Architect’s Notebook @ DAMDI Publishing Co

The way people communicate and connect around the world today, is being radically redefined by digitalization. With the acceleration of digitization as one of the most obvious consequences of the pandemic, the use of digital tools is experiencing an unprecedented rise among arts and cultural institutions and practices.

Publication @ tanz Yearbook 2022, Germany, 15 August 2022

In our globalized world the accelerating speed of socio-political and cultural change collides with the longue-durée of heritage sites and territories. As social and political contexts around places with a public meaning change, controversies often arise.

Publication Re-Charting Places @ Contested Spaces – Concerted Projects: Designs for Vulnerable Memories, LetteraVentidue Edizioni, Syracuse, Italy, April 2021

Investigating and speculating on the future of social and cultural spaces requires considering physical spaces in combination with digital media networks, emphasizing the hybrid qualities of spaces in the interplay of the digital and the physical.

Publication Hybrid Space @ @ Regeneration [and its Discontents], Lithuanian Architectural Foundation, Vilnius, Lithuania, 4 June 2021

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of digital instruments is rapidly increasing. As the possible consequences of digitization are more sharply outlined, this opens new possibilities for spatial organization. This urges us to reconsider the guiding principles and models for the urbanization of technology we want to follow and what our city visions are. We can still choose.

Publication Post COVID-19 City
@ KHM #0 Magazine, Academy of Media Arts (KHM), Cologne, Germany, 1 July 2022

Recent developments such as Internet of Things, Big Data, and Machine Intelligence have ambition and the potential to algorithmically manage life, including urban nature. These developments in technology and media are supporting the development of a new hybrid architecture where Architecture and Nature fuse: NatureTecture!

The documentary Fabric presents the history of the building complex that houses today the Athens School of Fine Arts, one the main venues of documenta 14 in Athens. It also narrates a family history that spans more than over 100 years and starting in Cappadocia in Central Anatolia, continues via Beirut and Istanbul (Constantinople) arriving in Athens in the 1920ies.

Fabric is realized on occasion of documenta 14 in Athens in dialogue with the documenta 14 curator Monika Szewczyk.

The development of Virtual Reality (VR) is closely linked to the exploration of unknown territories. Virtual Reality, slowly emerging since the1920s, really took off in 1966 when NASA introduced this technology for flight simulation systems in its space program. As it was too expensive and too risky to train the astronauts by practising the real thing – launching them into the cosmos – methods had to be developed that could provide the trainees with a simulated experience: a small physical stimulus of acceleration, supported by and combined with visual information, was extrapolated and amplified in a ‘knock-on’ effect by the brains of the astronauts, providing them with the mental environment required to practise for the operation in (real) space.

Publication @ de Architekt, The Netherlands, June 1998

In the Sisyphus work of the day-to-day struggle for survival of the offices, in the traineeship of the next generation, the crisis of architecture is now directly experienced. Even in the architectural discourse there is a perplexity. Excesses from the crisis are sought through escapades into atmospheres or through bonds from post-bicentenary courses, such as the communication for “architecture pop” or the urbanist in the shrinkage discussion.

Publication Landscape BOTOX @ Stadt+Grün, Germany, September 2006

Networked participatory design systems are replacing the logics of the industrial age, where the creative ones designed for the non-creative masses.

Publication @ World Architects, WEB, 11 May 2012

Soft Urbanism is a new interdisciplinary field of planning, investigating the transformations of space in the emerging information and communication age and designing the interplay of urban and media networks.
Hybrid Urbanism investigates the transformations of space in the information and communication age and develops and designs hybrid urban and media networks.

Media networks are influencing and interacting with ‘real’ places. These digital information-communication networks are changing our physical environment and also the social, economic, and cultural organization of our societies in general.

Soft Urbanism is an interdisciplinary field that examines the “soft” aspects, the communication aspects, of the contemporary city.

Hybridization is an evolutionary strategy of cumulative, dynamic cultures that are based on intercultural connections and fostered by cross-fertilization.

Telecommunications lacks the tangibility of real space. Conversely, the culture of the city needs to integrate digital technology

Transforming the facade of the Humboldt Forum into a living organism.
The special art edition of Der Tagesspiegel, the German newspaper, publishes interview on the changing role of design in times of crisis.

To understand the fusions, the superimposition and the interactions of media and ‘real’ architectural/urban spaces, the new term ‘idensity®’ replaces the obsolete conventional terms of spatial distinction.

Rethinking design in order to address the changes of our future needs in our increasingly service and knowledge based society and economy.

Research @ Dutch Design Foundation, Premsela Stichting, Amsterdam, 15 June 2015

Cross-fertilisation, borrowing other’s ideas and incorporating elements of other’s culture into one’s own is crucial to cultural development.

Lecture Co-Thenticity @ Dutch Design Institute, Beijing Design Week 2011, Beijing, 28 september 2011

In the aesthetic production of the 20th century, there is a fascinating moment of artistic synergy. An architect, Le Corbusier, conceives an Electronic Poem, an electronic synthesis of visual and acoustic events, and a “vessel containing the poem” [a pavilion] for the Philips corporation presentation at the 1958 Brussels World Fair.

The merging of the three Dutch design related institutes, architecture, design and media, into a new hybrid design institute.

This general trend reflects on all aspects of our existence: culture, politics, economics, etc. and, of course, on cities. One of the most significant achievements of the 20th century – network technologies – have provided our planet with a totally new digital layer: virtual reality. This has given rise to a whole new sphere of interplay between urban and media networks. Communication networks are changing our society.
Interview by the STRELKA Institute in Moscow for the Future Urbanism project – forty one interviews with contemporary writers, architects, sociologists, economists and city planners.

Anastassia Smirnova, Programming Director @ Strelka Institute, Moscow,  15 December 2013

The Nederlands Architectuurinstituut (NAi) has established a reputation as a center for all aspects of architecture in the Netherlands and as the largest architectural center in the world. But the golden times are over, the current savings policy forces to rethink. The NAi had to merge with two other institutions and is now going new ways together with these partners.

Publication The New Institute @ Deutsche Bauzeitung, Germany, 3 June 2013

Electric vehicles are regarded primarily as regards sustainability, ie as a vehicle to support the entry into the post-fossil age. At the same time, the introduction of the new electro-powered motors opens up opportunities for the redefinition of the car with far-reaching consequences: the car is shrinking – and the public space of the city can grow again.

Hybrid Space Lab is concerned with how the expanding media networks interact with the physical, the public space. Their work is to be seen at the International Architecture Biennale 1ab in Rotterdam. International Architecture Biennale 1ab in Rotterdam.

Interview Many to Many @ Deutsche Bauzeitung, Germany, 1 March 2006

The property becomes the interface, the house develops into a “smart”. Network environment. Similar to the car, the connected car, which is not just a project from Microsoft, but has long been a reality.

Interview social construction of technology @ Bundesgartenschau 2005, BUGA, Munich, 1 September 2005

New interdisciplinary fields of planning and design are introduced: Soft Urbanism, exploring the interaction of urbanism and the space of mass media and communication networks, and Hybrid Space Design, developing fused analog-digital / architectural-media spaces.

Infodrome is a think tank for the Dutch government in the information society. The objectives of Infodrome are gaining insight into the social consequences of the information revolution , organizing and feeding the public debate about the role of government in this, and advising the government on relevant strategic choices.

Research & Publications @ Infodrome, Den Haag, The Netherlands, March 2000

Media Babies on CHANEL NO.5 derives its strength from fragmentation in order to develop a truly public “narrow/broadcasting/catching media network. A local-based public interface the “Media Baby” is instrument that seduces its public to use and abuse the television medium, maximizing its possible spontaneity by hijacking the public’s imagination.

Publication @ KHM Yearbook for Art and Apparatus, Academy for Media Arts, Cologne, Germany, 1 October 1998

Public urban space and the “space” of communication networks are usually considered to be competing, even mutually exclusive frameworks for social interaction.  In fact, the traditional functions of public urban space are being taken over by telecommunication networks, their input/output devices implanted in (private) interiors. 

Publication Media & The City @ de Architekt, den Haag, the Netherlands, July 1997

The new image of Man looks roughly like this: we have to imagine a network of human interrelations, a ‘field of intersubjective relations’. The strands of this web must be conceived as channels through which information (ideas, feelings, intentions and knowledge etc.) flows. When these strands knot for a moment, they form what we call ‘human subjects’. The totality of the strands constitutes the concrete sphere of life and the knots are abstract extrapolations.

Article @ Hybrid Space Lab, Berlin, July 1999

Often, comparisons, parallels to landscape, are drawn to nature in the work of Behnisch & Partner.

Publication, the Work of Behnisch & Partner @ ARCH+, Berlin, 1 September 1994