the smell of garbage in the air really hits you when you step off the airplane after 7 days in the cold wet overcast cities of the netherlands. the nai hosted a workshop where 9 of us sat in conference rooms and discussed slums and social housing all day. in amsterdam we lived in style. the lloyd hotel designed by mvrdv with its dining room that shoots up 6 floors and the capital ‘d’ designer rooms. mine was on the top floor with a dormer window overlooking the harbour, prasad and rupali had the signature bathtub in the middle orange room while ainsley’s room became a bathroom with a turn of a wall.
the first day we met in a conference room in the new jazz center overlooking the city. ‘unsolicited architecture’ is an interesting turn of phrase. architecture that has no client but has a concern. on the first day we spoke to architects in the netherlands now but who originated in countries from around the world including brazil, colombia, south africa, china, indonesia and spoke of parallels and differences between policies and implementation in those countries. when a metaphor becomes the way in we see so many reciprocities. ‘disease/resource/ organism/ commodity… fine… but weapon???’
that evening we walked a long walk down newly developed piers along the waterfront where housing that ranged from tiny houses to enormous bulky brick dinosaurs protect inner courtyards and face out to the rain. across the water on some of the other piers was ‘the whale’ and an enric miralles housing project.
the second day we spent at the hotel and were visited by a few architects who had come to mumbai in september. 2012 architects showed us some of their work were kitchen sinks and windmill propellers become façade cladding and a playground respectively. the ‘harvestmap’ locating local resources was a terrific idea.
that evening i saw my favorite building in the netherlands. ‘the ship’ by de klerk is a post office and a housing project on the outskirts of the old town. red brick moulded into an expressionistic sculpture with intricate details and perfect scale. while most of the other work in the netherlands was essentially about surfaces and floating boxes- here the building worked in all scales- form the urban gesture of the tower and perimeter block to the organization where different units combine together in complex ways to the delicate and exotic detail on the surfaces.
dinner that night was at a fancy restaurant in an old hospital- the ‘smart’ project. in a room nearby- art exhibitions and on the plate- rabbit’s foot.
the inner city of amsterdam is excruciatingly pretty and touristy in a good way. even the red light area and other such sleazy entertainment is safe and easy. i am not so sure whether i liked it more than the much uglier and grittier rotterdam where we went the next day. completely bombed out in the war the city is filled with the anonymous modernism of post war reconstruction. today it is even the site for so much contemporary avant garde architecture that the netherlands architecture institute set up its center here. and what a center it is. huge exhibition space (where the ‘open city’ exhibition took over the whole space) an archive that ole walked us through and the offices where had our meetings. on the first day we were told about the urban renewal plans of the state in the netherlands and the evening we met zus- architects who have squatted an old neglected skyscraper. they spoke of the tenuous relationship they share with city authorities and the original owners of the building and of the plans they have for saving the building from demolition- including opening an exhibition/art space on the ground floor off the street.
we were supposed to go for an architecture tour on thursday morning but were completely rained out. but still we ventured huddled under our umbrellas to the harbor and looked across at the new bridge and the renzo piano skyscraper. a water taxi took us then northwards for more walks down the windy piers and up the gigantic maritime university. later the mvrdv offices were close by and we walked through their projects around the world.
on the way back we went through the kunsthal- close second on my favorite buildings list. like corbusier, mies and some roadside mall have been put through a blender and remixed into a modern art museum. postcards and toys. the last conversation was about discursive space and blogs reared their illegitimate head again. perhaps i need to spend more time on this again.
the possibilities regarding what can emerge are promising. too many different agendas perhaps. dinner was at a lively moroccan restaurant.
the ‘free day’ was spent waling around the streets of rotterdam. hanging boxes (again) bridges, housing projects (like the cubes), designer shops and later supermarkets and clothing stores and rupali and ainsley go crazy shopping.
and then we are back for hardly a day and i am off to delhi for a workshop called ‘the undisciplined city’ organized by the center for policy research at the habitat center. a cross disciplinary exploration regarding the informal city- discussion revolved around the nature of policy and the difficulties it has capturing the dynamics of the informal or the ‘undisciplined’. solly deconstructed all attempts at clarification by extolling the values of obscurity. and screwed us architects in the process - or challenged us to find new modes of practice. i wonder sometimes whether the aesthetic rather than the functional role of architecture can allow that space of intervention where architecture is not about making and breaking but rather about creating new possibilities. is architectures role then addressing the genius loci / myth of a site as a mode of re-reading the city. is this the lesson surrealist games can have for imagining the city. isn’t that what our second year projects have been about? cyborgs / tarot cards / exquisite corpses… as methods of rereading existing situations in new ways. other conversations further simplified the city into mutually exclusive formal and informal binaries, but almost everyone felt the need for new ways of speaking. the second day we spoke of the jnnurm largely and its successes and failures. bureaucrats, economists, social workers, political scientists, urban planners and architects promised to speak to each other again- soon.
1 comment:
rohan!!! was thinking of you as my last studio got over! how much i miss an instructor like you!...decided to drop by your blog and see what you upto...v interesting stuff! Amsterdam canal and rotterdam are like living Art/Architecture exhibits!...a strange extension to that is also Almere...
Lots of love and hoping to see you soon in Mumbai
Richa
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