March 17, 2013

Kurhaus and pier in Scheveningen in decline

Filed under: Architecture,History by Branko Collin @ 12:42 am

The Kurhaus Hotel in Scheveningen near The Hague is bankrupt, Omroep West writes.

The hotel is owned by seven anonymous private investors who bought it in 2004 for 46 million euro and is run by the German Steigenberger Hotel Group. At the time the purchase was supervised by Willem Endstra, who was accused of being banker to the underworld and who was murdered shortly after. Steigenberger has denied that there are financial problems and has declared that business will go on as usual, according to Misset Horeca.

Meanwhile the nearby pleasure pier, another icon of seaside resort Scheveningen, is also heading towards bankruptcy. The curator has decided to put the pier up for auction. It is currently owned by known tax evaders Van der Valk Hotels who bought it for 1 euro in 1991 of insurer Nationale Nederlanden who wanted to get rid of it because of the high maintenance costs, NRC writes.

The origin of Scheveningen is hidden in the mists of time, but towns with names ending in -inge originate from the 10th and 11th century according to Wikipedia. As the nearby The Hague turned from the hunting lodge of the counts of Holland to the seat of the government of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands, the fishing community of Scheveningen grew. In 1665 the two towns were connected by a paved road and from 1800 onwards Scheveningen developed into a seaside resort with hotels and villas being built to the northeast of the harbour.

In 1884 the Kurhaus was built, a hotel which doubled as a spa. The Kurhaus was connected to the pier via a bridge. (In World War II the original pier burned down—a new pier was built a bit further up North in 1959.)

According to history blog Geschiedenismeisjes, Kurhaus was still an icon of tremendous luxury at the start of the 20th century. During World War I, in which the Netherlands managed to stay neutral, the hotel was the location of a culture clash between new and old money. A group of people who had gotten rich during the war, the so-called ‘oorlogswinstmakers’ (war profiteers) flaunted their wealth in Scheveningen. And in 1919 a labour law was passed that made leisure time for workers obligatory—the hours that a person should work per day were limited to 8 and the Sunday would be a day off. This brought spending time at the beach suddenly within the reach of the working classes.

(Photo by MichielJelijs, some rights reserved)

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February 3, 2013

Glass building printed with farm texture by MVRDV

Filed under: Architecture by Branko Collin @ 12:08 pm

As the architect’s web page crudely puts it, after Operation Market Garden in World War II the Dutch town of Schijndel in North Brabant was left with an ‘oversized’ market place.

MVRDV’s founder Winy Maas had been lobbying town hall to do something useful with all that space, and after his seventh attempt, he finally got his wish. On 17 January the building of the glass farm on the Markt in Schijndel was completed. The building is made to look like an oversized farm (scale 1.6:1) and is made entirely out of glass, on which a texture has been printed.

MVRDV writes:

The building with a total surface area of 1600 m2 contains shops, restaurants, offices and a wellness centre. The exterior is printed glass with a collage of typical local farms; a monument to the past but 1.6 times larger than life.

In collaboration with MVRDV, artist Frank van der Salm photographed all the remaining traditional farms, and from these an image of the ‘typical farm’ was composed. This image was printed using fritted procedure onto the 1800 m2 glass facade, resulting in an effect such as a stained glass window in a cathedral. The print is more or less translucent depending on the need for light and views.

The print lets in light from outside during the daytime and the building is illuminated from the inside during the night.

This is what the square looked like in October 2010 according to Google:

(Photo: MVRDV)

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January 7, 2013

Satellite dishes are not always protected speech

Filed under: Architecture by Branko Collin @ 2:07 pm

A homeowners’ association in Rotterdam recently wanted a member to remove a satellite dish from his flat. Dishes are considered an eyesore and they decrease the enjoyment other owners have of their flats.

However, it’s not that simple, Internet lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet writes. Freedom of speech also includes the ability to receive information, which is why judges have been reluctant to outlaw satellite dishes in the past.

The homeowners’ association won its lawsuit last July because the homeowner had other ways to watch his favourite TV channels, such as on the Internet. A fundamental right does not always trump a homeowners’ association’s articles.

Engelfriet omitted to mention that the satellite TV watching flat owner was of Turkish descent. When Dutch people see a street full of satellite dishes, they generally assume that the neighbourhood is popular with immigrants. Homeowners fear that a neighbourhood’s property value will drop if the neighbourhood is perceived to be too ‘black’.

In this case, the plaintiff had also made it clear that it wasn’t he who needed access to the satellite channels, but his wife.

The plaintiff was ordered to pay all his opponent’s legal costs, which the judge determined to be 200 euro.

(Photo by Kai Schreiber, some rights reserved)

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November 22, 2012

Concert hall advertises by using its acoustics in amusing ways

Filed under: Architecture,Music,Science by Orangemaster @ 12:35 pm

To prove that ‘everything sounds better in the Concertgebouw’, Amsterdam’s beautiful 125-year-old concert hall, some amusing adverts were made, albeit not every one of them brilliant or believable. I find the showering one a bit boring, and I don’t need to hear burping children either.

In the video below, the acoustics were tested using three scooters, which sounded much less annoying than they do on the street whizzing by on bike paths. The three scooter guys are pretty typical for Amsterdam’s streets, and they had never been in the Concertgebouw before. Having attended concerts there myself, all I can say is that the hall is very live sounding and makes brass and strings sound very vibrant, as long as you have good seats.

(Links: www.improbable.com), www.amsterdamadblog.com, Photo of Concertgebouw by Ben Rimmer, some rights reserved)

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October 20, 2012

Pedestrian bridge is 12 metres high in Purmerend

Filed under: Architecture by Branko Collin @ 12:29 pm

The Milky Way Bridge (Melkwegbrug) in Purmerend connects the Weidevenne neighbourhood with the historic city centre.

It cost 6 million euro to build, and was designed by Next Architects and built by Ingenieurs Bureau Amsterdam.

The arch is 12 metres high and the bridge has 130 steps. The idea behind making the bridge this way is that the architects did not just want it to be a bit of infrastructure, but also a place where people want to be.

A second bridge runs underneath for bicycles and wheelchairs. This second bridge can be opened to let boats pass.

(Link: Bright. Photo: Next Architects.)

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October 6, 2012

Artist Tinkebell reports snails stolen by activist reporter

Filed under: Animals,Architecture by Branko Collin @ 3:57 pm

Controversial artist Tinkebell has announced she will report a theft with the police after a TV Rijnmond reporter took two snails from an exhibit with him. TV Rijnmond handed over the snails to Dierenbescherming (‘Animal Protection’, an association with 200,000 members and 31 local chapters) for further study.

Tinkebell is currently exhibiting some 1,000 live snails with beads glued to them as part of a larger exhibition at the Villa Zebra children’s museum called Ah, wat lief! (‘So sweet’). The exhibition is supposed to explore and challenge how children look at animals—which ones do they find cute, and which ones do they find horrid.

Earlier Tinkebell exhibits centered around exposing the hypocrisy of animal lovers by doing the exact same thing they do to animals, but within a completely different context. In one instance she made a leather purse, with the leather from her own cat. She also let hamsters run around a showroom while they were imprisoned in tiny plastic balls she had purchased at a pet store, something for which she was prosecuted but ultimately acquited.

In an article on left-wing blog Joop.nl Tinkebell explains how she got the idea of adorning snails with beads in the first place:

I have been painting all the snails I find in my own garden for years. [One day I spotted my neighbour salting his garden to kill snails and] I began to wonder where the snails came from, where they were going and how old they would get. In order to answer my own questions as well as try to change my neighbour’s mind, I started to paint numbers on the snails in my garden. There were many of them…

A year later and much to my surprise I saw that the snails were still moving through my garden, numbers and all. Wow! So then I numbered the unmarked copies in a different colour.

Another year passed and now three generations of painted snails were moving among my plants, and the year after I started with a new ‘tactic’, that of ‘beautifying’. I added glitter, flowers and little paintings. Each year my snails looked different, and that is how I kept track of different generations.

(Photo by Helen Cook, some rights reserved)

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October 5, 2012

Parkour in Rotterdam, Jackie Chan style

Filed under: Architecture,Bicycles by Orangemaster @ 4:19 pm

Despite a whole bunch of bad jokes about the Netherlands’ second city, Rotterdam, it is often praised in the foreign press or in Wallpaper magazine, mainly for its modern architecture.

In this video, the city’s best know poet and jazz fan Jules Deelder sarcastically says, “I swear to you, Rotterdam can’t be filmed. It has no past and not a single stair-step gable,” echoing the opinion of many who think Amsterdam is top dog and Rotterdam must be treated like a less posh younger sibling who tries to mask their bombarded past by going modern.

The Willemswerf is the name of the office building martial arts star Jackie Chan slides down in his 1998 film ‘Who am I’, which has some excellent shots of parkour-like action in Rotterdam. Apparently, when asked back in 1999, Chan put it on his list of 10 favourite stunts, which can be read in his book ‘I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action’. Oh, and he performed that stunt himself by the way like he did so many others.

Even though one of his stuntmen proved it could be done from a lower level, it took Chan two weeks to get up the nerve to try it himself. The sequence begins with him fighting it out with some thugs on the top of a very tall building in Rotterdam. After battling with them around the roof, and nearly falling off once or twice, he finally took the quickest possible trip to the sidewalk below –sliding down the side of the building, which is slanted nearly 45 degrees, all the way to the ground. Twenty-one stories.”

At least Rotterdam has 21-storey buildings.

The movie also prominently figures the ‘koopgoot’ (underground shopping area), the cube houses and the Erasmus bridge. He also tries using a recumbent bike, a stunt in itself.

(Photo of Rotterdam, KPN building by Roel Wijnants, some rights reserved)

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September 23, 2012

KAW Architects put women’s shelter out in the open

Filed under: Architecture,General by Branko Collin @ 12:22 pm

De Veilige Veste (‘the Safe Fortress’) in Leeuwarden is an old police station repurposed as a shelter for young women who have become the victims of ‘lover boys’ (young pimps), abuse, human trafficking and the likes.

KAW Architects write: “these girls used to be hidden from view, but modern media hound them. That is why shelter organisation Fier Fryslân came up with the idea of ‘visible but safe’.”

The building will house up to 48 women aged 15 to 23, and still have room for 1600 square metres of office space. Visitors will have to pass four security measures to get in. Fier Fryslân figures these measures will hardly be necessary, as the perpetrators typically don’t want to come out in the open anyway.

If you don’t understand what they say in this video by Omrop Fryslan, don’t worry, neither do we. It is presented in Frisian, although the interviews are in Dutch.

(Link: Inhabitat. Image: KAW Architects)

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September 10, 2012

Will Amsterdam Central Station be ‘kerned’ correctly?

Filed under: Architecture by Branko Collin @ 9:18 pm

Amsterdam Central Station is getting a new bus terminus, and architects Benthem Crouwel have decided to adorn the terminus’ roof with the word ‘Amsterdam’ in giant red glass letters.

Famous Dutch graphic designer Piet Schreuders is worried that the letters may not be spaced correctly (kerned, as typographers call it), and watches the roofing process like a hawk, sharing his observations at Typographica.org.

Today, in September 2012, the middle section of the roof is still missing, so all we can see is AM…RDAM. (The letters STE won’t be inserted until 2013, when construction of the underground North-South tram line at this location is expected to be finished.)

Being worrisome by nature, we typographers can’t help expressing some concerns: did the architects and roofers calculate everything exactly right? Will the missing letters fit into the remaining space? And did the roofers adhere to proper kerning specifications?

Fact: the word AMSTERDAM starts and ends with the letter combination AM. The first worrisome fact: the space between the first A and M is five windows … but between the second A and M—oh, horror—it is only four.

Earlier this month the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam presented its new logo which had too much space in it, right at a position that suggested a case of ‘English disease’, as the Dutch call it—the habit of putting spaces in compound words. That space caused a lot of buzz on the Internet—I doubt Benthem Crouwel’s typography will yield a similarly rich word of mouth.

(Illustration: Benthem Crouwel Archtitects)

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September 7, 2012

Dutch artists help spruce up Philadelphia

Filed under: Architecture,Art by Orangemaster @ 7:33 am

Back in 2010 Dré Urhahn and Jeroen Koolhaas painted favelas in Brazil, now they are helping to revive one of the worst neighbourhoods in the US, Germantown in Philadelphia, which is full of drugs, murder, poverty and violence.

The goal of the Philly Painting project is to revive the neighbourhood and turn it into a new historic landmark. Follow the link and watch some videos about the project.

Over the course of their residency, Haas & Hahn are being challenged to consider design not just for a block but for an entire commercial corridor. Philadelphia’s Commerce Department, a major partner in this effort, recognizes the potential of a major project like this to radiate optimism and serve as catalyst for additional positive change and commercial potential.

There are photos galore here.

(Link: www.rnw.nl, Photo of Philly mural by dwweber, some rights reserved)

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