Osdorp

DURING one three-week pe­riod re­cently Iwan Baan tou­ched down in Ams­ter­dam, Me­xico City, Miami, New York, Milan, Rome, Tokyo, Me­del­lín and Basel, where he pho­to­gra­phed buil­dings de­si­gned by some of the world’s top architects

The win­ners, with full quo­tes from the jury-report: see also dis­cus­sion about the re­sults and the jud­ge­ment (for now only in Dutch, trans­la­tion will fol­low soon)First prize (ex aequo, each 15,000 euro)AMALGAM  - Laura Al­va­rez, laura al­va…

Web 2.0 seems to have per­mea­ted – ad­mit­tedly a little slowly – to neigh­bourhood ma­nage­ment and urban de­ve­lop­ment. Ams­ter­dam hou­sing as­so­cia­ti­ons re­cently laun­ched the Bu­urt­le­ven web­site (www.buurtleven.nl), a di­gi­tal bul­le­t…

While the lec­ture that Ale­jan­dro Zaera Polo held in April 2008 es­sen­ti­ally si­gnal­led the start of his ex­ami­na­tion of the re­la­tion bet­ween buil­ding vo­lume and po­li­tics, he is now working on a ge­ne­ral theory about The En­ve­l­ope. N…

Schmidt ham­mer las­sen ar­chi­tects won the com­pe­ti­tion to re­de­sign the old com­mer­cial and trans­por­ta­tion port of the town of Hol­baek. In many for­mer in­dus­trial port areas around the world ar­chi­tec­tu­ral work is cur­rently in high d…

The first pu­blic gathe­ring of the In­ter­na­tio­nal New Town In­sti­tute took place on Tu­es­day eve­ning May 27 at the Kunst­li­nie art centre in Al­mere, or­ga­nised in con­junc­tion with Casla ar­chi­tec­ture centre. The aim of the In­ter­na­tio…

Small rooms with a lot of lu­xury: that’s the for­mula be­hind Ci­ti­zen M. »If you’re in town for a short stay, then you cer­tainly don’t want a big lu­xury room with all the extras«, ar­gues Je­roen Ves­ter of Ams­ter­dam de­sign firm Con­crete, ‘b…

The RIBA Na­tio­nal and In­ter­na­tio­nal Awards were an­noun­ced on June 27th. The final short­list for the £20,000 Stir­ling Prize which in­clu­des the RIBA Na­tio­nal Awar­dees will be an­noun­ced on July 17th, and the win­ner on Oc­to­ber 11, 200…

Next to Ams­ter­dam Cen­tral Sta­tion, a new buil­ding hou­ses the Con­ser­va­to­rium van Ams­teradam, which opened on April 21, 2008. De­si­gned by Frits van Don­gen of Cie., the buid­ling is a school and con­cert hall in one, which is si­tua­ted in…

These days it’s a com­mon­place to con­sider the de­sign of our built en­vi­ron­ment in such pa­tho­lo­gi­cal terms: The con­tent of our ci­ties is in­cre­a­sin­gly de­ter­mi­ned by ap­pa­r­ently trau­ma­tic, un­con­trollable mo­ti­va­tions (in­clu­d…

In order to in­crease liva­bi­lity, Ams­ter­dam is thin­king about buil­ding an un­der­ground city. The plans for the AM­FORA project were re­cently re­vea­led at the In­ter­na­tio­nal Con­gress “Underground Space Chal­len­ges in Urban Development” i…

It be­came clear du­ring the sym­po­sium that each spea­ker not only in­ter­pre­ted mo­der­nism dif­fer­ently but also ap­proa­ched the re­vi­ta­li­sa­tion of he­ri­tage in a dif­fe­rent way. For one spea­ker mo­der­nism was a mo­ve­ment lin­ked the …

Architecture is not only a pro­fes­sion but also a win­dow on the world, and it can be de­ployed as an in­stru­ment to ef­fect so­cial change. It’s a mes­sage you’ve been sprea­ding for years in lec­tu­res, though ac­tivi­ties such as t…

As a for­mer oc­cup­ant of an Ams­ter­dam hou­se­boat, I was won­de­ring if all that much has chan­ged in the big city since I sold my arc four years ago. Is the ground lease still the sub­ject of dis­cus­sion? Is there a lot of fuss anyw­here about …

Architect Elia Zeng­he­lis ob­ser­ved a fluc­tua­tion in the be­lief that holds the pro­fes­sion and its prac­ti­tio­ners to­ge­ther. ‘We have now re­ached a point at which there are no lon­ger any shared paradigms’, ac­cor­ding to Zeng…