July 29, 2012

Sagrada Familia gets Dutch coating

Filed under: Architecture by Branko Collin @ 11:21 am

The Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona, Spain, will receive a protective coating this year by a Dutch company from Winschoten, Groningen .

NOS Nieuws reported last Tuesday that manager Ton van de Klashorst decided to leave for Barcelona without an appointment last year (“we figured, let’s swing by”), and hope for the chance to speak with the supervising architect. Originally they got half an hour, but this quickly turned into two and a half hours, during which the company got to demonstrate their coating.

The coating is supposed to protect the stone against pollution and water.

Construction of the Sagrada Familia started in 1882 and is expected to be completed in 2026.

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July 14, 2012

Dré Wapenaar’s tree tent hotel

Filed under: Architecture,Art by Branko Collin @ 2:36 pm

Rotterdam-based artist Dré Wapenaar came up with these tear-shaped tents that can be hung from the stems of trees.

Four of these tents are currently forming a hotel in Borgloon, Belgium, where they are part of an open air art exhibit called PIT. A one-night stay will cost around 70 euro, according to The Pop-Up City. Trendbeheer adds that guests can have their breakfast seated on furniture by Ardie van Bommel, a recent Eindhoven Design Academy graduate.

The temporary hotel will be open for business until September 30.

Check out the Trendbeheer article for more photos of the exhibition.

(Photo by We Make Money Not Art / Régine Debatty, some rights reserved.)

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July 13, 2012

Film director Paul Verhoeven’s bridge to Hollywood

Filed under: Architecture,Film by Orangemaster @ 6:35 am

After hearing from two curators of Amsterdam’s Eye Film Institute (white building on the left, the other is the delightfully retro former Shell building) that Queen Beatrix really liked Sokurov’s The Russian Ark, which is known for having been filmed in one go with no editing, I also find out more about Hollywood heavyweight Paul Verhoeven.

To the Dutch, Paul Verhoeven is a major director who launched the career of fellow Dutchman Rutger Hauer, starring in films such as the 1973 Dutch classic Turkish Delight, while to Hollywood he’s the guy that came up with blockbusters such as Robocop, Basic Instinct and Starship Troopers. Another face you may recognise in his films is Hollywood actor Jeroen Krabbé who played General Koskov in the Bond film The Living Daylights.

After 20 years of tinseltown Verhoeven came back to continue working on films in the Netherlands. In May he was present at the premiere screening of his restored 1980 film ‘Spetters’ (‘Hunks’ (male and female), but also meaning ‘spatter’ and even ‘ejaculation’). Lucky for some, it’s playing a few times with English subtitles in Amsterdam this month.

Spetters is being presented in its ‘uncut’ version, which means explicit sex scenes were put back in the way the film originally intended, including a blow job scene in the Rotterdam subway. Critics were very harsh on the film at the time, saying that it portrayed youth as amoral anti-gay bashers (one of the main character’s is gay) and the feminists had a field day with the blatant sexism and misogyny that actually makes the film amusing today and makes me wonder why the many women in Verhoeven films didn’t make it to Hollywood.

Here’s the Hollywood voice over trailer, with a wee bit of functional nudity:

And here’s the restored version of the trailer in Dutch. This one has explicit sex it in, which doesn’t need translation:

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July 11, 2012

The Netherlands grows itself a bit further

Filed under: Architecture,History by Branko Collin @ 10:53 am

Tweede Maasvlakte indicated with a dotted line. The white blotches to the North-East are caused by sunlight reflecting off the greenhouses of the Westland area.

Today Queen Beatrix will officially close the last bit of an 11 kilometre dam that encloses an area of the North Sea that should become new land this year.

The Tweede Maasvlakte will be a 2,000 hectares large area atttached to the first Maasvlakte (‘tweede’ means ‘second’) outside Rotterdam that will be used as part of the port. The Betuwelijn railroad will be extended into it. It will mainly be used as a container harbour.

The new land will grow the area of the harbour by 20%. The dam surrounding Tweede Maasvlakte will contain 20,000 blocks of stone. RTV Rijnmond calls it an ‘ultra-Dutch project’, as it involves ‘building land to trade upon’.

To my knowledge there are no plans yet to extend this thing all the way to England, though people have been talking about moving our national airport to the sea.

(Image: NASA + 24 Oranges)

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July 7, 2012

Oldest farm in Western Europe almost torn down

Filed under: Architecture,History by Branko Collin @ 11:36 am

Farmer Piet Scheepers from Best, Noord Brabant, simply did not know that this barn of his was so old. He figured 300 years, tops. And because it was difficult to work in due to the low ceiling, he was ready to tear the building down, six years ago.

Research by local historian Dick Zweers has since put a stop to those plans, Omroep Brabant reports. Zweers found out that the wood in the building was from 1263: “The first thing I noticed that this used to be the sort of house where there was always a fire, people were always in the same room, they always had a need for warm water—you can tell by those sooted beams.” He adds: “There have been changes, but the construction is in essence still the same.”

Scheepers had already acquired a permit for demolition, now the government wants to turn the barn—which currently houses calves—into a state monument, and is willing to invest 100,000 euro in renovation, as is the provincial government.

Omroep Brabant calls this the oldest farm still in use in Western Europe. Back in November, Zweers was still hedging his bets: “Great Britain has also got a lot of old stuff.”

(Photo: Google Street View)

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July 1, 2012

Floating bicycle roundabout in Eindhoven

Filed under: Architecture,Automobiles,Bicycles by Branko Collin @ 6:50 pm

The city of Eindhoven wanted to change the roundabout at the Noordbrabantse laan back to a regular intersection, but figured that this would be too dangerous for bicyclists. Their novel approach? To keep the roundabout for bicyclists, but shift it a couple of metres up into the air.

The engineers of ipv Delft designed a bridge that hangs off a giant pylon in the middle. The pylon is 70 metres high, and 24 cables support the bridge. A concrete nubbin appears to protect the pylon from adventurous heavy goods vehicles.

This video by Omroep Brabant shows what the bridge looks like from above:

The bridge was opened for the first time 3 weeks ago, but closed down again when it turned out that the wind caused the cables to vibrate dangerously. Since then dampeners have been installed that should fix the problem.

Eindhoven could have opted for bicycle tunnels instead of a bridge, but the city felt tunnels lack ‘social safety’, which Fietsberaad describes as “the extent to which (in this case) bicyclists feel free of threat or confrontation with violence”. (In other words, tunnels are dark and may be full of bad guys.)

(Link: Bright. Photo: ipv Delft. Video: Youtube/Omroep Brabant. More photos at Wegenforum)

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June 24, 2012

Rooftop velodrome for Sanya, China

Filed under: Architecture,Bicycles by Branko Collin @ 11:31 am

In the southernmost part of China lies the city of Sanya. Local housing corporation Vanke asked NL Architects from Amsterdam to design a bicycle club as part of a resort. This is their proposal.

The pavilion houses a bicycle rental, a cafe and a rooftop velodrome.

(Link: The Pop-Up City. Photo: NL Architects.)

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June 16, 2012

Amsterdam discovers a new oldest house

Filed under: Architecture,History by Orangemaster @ 2:50 pm

For ages, the house hailed as the oldest in Amsterdam was the unique wooden house (‘Houten Huys’) from 1530 at No. 34 of the Begijnhof (map), one of the oldest inner courts in the city of Amsterdam, inhabited solely by unmarried women.

And now Amsterdam has a new oldest house, located at No. 90 of the Warmoesstraat, near the Red Light district and Central Station. Experts have dated the house back to 1485 by having its wooden structure analysed in a special lab in Berlin. The rich discovery also makes it the very first 15th century house to be discovered in the city.

A fire broke out in No. 90 back in 2010, and during the repairs, a building inspector noticed some very old details in the wood of this old house, also confirmed by the experts that tend to historical monuments and architecture. The façade of the building is from 1800, which is why no one bothered or noticed before.

(Link: www.rtvnh.nl, Photo of Warmoesstraat by Olivier Bruchez, some rights reserved)

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June 2, 2012

Monumental tobacco barns may now be used to house businesses

Filed under: Architecture,History by Branko Collin @ 8:19 am

The municipality of Utrechtse Heuvelrug has broadened usage rules for so-called ‘tabaksschuren’, or ‘tobacco barns’, barns that were used in the 18th and 19th century to dry tobacco leaves.

According to De Telegraaf the region used to be the tobacco centre of the Netherlands. The barns were typically 24 metres long and 12 metres wide, and had a tarred roof and shutters in the gable to keep the inside cool and draughty.

Until last Wednesday old tobacco barns could only legally be used as homes, but the municipality will now allow businesses such as offices and tea houses to operate from the classic barns.

A list of tobacco barns (with photos) can be found here (PDF).

(Drawing by Paulus van Liender, 1731-1797, of a tobacco barn just outside Amersfoort.)

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May 25, 2012

The Dutch house of Matsue

Filed under: Architecture by Branko Collin @ 9:08 am

The oldest example of Western architecture in Matsue, on the West coast of Japan, is the Dutch Mansion. The Made in Matsue blog explains (pictures after the link):

This building known once as the “oranda-yashiki”(「オランダ屋敷」), or Dutch Residence/Mansion, is said to be the first example of western architecture here in the Sanin Region when construction was completed in 1871 (4th year of Meiji).

Originally built to serve as a temple school, ‘Omachi School’ (苧町学校), it is quite extraordinary that it has remained intact in its original form to this day, as buildings of this style have almost all been reconstructed on or after 100 years since construction.

It is not clear from the article whether this building was actually based on Dutch architecture, I am guessing that ‘Dutch’ in this case may have been shorthand for ‘European’.

Between 1633 and 1853 Japan closed itself off from the rest of the world, a policy called Sakoku. During this time only a limited number of countries were allowed to trade with Japan, the Netherlands being the only European trade partner. Dutch traders were confined to an artificial island in the harbour of Nagasaki called Dejima.

(Photo by Emre Ayaroglu, some rights reserved)

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