Author Archives: admin

Where I write

Some voyeuristic pleasures can be achieved watching other people’s working places. Not the sterile photographs that architects take after they finish their projects, no pictures of  writers at work. Fascinating.

wiw-chip-delany

Moment of truth

Any creative person at the end of a project who looks at the result and tells us he/she is 100% satisfied with the result is a liar. No matter what, I believe that a creative project can never be finished, there is always something that could be changed, something that could be added, removed, painted, erased, enlarged, reduced… I’ve made a small book about this particular point in a project, called “moment of truth” (send me an email if you want to order a copy: sos [at] vanderarchitects [dot] com).

Even though I don’t think I’m a very particular person, I’m not that much detailed orientated, I even quite like it when things go slightly off. Andy Warhol has mentioned this kind of misunderstanding where someone by slightly misunderstanding his intentions creates a completely new direction. This happens often during construction meetings when the contractor misunderstands the intention of a drawings, detail of idea and thus creates this additional design layer in the process. That I like. No, it is not that I’m a person who is never satisfied, far from it.

In architecture the end result is obviously fixed, Wittgenstein might have moved the ceiling of his house 2 cm lower, but for most of us this is a luxury few can afford. I’ve never asked, but probably a writer has the same feeling after a book is printed. S/He might fret over and over on the main character’s opening sentence, but when holding the book in your hands it might be the cover or the font that conveys this feeling of loss. It is not the feeling of satisfaction one might expect after working hard to finish a project. No the feeling is a kind of anti-climax, a feeling of deep emptiness…

For me it sometimes is a chair that a client insist on putting in the space, or a painting, a doorknob, an umbrella stand, a plant. But I gave in, as after all it is not my space anymore. But it was mine for the last 6 or 8 months, this space, it floated in my mind, slowly forming to what it is now. Is that maybe the point? The moment of truth is a moment of loss. And the pain is pain of letting go?

Philips Biosphere Farming

Interesting projects by Philips on sustainability and  forward thinking.

“This is exploring the integration of electronics and bio chemical functionalities into the inert material of the built environment. The design of the concept fundamentally changes the current approach to buildings and habitat.  This future habitat shifts from the current state where the  building surfaces are benign inert ‘dumb’ materials only used for construction and shielding purposes to sensitive functional skins that are ‘alive’ and act as membranes to harness energy. A membrane creates a strong link between the exterior and interior of the habitat and used as a transporter collecting and channeling the elements of air water and light – from the outside feeding into the inside space. This will supply the habitat with all necessary sources to be able to live off the grid.”

I especially liked their Biosphere Home Farm.

“kitchen skyscraper’s concept development is to explore the possibility of growing at least part of one’s daily calorific requirement at home, as explained by Philips. Using the synergies between fish, plants, vegetables and algae, the Biosphere home farm has been designed to stand up right, to minimize the amount of floor space required (great for small apartments or tiny kitchens) but to also enable the stacking of the various mini eco-systems to ease the flow of nutrients from one level to the next. Not only will this mini-at-home-farming system produce natural foods such as lettuce, cucumbers, spices and shellfish, the ability for it to operate without electricity using only water, organic waste and the sun’s energy to power up should also bring much appeal.”

via Vidafine

Where am I?

You are a business person, world-wide head of facilities of a large global corporation. You are on a tour, visiting many of the branch offices around the world. Your corporation has a global agreement with hotels, furniture suppliers, real-estate agents, airline companies, ad agencies, architects, coffee providers, telephone systems. When you step out of a taxi and walk, suit case in hand through security gate of the branch office you are a little confused, doesn’t the building look the same as yesterday? Wasn’t that the same coffee shop on the ground floor? The same glass box structure, elevated to great heights, the same revolving door entrance, the same curved reception counter, the same Barcelona chairs are waiting for you, and well, obviously the company logo is the same. Yesterday you were in Bangkok and the heat outside was thick like a wet blanket clinging on your shirt. Today  you landed at a foggy and cold, autumn airport and you had to wear a raincoat. But inside the office tower were you company has this branch the temperature is set at an equal 23 degrees throughout the whole building. Despite the difference in temperature in this country and Thailand you noticed that the temperature inside this building is almost equal to interior temperature of the office in Bangkok. As you walk through the office, you walk past identical office desks, chairs and storage units, identical to the ones you were walking past on the other side of the globe only a few days ago. The office looks efficient, with its neat rows of organically shaped desks and low partitions. You can see the grey skyline stretching for miles outside, notice that it has started to rain again and feel relieved you took your umbrella with you. Inside the office the spaciousness continuous, with its glass partitions that divide but do visually not separate the various meeting rooms, private offices and other enclosed spaces. The office is colourful, walls are painted in bright orange and blue to contrast the greyness outside. People are busy at work, some are sitting behind their computer screens, writing emails, inputting data, on the phone or running towards appointments. The buzz of activity gives you the comfortable feeling that business is going well here. You step into the meeting room and are greeted by colleagues whose faces or names you recognized from the video conferences or internal email memos. As you drink your coffee with the familiar logo on the cup, and listen to the report in English while watching a presentation on the screen, your eyes skim to room and all of a sudden you …

forget were you are.

In your mind you go through your travel schedule: tomorrow you will continue to Brussels, after that Copenhagen and finally Rome. When you started your trip you were anxious to visit all  these branches and were feeling a strange combination of anticipation as well as discomfort which one has when visiting new, unknown places, countries where you don’t speak the local language. But after your first stop in Japan, this, at the same time nervous and exiting feeling has disappeared, and the trip has become one of routine. In the hotels, the airports, the taxis, everyone you meet speaks English. The breakfast buffet at each hotel is always the same: the same choice of fruit, the brown, white and pastry breads, the same selection of eggs, and even the choice of Japanese breakfast was available in almost each hotel you stayed in. But where are you … now? You look around the room, people are wearing Armani suits, Prada glasses, scribbling with Montblanc pens in their Moleskine notebooks. You start to sweat, your heart is racing, you feel dizzy, you forget about the presentation, this is ridiculous, you are trying to remember,  but you just don’t know where you are.

The presenter, a pretty asian lady in her early thirties, dressed in a black one piece, opens up a Powerpoint presentation titled “Presentation for John Candy, Head of Facilities Worldwide”. You realize you have seen this opening slide 12 times now. After all you have been to twelve cities in 20 days, and as you sit in this meeting room on the same type of chairs you sat a few days ago, in a similar kind of meeting you feel as if it the people have moved while you and the city remained in place. A tall blond man with a Brooklyn accent asks you when you would like to see the new premises, your are lost are lost, lost for words.  But more than being lost for words you feel you are lost in space…