Last Saturday, the Archis/Volume team visited two neo-traditional neighborhoods in the South of the Netherlands. Holland’s first neo-traditional neighborhoods are largely completed, and during this excursion led by Volume’s Editor-in-Chief Arjen Oosterman we had the opportunity to visit the most famous one of them, Brandevoort. The popularization of neo-traditional neighborhoods and vintage urbanism has led to intense debates in professional circles. Is this a good thing because people like it? Or is it fake because we are rebuilding the past without any historic anchor points?
Our first stop was Haverleij near the city of Den Bosch. This district by Sjoerd Soeters comprises approximately ten ‘castles’ situated in a natural and green setting. All castles, which are designed by different architects ranging from Soeters himself to Michael Graves, have a residential function and feel like gated communities, although there are hardly any fences. Many of the buildings have typical medieval elements, such as bridges and castle-like walls and towers. At the same time, the neighborhood hardly feels ‘fake’ due to the great variation in architecture and building materials. Nevertheless, one thing is clear: Haverleij and its residential concept makes a statement against the crumbling of social cohesion in the modern world. All castles breath social control, unity and safety.
The same goes for Brandevoort, our second stop. Brandevoort part of the latest generation of Dutch suburbs, the so-called Vinex neighborhoods. The state-led Vinex program regards nation-wide production of new large suburbs near almost all medium-sized cities in the Netherlands. Many Vinex projects have resulted in landscapes of monotonious houses in semi-modern building styles. But Brandevoort is a remarkable exception. This new neighborhood by Rob Krier, built close to the city of Helmond, looks and feels like a traditional medieval town. Brandevoort tends to breath history, although Krier’s plan has been existing for only eight years.
Most people would compare Brandevoort to ‘real’ fortress towns and medieval city centers and conclude that the streets are quiet and boring. But shouldn’t we compare the atmosphere to other Vinex-neighborhoods designed and built in the same period under the same conditions? In that case, Brandevoort is pretty lively and livable. People seem to be happy. After 40 years everybody could have been forgotten that this historical town is completely fake…
Click here for a Flickr set with more photos of the trip!
Photos by Valerie Blom
Josef Kellndorfer and Wayne Walker of the Woods Hole Research Center recently worked with the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Geological Survey to create an extremely detailed map of all the trees in the United States. It took the team six years to collect the data for the map with help from a space-based radar, satellite sensors, computer models and a massive amount of ground-based data. They managed to visualize the American forests with an accuracy of 30 meters. Click here for the full map.
Remember our December Special? New subscribers to Volume magazine were in the running to win a unique Worldmoon jewel designed by DUS Architects. Watch the official lottery drawing by our Editor-in-Chief Arjen Oosterman and find out who’s the lucky winner!
International conference and workshop, 14-17 February, 2012, Westergasfabriek, Amsterdam. Visit socialcitiesoftomorrow.nl for more information.
Our everyday lives are increasingly shaped by digital media technologies, from smart cards and intelligent GPS systems to social media and smartphones. How can we use digital media technologies to make our cities more social, rather than just more hi-tech?
This international conference brings together key thinkers and doers working in the fields of new media and urbanism. Keynote speakers such as Usman Haque, Natalie Jeremijenko and Dan Hill will speak about the promises and challenges in this newly emerging and highly interdisciplinary field of urban design. The keynotes will be accompanied by presentations of ‘showcases’ from various disciplines, such as architecture, art, design, and policy.
Social Cities of Tomorrow explores how urban designers, interface developers, app builders, policy makers, housing coorations, artists, scientists and others can use digital technologies to organise citizen engagement, and to contribute to our social cities of tomorrow.
Mapping the Earth is a classic problem. There’s no right way to do this perfectly in a way that depicts the shape and size of the surface in a proper way, argues Jack van Wijk, Full Professor Visualization at the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science of Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). To explore new ways of unfolding the Earth Van Wijk developed a series of myriahedral projections.
“Why not just take a map of a small part of the earth, which is almost perfect, glue neighboring maps to it, and repeat this until the whole earth is shown? Of course you get interrupts, but does this matter? What does such a map look like?”
Click here for the full series.
Join Volume, Mark Wigley, Jeffrey Inaba, C-LAB, and guests at Project No. 8 (Ace Hotel location, 22 W. 29th Street, New York, NY) from 7-9 pm on Tuesday, 13 December 2011 for holiday cheer and urban conspiracy… i.e. the launch of Volume #29. Copies will be for sale, but drinks and music are complimentary. Click here for more information.
December is the month to guarantee yourself or a loved one a yearlong source of inspiration. Buy a subscription to Volume now and you will get a unique limited edition Volume bag for free and be in the running for the Worldmoon jewel. Click here to subscribe!
Commissioned by Alicia Framis for the Moon Life project, Amsterdam-based DUS Architects have designed a masterplan for the moon captured in the form of a jewel at a scale of 1:140,000,000. The jewel can be worn as a brooch or a necklace.
(This offer is valid from Dec 1st – 31st, 2011. A winner will be selected at random from all the new subscribers from that period. The winner will be announced in the second week of January 2012 and will receive the jewel in a special gift box, free of charge.)
Click here to subscribe to Volume.
Join Printed Matter, Jeffrey Inaba and guests to celebrate the launch of Volume #29: The Urban Conspiracy! Friday 2 December, 2011, 5-7 pm, at Art Basel Miami Beach, Miami Beach Covention Center. Sponsored by Printed Matter.
One-day conference on Friday 9 December 2011, 9-18 h. at V2, the Institute for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam. With Rob van Kranenburg, Martin Pot, Ben van Lier and others. Registration: students €15, professionals €35. Click here for more information.
On December 9, 2009, the first Council-conference was held in Brussels. A wide variety of researchers, artists, IT-professionals, architects etc. gathered to discuss questions and answers concerning the Internet of Things. Part of this debate was focused on sub-themes, one of those was ‘Home-Sense’: what are the consequences, implications, questions for our home-environment in relation to the IoT? On April 9th, the world-wide IoT-day, this discussion was continued in Rotterdam on a smaller scale: now, 2 years later, it is time to gather the developments and focus once again on the issues involved. This conference intends to do that by bringing together a variety of professionals and researchers throughout the various disciplines, present/discuss the current status and try to articulate elements that will contribute to the actual, still developing issues of home vs. technology. The morning session will handle the background, architecture, technology; after lunch the emphasis will be on experience, privacy, spheres.
Click here to buy Volume #28, the Internet of Things issue!
Wednesday 23 November 23, 8 pm, De Verdieping, Amsterdam. With Peter Luscuere and Hielkje Zijlstra. Entrance: € 2.50. Click here for more information.
Failed Architecture shows buildings and urban environments that are malfunctioning, displeasing or have failed to stand the test of time and are currently neglected, abandoned or even vandalized or demolished, because of changing economic, social, political and/or physical circumstances.
In the sixth edition of Failed Architecture, the focus will be on the more concrete, technical and practical failures of architecture. Which seemingly clever building technologies or materials have turned out to have unforeseen negative implications for the inhabitants, users, repairmen and janitors? Which types of buildings are more often subject to failure or usage problems? When can we speak of just unforeseen complications and when are architects or contractors to blame? Which cases are exemplary and what lessons can be learned for future architecture?
