’t both in control of the tool they are utilizing?

Special effects designer Guy Dyas disagrees with this argument. He says that, “Using the computer is not a craft in itself, it is a utilization of a tool, no matter how creative the outcome; the real skill in utilizing that tool is derived from traditional design knowledge.” ( Dormer: 177 ) Dyas makes the distinction that the computer cannot be considered a craft because the original analog form of that tool lost much of its meaning after entering the digital world. There is no correlative action for using real scissors to the cut function in Photoshop, for example.

Jeremy Myerson, a design writer, backs up Dyas by quoting, “This lack of a tactile or physical encounter with materials as the basis for decision-making in design is cited by many as a reason why computing cannot yet be regarded as a craft in its own right.” ( Dormer: 179 ) The only distinction I can make from this culmination of definitions is that what keeps the use of the computer from being a craft is the type of material and tool interaction. I view a tool as an object that is needed to carry out and accomplish a task. Tools are part of the process, not the result. Scissors, lead and wood type, rulers, and pens are all tools.

Material is what the thing is made out of. Anything existing at the end result is a material. Ink, glue, and paper are all materials. Sometimes with manual design, a tool can leave evidence of itself in the result, making it become part of the material. Materials and tools overlap borders and they become material-tools. On the computer there are no marks left behind from the tools. Computer tools are data, not physical things. A mouse and a keyboard are tools. The effect of thousands of movements from a mouse is shown when the result comes out of a printer but traces of the tool itself are not evident. The computer is a design tool and, based on the standards of craft, a continual tool to material overlapping should remain active.

Another element, which contributes to the argument of whether or not computer design is crafting, is the amount of risk and involvement by various designers. Dormer claims, “The crafted product may or may not be the product of a single person; it may be the product of several skilled persons, but each of them at any moment could ruin the product with a mistake. Here, in a sense, every fresh object is a new beginning rather than a continuation of one beginning. Every new beginning is a risk.” ( Dormer: 138 ) The only risk in digital design lies not in the hands of the designer but within the mechanical area in the nature of crashing hard drives and corrupted files. The hand skills of the computer designer play no role in the risk of the end result. In an article called The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction, inspired by Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, it says that, “Digitalized art becomes information: more data than object.

Mechanical reproduction is performed by an expert at or near to the manufacture of an object, whereas digital reproduction can be performed at any stage by anyone with a computer.”

This relates back to the standards of technology coined by Dormer that say that modern technology has characteristics of “simplicity, distribution of knowledge through systems and organizations, and ubiquity.”

This leads me to believe that the role of designers changes through the evolution of technology. Before the early 20th century, designers were pinned more as crafters working in their small dark shops. They were stereotyped as lower-class, dirt under their nails, dust in their hair blue-collar workers, as Norman Potter refers to them in What is a Designer. ( Potter 66 ) Since digitalization it seems that the status of design-

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ers has risen. We envision them in their trendy studio trading their blue collars for black collars.

From the examples shown and definitions given that set the parameters of what craft/handmade is and is not, I have concluded that using the computer as a designing tool is not a craft. The lack of tactile qualities and separation of material and tool prove why using the computer as a digital tool is not a craft. The end result sheds little light of the process and how it was made. According to former director of the London Design Museum Helen Rees, “A craft object often reveals much about the skill and the technology used to make it. The relationship between craft process and product is likely to be, if not quite transparent, then at least relatively accessible to most of us.” ( Dormer: 123 ) With handmade design it is easier to see how it was made and the process it went through.

This conclusion does not mean that computers have no validity in the design process. It merely says that it carries different characteristics and tones that digitalization embodies. With this different tone, it is to be expected that the process of digital design contrasts greatly with analog design.

P ROCES S

How does the process of analog design diverge from the digital process? How much interactivity is there with tools and materials? How is what you do with your body a reflection of the results? What is lost in the process through digitalization and also what is lost in analog mode?

These questions came to me through my exploration of discovering ways of production through non-digital techniques.

Learning the letterpress was a way to get into the process. Though I am not highly skilled in this craft, just the fact that I wore a smock or had dirt on my hands from handling lead was enough proof to know that this experience was something that I never had from a computer. On the other hand, digitalization gives experiences that are only available through the computer.

Digital methods have to do with a relationship between designer and toolbox, while handmade methods engender a relationship between designer, tools, and materials. One way gives what another cannot, so the expectations have to be different. I have divided my analysis of the processes into three categories — tools, mistakes, and evidence. Each category reflects my research and shows what I discovered through my own practices.

TOOLS

Computers carry a lot of weight, because people expect them to perform a wide variety of tasks. Digital tools are representations of existing tools and their functions. They perform the task that would have similar results as analog tools. So should a tool be an object that is the result of its use or an icon that represents the effects? Electronic tools are moving further away from such a tool experience.

The computer is an accumulation of a whole workshop and more. Jan Middendorp mentions, “In itself a computer is not a tool but a toolkit, a box you put functions in as you choose. All kinds of instruments that used to litter workshops and offices now have a place on the hard disk: marker and drawing board, scissors, paste, trash can, ledger, typewriter, calculator, fax and telephone.” ( LettError: 22 ) The arrangement and treatment of tools digitally is completely differently structured than in an analog atmosphere.

I’m sure many users of the Adobe applications can agree. The advantage of using these programs is that they all have the same commands that perform the same tasks, from InDesign to Photoshop. You go from one

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application to the other like switching bits in a drill. I like when I can press the _ + SHIFT + S buttons in any application to complete the same job. I don’t see the common language as a fallback but as an advantage to the users.

In digital mode, there exist two planes, and in analog mode work is done on the same plane as the materials. The two digital planes are the screen and the flat surface below, containing the keyboard and the mouse. Digitally, what designers do on one plane does not correspond directly with what is happening on the other plane and what is produced finally.

Actually on the screen one never even touches the work at all until a printed version exists. This type of discourse is also true when it comes to typesetting. The movements of the hands choosing the letters do not have a direct reflection of the result that is printed finally. Abstract reflections whether it is analog or digital have always been there. The apparent difference is the distance in which the tool is reflected from the user. It is this type of physical distance that characterizes the computer most. The computer is an imaginary toolbox rather than a physical toolbox. There is more thinking about the choices available in the box than thinking about materials and tools.

Let’s analyze how the digital tool is used in relation to the analog tool. The scissor tool is quite abstract on the computer and does not have the same physical properties as if one were really cutting something. Analog scissors may leave a jagged edge or show over cut areas. On screen, the scissor function remains flawless and does not have the capability to make these types of cuts. Digitally, one needs to understand the concept of segments and anchor points in order to properly take advantage of the scissor function. Scissors can only cut on certain areas of shapes whereas analog scissors have fewer limitations. The only limitations are based on whether the material can be cut through. Is it important that the original purpose and function of the tool changes when it crosses into the digital domain?

The most far removed from analog to digital as far as materials and tools go is the working and thinking process of handling type. The realm of type from carving to setting and printing was a highly skilled craft in the time when everything was still manually done. Now typing a document and printing it can hardly be considered a craft. The specialization has disappeared and automated digitalization has appeared. The consequences for designers today untrained in the traditional method mean less attention to details. German graphic designer and typographer Erik Spiekermann from MetaDesign in Germany claims, “There are problems that come up because of the shift in who is actually responsible for the typesetting — it’s now done by designers, not typesetters. These people are not typesetters, and attention to typographic detail has gone down tremendously.” ( Igarashi: 17 ) This is not an attack on type designers but a curiosity in how their designs would change if they all had to learn the traditional method of cutting and setting type.

English type designer Michael Harvey is familiar with both methods.

He says that carving, painting, and drawing letters gave him an understanding of letter forms and how letters go together without which he could not design typefaces. The question that remains, of course, is whether “understanding through craft making” is a necessary part of a designer’s education or not. ( Dormer: 156 ) This is his reaction after learning how to design type digitally. When I first learned how to set type by hand it was like learning a new subject all together. I had to realize the individuality of each character. Automatic paper size does not exist; such as A4 or US letter. Each typeface and size is kept in different drawers and not all grouped in one keyboard. Leading has to be inserted manually, whereas the computer inserts it automatically. These are just some of the few extra details that we do not realize as much •

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when it comes to using the keyboard. Typesetting works with negative space and working with a computer works with positive space. After setting the type it becomes time to print, and that brings even more details such as what paper thickness is allowable, what pressure to set the press, and how to arrange the text on the press. Even more difficulty comes when more than one color needs to be printed. Learning this skill is what it took for me to realize that when we sit behind the screen we enter a completely different mental path.

Another difference between analog and digital production is the “now” moment — the moment when the decision is put on the medium.

Digitally anything can be _ + Z’d , ( undone ) but that makes the commitment to decisions less precious. Engravers do not have this easy two-button command. When the chisel hits the stone, the mark that is left remains in the finished work. Imagine if there was no _ + Z on computers. The results may be interesting but it is just not practical with the capabilities the machine has. On paper any mistake becomes part of the result, and continually reworked to make it fit in.

To know how materials respond brings up the issue of education in design.

Alison Black, a psychologist with interests in information design, did an experiment while she was researching in the Department of Typography and Graphic Communication at the University of Reading.

She wanted to compare how students felt during the design process when one group worked on paper and the other on screen. The results were that the ones working on paper were struggling more but at the end they were happier with the results than the students working on the screen. The group working with the computer felt more confident in the process but not as satisfied with the results. ( Dormer: 179 ) For students now studying design, the use of the computer is the first tool that most of them are introduced to.

It’s easy to say that one is better than the other based on personal preference, but after researching this topic in the field of tools, it’s important to distinguish which mode ( analog or digital ) to use based on the task.

Like William Morris’ principle from the Arts and Crafts movement, “Know the potentials and limitations of materials. Learn first hand.

Use it to your best advantage and with pleasure because if you aren’t using it to your best advantage then the work lacks.” ( Naylor: 104 ) E V IDEN CE

When the final result is delivered, most of the time all evidence from the process is left behind. By evidence I mean physical and mental evidence — remnants and marks from the experience that the designer went through. Mental evidence could be a representation of how the designer felt at that time — if they were frustrated, ecstatic, in a rush etc. Physical evidence deals with the in-between stages, the period from beginning to the near ending; the tryouts and preliminary sketches. On screen we try many things before we come to the end but all of this is deleted. Think of how many times one presses the delete button. By hand, loss of evidence is not so drastic but elements are still cut away for example. Mainly my focus in this section is in the loss that happens on screen.

One doesn’t see the process from the result in digital design. Still people have the feeling that working digitally isn’t as risky because that moment of no return, the now moment is lost. Anything can be redone, copied, and reproduced with a few clicks. It becomes more challenging when one pastes and cuts something on paper because there is no going back. If one can’t go back the evidence remains intact. Each method embodies its own characteristics that do not transfer, which diversify them.

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• What kind of evidence is lost in the digital form of the analog tool? The computer shows no evidence of ink running out or a pencil becoming dull; this is the nature of digital tools. These tools are limitless and never change. On the other hand, undoing actions undoes all the progress. One can’t undo one element, but all the elements before that are erased as well. In this case we rely on data, not tangible materials.

MIS TA KES

How are mistakes dealt with digitally and non-digitally? Do we recognize when we experience them or do we automatically dismiss them?

Happy accidents are things that happen during the process that are unexpected and welcome. They occur in both instances but more frequently when one works by hand. The manual atmosphere creates more room for accidents to appear because the events are not automated. It lies more in the hands of the designer than the mechanics.

Most of the control sits within the operator; however, one always comes across errors or glitches in the system not under their control. Scanners that do not scan evenly, and printers that leave streaks, are some scenarios that can occur. Often times these types of things are not shown.

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BODY

Digital design is less material-oriented than analog design, which makes it harder for the user to identify with the tools they use. This is a very blunt statement, but is it true? Is the handling of material related to the amount of bodily activity? Drawing with a pencil is in the same realm as clicking with a mouse. A hand exists behind these tools in order for them to function, emphasizes Emigre’s Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko. Martin Lambie-Nairn, a design consultant for British television, discards all these questions. His motto tells that as long as he can express himself and create a strong design idea, the tool becomes arbitrary.

In terms of digital media, Jay David Bolter states, “As producers, we must master techniques to render digital media transparent to the user, but we must also render the media visible to and reflective of the user.” ( Bolter: 6 ) I translate transparency as the level of evidence that shows the true character of the tool and medium used — the marks left behind.

Bolter establishes three criteria for digital design: i The computer has become a new medium ( a new set of media forms ) ii To design, a digital artifact is to design an experience iii Digital design should not try to be invisible ( Bolter: 12 ) Now you may be thinking, didn’t she mention that the computer is a tool?

The computer is a medium and a tool, and can float between the two.

As an interface meant to be seen on the screen, the computer acts as the medium, and as a tool when it is viewed. When the result has purposes in print, the computer is only a tool. It can also be seen as the middleman. During most of the process, if the result is in print, it acts as a temporary constructing medium, but then changes to a used tool once it’s put out.

What about our physical involvement with our tools? The computer does not have great physical demands, which are the result of minimal tactility. The amount remains the same no matter what one is doing, from reading an e-mail to designing an Olympic stadium. What proof is shown on the computer at the end that signifies the quantity of physical involvement?

For the majority of the time, we sit while our fingers do most of the work.

What we experience is through our hands and eyes. Working by hand is the same — we experience through our hands and eyes. The difference is the deepness of involvement. Clicking doesn’t say anything about what is happening on the screen, whereas movements by hand in an analog atmosphere suggest somewhat more as to what is going on. Imagine the marks a mouse would make. How abstract would they look compared to what is shown on the screen? Could it have to do with the fact that we are not actually looking at our hands clicking the mouse and typing? Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics, notes, “Do we need to see our hands to know what they’re doing?” ( McCloud: 37 ) Or do we understand more about what we are doing when we look at our hands? McCloud uses the example of a car. When we drive we don’t look at our hands. “The vehicle becomes an extension of our body. It absorbs our sense of identity, we become the car.” ( McCloud: 38 ) The car, or any tool becomes part of our body, becomes a part of our physical awareness. This example refutes the assumption that the eye has to be concentrated on the hand to perform a task. Philosopher Gaston Bachelard says, “It helps us understand the innermost essence of matter. That is why it also helps us image ( forms of ) matter.” ( Oase: 29 )

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• Yes, the computer is an extension of our body but more so, an execution of our concepts. As in driving a car, the balance of activity from mind to body are not equal. Mentality by far outweighs physicality. “All the things we experience in life can be separated into two realms — the realm of the concept — and the realm of the senses.” ( McCloud: 39 ) The question is, while driving is hardly close to designing, which realm should design experience? Bolter argues that digital design is a physical act, which makes it a hands-on thing and in the realm of senses. Sight and touch go together even in digital design because designers can feel the physical implications that go with it. He argues that because the results make a difference in our social world, the computer becomes a material. ( Bolter: 122 ) Of course the computer is a material thing, but the material remains the same no matter what one is doing within the computer.

IN CLOS ING

We are living in the electronic age where computers will remain dominant. Now the question is how can the digital tool become more embodied and give us more variety within the tool? Or will it remain a remote system?

After completing my visual work, I came to the conclusion that it is not only our relation of material and tools to our bodies that define what craft is, but also the stages of the whole process. I have divided the stages into three sections: i preparation ii production iii execution Preparation has to do with all the preliminary planning that occurs before applying it to the medium. Production is actually applying the medium. Finally, execution is putting out the work in the medium that it will be presented in. When one works manually, the stages overlap each other and the materials and tools are active in each stage. Digitally, each stage is very defined and separate when the medium is in print. The tools and materials keep their function within a single stage. The fact that each step of the process in digital design stays remote as opposed to manual methods proves that it is not a craft.

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– 40 – LettError Dutch type designers, including Erik van Blockland and Just van Rossum, can see beyond this. They have utilized the digital interface to bring out the characteristics only seen on the computer. What makes them unique is their ability to make programs for type designers. They make their own digital tools ( programs ) to design. Instead of letting the capabilities of the computer guide them, they guide the computer with their programming capabilities. One of their most innovative creations was the typeface Beowolf. The typeface changes a bit independently each time it comes out of the printer so that each print is unique.

Van Blockland and van Rossum came up with Random Technology.

It lets the letters rasterize randomly by not having a fixed outline or bitmap. They calculated every point and curve and then moved them slightly to create the random result, and that result was Beowolf.

LettError has brought back the knowledge about tools that has diminished in this electronic age. Designers like LettError don’t dwell upon and imitate the past, but find new ways to enhance the present. Even though it is possible to program our own tools, the embodied aspect is still missing.

Designers in this electronic age don’t realize the lack of a physical experience because we never experienced it. I want the relationship of tool to hand to be more dominant. What if we could digitalize our own analog tools to create our personal toolbox?

Today we exist in the safe middle ground between analog processes and digital processes. It’s time to cross the bridge and look ahead to new possibilities. We should create our own individualized combination of digital tools in this existing atmosphere of standardized toolkits.

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REFEREN CES aphid.org. The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction. Internet Blackwell, Lewis ( 1995 ). The End of Print: The Graphic Design of David Carson.

Spain: Laurence King Publishing Bolter, Jay David, and Diane Gromala ( 2003 ), Windows and Mirrors: Interaction Design, Digital Art, and the Myth of Transparency. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press Dormer, Peter {ed. ) ( 1993 ). The Culture of Craft. Manchester: Manchester University Press Igarashi, Takenobu ( 1992 ), Designers on Mac. Japan: Graphic-sha Publishing Co., Ltd. Jury, David. ( 2004 ), Letterpress: The Allure of the Handmade. Switzerland: RotoVision SA. LettError. Nuth. ( 2000 ) Netherlands: Goodwill Publication.

Lichtenstein, Claude ( 2005 ), Poster Collection Handmade 11. Zurich: Lars Muller Publishers McCloud, Scott. ( 1993 ), Understanding Comics: the Invisible Art. New York: HarperCollins Publishers McLuhan, Marshall ( 2005 ). Unbound Project. Corte Madera, CA: Ginko Press, Inc. Mulder, Arjen ( 2004 ). Understanding Media Theory: Language, Image, Sound, Behavior. Rotterdam, Netherlands: V2-Publishing/NAi Publishers ( 2004 ) Naylor, Gillian ( 1971 ). The Arts and Crafts Movement. Great Britain: Studio Vista Publishers OASE Architectural Journal, Summer 2002 #58. “SUN”.

Potter, Norman ( 2002 ). What is a Designer: things. places. messages. London: Hyphen Press Pye, David ( 1968 ), The Nature and Art of Workmanship. London: Cambridge University Press

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In its Masters’ programs, the Utrecht School of Visual Art and Design intends to create a distinct national and international profile focused on visual artists and designers whose work is supported by a research attitude. In order to underscore the School’s policy of research and exploration, the Department of Visual Art and Design has recently established a professorship in Artistic Research.

The professorship will develop Research & Development activities, where the creation of didactic strategies for a research attitude in both Bachelors’ and Masters’ degree programs, and the specificity of artistic research as a form of knowledge production are all core goals.

In this context, the professorship has recently been involved in setting up field meetings in the domains of fashion and spatial design. In addition, the professorship looks to encourage research projects in broader contexts. The first research project, Shelter 07, curated by Professor of Artistic Research Henk Slager, in collaboration with the city of Harderwijk, involved four members of the school’s staff ( t hree from Fine Art and one from Spatial Design ). MaHKUzine reports on both the Shelter 07 research project and the field meetings.

Report from the Fashion Design Field Meeting ( M arch 2007 )

In the context of a fashion design field meeting, the Department of Fashion invited Jose Teunissen, Professor of Fashion Design at the Arnhem Academy, for an exchange of ideas about the particulars of a research attitude in the area of fashion. Additional topics addressed during that meeting implied the consequences of fashion research for the development of a relevant and current curriculum, and the participation of theory programs in such a curriculum.

In 2002, the year Jose Teunissen began as a Professor of Fashion Design, theory production in the field of fashion proved to be an entirely undeveloped domain. If fashion theory was a topic at all, it tended to be squeezed into a historical perspective on movements and styles. In order to demonstrate that fashion theory as such is a serious field of research, many actions had to be undertaken. First of all, Teunissen’s department of fashion theory started to organize a yearly international symposium focused on theory production in the field of fashion, while including a series of complex and current themes in the visual, cultural, and social debate. Themes emerging during these symposia dealt with a variety of topics. For example, the issue of ideal forms of femininity and the awareness that, therefore, a classic, semiotic construction is no longer a departure point for topical fashion designers such as Ann Demeulemeester, Martin Margiela, and Junya Watanabe. Another theme combined the global fashion/local tradition with an exhibition in the Utrecht Central Museum, where works by fashion designers such as Vivienne Westwood, John Galliano, Hussein Chalayan, and Bernard Wilhelm were shown. However, for fashion to become entirely launched into the domain of intellectual reflection, an additional, strategic action was needed: the compilation of a reference book for fashion expanding upon its methodological perspectives.

In 2006, The Power of Fashion ( Jose Teunissen, editor ) was published, putting forward various perspectives on the phenomenon of fashion while

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involving fields such as anthropology, semiotics, marketing, and the history of costumes, tackled by authors such as Ted Polhemus, Dirk Lauwaert, Patricia Calefato, and Chris Townsend. The book proved a hit in graduate fashion programs. Theoretical curricula based on the 416 pages of The Power of Fashion show that masters’ programs in fashion could indeed prove pivotal in generating fashion designers with a basic research attitude.

How do these developments at the Masters’ level influence previous levels such as Bachelors’ degree programs? What ingredients should be implemented in the basic fashion programs and their curricula so that students will start developing an initial, reflective and research-oriented attitude? Should the first-year programs already begin with a focus on case analyses and related problematics, or should they rather focus on a more traditional canon? In the fashion field meeting, people appeared to prefer an intelligent mix of the two approaches, i.e. a student should possess a certain amount of canonical knowledge before being able to develop concepts and perspectives. That opinion runs parallel with the general cross-disciplinary debate; designers have to be trained first in a mono-disciplinary trajectory before being able to work in a cross-disciplinary way. A similar opinion has emerged in the theory part of the program. In order to acquire knowledge of the cultural context of the field of fashion, students should first be exposed to art history, cultural history, history of styles, history of costumes, and philosophy at a Bachelors’ level. In the course of the Bachelor of Arts program, students should then be directed towards a program where they learn how to involve a conceptual system in their own artistic research. After that shift occurs, conceptual frameworks focused on the specificity of fashion research should be offered including semiotics, gender studies, and branding theory. An additional unit could comprise a seminar where topical professional magazines such as Fashion Theory - edited by Valery Steele - could be read and discussed. In an ideal educational situation, such programs could be composed in collaborative workshops exploring both theory and practice, enhancing the awareness in students that theory and practice influence, traverse, and intermingle. Such programs could result in the activity of fashion designers also being understood as a reflective practice.

B IB LIOGR A P HI CA L NOT E

Teunissen, Jose ( ed. ), ( 2006 ), The Power of Fashion: About Design and Meaning, Tielt: Lannoo.

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Report from the Spatial Design Field Meeting ( April 2007 )

What are the main components coloring the fields of interior design and urban design today? How do they contribute to Bachelors’ and Masters’ programs? These questions were at the core of a spatial design field meeting organized by the Utrecht School of Design and the Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design, involving twenty-odd representatives from the field of interior design and urban design.

The first point of discussion brought up by various participants turned out to be the issue of the pitch competition structure merging radically in both fields. The former process of presenting an idea which is then developed into a balanced plan, in dialogue with the commissioning party, seems to be a phenomenon from the past. Today, an elaborate plan or at least the contours of a concrete idea must be presented at the pitch presentation. The domain of urban space is also characterized by discontinuity and a form of viscosity. This makes it necessary for the course of action in projects to focus on both steering and developing the process.

Such a change in the professional situation likewise entails spatial designers needing novel skills and insights. How should ( g raduate ) programs deal with those novel requirements? Particularly the competitive commission situation seems to demand that participants possess skills enabling precise and strategic ways of putting visions and ideas forward. Today, a designer of urban and/or interior space must be able to convincingly present a plan which could be immediately realized. That process requires advanced communication and rhetorical skills.

In addition, the majority of participants in the field meeting stressed the necessity of more discipline-oriented plans of action. Although many undergraduate programs focus on cross-disciplinarity in search of a wider scope of skills, the opposite seems to occur, i.e. erasure of specific skills and related working attitude. A strategic awareness of a professional oeuvre could be the starting point for a form of graduate education focusing on advanced requirements based in the actuality of the field. Conceptualizing, contextualizing, and communication in the context of one’s oeuvre should play a crucial role in preparing for a new professional style of rapid pitch visions and associations. Therefore, as most participants emphasized, the importance of a strong and reasoned awareness of discipline-related qualities should be at the core of educational programs.

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Research Project: SHELTER 07 The Freedom of Public Art in the Cover of Urban Space.

The objective of the Shelter 07 project was to draw attention to the history of the Dutch city of Harderwijk. To achieve this goal, the genealogical significance of the name Harder-Wijk, “an elevated place offering a safe shelter to refugees in troublesome times”, served as the point of departure for the exhibition in public space.

That genealogical significance causes notions such as safety and freedom to appear inextricably bound to Harderwijk’s history. But how did that connection arise? Is it still linked to a spatial, sitespecific concept with phenomenological connotations of physicality? Or does a medial, discursive relationship transform the current concept of “place” into a textual issue, i.e., a notion of place as a platform of knowledge and intellectual exchange?

To investigate these questions further, eight artists have been invited to produce artistic research projects related to a number of significant locations chosen in collaboration with the historical society Herderewich. The artists were asked to develop specific proposals underscoring the above problematics in an artistic form. Interestingly, in their projects, a number of related issues and topics emerged.

In order to understand a location’s specificity, Lara Almarcegui employed an archeological method eliciting that which precedes space, i.e., the granting of room. On the Blokhuisplein, a historical location renowned for its straightness and power, she created a fallow field presenting a temporary autonomous zone as a dysfunctional, undefined, and unfounded space escaping the grid of geography. At the same time, the autonomous zone was able to shelter the experience of a total freedom of interpretation.

As a location for his video work, Tiong Ang chose the former lodge of the duty officer of the colonial yard depot, the building where volunteers for the Dutch East Indies were recruited. The lodge is situated next to a monumental gate that, thanks to the house of ill repute once situated just outside, seamlessly connects two former literary worlds of bourgeois escapism: the reality of Keetje Tippel, a famous woman of easy virtue, recorded by Neel Doff; and the contours of colonial reality, sketched by Multatuli in Max Havelaar.

Ginette Blom’s intervention brings us back to a medieval conception of freedom incorporated to some extent in the double function of the 13th-century Vispoort ( Fish Gate ). As a crucial element in the fortress structure, this building served initially as a defensive post and lighthouse. However, at the gate’s sea-facing side, there was also a quay where fishermen could freely sell part of their catch. By means of a nighttime light projection on this historical location, a filmic memory of this pre-capitalist free trade site was evoked.

Gijs Frieling rewrote the history of the port as a freewheeling place of leisure in the form of an allegoric mural near the pier. Until the early 20th century, Harderwijk’s economic independence relied to a certain extent on the presence of the ( fishing ) port. With the arrival of the Zuiderzeewerken - turning the greater part of the South Sea into a polder - Harderwijk’s economy seemed to run aground. However, the sudden arrival of a group of dolphins at the dock entrance turned out to be the beginning of a new period of economic vigor.

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Jeanne van Heeswijk ( in collaboration with Boris van Berkum ) developed a series of wallpapers placed on the bricked-up windows of old houses around the church square, retelling last century’s lingering tales: about the symbolic poet Rimbaud, who lost his identity as a poet during his stay in Harderwijk and vanished in the grand myth of the foreign legion; about the first big stream of ( Belgian ) refugees who found temporary shelter during World War I in camp Harderwijk; and about the circulating rumors of missing passports popping up during the transformation of the AZC ( Refugee Center ) Jan van Nassaukazerne into luxury condominiums, as proof of the search for shelter in a new, safe identity for its former inhabitants.

At the spot where, till the late 1970s, the strictly Protestant “church school” ( Vismarktschool ) was situated, the city of Harderwijk has recently constructed a natural water reservoir. Job Koelewijn considered this an ideal place for his intervention. He put the stream of rising water and all its connotations of Flood, chastening, and eternal return into the liberating perspective of some hundreds of Great Books.

In the City Museum, Irene Kopelman investigated the 18th-century position of the University of Harderwijk as refuge for thought through an artistic interpretation of Linnaeus’ botanical classification system.

Just because this university did not choose for a dogmatic movement of thought but rather was open to a variety of epistemological perspectives, it was a safe haven for unorthodox intellectuals from all over Europe.

In the context of Shelter 07, Mieke Van de Voort stayed temporarily in Harderwijk in the Zeebuurt area, where she developed a new work in a typical 1950s row house, icon of radical mediocrity. Here freedom seems to be entirely reduced to a one-dimensional concept. Yet, inevitably the question arises: could something cooked up in an anonymous row house ultimately prove meaningful for the balance between freedom and safety?

Parallel to the Shelter 07 presentations in urban public space, the Catharinakapel ( K looster 1 ) served as the source of Shelter 07 information during the summer of 2007, supplying information about the participating artists, the artistic research projects, the work processes and the historicity of the chosen locations. ( Shelter 07, Harderwijk, The Netherlands June 1 – August 31 ). www.catharinakapel.nl/shelter07

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• Tiong Ang •• Ginette Blom ••• Jeanne van Heeswijk/ Boris van Berkum •••• Job Koelewijn

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M mahkuzine 3 journal of artistic research Summer 2007.

MaHKUZINE, Journal of Artistic Research.

Hosted by the Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design ( MaHKU ).

ISSN: 1882-4728 contact MaHKUzine Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design Ina Boudier-Bakkerlaan 50 3582 VA Utrecht The Netherlands mahkuzine@mahku.nl website www.mahku.nl editorial board

HENK S L AGER ( genera l editor )

A NNE T T E W. BA LKEM A

A RJEN MULDER

B IB I S T R A AT M A N

editorial consultants

KL A AS HOEK

W IM M A RS EILLE

CHRIS V ERM A AS

M AS CH A VA N ZI J V ERDEN

final editing: A NNE T T E W. BA LKEM A language editing: JENNIFER NOL A N translations: GLOBA L V ERNUNF T design: Ma HKU/ M A Editor ia l De sign ( T HOM AS CLE V ER ) . typeface: Swift (by GER A RD UNGER ) , B E A k zidenz Grote sk

earn MaHKU is part of the European Artistic Research Network, together with Helsinki School of Art, Helsinki; Malmö School of Art, Malmö; NCAD School of Art, Dublin; Slade School of Art, London; Vienna School of Art, Vienna. participants

A NNE A NDRIES EN , MaHKU Graduate Design, Interior Design

JOOS T GROOT ENS , Architectural and Editorial designer,

G A B RIEL LES T ER , Visual Artist, Brussels, Belgium

ELLEN RUB EL , MaHKU Graduate Design, Interior Design

A LB ERT VA N DER S CHOOT, Professor of Art and Reflection, AKI, Enschede

CORINN W EILER , MaHKU Graduate Design, Editorial Design

lecturer at MA Design, Design Academy, Eindhoven

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