Annual Review 2022-2023

Amsterdam Academy

of Architecture Annual Review 2022–2023

SMALL STEPS

At the time of writing – while the coalition formation following the Dutch provincial elections in March 2023 is progressing slowly, partly due to discussions about nitrogen deposition and whether or not the parties take nature and environment policy seriously – greenhouse gas emissions in the Netherlands (and beyond) continue unabated. One of the biggest emitters is the construction sector. In November 2022, the Dutch Council of State ruled in the case of the Porthos project that nitrogen released during the construction of projects should not be excluded from nitrogen calculations. The victory in this case, which was brought by Mobilisation for the Environment, is another small step towards the sustainability of the activities required to create buildings, cities and landscapes. The Amsterdam Academy of Architecture is making every effort to contribute to that sustainability on two fronts: in the curriculum and in its business operations. In the curriculum, our commitment is visible in the appointment of department heads. In this context, the substantiation of the (R)evolution Planet training theme is an important topic of discussion. Our department heads (including our new head of Urbanism Anna Gasco, who will join us on 1 September) ensure that attention to the climate crisis is integrated into every level of the curriculum. They refine the briefs for design and research projects and invite guest lecturers who specialize in relevant topics, including through open calls published on the Academy’s website and social media. Last academic year, for example, the open call for Ecosystems and Reflection attracted a large number of responses from guest lecturers who were not yet part of the Academy’s network, but whose backgrounds enabled them to make valuable contributions to the content of the subject. In addition, the department heads are increasingly inviting guest critics who are not active in the design disciplines, but who can make important contributions to the discussion of climate issues from their fields of expertise, including policymakers, scientists, politicians, writers, journalists and artists.

In addition to this transdisciplinary exchange, we continue to strengthen interdisciplinary collaboration among the students of the three Master’s programmes. For example, more and more design and research projects have joint initial, interim and final presentations to ensure that students and teachers are aware of each other’s projects and the knowledge generated in each other’s studios. Design and research projects are also slowly but surely becoming more closely linked to ensure that students can directly apply the results of their research to their design.

The Academy of Architecture is also making every effort to improve its business processes. The Amsterdam University of the Arts (AHK) aims to reduce its environmental impact through a sustainability

roadmap that translates the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals to the level of the institute. As part of this, we are making adjustments to the Academy of Architecture, including the forthcoming installation of a heat pump, solar panels on the roof and insulated heritage glass. Inside the Academy of Architecture, the AHK’s roadmap is further fleshed out by our Green Team, which looks for opportunities to make improvements, large and small. For example, we are currently implementing waste separation and bringing more plants into the building. The vending machine with (aluminium) cans of soft drinks will disappear. The canteen, which already serves only vegetarian meals, is adding more vegan dishes to the menu. Guests or students who previously received a bouquet of cut flowers will now receive a potted plant. The materials used in workshops are being reviewed and adapted where possible: from September, for example, Styrofoam will no longer be used to build models, and by 1 January 2024, all disposable cups will be removed from the building. ‘Bring Your Own Cup’ is in the running to become the Academy’s new slogan. These are all small steps, but each one is important and worthy of attention. Not only because together they will ensure that the Academy of Architecture contributes to a zero-emissions building sector, but also because these small steps show that working towards a cleaner world is not something for the distant future, but that the future starts today. ←

Architecture historian Hans Ibelings from Montreal, Canada, gave the Midsummer Night Lecture 2023. In this article, he explores concepts relating to the organic and inorganic world and their consequences for architecture, urbanism and landscape architecture.

In 1968, Ray and Charles Eames made the first version of their film Powers of Ten. Even if it was a complete film, they called it A Rough Sketch for a Proposed Film Dealing with the Powers of Ten and the Relative Size of the Universe 1 I find it a great title, one that I love to apply to anything I say, or write, to underline that what I do is always just an indication of what I have in mind. Which is, in this particular case, a rough sketch of a proposed article that deals with the dire planetary circumstances we are currently in. I want to outline that this self-inflicted environmental predicament offers us an opportunity, and brings an obligation, to reconsider where we stand, as humans, as architects, landscape architects and urban planners, and to include my own field, as historians. ‘Where we stand’ means where and what we are, and how we see and position ourselves as part of the planet we inhabit. It raises the question of what our relations with the world we are in are, since, as Baptiste Morizot has argued in Ways of Being Alive, ‘the current ecological crisis . . . is a crisis in our relations with living beings’.2

For a long time, and particularly in the West, the world we are in was seen as one world, ‘ours’ to be exact, a human world, owned and occupied by ‘the Family of Man’ to use the gendered title of Edward Steichen’s famous travelling photo exhibition from the 1950s.3 If the environmental crisis has achieved anything, it is that it has made us aware that we are part of a comprehensive more-than-human world, which cannot be reduced by a binary opposition between human and non-human, or even between animals and plants (and algae, fungi, bacteria), let alone by saying that culture (or architecture) differs fundamentally from nature.

The proposed film of Powers of Ten was completed in 1977 (fittingly, it had taken roughly ten years to make it). It starts with a picnicking couple in Chicago, seen from above. Step by step the camera zooms out to the universe before rapidly zooming in again to return to the picnickers and subsequently to enter the right hand of one of them. From there it goes step by step to the subatomic level of a white blood cell.4 Ray and Charles Eames were inspired by Dutch educator Kees Boeke, who had published a book in 1957, called Cosmic View: The Universe in 40 Jumps. It did on paper what Powers of Ten later did on celluloid, zooming out and in, starting with a human, in this case a young girl.5 Albeit without going into detail, both Boeke’s book and the Eames’s film not only helped their readers and viewers to get a sense of scale, but they also underlined that there is a cosmic continuity from a proton to the universe. Two years after the 1977 version of Powers of Ten, James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis formulated their Gaia hypothesis.6 This hypothesis is an example of a rough sketch of a proposed theory, in this case for an encompassing view of the Earth, underlining the interconnectedness of everyone and everything that is part of our planet. Lovelock initially got most credit for it, but in recent years the revolutionary thinking of evolutionary biologist Margulis has gained significantly more recognition. Aside from co-developing the Gaia hypothesis, her key scientific contribution is related to symbiosis and the concept of the holobiont, which is, simply put, an acknowledgment that humans, for instance, are not just one organism, but carriers of colonies of bacterial and fungal life.7 There is the evident ‘power-of-ten’ parallel here between a human as a holobiont, and Gaia as the carrier of all lifeforms.

GAIA

Both the concept of Gaia and that of the holobiont are fundamentally relational. They reflect an ecological way of thinking that goes back to Ernst Haeckel, who coined the term in 1866, to describe the encompassing entanglements between living organisms, and between organisms and their environment.8 The word ‘ecology’ is, as is commonly known, rooted in the Greek oikos, meaning home, which underscores the obvious links between ecology and architecture, and the idea of being at home in the world. The latter aligns with how the Scottish Centre of Geopoetics describes its topic of interest: ‘Geopoetics... proposes... that the various domains into which knowledge has been separated can be unified by a poetics which places the planet Earth at the centre of experience... It seeks a new or renewed sense of world, a sense of space, light and energy which is experienced both intellectually, by developing our knowledge, and sensitively, using all our senses to become attuned to the world, and requires both serious study and a certain amount of de-conditioning of ourselves by working on the body-mind.’9 With this focus on sensing and experiencing the Earth in its totality as a way of becoming attuned to the world, geopoeticians walk, at least partially, in the footsteps of the great Scottish regional planner and biologist Patrick Geddes. They ask for an understanding that is truly a worldview: to see, as Dutch architect Jaap Bakema put it in the 1950s, the totality of existence.10 Geopoetics certainly isn’t more than a rough sketch of an approach, nor is ecopoetics. As Jonathan Skinner, editor of Ecopoetics argued in the first issue of his eponymous journal: ‘“Eco” here signals – no more, no less – the house we share with several million other species, our planet Earth. “Poetics” is used as poesis, or making, not necessarily to emphasize the critical over the creative act (nor vice versa). Thus: ecopoetics, a house making.’11 The words of Skinner bring to mind a part of the title of architect Bruno Taut’s 1920 book Die Auflösung der Städte oder die Erde eine gute Wohnung: oder auch: der Weg zur alpinen Architektur. 12 With his notion of the Earth as a good dwelling, Taut expressed a sentiment that retrospectively can be considered ecopoetical. Similarly, the reference in the title of his book to the topic of his previous publication, Alpine Architektur, can be interpreted as geopoetical, as it places the Earth in the centre of experience, and implicitly proposes ‘to design like a mountain’, in analogy to what ecologist Aldo Leopold later suggested as ‘to think like a mountain’.13

In the same vein, there is biopoetics, which entails an engagement with the – living – world as well. As Andreas Weber put it: ‘“Biopoetics” pursues the idea that we can understand living beings through the aliveness we share with them. We are alive as are all organisms – and our existence follows the same principles which we know firsthand and from the inside, as it is through them we exist. These principles are alert concern, feeling, expressivity, connection-through-mutual transformation. They are the creative principles which guide poetic experience – hence the term “biopoetics”.’14

This may all sound arcane and detached from the pragmatics of architecture, urban planning and landscape design, but maybe it isn’t. Katarzyna Machtyl argued in ‘Living and Dwelling: A Biosemiotic and Anthropological View on Inhabiting, Art and Design’ that it is ‘impossible to distinguish between . . . building and dwelling, just as it is impossible to distinguish between culture and nature. . . . the very act of dwelling is actually the act of building – it is a process, it does not have an initial form – a project that is unchangeable regardless of how its realization turns out, nor a final form, because while living in a seemingly ready-made structure, we change it – whether we are human or nonhuman subjects. It is made possible by our (both human and nonhuman animals’) agency and the possibility of making choices, which . . . we make “in the moment of now”, and which “design” our future.’15

Machtyl emphasizes the connection between dwelling and building, and not coincidentally she omits the human-centric third word that Martin Heidegger added in his famous 1951 talk in Darmstadt, ‘Bauen, Wohnen, Denken’. Thinking has for too long been considered the exclusive privilege of humans. Later in the same article Machtyl dwells on (no pun intended) design for more than humans: ‘Non-anthropocentric design is nothing more than a design that is turned towards co-being, not just human well-being, and conducted from a human perspective. After all, what are nature reserves, nesting boxes for birds, clothes for pets, or gardens? They all have in common the human perspective that lies at the very beginning of the (future-oriented) design process. It is humans who decide which species to protect, which to exterminate, which to nurture and put “on display”, which to remove, which are useful (to humans, of course), which are harmful.’16

And she adds that ‘Non-human-oriented design does not mean designing birdhouses or gadgets for dogs, but is oriented towards inter-species relations, coexistence, biosemiotic dialogue.’17

DWELLING

This is pretty much what Andrés Jaque is trying to do with his more-than-human architecture, such as the Reggio School he recently completed in Madrid, mindful that any building will inevitably be inhabited by other organisms than humans. The analogy does not work perfectly, but his work is the architectural equivalent of a holobiont. On different scales, the same is true of Debra Solomon’s multispecies urbanism, and of Maike van Stiphout’s nature-inclusive landscape architecture. The idea of the ‘more-than-human’ goes back to David Abram, who wrote in 1996 in the concluding part of The Spell of the Sensuous: Perceptions and Language in a More-than-Human World: ‘The human mind is not some otherworldly essence that comes to house itself inside our physiology. Rather, it is instilled and provoked by the sensorial field itself, induced by the tensions and participations between the human body and the animate earth. The invisible shapes of smells, rhythms of cricketsong, and the movement of shadows all, in a sense, provide the subtle body of our thoughts. Our own reflections, we might say, are a part of the play of light and its reflections. “The inner – what is it, if not intensified sky?” By acknowledging such links between the inner, psychological world and the perceptual terrain that surrounds us, we begin to turn inside-out, loosening the psyche from its confinement within a strictly human sphere, freeing sentience to return to the sensible world that contains us. Intelligence is no longer ours alone but is a property of the earth; we are in it, of it, immersed in its depths. And indeed each terrain, each ecology, seems to have its own particular intelligence, its unique vernacular of soil and leaf and sky.’18

What does all of this have to do with architecture, landscape and urban design? Everything. Because every design intervention is on a planetary, macro scale, as well as on a micro scale connected with everything else, organic and inorganic. By not pitting architecture (or culture, or humans) against nature (or the planet), the design of buildings, cities, landscapes has the potential to become both less important, and more important. Less important if, as biosemiotician Thomas A. Sebeok – an earlier subscriber to the Gaia hypothesis – put it, we accept that we are only looking at a fraction of ‘that minuscule segment of nature some anthropologists grandly compartmentalize as culture’.19 And more important to the extent that we can understand architecture, urban design and landscape architecture as contributions to the whole of the Earth, Gaia.

IN AND FROM THE WORLD

Products of design are inseparable in the world and from the world they are in, like blood, the narrator in Italo Calvino’s short story in Ti con zero, ‘Il sangue, il mare’.20 The point of departure of this story about ‘the blood, the sea’ is the similarity in composition between blood plasma and sea water. It relates how what once surrounded humans, ocean water, has become our bodily content. The inorganic outside has become the inside of organisms. Just as we carry the ocean in our body while we swim in it, there is no categorical difference between inside and outside in architecture. If it wasn’t the title of the tear-jerking charity hit single from 1985, I would say ‘we are the world’. And simultaneously ‘the world is us’. And the same goes for architecture, which is the world, just as the world is architecture. Perhaps this is what Bakema was hinting at with his total architecture and the totality of space, which seems for architecture both humbling and gloriously liberating. ←

1 A Rough Sketch for a Proposed Film Dealing with the Powers of Ten and the Relative Size of the Universe (1968), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f5x_ dRKIF4, accessed 23 May 2023.

2 Baptiste Morizot, Ways of Being Alive (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2022 [2020]), 4.

3 The Family of Man: The Photographic Exhibition Created by Edward Steichen for the Museum of Modern Art (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1955).

4 Powers of Ten: A Film Dealing with the Relative Size of Things in the Universe and the Effect of Adding Another Zero (1977), https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0, accessed 23 May 2023.

5 Kees Boeke, Cosmic View: The Universe in 40 Jumps (New York: John Day, 1957).

6 James E. Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979).

7 See: Lynn Margulis and René Fester (eds.), Symbiosis as a Source of Evolutionary Innovation: Speciation and Morphogenesis (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991).

8 Ernst Haeckel, Generelle Morphologie der Organismen (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1866).

9 Scottish Centre for Geopoetics. https:// www.geopoetics.org.uk/what-is-geopoetics/, accessed

10 Bakema addressed this idea in multiple

articles. See for instance: Jaap Bakema, ‘Towards a Total Architecture’, Architectural Design (April 1959), 145-146.

11 Jonathan Skinner, ‘Editor’s Statement,’ Ecopoetics 1 (2001), 5-8: 7.

12 Bruno Taut, Die Auflösung der Städte oder die Erde eine gute Wohnung: oder auch: der Weg zur alpinen Architektur (Hagen: Folkwang Verlag, 1920).

13 Bruno Taut, Alpine Architektur (Hagen: Folkwang Verlag, 1919); Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989 [1949]), 129-133.

14 Andreas Weber, The Biology of Wonder: Aliveness, Feeling and the Metamorphosis of Science, https://biologyofwonder.org/biopoetics, accessed 22 May 2023.

15 Katarzyna Machtyl, ‘Living and Dwelling: A Biosemiotic and Anthropological View on Inhabiting, Art and Design’, Biosemiotics 15 (2022), 215-233: 226.

16 Ibid., 228.

17 Ibid., 229.

18 David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perceptions and Language in a More-than-Human World (New York: Vintage, 1997 [1996]), 156.

19 Thomas Sebeok, ‘Vital Signs’, The American Journal of Semiotics 3/3 (1985), 1-27: 2.

20 Italo Calvino, Ti con zero (Milan: Mondadori, 2019 [1995]), 36-46.

Bruno Taut, Alpine Architektur (Hagen: Folkwang Verlag, 1919) Heidelberg University Library

THE ART OF ARCHITECTURE

It was a pleasure to dive into the harvest of this year’s graduation projects. Not only did it give me an insight into 44 individual plans, but it also offered me a world tour in just one morning, as so many places and continents were represented in all your plans. Let me highlight some of the interesting, surprising and disturbing aspects.

Many of the projects we found interesting share the moniker ‘Anthropocene 2.0’. This is a concept I borrowed from landscape architect and thinker Dirk Sijmons. Of course you are familiar with the term Anthropocene: the period of humanity’s extractive and abusive exploitation of the world’s natural resources. Sijmons uses the term ‘Anthropocene 2.0’ to describe the opposite position, which seeks to repair and reconstruct what humankind has destroyed by regenerating the soil, the water and the air. Quite a lot of the projects have in common that they are looking for ways to repair the destruction that has been done. In all of these plans, an emphasis on and generous attitude towards flora and fauna, in every sense of the word, is quite natural. It means that as an architect or urban planner, you need an extra skill set, that of the ecologist. If you are serious about restoring natural systems, it is not enough to draw or render nature, you need to know how it works. I don’t know about you, but speaking for myself, there is a huge knowledge gap that needs to be filled. Most spatial planners and designers don’t have this skill set yet, and even landscape designers don’t always know how to design with nature. In this day and age, we all need to broaden our interests to include ecological thinking, with its automatic long-term perspective and the inclusion of designing with nature, flora and fauna. Beyond their impressive and ingenious aspects, I was a little surprised to see that many projects lacked a direct link to the times we are living in. Do I need to mention all the crises and transitions we are experiencing? Like the pandemic, the polarization and inequality in our society, the farmers’ protests and the coming revolutions in agriculture, and the war in Ukraine. All these crises were largely absent from the projects. I didn’t see a lot of political angles in the graduation briefs; there was much more emphasis on the personal motivations for starting a project. This has its pros and cons, but sometimes it made me question the urgency. I regularly asked myself: ‘Why has this project been undertaken? What is its relevance?’ →

Michelle Provoost, partner at Crimson Historians & Urbanists and director of the International New Town Institute, was a guest critic at the graduation weekend, which drew over one thousand visitors. She gave a talk on the themes that struck her in the final projects. This is an abridged version of that talk. Text MICHELLE PROVOOST Photos JONATHAN ANDREW

This is not to say that change was not on the agenda at this graduation weekend. On the contrary, there was a clear emphasis on the need to change the way we do things, on so many levels. For more than a century, we have been accustomed to thinking about our actions in terms of progress, of doing more and doing better, in quantitative terms. However, the question inherent in some of the plans has been: ‘Can we do less but, for example, create more happiness or a better environment?’ If this is the intention, we need to change our narrative, our habits and our role as designers. In line with this, the idea of the architect as someone who designs and builds was often questioned. Other basic assumptions of the profession have also been challenged, such as ‘a building is made of concrete’ or ‘a house is made for a family’. Rightly so, I think, because in all these changes, designers can lead the way by experimenting, by showing what is possible, or by using the power of imagination to create an image of a new situation.

Another thing I saw in your projects, quite surprisingly, is a reappraisal of architecture as an autonomous field of knowledge. In contrast to the general emphasis on the social aspects of the built environment, on the collective and the community, there seems to be a renewed interest in architectural form as such, in architectural language, symbolism and aesthetics. The last time this approach to architecture was in vogue was in the 1980s. Some of the graduation designs show a similar interest in the autonomous aspects of architecture, in the history and vocabulary of architecture as a method and a body of knowledge.

In my opinion, this is just as important as the societal approach to architecture. We need both. If you’re looking for architecture as a way of imagining possible futures, you also need the formal aspects, the aesthetics, the form and the space to be convincing. I’m particularly interested in the aesthetics and the formal aspects that will come out of all these changes that you’re proposing. I’m sure that new approaches to research and construction will lead to a new architectural language, and I’m very excited to see where this will go. Thank you very much for your attention. ←

ARCHIPRIX NOMINATIONS

At the close of the Graduation Weekend 2022, director Madeleine Maaskant announced the four nominations for the Archiprix Netherlands. The four nominated graduation projects were: Exhibition for Imagination by Steven van Raan (Architecture), Exit Urbanism by Max Tuinman (Urbanism), Choreographing Resilience by Justyna Chmielewska (Landscape Architecture) and Alive Algae Architecture by Irene Wing Sum Wu (Architecture).

Additionally, both the Audience Award 2022 and the Research Award 2022 were awarded to XXX by Anna Torres (Architecture), the Engagement Award 2022 was awarded to Heelhuis by Niels Geerts (Architecture) and the [R]evolution Planet Award 2021 was awarded to The Plant by Jasmijn Rothuizen (Architecture). ←

The Amsterdam Academy of Architecture nominated two Architecture projects, one Urbanism project and one Landscape Architecture project for the annual Archiprix Netherlands competition.

FOR IMAGINATION

and materials that form interesting new spaces. The idea is to design the spaces first and then see if they will have a function, and if so, which one?

The graduation work is a study only on paper in which there are no limits, and I do not allow myself to be hindered by the reality of architecture. I was inspired by surrealistic design techniques and I want to use these to explore the extreme side of architecture. Using different design techniques gives me the opportunity to look at and design from different perspectives. I want to create a field of tension between architecture and art, but also between imagination and reality. I will take this as far as I can, to eventually design absurd spaces about which people will continuously marvel.

I began this graduation work with a return to a personal childhood drawing of a city. A city that is unknown to me and originated from my personal fantasy and memory. The drawing offers room for imagination. It triggers curiosity about what goes on behind the door of the house. Moreover, this drawing also evokes emotion. Is this a cosy part of the city or does the absence of people on the street create a disturbing feeling? As a child, you are brash, and you let go of any form of reality. This inspires me to think about how you, as an architect, can break free from the limitations you unconsciously impose on yourself. Therefore, the goal of my graduation is to (re)design a place without any form of restriction and to give back the historical experience of that place. I searched for a method with which I could create compositions I could never have imagined before. I don’t want to design a traditional building with a front door and several rooms. On the contrary, I am looking for a strategy to combine objects, spaces

real) drawings can yield a better, more exciting and more fascinating architectural design. The architect as artist versus the architect as realist. Free and intuitive creation versus deliberate and structured working. These are two completely different design approaches that intrigue me. Building on my essay, in which I argue for a more surrealist way of thinking of an architect, I would like to demonstrate in my project how these two design approaches can be brought together and how surrealism can bring innovation in architecture.

In this graduation work, you will find my design for the Frederiksplein in Amsterdam. The Frederiksplein is a place with a rich history, of which unfortunately nothing is visible in its contemporary form. I aim to restore the old historical value by means of a layered design, which is based on a lot of research, while at the same time creating space for imagination, alienation and wonder.

In the design process, I tried as an architect to disconnect from the limitations that I consciously and/ or unconsciously impose on myself –a process that I associate with drawing, a fascination of mine. I have used existing design techniques from surrealist art, another fascination of mine. This graduation work can therefore also be regarded as an investigation into the extent to which the process of making (sur -

STUDENT Steven van Raan

Architecture GRADUATION date 4 May 2022

MENTOR Rob Hootsmans COMMITTEE MEMBERS Marlies Boterman and Paul Kuipers ADDITIONAL MEMBERS Elsbeth

Falk and Gus Tielens

Nomination

Steven van Raan drew a city that originated from his personal fantasy and memory.

3 Three-dimensional composition of forms.

2 Two-dimensional composition of forms.

1 Selection of forms, scaled to the same size.

5 Various three-dimensional compositions tied together.

4 Various two-dimensional compositions tied together.

6 Photos of various three-dimensional compositions combined.

8 Add scale and insert in existing urban context. 9 Invert by transforming empty spaces into mass. 10 Create space by extruding mass. 11 Flat model of composition.

7 Frame and digitally enhance the composition.

Drawing on flat model.

Steven van Raan searched for a method with which he could create compositions he could never have imagined before.

1 The cube houses / the soldier, 2 The city wall / the traveller, 3 The square / the market ladies, 4 The gate / the gatekeeper, 5 The foot walk / the touris,

8 The ruin / the firemen,

Steven van Raan used existing design techniques from surrealist art.

6 The cupola / the inventor, 7 The gallery / the violin player,

9 The grid / the modernist, 10 The artwork / the art collector, 11 The safe/ the safe keeper, 12 The tower / the bank director

Romney hut These huts are scattered over the entire are in the Baaibuurt. The Romney huts are constructed of a clamped tubular steel frame with a central entrance. The hut was used to accommodate facilities for which abnormal roof spans were required. On some airfields, two or more Romney would be erected to accommodate large stores and workshops, or occasionally used as aircraft hangars.

Niermeijer’s heritage large storage space filled to the brim with artwork of Theo Niermeijer, sculpture artist and founder of this settlement by allowing others to live around his atelier on this place.

Theo Niermeijers legacy is scattered over the area. In and out of sight are large metal sculptures being overgrown and corroding because of the weather. In the bushes, between the trees, underneath the soil, Theo’s artworks live on.

De Karavaan De Karavaan is a row of structures, cars and carts melted together into one long house. The row has been growing over the years after which it got nicknamed ‘the caravan’. Inhabited by Elya Salié and her family.

Pizza oven A place to come together, outside. A self-built pizza oven that gets used during hot summer days for providing delicious pizza for parties.

World War 2 relic one of the three out of 16 bunkers situated on Zeeburgereiland. This bunker has once been transformed into a neighborhood café and is now only in use as a workshop.

Travelerswagons

There are multiple ‘clownswagons’ scattered over the area, one of them was built in the late 19th century, others in the early 20th century. Built for living in, and still inhabited!

Sharing space Not only inside are communal spaces. but some parts outside are also being used communally. Places to play, to cook, to relax on a hot summer day. A place for kids and adults to come together. In the shade of the trees.

In nature The area is covered in green, or rather inside nature. Nature grows everywhere in the area, grasses, shrubs, under the large trees. There is a large path that runs through the area, from which the smaller paths lead to the front doors and workspaces of inhabitants.

Community building The communal building a shared place for all the inhabitants of One Peaceful World. (un-)organised gatherings, replacement of a living room, parties, band practice on stage, neighborhood council-meetings. A place to relax and sit by the fireplace or to be active together. A place well used by all of the inhabitants, inlcuding a shower and toilets.

The entrance The entrance is used by inhabitants and, when still active, used by the public as entrance to the sculpture garden and open-air museum. The area started because of Theo, and the entrances of the area still show his name on the signs: Theo NiermeijerThe iron poet “It has to be this heavy, because it can’t be any lighter.” Free entrance

The ultimate answer is not up to me; that’s not possible. Any design of what the perfect neighbourhood might be, misses the point by definition; it’s too one-sided. This is a quest, and my contribution is to stop and point in a different direction, advocating for a much slower lens. I am pleading for designers to get to know the area they work in –and question all reasons for intervening over and over. Are we still doing the right thing, or should we maybe be doing more than just design?

it? Is the greater good housing, or is it ecology, cultural values, social values, creativity or productivity? The urbanism profession and the Academy of Architecture seem to participate in the system of largescale and efficient design. I am part of that system too. But I do not believe that designing a dense car-free urban district with green roofs solves the problems we are facing. And with this graduation project, I have the possibility to question this largescale applied machinal way of developing and designing.

This project became about saving an undefined and unknown area within the city. We are eradicating entire areas without realizing the value of these anomalies for the city. We are sacrificing diverse, ecological, productive and creative but also vulnerable communities, only to build back so-called sustainable neighbourhoods hoping they become a diverse and well-working part of the city again. How do we protect and value that which, at first sight, seems worthless by current standards? Are we building in the name of people –or for people? What is the greater good, and who defines

This project is not a design, this project is an approach, a changed way of thinking. The Baaibuurt-west in Amsterdam is scheduled for demolition; 900 new houses are being projected on this inhabited area. This project started with a fascination for empty and unused spaces. During the process, I managed to predict which areas in Amsterdam were going to be demolished, thanks to multiple parameters. One of those areas intrigued me; I can simply not believe that everything and everyone there is going to be flattened, cut down and evicted.

A part of the area as imagined in a possible future.

part of the area analysed by drawing.

Materials scavenged from the area, serving as base for the model. Are you willing to get your hands dirty to get to know the area?

1.200 inhabitants

(4 per house)

300 houses 33,3 house/ha

work/inhabitant

25.000+ m2 20,8+ m2

Carpenters (Car)mechanics

Sculptors Construction companies

Ateliers Storage

Second-hand stores/repairshops

Bar/dancing Intercultural organization for participation and integration

Funfair-operators

Broedplaats

Clothes store Workshops

Yogastudio Canine-training Dog daycares

Band-practice room

Self-built livingrooms

Self-built caravan café Horse meadow Recycle Lounge Gallery Club 44

Boat/Bunker Supermarket Museum beeldenpark, Zeeburg + much more!

1.620 inhabitants

(1,8 per house)

900 houses 71,4 house/ha max. 16.000m2 9,9 m2 work/inhabitant Restaurants Realtors Doctor Dentist Office Retail Gym

EXIT URBANISM

350 inhabitants (4,3 per house) 80 houses 6,3 house/ha

15.000m2 42,9 m2 work/inhabitant

Carpenters (Car)mechanics Sculptors Construction companies Ateliers Storage

Second-hand stores/repairshops Bar/dancing Intercultural organization for participation and integration Funfair-operators Broedplaats

‘GOOD’ URBANISM

Clothes store Workshops

Yogastudio Canine-training Dog daycares

Band-practice room

Self-built livingrooms Self-built caravan café Horse meadow Recycle Lounge Gallery Club 44

Boat/Bunker Supermarket Museum beeldenpark, Zeeburg

Wilkesstraat

IMAGINE SHARING WORKPLACES -

used for

working hands in the

smaller shared workshops

HornstraatLeo

HaarmslaanBob

Anthonievan Akenstraat

Keulen-DeelstrastraatAtje

AtjeKeulen-Deelstrastraat

Kamerbeekstraat

AREA self-organized festivals for the island and city

DillemastraatFoekje

Alidavanden Bosstraat

WielemapleinGeertje

EefKamerbeekstraat

EefKamerbeekstraat

DillemastraatFoekje

EefKamerbeekstraat

HOUSEa place for the

WielemapadGeertje

converted trailers

KamerbeekpadEef

KeesBroekmanstraat

KeesBroekmanstraat

HornstraatLeo SenNida straat

FARMa small animal farm for kids and elderly DIKE SHEEPmaintaining the dike with grazing animals EXPLORE VALUABLE FAÇADESconstructive artistic artworks VEGETABLE GARDENgrowing of crops and fruits LIFESTYLE living different than society demands ARTWORKS ornaments and objects BIG FIELD an important natural void TREES large adult trees WARNING CLOSED OFFpreserve open character SWAMPreed growth TRASHaccumulation of unused materials MANAGE NO MOWING TRASH COLLECTION NO PAVING MONITOR TREEShealth and size STRUCTURAL DECAYhousing and buildings ASPHALT CONDITIONuse will intensify SOUND festival noise pollution LIGHTSpublic space time sensitive lights

SECOND-HAND COMMUNITY

IMAGINE

SELF BUILT HOUSING only actually self-built allowed SECOND HAND CIRCLE stores as main supplier CRAFTING COMMUNITY inhabitants that help each other build EXPLORE

VALUABLE

SECOND HAND STORES fixing and selling TREES large Italian poplars and oaks BAR DANCING social space and country bar AVAILABLE SPACEused by postal service

WARNING STONE unnecessary paving CHARACTERfences OVERGROWTHplants overgrowing public spaces SWAMPreed growth

MANAGE TRASH COLLECTION LESS PAVING MONITOR

OCCUPATIONamount of people democratically chosen RENTAL PRICES low prices need to remain low STRUCTURAL STRENGTHhousing and buildings TREEShealth and size

Re-naturalizing rivers should serve future generations who are going to deal with even more severe floodings. This project can serve as an example for other Polish cities that have to deal with similar issues. With time people will be able to slowly accept the streams they once turned away from. Restoring the presence of the Strzyża represents the interests of other tributaries of the Vistula River, which have disappeared from the landscapes of too many Polish cities.

The only way to restore the Strzyża is through various interventions: from engineered city investments on the grounds belonging to the municipality to simple community actions, which will take place in the areas owned by privatized neighbourhoods. Diverse ownerships around the river make it impossible for a single top-down plan. At this moment, the only way to fight the floods and the disappearance of the stream is by local collaborations. Only together will we be able to deal with the consequences of the lost river’s ecosystems.

Over the past 30 years, I have observed the slow disappearance of the Strzyża Stream from the landscape of my hometown. The government sold many kilometres of the Strzyża to diverse investors. Some of her pieces belong to the national treasury, some to commercial companies, the rest is still in the ownership of Gdansk’s municipality. As a result, the river has no coherent planning, and many of her pieces have uncontrollably disappeared underground. The consequences of these money-driven actions are catastrophic: during heavy rainfall, the stream floods the city. The destroyed stream’s biotope (degraded topsoil and wiped-out riparian vegetation) is unable to absorb the rainwater, which leads to floods. Only in these moment does the Strzyża reappear, while for most of the year it remains invisible to the eye. It is necessary to act now to minimize recurring floods. In the age of climate crisis, bringing our lost rivers back to life is a necessity. The goal of my graduation project is to restore the physical presence of the Strzyża’s buried underground ecosystem and, as a result of that action, to minimize the floods. All of the designed interventions aim to improve the preparedness of citizens of Gdansk for living in a flood zone.

Each year there are fewer of them. Some have disappeared underground, from time to time reappearing in a littered ditch between the buildings, to sink into the ground again somewhere. This is the fate of the Strzyża Stream and other tributaries of the Vistula River. Almost all of the Vistula’s tributaries have disappeared from the landscape of Polish cities. In Poznań, the stream was interrupting city development, so it was moved. In Krakow, all rivers except the Vistula have disappeared. Wrocław’s streams were forgotten, they disappeared, and when they reappeared during the floods, 40 per cent of the city was underwater. Each summer the Rawa Stream dried up more until one day, it completely vanished from Katowice. In Gdansk, 2 km of the Strzyża were diverted to underground pipes.

Inspired by the existing actions of placing sandbags, this project offers a choreography of resilient actions, which instead of just protecting, prepare people for upcoming floods. All of the resilient actions aim to strengthen the presence and ecological value of the Strzyża.

Every few years, the Strzyża floods the city of Gdansk. Only in these moments does the stream reappear, whereas for most of the year it remains invisible to the eye (red line).

Collective garden around the Strzyża with resurfaced underground concrete pipe.

ALIVE ALGAE ARCHITECTURE

still water and open wavy water.

I’ve created five towers (Consolidating> Growing> Dissolving> Transiting> Waving), allowing you to experience the material and landscape from different atmospheres and perspectives. The towers are connected by different bridges, which also harmoniously reflects this feature of Het Twiske: from spot to spot by bridge to bridge. This design will provide a poetic experience for the visitors towards the material and landscape: it aims to provoke the discussion about using algae as a future material or resource.

fore, this project aims to boost the market field and demand for microalgae, to encourage faster and cheaper development of the microalgae system. Or at least broaden the public’s knowledge about this new potential material.

Alive Algae Architecture demonstrates the built environment’s opportunities with microalgae. This project explores how microalgae can be integrated into the building or if they even can become construction material. The location –Het Twiske nature reserve near Amsterdam –harnesses the quality of this material in a self-sufficient ecosystem. Over time, the building will continuously change. The project boasts a rich quality of different types of landscape: forest, open grass field, reed field, inner

It focuses on a bio-based material on a microbiological scale and its application in architecture. Say ‘algae’: most people immediately think of pond scum –but what they do not realize is that we would not exist if algae didn’t exist. Microalgae are the oldest organisms on Earth; they are the beginning of the food chain. In the past few years, it has been made clear that we can no longer ignore the threats to climate change, the economy and future energy security. Microalgae can help address all these major issues. They can absorb CO2; produce oxygen, power, fuels and food; purge water during their own growing system; and produce a large amount of biomass. Despite the many advantages, the development is very small-scale and expensive. There -

It is an innovative project. It is a material-based project. It is research of microalgae. It is built from microalgae. It is built for the material. It is built for the ecosystem. It is built for the landscape. It is about nature-culture. It is about the basics of the cycle of life, also in architecture.

Alive Algae Architecture is a project that combines the knowledge of science, art and architecture: research as a scientist, craft as an artist, design as an architect. This project is a form of innovative research.

STUDENT Irene Wing Sum Wu MASTER Architecture

DATE 29 August 2022

GRADUATION

MENTOR Jeroen van Mechelen

COMMITTEE MEMBERS Laura van Santen and Marlies Boterman

ADDITIONAL MEMBERS Lada Hrsak and Milad Pallesh ARCHIPRIX Nomination

Model.

Material experiment pallet.

Impression of five watchtowers.

Consolidating / material mock-up / ramp algae. T4: Transiting / model.

T5: Waving / material mock-up / algae fabric.

T2: Growing / impression / reflection of landscape.

T3: Dissolving / material mock-up / dissolving bricks.

Detailed typology; a clever and sensual workspace.

unapologetically gives back the city to sex workers by inhabiting and densifying the inner roofscape of a typical Amsterdam city block –Blauwlakkenblok –which once hosted a great many sex work windows. It recognises the variety of sex workers’ needs by providing qualitative workspaces to over 70 sex workers and communal facilities. By the nature of its design, XXX alternates intimate courtyards of fresh vegetation, delicate lighting and layers of flowing veils with larger, breathing and restful public spaces for the city. The result is a project that offers sex workers and the city’s users a delightfully slow-paced, mysterious Red Light experience and honours the key role sex workers play in our society.

How can we create a more balanced solution that listens first to sex workers’ needs, all the while benefiting the city and its inhabitants? How can we learn ways to rethink a public space that has been overwhelmingly designed to cater to the heterosexual masculine fantasy?

combined with the lack of proper infrastructure results in a saturated and over-capacitated neighbourhood.

Guided by an intuitive artistic approach, a sensitive collaboration with Amsterdam’s sex work community was born. Through a series of intimate conversations with sex workers and meticulous observations of the area, precious details, stories, needs and dreams came out as the building blocks for our project. XXX playfully provides a fresh answer to the city’s current controversial questioning on how to deal with its evolving Red Light district. This intervention

The municipality of Amsterdam sees this as an opportunity to push an intensive gentrification project meant to close down windows, remove sex work and bring in a different kind of tourism, by means of an alarmist Red Light narrative. In an attempt to relocate sex workers, the municipality has been developing an ill-conceived and insensitive ‘erotic hotel’ that would push the sex work community outside the city. Conse quently, sex workers are faced with a myriad of uncertainties. With an ever-shrinking number of dedicated workspaces, room rentals are becoming increasingly unaffordable, and many sex workers see themselves working from home in unsafe conditions or simply going out of work.

view of XXX; a densifying intervention in the Red Light district.

XXX is an architectural invitation to rediscover sensuality and intimacy in the heart of Amsterdam’s historical Red Light district De Wallen.

Amsterdam’s sex work industry has always been intrinsically linked to the city’s development, dating back to its beginnings as a harbour city in the 1300s.

Over the years and through changing legislation, sex workers have seen street work evolve from exposed and unsafe into a more controlled and secure window work. This work-behind-glass typology is typical of the Dutch urban landscape. De Wallen, a central neighbourhood in the heart of Amsterdam, is notorious for its rowdy atmosphere and its confronting windows –and even more so for the women standing behind them. The Red Light district sees over 8 million visitors a year; the size of the area

2022

30

Ground floor; a porous block made publicly accessible.

First floor; spaces for sex work are organized around lush courtyards and shape the inner block.

Section through XXX; a roofscape addition to Blauwlakkenblok.

Mysterious narrow alleys

guide the entrance to the project.

A central green space and crossing walkway offer intimate public space to the city.

Cosy wooden corridors provide slow-paced circulation and lively interactions.

Warm red lights, vegetation and veils create a layered and romantic atmosphere.

A central green space and crossing walkway offer intimate public space to the city.

the environment at a given moment. This way of designing has led to a main setup: a residential building (bed house) on the Overtoom and a health clinic at the park. The exponential economic growth and political developments of the last decades have led to a privatization of healthcare. At the same time, the current pressure on the sector and the growing and aging population demand a revision of the plans for healthcare. Workshops were held in the process with relatives, care providers and care developers. Two common denominators were striking: everyone wants to provide care (‘the broad care team’) and the general call to make the building very specific, but flexible at the same time. Every patient is unique and has their own needs. We need to look at more inclusive forms of living, where prevention, inspiration and humanity are central. Heelhuis is mainly intended as an instigator to think about better care buildings, in addition to showing several concrete design solutions. After all, many care homes have been designed as efficient care machines due to the privatization of these services. In Heelhuis this is radically reversed: here, the resident, the next of kin and therefore the quality of life (and death) are central on all scale levels.

through urban life in the base and through a garden as an extension of the Vondelpark. In this way, Heelhuis is an inherent part of the city, and gives back space to the surrounding residents and visitors. Residents of Heelhuis are an inseparable and autonomous part of society. The project has been approached entirely from the resident’s point of view. During the design process, the question was constantly asked: ‘I wake up . . and then what? What do I do next? What does my day look like?’ The building has grown in this way. Step by step, spaces were added, and the scale of the design grew. Residents can determine to what extent they want to be part of the community and

Heelhuis is a proposal for a care building based entirely on the patient. The project is a response to the manifesto for the care of Boukje Bügel-Gabrëls, a fellow student who started the project. During her period of illness and rehabilitation, she experienced the limitations of the current healthcare architecture.

Laura Alvarez and Jarrik Ouburg

Boukje recorded her experiences in diaries and shared them with her loved ones. She initiated spatial proposals where hope is central to all the pieces. Heelhuis replaces the current Reade rehabilitation centre, which will move to the site of the OLVG West hospital. The current building turns away from both the city and the park behind it. Heelhuis does the opposite: it adapts to the immediate environment

van Mechelen and Stephan

Heelhuis and its gardens blend in on both sides: park and city.

The dwellings have been designed with the bed as the starting point: from intimate and quiet to open and connected.

idiom of the floor plans is then based on the room, the Vondelpark and the Overtoom.

The

Model showing the section of the building.

Heelhuis in different scales.

A built, sunken garden as a spa for residents and the city.

Pilgrim in the Vondelpark

–by Boukje Bügel-Gabreëls.

The room.

The garden.

The community.

The recessed garden.

The health clinic.

The environment.

apart to make the building permeable and accessible.

By adding public functions, which make use of the different energy flows in the building (food production, catering and various accommodation functions), it becomes a multifunctional power station. This will make the new plant a pleasant place to visit, enter and use. The Plant shows that energy facilities need not be hidden away, but can actually add value to the living environment in the neighbourhood.

ed — it is vital to see these power plants as an architectural task in their own right. This way, we prevent these new buildings from blocking the city, and the energy processes become experienceable for the resident. As an architect, I want to ensure that these power plants are given an appropriate place in the city, not only creating space for the development of renewable energies, but also enhancing urban liveability. The research for my thesis pursues a new typology of the power plant. It is important that power plants become accessible, have a recreational function and that the technology can be integrated from various perspectives –that they represent a positive change in our energy transition. The Plant is a decentralized energy supply that meets the heat demand of people living in its immediate vicinity. The new strategy transforms the large urban heat network for the city into a local network for local residents. Residents can literally experience where their heat comes from. With minor adjustments in the development plan, the power station becomes the heart of the neighbourhood, a place for all residents. Several paths for walkers and cyclists run through and around the building in the city park. As an icon, the power station gives identity to the neighbourhood. By turning the building inside out, technology is made visible. The different facets of technology are pulled

The energy transition is a huge effort to provide the Netherlands with sustainable energy. Generating energy is on the eve of a major shift. Coal and natural gas power plants are making way for wind farms and solar fields –a positive change in our energy transition. Not only the Dutch countryside, but our cities, too, are facing this inevitable change. This requires a new approach in the urban area. Where energy is now mainly generated outside the city, more and more local sustainable energy plants are popping up within the city. To prevent our cities from once again having to deal with a new generation of anonymous and meaningless utility buildings — elusive, inaccessible, unwant -

DATE 22 March 2022

Machiel Spaan

MENTOR

COMMITTEE MEMBERS Jeroen Atteveld and Kamiel Klaasse ADDITIONAL MEMBERS Dafne Wiegers and Floris Hund AMSTERDAM ACADEMY OF ARCHITECTURE (R)evolution Planet Award

The Plant.

Model with the heat network.

Energy strategy and location.

Cold square with the cooling basins.

Heat square with the geyser bath.

Urban plan with a heat and a cold square.

Different routes through and around the building.

in the middle of the park and the neighbourhood.

plant

tower.

Heat route connected with heat functions in the building.

HUMAN ZOO

Landscape architect Thijs de Zeeuw is an alumnus of the Academy of Architecture; it was in this capacity that he delivered the Kromhout lecture – named after one of the academy’s founders – during graduation weekend. The lecture, which was entitled ‘Stupid Optimism and the Power of Speculation’, explained why De Zeeuw faces the future with confidence.

De Zeeuw graduated in 2011 with a design for an urban nature garden on the site of Artis’s current car park. His design was well received by the zoo’s management, which subsequently asked him to design an elephant enclosure on a site immediately adjacent to the car park. De Zeeuw told the students present: ‘Be careful where you choose to do your graduation project!’

With this commission in his pocket, he decided to quit his job at H+N+S Landscape Architects and start his own business. He soon discovered that the other-than-human perspective was very important in this commission. ‘Designing zoos forces you to take up different perspectives,’ says De Zeeuw. ‘A zoo director will often ask: “Can you design an enclosure in which the animal performs its natural behaviour?” But it’s of course quite hard to find out if an animal likes your design. That leads to the question: What natural behaviour is relevant in a zoo?’ To answer this question, De Zeeuw cites the concept of ‘affordances’, as in: ‘A landscape that affords certain natural behaviour’. He designed a rock garden consisting of 163 unique concrete objects that all create a different kind of friction; the rough surfaces enable the elephants to scratch themselves. Another important notion is ‘agency’. How can you make sure an animal can act at will in its own environment? De Zeeuw designed the pond in which the elephants can bathe in such a way that visitors can get splashed when the elephants enter the water. The water sloshes over the edge of the pool, with startled visitors as a result. In response to the new enclosure, Dutch newspaper NRC headlined on its front page of 22 September 2022: ‘An Enclosure for Animals Should Not Be Too Perfect.’

The next project was an enclosure for two crocodiles (or, more precisely, false gharials) named Harry and Layla. ‘The challenge was: make an environment in which they might breed, so they produce offspring,’ says De Zeeuw. ‘Can you design an enclose that gets crocodiles in the mood for sex? That’s quite difficult to imagine, because I feel closer to elephants than to alligators.’ There was little information about the crocodiles’ requirements. Given were the water depth (it had to be deep enough for them to float, without their belly hitting the floor) and the temperature. That was all. ‘What is similar to the sexual life of crocodiles?’ De Zeeuw asked himself. ‘I thought of the seasons. They’re from south-east Asia. They have a wet and a dry season there. For the wet season, we designed a rain machine with a nice, fat tropical raindrop. When we first introduced the rain machine, it turned out that Harry and I are more alike than I thought, because neither of us like rain. He swam around the rain showers. That made me wonder if I’d done something wrong. Then I realized: being able to avoid rain is actually a good thing: it gives him agency over his wellbeing.’ In terms of offspring production, his design was less successful. ‘Eventually Harry and Layla were very affectionate, but unfortunately no young crocodiles were born.’ →

After studying Landscape Architecture at the Academy of Architecture, Thijs de Zeeuw designed several animal enclosures at Artis Amsterdam Royal Zoo. In his Kromhout lecture, he talked about this fascinating challenge involving numerous ethical questions.

Text DAVID KEUNING Photo GREG JENNIE

One assignment led to another, and De Zeeuw subsequently designed an aviary for snowy owls and cranes, an enclosure for prairie dogs and, together with Anna Fink, a habitat for oryx, which are extinct in the natural environment. Gradually, however, he began to have reservations. Already during the design of the elephant enclosure, De Zeeuw had second thoughts about locking up animals. Today, the elephants are doing better than they did in their previous enclosure, but still it’s a system that takes away freedom from animals. De Zeeuw started to speculate about other futures for the zoo. He received 5,000 euros from the Creative Industries Fund NL and organized a symposium at Sexyland. Inside the venue, an auditorium was built in the shape of a monkey enclosure for humans, with wooden rafters, car tires, bananas and nuts. The main questions at the symposium were: Can we design a zoo for the future? What should that zoo be about? What is nature? Can the zoo serve as an urban model? Would it be possible to design a city more like a zoo?

Together with Ira Koers, Bart de Hartog and David Habets, De Zeeuw built an impressive model, loosely based on the Swiss city of Zurich. ‘In the model we opened 10 per cent of the streets of Zurich to animals such as elephants and giraffes,’ said De Zeeuw. ‘The zoo has a lot of colonial associations. It’s a very Western concept to lock up wild animals and put them in a position where they can always be seen.’ The model gave rise to many subsequent questions: What is wildness? How wild are humans? Many zoos have a vulture. Can humans organize sky burials, where the body of a deceased person is given to the vultures? What place does sex have in a zoo? Shouldn’t every animal have a free choice of partner? De Zeeuw calls this project ‘an ongoing speculative laboratory. For me, this project is essential to keep working on zoos’.

Discussing the last project, De Zeeuw went one step further. The idea that nature has rights has become increasingly common in the last few years. But how do you know what nature wants? How do you give a voice to the non-human, or – more specifically – to an animal? Together with the Embassy of the North Sea, De Zeeuw started a project titled ‘A Voice for the Eel’. The aim of this project was to investigate to what extent it is possible to start a conversation with an eel. ‘First, I ate my last eel ever,’ said De Zeeuw, ‘which already changed my relation to it.’ He found out that eels can travel huge distances. A young, still transparent glass eel swims 6,000 km from the Sargasso Sea to the Netherlands, chooses a ditch to grow up in and then swims back to the Sargasso Sea. They only reproduce once, so they can’t be bred. Knowing there are eels in the water of the IJ, behind architecture centre Arcam, De Zeeuw went diving there and tried to make sound recordings of eels that were swimming around. It turned out that it’s very noisy under water, because sounds travel much faster in water than in air. Based on the data, he made a design for an underwater eel park, consisting of, among other things, cubical housing elements that he placed in the water.

Earlier in the process, he’d made a model of his design, in a basin with real water in it. After a week, there was a layer of algae floating on the water surface. ‘I had to come to terms with the fact that my model, which represented the living environment, actually became a living environment itself,’ said De Zeeuw. ‘I was tempted to kill the algae, but didn’t. Eventually, a tiny larva of a small black fly inhabited the water in my model. It was quite ugly, but also the perfect 1:100 scale eel. That larva became my hero.’ ←

zooofthefuture.com

T KNOW EVERY’THING

So the climate crisis will become a major issue in education?

WE DON

MARKUS ‘Can we exchange the word crisis for something else please? Portraying it as a perpetual emergency has the opposite effect. It’s like a fire alarm: if it’s gone off 20 times, no-one responds to it anymore. This alarmism is getting us nowhere. We need to accept that this is our new reality and work towards operating in it as spatial designers.’

JANNA ‘All of the projects that students are working on are situated in the transition, and each time in a different way. As designers we have the possibility to positively contribute to the transition, but it’s also important that we take this as our starting point.’

JOOST ‘The current generation of students grew up with the fact that they are in this crisis. They get a bit tired of people showing them pictures of floods or fires, it doesn’t trigger anything anymore. But they are very enthusiastic and positive to bring this change about. So it’s the context in which we operate, and we make them aware of that, even if they’re designing a chair.’

Do they need that?

JO ‘I think that differs per discipline. In landscape architecture it’s part of the profession to relate yourself to everything around you.’

JA ‘I think the differences are more on an individual level. Everyone’s an expert, developing their own unique path.’

MA ‘As spatial designers we work on a better future. Designing dystopia is not something you can sensibly do. Students get fed everyday with news stories of crises. On the one hand they’re afraid, and on the other hand paralysed. Cynicism can emerge from that, the feeling that nothing matters anyway. We want to overcome this and get them back to the belief that they can work on a better future. It’s not too late, and doing nothing certainly is not the better option.’

JO ‘I also try to make them aware that it’s always in collaboration. We need to step away from the idea that one designer can fix everything – a God-like person that draws the future. We’re all operating in a system together and need to collaborate on all levels, not just our disciplines but all kinds of expertise.’

JA ‘There is an absolute richness in students working together on projects within their discipline, but we’re also very much aware that the engagement with other disciplines and other forms of knowledge is necessary. We’re coming from a period where the role of the designer had more focus on the creative process, materiality and form. Now the questions are: How do you engage with growing volumes of knowledge? How do you build on the knowledge from other fields? As a design profession, we relate to and build on this knowledge from other fields, but it requires other skills in communication, exchange of information, hosting interviews and conversation, writing and being able to work in the context of and with other forms of knowledge as well.’

Is this interdisciplinary approach new?

JO ‘I was just reading the applications for next year and 75 per cent of them mention the interdisciplinary approach as one of the reasons they want to study in Amsterdam. You don’t master the other disciplines, but you know your position and role and you are aware of the field that you’re operating in.’

JA ‘And of the strength of the other fields and collaborations.’ Markus: ‘A long time ago one person did everything. Constructing buildings came out of craftsmanship. In the twentieth century everything got specialized. As an urbanist you used to design the whole city, including the infrastructure. Now everything is situated in ‘silos’ – separated fields of expertise, with project managers connecting everything. Luckily, in the Netherlands it’s relatively better than in other parts of the world. But things are getting more complex by the day. With all the global and local agendas, like climate change, you don’t come to satisfying conclusions or solutions with this specialist approach. Often, a lack of knowledge is not the problem. It’s the interface between the people in these silos – and with many others – that needs attention. This is where we need to engage.’ →

The three heads of the Master’s programmes at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture meet in Rotterdam, to discuss the new climate curriculum over a coffee in the café of Het Nieuwe Instituut.

Janna Bystrykh (Architecture), Markus Appenzeller (Urbanism) and Joost Emmerik (Landscape Architecture) talk about chaos, bad ideas and the need for a hook to hang your towel on.

Text TARA LEWIS Photos MARJOLEIN ROELEVELD

That’s also a skill.

JA ‘Absolutely, a skill of reading, writing and communicating. Hosting and moderating conversations. Within our professions drawing is often our main way of communicating among the three disciplines and related fields. But we’re coming into an age where we need to rely on conversations and input from other disciplines. We’re entering a world where other species and forms of knowledge are also taken into account in designing, which requires a different understanding.’

JO ‘I like this metaphor of professional expertise being situated in different silos, which were created to make everything more efficient. That brought us great wealth at the cost of others. We try to tell our students that this focus on efficiency got us in the current situation, so we need other values.’

How do you implement this in the curriculum?

JA ‘The role of education is very important. In the past architecture studio briefs that were shared with students were written in an abstract way: to design a school, or a complex building, focusing on the object. Today much of what we discuss is how do we make sure that we provide enough context to the design question we are posing. If a building typology is suggested at all, the question is how it fits into that context.’

JO ‘One recent graduation project is a good example of this. After doing extensive research, the student decided that not designing anything was the answer. But he wasn’t allowed to graduate without a design. Our system clashed with what we believe in.’

JA ‘In some ways we still have a lot of catching up to do, and our students have an important role in that as well, to show us where bridges are missing and provide us with homework. It’s an exciting process.’

JO ‘The three of us also work that way: deciding together on what’s important, taking into account what students come up with. In my field, for example, plant knowledge was completely eradicated from the curriculum. But students tell me all the time: we want to learn about that. So we include that. And if there are any other pressing matters five years from now, we’ll change it again. We’re under no illusions of knowing everything.’

JA ‘That’s a very good example. They’re not being educated to be botanists or ecologists, but they’re learning the vocabulary of the discipline in order to be able have meaningful conversations with those experts. And that is an important shift in design education.’

Why is vocabulary important?

MA ‘The vocabulary of all the disciplines has grown smaller over time. Fifty years ago urbanists knew everything about sewage systems, now they know what a sewer is. Our work is to thicken the dictionary of each discipline again. Not just with professional knowledge from within the field, but also with terminology from sociology, economy and environmental studies and many other fields. If you don’t know what term to search for, you won’t find anything. I had a teacher in secondary school who taught me: you don’t have to know everything. But it’s like a towel, you need a hook to hang your towel on. If you don’t have that hook the towel cannot hang on the wall. Without a basic understanding of key terminology, a whole field of expertise becomes non-existent to you.’

Does this also require certain skills from students?

MA ‘The idea is that there’s not one solution. The problems are big and complex and the important thing is the critical path you take and the strategy you choose. That requires openness, sensitivity and curiosity. And also the analytical ability to dissect a problem into subproblems you can understand.’

JO ‘In most of students’ work assignments it actually works in the classical way. They get a very clear goal to work towards. Therefore it’s extra important that at the Academy we create the freedom to look at assignments differently.’

JA ‘The scale of the school allows us to be flexible and have personal conversations with the tutors and have a close connection to the students. So that helps.’

Do students enjoy this new way of educating? Flexible, comprehensive, no clear paths from A to B. I imagine that some students just want to become architects and learn how to design buildings.

JA ‘That’s an important question. When we have interviews with incoming students this is part of the conversation: be aware that this is how we work. It’s a climate-focused curriculum, which means that it might include addressing certain topics, collaborations or forms of knowledge that you wouldn’t necessarily expect in an architectural curriculum, but which hopefully will become common practice in the future. At the same time, it’s important that the students also question us and are critical of what we’re doing.’

MA ‘But let’s face it, we also have students that come in with a rather traditional definition of what the profession is. It’s interesting to see how they develop within that context. I sometimes find the transition they go through in four years unbelievable. With others, less so. That’s also part of education.’

Joost Emmerik, head of the Master’s programme in Landscape Architecture.

Markus Appenzeller, head of the Master's programme in Urbanism.

So there’s still space for the one-dimensional student?

MA ‘No, there isn’t.’

JA ‘The transition is here. We all need to contribute to it. From the architectural perspective, there’s a lot of room for discussion about and active exploration of the architect of today and tomorrow. That doesn’t mean that there’s no room for students and professionals who want to focus on designing and building. On the contrary, there are some very important questions to be answered from an architectural perspective. How should we build? With what materials? Under which circumstances? And what does that mean globally?’

JO ‘When we started our studies, it was very clear what you had to become. Today, that’s less clear. Some students really relate to this interconnectedness and the interdisciplinary approach, while for others it’s just: “I want to do landscape architecture.” It’s already valuable that they learn a bit about other professions and maybe later in their careers make use of that. There’s a nice quote by artist and gardener Ian Hamilton Finlay: “There are many levels of understanding and none is to be despised.” When I studied architecture in Delft, it felt like the course very much catered to the 1 per cent who were going to be Rem Koolhaas or Le Corbusier. Everybody else was considered of lesser importance. That was horrible because I was not an exceptional student and it felt like there was probably no place for me in this world.’

MA ‘That’s why you became a landscape architect.’

Joost laughs and continues: ‘With the transition we’re in we need a wide range of perspectives. It’s all hands on deck and I’m happy with every landscape architect that we can get out there.’

Will they be able to bring about the necessary change?

MA ‘There’s a very long road ahead. For now I see a lot of business as usual, and a lot of good work in the periphery. But the system is hard to change.

JA ‘And that’s why I think it’s important that not only design but also writing, speculative thinking, public engagement and other forms are all part of design education. Even within our profession, the needed change is not defined by the discipline, but across the many political levels and professional fields that shape it. It’s a conversation that needs to develop gradually and collectively across fields, and designers are in a good position to have an important role and support that transition in different ways.’

JO ‘That’s also why we ask people from other fields of expertise as guest lectures. If you only have designers, you limit the discussion. If you want to define our current profession, you need to have a conversation about society and culture as well. Maybe it sounds ambitious, but change requires a certain chaos. Perhaps in five years we’ll think: bringing in the anthropologist was a very bad idea.’

JA ‘We won’t.’

MA ‘That’s why we encourage students to take risks. To experiment. The history of mankind is a history of successfully failing.’ ←

Janna Bystrykh, head of the Master’s programme in Architecture.

LET’S START

On Thursday morning 25 August, more than 70 firstyear students drew each other’s portraits, in a kind of ‘panic design approach’, in rows of two. Participants each had 30 seconds per portrait and then moved on. Education manager Henri Snel argued that offering both physical and cognitive activities simultaneously is a good combination to promote learning. ‘Research has shown that people who read a book while cycling on an exercise bike remember what they have read better than people who read a book while sitting on a sofa,’ he said. ‘So that also means you observe better if you draw while being physically active.’ The next assignment was to draw two things you’d put in your suitcase if you were emigrating. ‘That’s a great starting point for a conversation,’ Snel said.

In the afternoon the students, guided by artists, carried out sensory assignments at various locations around the city. First up was a homemade lunch (sense of taste). Students had put them together beforehand and brought them to the academy to give to another student they didn’t yet know, the idea being that ‘you give something away from your own cultural background and you also get something back’, a special way to get to know each other and start a conversation. After lunch, there were assignments at four other locations.

Led by alumni Jacopo Grilli and Laurens van Zuidam, a new group of students started their studies at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture.

Text DAVID KEUNING Photo MARLISE STEEMAN

‘There was a lot of interaction between students,’ said Grilli. In Bethaniënstraat, they created a performance: passers-by could cycle or walk between a double row of students, who gave them a huge round of applause. In the Zuiderkerk, the students depicted what they believed, using their bodies rather than sounds. This was quite touching. To experience sight deprivation, they walked through the city in a long line with face masks in front of their eyes, holding hands. Grilli: ‘The students were thrilled. One student said: “I did expect something weird. But this was really, really weird.” Mission accomplished.’

Friday started relaxed, with a yoga session on the helicopter pad of the Marineterrein, near the MakerSpace. This was followed by three lectures by the heads of the Academy’s three Master’s programmes: Janna Bystrykh (Architecture) at the MakerSpace; Markus Appenzeller (Urbanism) and Joost Emmerik (Landscape Architecture) at the Academy. The afternoon programme took place in the courtyard, where participants executed three performances at the end of the day, in three groups of over 20 students each. They had two and a half hours to prepare their performances. During the conclusion, with food and drinks, the freshmen had the opportunity to get to know the one or two students they hadn’t talked to during the previous two days. ←

ABOVE AND BELOW

Artist-in-residence Mari Bastashevski looks back on the Winter School 2023.

Text MARI BASTASHEVSKI Photos GREG JENNIE

In September 2022, the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture invited me to be the next artist-in-residence and to lead the Winter School for a cohort of first and second-year Master students in Architecture, Urbanism and Landscape Architecture. Anticipating the challenges of bringing together 120 students from different fields, I met with a core team from the Academy to analyse how the past Winter School had contributed to the overall programme. Over the course of a conversation, we explored the hidden potential of the format in many directions simultaneously, yet all of these consistently landed on one word: unlearning. As a part-time academic, I’m by no means a stranger to such collaborative opposition, but unlearning specifically in the context of the Winter School was a way to create a sense of possibility that would allow the students to reposition themselves within a tight spot between the highly structured institutional programme of the Academy and their conventionally demanding daytime jobs. Time, or rather its perceived scarcity, was also a problem that emerged early on in our conversation and continued to persist throughout it. Merging my own practice with the objective, I decided to design the programme of the Winter School around unlearning everything we think we know about time. In particular, human infrastructural time of efficiency and labour that silently governs our shared futures. During the Winter School, the students were asked to create a proposition for living with animal worlds by way of exploring a temporality that governs other-than-human cultures. Each of the 30 groups were offered ten specific other-than-human time frames. Between these group-specific prompts, the students had to deal with the workday of bees, the love nests of pigeons, the deep time of fossils, and the time of smells and seasons, among others. In giving genuine attention and serious consideration to the prompts that may at first seem a joke – even as they laughed – the Winter School students took a major leap of faith, producing an outstanding body of research-based works of art that tackled and responded to very pertinent questions in an original and intelligent manner.

Speaking Scent treats smells as forms of messaging between a leek, a bee, a moth and a caterpillar.

Speculative as it may be, other-than-human time is a central yet rarely mentioned studied subject within Earth-managing science. Today’s way of thinking about a more harmonious way of living with this planet occurs almost exclusively in the context of crisis-solving. Possible impending end-times – be it the end of the world or something else – are always at the forefront of progressive discourse, within and beyond the field of architecture and (urban or landscape) design. In combination with ever tighter deadlines for project delivery, this regime constitutes the ideal conditions for stagnant paralysis of imagination, overproduction and recurrence, in particular, when it comes to envisioning the futures we actually want (so necessary in the meantime, no matter the inevitable end times). The perceived scarcity of time and subsequent push to reduce all activity without an instant outcome as ‘time wasters’ shapes the culture of hyper-productivity that isolates individual human time from communal, as well as other-than-human time. This severely impairs our ability to relate to others even if they are in our direct proximity.

According to philosopher Vinciane Despret, one of the authors in the reading assigned for the Winter School, time plays an essential role in how we relate to others, especially to animals. Time is at the heart of the multifaceted relationships that depend on proximity. Tim Ingold, another author assigned for the Winter School, stretches that same theme of proximity time-wise even further in considering other than human landscapes and processes. ‘We did not ask for ages of mountains because we took them to be a part of the givenness of the earth for humans,’ he points out. ‘But that sense of givenness is under challenge!’

Time is primarily a law of proximity, and it is just as necessary as space for thinking with, even in instances where spatial proximity is neither desirable nor available. While shared space is somewhat desired for the practice of proximity, shared time is absolutely indispensable to the very conception of intimate discoveries. As it stands, the way of thinking with and not just about the future (a time zone of its own) is almost absent from our daily routine and curriculum alike.

METHODOLOGY

Even as most students found these concepts worthy of attention, the novelty and complexity generated occasional moments of collective anxiety. To create a favourable experimental environment for the students, a team of tutors from the Amsterdam University of the Arts and Lausanne devised a nuanced methodology that worked to save the students from becoming overwhelmed. Often the students were not so much stuck as overwhelmed and needed help with narrowing down the scope. For this the mentors devised group-specific research tactics and techniques that a group could use for measuring their specific temporality. In some instances, as for example was the case with the folded time of cats, temporality was defined as a durational activity; in others, like the bee archive, it was framed as a form of social or cultural production. To constrain the organizing principles even further, at the end of each day, the Winter School team helped the students determine what did and did not belong on the Winter School map. Mapping the entire school onto a MIRO board, a method proposed by Antoine Iweins early on, played a vital role in allowing an open overview of the process in real-time for everyone.

Halfway through the Winter School week, the team switched gears from research to making and helped the students recontextualize the information they had gathered into conceptual models. Reverse engineering existing work that had a temporal component baked into it, such as the now 53-year-old time-based work Spiral Jetty, or the works by Ian Ingram who made technology for animals, helped them look at the conversion between research and a conceptual framework. This was a particularly important step for swaying the students away from attempting to inform the world about new things they had just discovered, towards a more inward-based practice of using raw information to create a unique proposition. Above all, the team consistently strived to create a nurturing atmosphere of exchange rather than a competitive environment. While Kyra Michel and Antoine Iweins designed a detailed fail-safe plan for stages of workflow and group coordination, the Winter School tutors rotated among groups, crowdsourcing information and relying on swarm intelligence to make sure each group had what it needed to conclude the project on time. Arriving at the Winter School on the weekend, as well as evenings after days of work, most certainly had a risk of mass riot were it not for the dinners and attention of the Academy’s caretakers, as well as Emmalot Morrel’s commitment to stretching and bending the institutional rules in order to accommodate the competing needs of each individual student, tutor, the management and myself. So, while the rigorous structure and demanding assignments we had collectively designed for the students were risky and unrealistic, it was exactly this faith paired with an almost invisible structure that held up the chaos of the Winter School like scaffolding. Was it worth it? Most certainly! →

In just a little over a week of the Winter School, the students produced 30 conceptual art and design pieces that filled the Academy with a spontaneous pop-up exhibition. Birds, bees, cats, whales and insects emerged in a perfect cohesive polytemporal flash mob, bursting within the Academy halls into a magical forest of scents, flavours, colours, shapes, tastes, porous, exploding aesthetics and games. In converting research into material form, the students really did explore every material and immaterial medium imaginable.

In the sonic sensory ensemble Earthly Love, for example, Anna Hering, Saïde Köppel, David Notenbomer and Iris van der Walle translated the time of cicada cycles into a minimalist sound installation that was transmitted through vibrations in a listener capsule filled to the brim with fragile black balloons. The composition ended on a single note, a cicada’s orgasm – C major in three-quarter time. Cicadas spend 17 years underground and only one above it, raving in coital ecstasy before death. But what is above and below when the ground itself has no conscience? What happens in the 17 years of a cicada’s life leading up to that one grasp of sunlight is indeed a black box. In Petrichor, a small-scale subtle and quiet work, visitors are introduced to the precision of the temporality of scent. Petrichor, as Lili Carr, Britt Gijzen and Sohila Elshenawi informed us in the earlier stages of research, is a specific name for the smell of the first minutes of rain. ‘What is released in the scent of petrichor?’ they ask, ‘microbial-time in the metabolic excretions of Streptomyces; tree-time in their inter-species chemical communication; climate-time in the intervals between spells of dry weather and rain; capitalocene time in the reaction between NOX, sunlight, and ozone, and the suffocation of all surface-dwelling living things. Memory?’

Speaking Scent treats smells as forms of messaging between a leek, a bee, a moth and a caterpillar. The work moves as an oscillation between scientific and poetic elements. Alma van de Burgwal, Ebru Güner and Daria Agranovskay used the lab setting to distill and break the chapters of the scent conversation into three distinct scent samples. The accompanying captions explain humbly: the first one was a miss, the third an overkill, but the second is just right! To an untrained nose, all three smells are equally enthralling. The scent, on display in capsules, is accompanied by a dreamy and poetic book of drawings of fuzzy bees and animated leeks. If Earthly Love and Petrichor demanded slow and quiet inward-based contemplation, then works like Sporegasm FM and Freeze Thaw Unpause took up a lot of space in an unapologetically brazen speculation of a world. Asking the viewer to consider the lifecycle of mould, both silent and nearly invisible, Yves Paquaij, Tom Spanjaard and Mathijs Metten argued mould has a militant commitment to balancing the entropy and the future of our planet. The exhibition started with the tracing of potentialities of mould and ended with mould-covered toast inside a first aid box with a red cross on it. Quirky, brazen, simple – it was a complex philosophy translated into a readymade object.

Wood Frog pursued a mode of argument through posthumanist science fiction. In what resembled a future frog gay pride, Freeze Thaw Unpause set up a row of seven displays of highly stylized and dramatic adaptations a wood frog may go through as it adjusts to seven possible versions of climate collapse after surely sleeping right through some of the most important climate events in their life. ‘While hibernating, the frog literally pauses in time,’ Aldo Salcedo Trejo, Tess Nijhuis and Julian van der Linden explained. ‘The world around it continues. This is the Haunted Time.’ A masquerade that reveals a certain inadequacy in human temporal powers. It’s by no means a guarantee that our species would ever develop the adequate biotechnologies to compete with other, more enduring beings in the game of adaptation, or whether we’ll even understand the dynamics of the frog’s powernap in time to sleep through the large planetary event. While the space of this article does not allow for a review of every single work in the exhibition, each contributed an entirely unique component of knowledge that connected itself to the next. The exhibition’s sensitivity to the topic was eclipsed only by the quality of research and archiving that each group put into their work. Thousands of drawings, sketches, post-it notes and other more novel forms of documentation made the event a school rather than just a pop-up freestyle exhibition. A school that we can rebuild, retrace and learn from for years to come. Much like the works of art dealing with honey and fossil as forms of prescribed archives, the research catalogue constitutes its own temporality, unique to the constellation of people and events in this particular Winter School, or as Team Petrichor asked, ‘Memories?’ Memories!

The Winter School has certainly opened up a kind of prism through which to see a different network of relations that forces us to reconsider and review things that we have long accepted as common sense. Like, for example, what is under and what above for a cicada? What is inner and outer for a cat and the window? Or why hasn’t the gorgeous 187-decibel whale song killed us yet? Are dead and alive the most absolute states of time as flowing and inexistent, or does time continue beyond death? At the start of the Winter School, we asked the students to try to expand their habitual temporal environments, to find time travellers all around them. To look at their techniques. Becoming observers and participants (composers, builders and players), the students outlined distinct cruxes where borders between human and other-than-human cultures can become perceptible, where intervention is possible. We were faced with what Amitav Ghosh described as the ‘uncanny’ and ‘unpredictable’, and to some degree we’ve considered accepting and exploring this with no prior protocol or rules.

Drawing on the nuanced and inspiring research and facts, each of our groups in the Winter School positioned themselves in a sociocultural and emotional experience of time in a way that prompted forgetting and unlearning. This exercise is an important first step in allowing other-than-humans to have some say in a manner of their own prescription. The Winter School wove together all the transient forms of life, rhythms, and circles of transformation and movement in a way that formed a world that is both ours and alien to us. And while our time-focused time together was surely all too short, I have a feeling that the propositions that emerged during this period will have a long and unpredictable timeline, as long as we make sure they’re shared. ←

REFLECTIONS ON THE WINTER SCHOOL EXPERIENCE

Freeze Thaw Unpause comprised highly stylized and dramatic adaptations a wood frog may go through as it adjusts to climate collapse.

Research into the gorgeous 187-decibel whale song led to the question: Why hasn’t it killed us yet?

CHANGE OF THE GUARDS

On a cloudy autumn evening, the Hoge Zaal of the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture was abuzz with excitement as faculty, students and professionals gathered to bid farewell to Hanneke Kijne, the former head of the Master’s course in Landscape Architecture, and to welcome her successor, Joost Emmerik. Kijne had been at the helm of the programme for four years. As the evening began, director Madeleine Maaskant took to the stage and recalled the tradition of revolving heads at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, going back to 1964. 1972 saw the introduction of the Master’s course in Landscape Architecture, first headed by Hubert de Boer. This evening, we’d say goodbye to the twelfth head and welcome the thirteenth. Next, Elena Dobretsova and Ziega van den Berk directed a few warm words to Kijne, showing appreciation for all that she’d done. ‘You have a special place in the hearts and minds of everyone who was under your wings,’ said Van den Berk. ‘You were a veritable academy mum to us all.’ They’d collected video messages to Kijne from many students, which were screened on the wall.

The floor then was for Kijne herself, who confessed that the video messages had been ‘overwhelming’. She reminisced about her years at the Academy, stressing the challenges and successes of her students, and showed three student projects: Ultimate Forest by Rachel Borovska (P5O5), Meester Visserplein by Tim Gämperle (P1b) and Stadswildernis by Mark Vergeer (a graduation design). ‘All these projects have given me a lot of faith in the current generation of landscape architects,’ she said.

On 13 October 2022, Hanneke Kijne said goodbye as head of the Master’s course in Landscape Architecture and handed over the baton to Joost Emmerik.

Text DAVID KEUNING Portrait photo JONATHAN ANDREW

Hanneke Kijne gave her very last tree sapling to Joost Emmerik, saying ‘good luck, have fun, and please take care’.

Kijne professed that she’s an adherent of cathedral thinking: helping each other from generation to generation, standing on the shoulders of your predecessors. That’s exactly what the concurrent educational model at the academy is about. Kijne, who had started her four-year term by giving all students a tree sapling, gave her very last sapling to Emmerik, saying ‘good luck, have fun, and please take care’.

After Kijne’s speech, it was time for her successor to take the stage. Before reading out his inaugural speech, Emmerik produced a 17-year old assessment form that Kijne had written about his work when he was her student at the Academy in 2005. Having already graduated as an architect and urban designer, he had decided to enrol in the Landscape Architecture Programme. In Kijne’s typical directness, her written comment on his P3a project was: ‘Great plan, but you could have gotten much more out of it.’ Emmerik concluded that he had big shoes to fill and promised Hanneke – as well as the audience – that he would try and do his ‘absolute best and make the most’ of his new position.

After his inaugural speech, which was printed in a beautifully designed booklet, the evening ended with a reception, where attendees had the opportunity to mingle and chat with both heads. ←

Joost Emmerik’s inaugural speech can be read at bouwkunst.ahk.nl/en/research/publications.

Joost Emmerik gave an inaugural speech titled Taking Root.

To enhance the courtyard quality, the existing site is turned into a place where people can linger and interact with each other.

‘

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flora and fauna. Modular furniture is designed to encourage visitors to decide how they want to use it –as a seat, a table, a podium or a playful fortress. Most importantly, The Otter moves. There are rails across the yard that allow the mill to rotate and move around the site, creating different scenarios. It can be one large courtyard, two small courtyards, or one large courtyard and another cosy small courtyard. The whole site is now a flexible monument that can respond to changing historical events and the evolving needs of people now and in the future.

The entrance to the courtyard has three walls. The first is at human eye level, to make you curious about what is going on inside. If you decide to explore and walk between the walls, you will notice that the walls get higher and higher, cutting you off from the street. When you reach the end, you are greeted by an open courtyard. In the courtyard, the design focuses more on the qualities of lingering and interaction. In the existing buildings, the walls facing the courtyard are removed to activate the roof area. The water boundaries of the site are made into slopes to slowly invite

function as it once did? The project proposes The Otter as a ‘flexible monument’. A monument that adapts over time to meet the changing needs of people, rather than becoming a ruin that no one can use. During the site visit, the potential of The Otter to become a beautiful and comfortable courtyard was observed, leading to the decision to retain it as the main identity of the site. To enhance the quality of the courtyard, design features will be added to the existing space to make it a place for people to linger and interact.

The Otter, the oldest working sawmill in the Netherlands, is a national monument. It is the last survivor of a larger group of sawmills that were built in the area from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. While other mills have been demolished, removed or relocated over time, The Otter has remained in its own location and function for a long time. However, the growing city and economy make it difficult for the mill to continue to operate. What will happen to the sawmill when high-rise buildings make it too difficult for it to catch the wind? What will happen to the monument when it can no longer

Plan. A. Green pocket, B. Community garden, C. Entrance, D. Rainbed, E. Roofs, F. Ecobed, G. Rotating platform, H. The Otter, I. Blocks, J. Green corner

This view from the water shows The

The entrance is at eye level to encourage curiosity about what goes on inside.

a varied spatial

Otter as a hidden courtyard.

The sawmill can be rotated and moved to the other side of the site, creating

experience in the courtyard.

under the bridge. The central core is aligned with the core of the basement to ensure that the core is simple yet robust. The rest of the tower is built with as an open structure with solid columns and left intentionally ‘undesigned’ to allow users to adapt the building to their needs. Users of the tower can freely modify the interior and façades as they want. This also allows the tower’s appearance and characteristics to change over time with different materials sourced from various places. A homeless shelter in the historical basement forms the core and the foundation of the tower, both structurally and symbolically. It allows people to serve the community directly and provides a space where different groups and people can work together and have a positive impact on marginalised people in the community. Furthermore, the sense of permanence and safety that the basement provides adds to the space’s quality for people living in more temporal and uncertain situations. Finally, the radio station and community library in the tower allow for different types of discourse to take place. By combining practical and theoretical aspects of activism in a tower, it can encourage traditional types of activism, but also allow users to be more open to different ideas and critical feedback from inside and outside.

Anarchist Community Radio Torensluis is an anarchist radio station and a community centre in the heart of Amsterdam. It is home to many anarchists and other progressive grassroots organizations in and around the area. The main goal of the design is to create a solid structure and a robust service core that can support the activities and initiatives of the users. The main structural elements are made from concrete that sits on top of the historical basement

Plan +1 (above) and plan 0 (below).

Plan +3 (above) and plan +2 (below).

Plan -1 (above) and section (below).

auditorium in the tower allows for different types of discourse to take place.

Anarchist Community Radio Torensluis is an anarchist radio station and a community centre in the heart of Amsterdam.

A homeless shelter in the historical basement forms the core and the foundation of the tower, both structurally and symbolically.

Besides an auditorium, the tower also boasts a library.

contemplation

and the subthemes of food and energy. The diagram on the right shows how many refugees Amsterdam (population 2 million by 2100) could take in, how much energy the city needs to be completely self-sufficient, and how many square kilometres we need to produce food. From this, it quickly becomes clear that either taking in all the people from the region or being completely self-sufficient is almost impossible due to the large number of square kilometres that would be needed to accommodate this programme. The self-sufficient refugee city is a place that is connected to the rest of the world and offers space for contemplation, production of food in creative ways, recreation in the city, energy generation in the sea, and housing for refugees. The next two panels show how this is translated into a design.

SELF-SUFFICIENT REFUGEE CITY

con: a limited number of refugees are accommodated con: partially self-sufficient pro: because not one or the other is excluded, there is enough space to make a nice combination in the programme

TOTALLY SELF-SUFFICIENT con: no refugees are taken in pro: the city is as self-sufficient as possible con: it is almost impossible to be totally self-sufficient when it comes to food

ture cannot be controlled. Because you can’t fight your fate, you might be better off accepting it. That is why, according to me, contemplation is an important theme for this dike. The dike must be a place where contemplation can take place in overwhelming and intimate ways. As far as I’m concerned, this is possible in a city that is designed in three different ways. In the diagram three scenarios are explained with the associated advantages and disadvantages:

WHY THE SELF-SUFFICIENT REFUGEE CITY?

I made the decision to further develop the self-sufficient refugee city. There is enough space in this scenario to accommodate both the main theme of

REFUGEE CITY pro: as many refugees as possible are accommodated con: the city will become overcrowded con: fully dependant on resources from the mainland: energy, food, recreation, etcetera

WHY DO ANYTHING AT ALL?

2100; due to a 4-m sea level rise, the water was unstoppable. The dikes have broken, and streets, houses and entire cities have been washed away by the powerful sea. Fortunately, this does not apply to all places in the Netherlands. Eighty years before the disaster, Amsterdam started building a dike to protect the city against the rising water. Because of this, important cultural-historical, economic and social values are preserved in the capital. With the hyper dike project, I will show you what Amsterdam and the dike will look like in 2100.

Amsterdam

CONTEMPLATION

Nature knows no mercy. Its power can turn a place into a beautiful or inhospitable place forever. The constant unrest and at the same time beauty of na -

By 2100, Amsterdam will have become a self-sufficient refugee city.

Programme.

Contemplation.

Food. Network.

salt marsh.

Section over lookout point.

Bird's-eye views.

Section over salt marsh.

point.

SURFACE WITH A PURPOSE –NO LONGER IGNORED

I created two scale models. The first shows that the floors can be used in different ways, such as for alleys or rooms. The second model is a bigger conceptual version of the monument that shows how it interacts with its surroundings.

made a strip to analyse what they need. While making it, I noticed that they always carry their bags with them. The strip of land between the railroad track and the Ruijterkade is an area that hasn’t really been noticed. A forgotten spot in the most expensive area of Amsterdam. The homeless connect to the plot very well, as they, too, often feel unseen and forgotten. I designed a monument for the homeless that would make them noticed. The monument has storage units for each homeless person to use during the day. The structure of the monument is fixed, but the storage units can be placed in a flexible way. It is open from the trackside, so people on the train can see how many homeless people there are in Amsterdam. The monument reflects society, and its sections show how it changes over time. The plot is not for homeless people to own, but for them to use.

The No Man’s Land project allowed us to interpret the concept freely. We started by defining what it means to us. For me, it was an area of the world that no one owns. This relates to the area we had to design, which is between the railroad track and the Ruijterkade in Amsterdam. Homeless people do not own any land, so this project was relevant to them.

I wanted to understand the homeless better, so I

Bird's-eye view of Oosterdokseiland.

A visual study of the needs of homeless people.

HIGHER POINT SIGHTLINES FROM THE OOSTERDOKKADE VIEWS FROM THE BUILDINGS ALONG DE RUIJTERKADE AWARENESS PASSENGERS BY TRAIN SIGHTLINES FROM THE TRAIN TO THE RUIJTERKADE Design principles.

What do the homeless need next to a place to sleep?

The model above shows how the monument interacts with its surroundings. The model below shows how the floors can be used in different ways, such as for alleys or rooms.

BIRDS OF A FEATHER

For Natural Matter (V1b), which is part of Form Studies, the students made bird houses out of natural fibres, including hemp.

During the Form study classes, students were asked to explore the possibilities of working with natural fibres. Three groups worked with cattail, hemp and Japanese knotweed to make bird houses. Two groups worked with reed and willow branches. All of the results have been placed in various locations and are hopefully now in use. This small summary shows some of the bird houses made of hemp, all with a specific bird in mind.

What is hemp? The hemp stalk consists of two types of fibre; the bast fibre, a long and strong fibre on the outer ring of the stalk, and the woody core, called the hemp shiv. These two types of fibre can be used for many different purposes; the bast fibre is used to make rope, yarn, woven textile and felted textile, and the shiv is used to make hempcrete (or more accurately hemp-lime) or paper.

According to authors Alex Sparrow and William Stanwix, hemp is an extremely fast-growing plant that can be grown without chemical pesticides or herbicides: ‘Industrial hemp is sown in the late spring, from early May to June. Seedlings emerge within five days, and grow rapidly, sometimes at a rate of 30 cm a week. The crop is harvested in August, having attained a height of 2-4 m. As it is cut down, the hemp plant is also cut into shorter lengths and is left on the ground for up to a month for “retting”: a biological process whereby the hemp straw becomes more workable and the bast fibres begin to separate from the shiv. When the retting process is complete, and the sun has dried the hemp, it is baled and stored under cover. The raw hemp straw is then processed into saleable parts.’1 Hemp is a very versatile fibre with few negatives. It does attract water, however, which is something to be conscious of when working with the material.

Our journey began at the Hennepklopper De Paauw hemp mill in Assendelft. At this historical windmill we were able to break the stalks with the help of huge wooden rams driven by the wind. We separated the two types of fibre from the raw hemp straw, just as they did in the seventeenth century, the Dutch Golden Age, when there was a huge demand for hemp rope and canvas for sailing ships.

The products we obtained, bast fibres and shivs, were the raw materials for further exploration and experimentation. The techniques involved were felting, braiding, weaving, crocheting, sewing, spinning and moulding hempcrete. Sometimes we used pressure and heat or lime as a binder to create the various birdhouses. The results were all placed around the mill for the birds to inhabit. ←

1 William Stanwix and Alex Sparrow, The Hempcrete Book: Designing and Building with HempLime (Cambridge: Green Books, 2014).

Special thanks to Ellen Chilla, Ab Alberts, Gerro Rieperma and Alfons van Schijndel from Molen de Paauw who kindly allowed us to visit the location and taught us how the vernacular methods of hemp processing are achieved. Besides hemp flax, they provided us with enough materials to make a suitable home for our chosen birds. Also thanks to Pieter Aaldring for his lecture about city birds.

MATERIAL Hempcrete

BIRD SPECIES Eurasian wren (Troglodytes troglodytes)

STUDENT Ruben Voogt

The volume I’ve created has an inner diameter of 17 cm, which corresponds to the wingspan of an adult wren. The hempcrete is 7 cm thick to ensure stability. The space was created by placing a negative space in a mould. An adult Eurasian wren is 9 to 10 cm long and has a wingspan of 13 to 17 cm. It weighs about 10 g. The Eurasian wren has very short round wings, a slender tail and a loud chatter. It occupies a wide variety of habitats, typically any kind of cultivated or uncultivated area with bushes and low ground cover: gardens, hedges, plantations, woodlands and reed beds. It inhabits more open areas with clumps of blackberries or gorse, rough pastures, moorland, rocky slopes and coasts, and sea cliffs.

Given that the Eurasian wren prefers a more sheltered and insulated space, hempcrete is perfect for it. The 24 x 24 cm volume is ideally placed under the structure of the windmill to ensure it doesn’t get too wet. Bricks are also placed under the volume to ensure there is sufficient ventilation to maintain the condition of the hempcrete. This will guarantee the longevity of the structure.

MATERIAL Hemp

BIRD SPECIES Great tit (Parus major)

STUDENT Aishwarya Nemade

For my birdhouse, I’ve used polished and industrially processed hemp fibres, including extremely fine, soft and long fibres, and mill-beaten raw fibres extracted from the hemp stem. In week 3, I began to experiment with the strength and weakness of the fibres. I created rings as layers of fibres to create the bottom part of the nest, tying the layers together using the felting technique. In week 4, I used hemp yarn and a traditional sewing technique to bind the layers (rings) of fibre together. After sewing, the bottom of the nest was strong enough to hold the weight of the birds and eggs.

In week 5, I made the four parts of the nest: the rope to hang the nest on the branch, the top cover to protect the nest from harsh weather, the opening for the bird to enter the nest, and the bottom, which is the base for the bird to rest and lay the eggs. In weeks 6 and 7 I used the same felting and sewing technique to join the four different parts together.

My work is an attempt to create a nest for the Great tit, which is mostly found in parts of Europe. The bird nest is placed about 2 to 2.5 m above the ground. Great tits often accept man-made birdhouses. They need only a small opening, which makes them feel safe and at home.

MATERIAL Hemp

BIRD SPECIES Goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis)

STUDENT Richter Dallinga

The goldfinch is a slender passerine bird with a wingspan of 21 to 25 cm and a length of 11.5 to 12.5 cm. It is brown, white, red, yellow and black. The goldfinch is a member of the finch family and is found throughout much of Europe, North Africa and Western Asia. The goldfinch nests in trees and branches. Usually in places that are sheltered by other trees but not overgrown. The nest is built within a week and consists mainly of moss and lichen. The nest is usually attached to the end of a thin cobweb branch at a safe height between the leaves of the tree. The nest itself is quite deep to prevent the eggs from rolling out. The nest is only used in winter.

The bird uses nest boxes. These are usually small, covered houses with small entrances. In front of the entrance is a platform with a small water bowl for the bird to drink from. In nature the goldfinch drinks from hollow leaves, hence the Dutch name: putter. The birdhouse should be placed in a quiet spot that does not face south.

MATERIAL Hemp

BIRD SPECIES Common starling (Sturnus vulgaris)

STUDENT Julia Landreau

I started to build the structure of my nest using the pilled fibres of the hemp branch. I formed an egg shape by weaving each pilled element together and closing them at the top and the bottom. I left a hole to create the opening for the nest. To make it more comfortable and protected, I used a mixture of the beaten fibres from the mill together and the industrial fibres that I felted on the outside and inside of the woven structure. The top of the nest is shaped to make it easier to install. The common starling is a medium-sized, noisy bird that is popular in both urban and rural areas. Starlings are very gregarious, especially in autumn and winter when large, noisy flocks can form near roosts. These birds move by walking or running rather than hopping. The female lays four or five eggs that are ovoid in shape, pale blue or occasionally white, and usually glossy in appearance. When migrating, starlings can fly at 60 to 80 km/h and cover a distance of 1,000 to 1,500 km. In general, starlings do not build nests, preferring to nest in holes and cavities in trees and buildings. In fact, many starlings have found homes in holes in occupied houses. The male makes a cup of grass and twigs to protect the eggs, but the nest itself is a prefabricated structure.

MATERIAL Hemp

BIRD SPECIES White wagtail (Motacilla alba)

STUDENT Julia Parton

The material I used for my nest was a mixture of industrially processed hemp fibres: fine and long, hair-like hemp fibres and milled hemp fibres. I used a felting technique to bind these fibres together, and then a traditional sewing technique to quilt the patches together to form my nest.

The bird I chose to design for is the white wagtail. It is a small bird that is very active and restless. The white wagtail nests near water in a bowl-shaped nest, often in a ditch or hole, in the bushes, reeds or on the ground. Modern wagtails have adapted to urban areas and often live in walls or bridges. The male and female nest together. The male occupies the nest and the female completes the process. Their nests are built using twigs, leaves, grass and other plants. They are lined with soft material such as animal hair. If they live in a man-made bird house, it must be open-fronted. Most wagtails migrate south for the winter, with only a few staying north. I have tried to mimic the design of the soft nest of this small bird. My design is a twist on their normal nest. I attempted to create a space that they would either build on or feel safe enough to use.

MATERIAL Hemp

BIRD SPECIES Common blackbird (Turdus merula) STUDENT Sinni Huttunen

Inspired by the natural nests of the common blackbird, this nest has a soft, bowl-shaped centre for laying eggs with an additional landing platform around it. The whole nest is about 20 cm in diameter, which, according to research into the standard size of manmade blackbird nests, is sufficient for the bird’s needs. The common blackbird is a relatively small bird (80-125 g, 23-29 cm long with a wingspan of 34-38 cm) that tends to lay three to four eggs and nest solitarily.

The bowl is made by crocheting beaten hemp fibres that have been hand-rolled into a coarse yarn. The surface on the inside is quite neat, while the outside has a messier look with fibres sticking out randomly. The platform is made of three rows of cut hemp sticks, creating a landing area of about 5 cm for the bird. Hemp rope runs through the sticks, which are naturally hollow, and holds them in a hexagonal shape around the dish, fixed to each other and to the bowl at each corner by more rope.

The nest should be fixed between tree branches with taut ropes about 2 m above the ground. Like their natural nests, it is not covered and should therefore be placed in a shady spot where the tree itself can provide some shelter.

SEATS OF SOIL

The Earth does not belong to us; we are only temporary inhabitants. However, humans are currently exploiting it at a destructive rate. The modern construction industry is largely based on the use of chemicals and mining, which is responsible for 40 per cent of CO2 production. With this in mind, we have explored ways of using local materials to create a series of seating objects made from local soil at Goois Natuurreservaat.

Rammed earth is an ancient construction method in which a mixture of soil is gradually poured into a formwork in layers. Each layer is then compacted iteratively until the volume is reduced by 50 per cent. It is possible to use different soil mixes in this process, resulting in a variety of colours, textures and structures within the design. Materials for this method can be found almost anywhere and can be extracted without causing too much damage to the environment.

By adding water and gravel to the local soil, the mixture becomes suitable for the rammed earth technique. The challenges of using local soil are the variety of exact ingredients and the varying amounts available, as this material is usually sourced from construction excavations. As a result, the soil mix has to be tested for consistency in each area. At present, working with soil in the Netherlands is a small-scale and low-tech industry. As a result, the preparation of the soil mix is time consuming and labour intensive.

There is also a major obstacle in the material itself: the rammed earth/soil mix is not water resistant. However, according to a thesis by Delft University of Technology graduate Yask Kulshreshtha, cow dung could be a solution. Adding 10 per cent fresh cow dung to the mix effectively makes the soil 50 times more waterproof. By using this in our local soil mix, we can prevent the seating from deteriorating in the wet weather conditions of northern Europe. Incorporating cow dung into building materials would also be a sustainable way of using surplus manure. When designing the rammed-earth seats, we incorporated the latest scientific research to develop this ancient building method. ←

In this Minor course students experimented with rammed earth, making seating objects. Text and photos MARLIES BOTERMAN

This Minor course was organized in collaboration with the Goois Natuurreservaat (Peter Kampen and Melvin Scholten), Oskam VF (Rokus Oskam), Grondverzet Hilversum (Dirk van Dijk), Biologische Boerderij Veldhoen (Hermien en Wilko Kemp) and Terraseal (Rocco de Groot). The teachers were Marlies Boterman, Paul Kuipers and Erik Vermue.

Photos

The urban blocks are opened up from the street as well as internally.

ROTTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS

Each building block hosts a diversity of building formats, scales and housing types, and therefore different residents and users with a variety of public and green space.

tions and experiences are situated in the plot; no building is the same. This results in a mix of vibrant micro-neighbourhoods, each with its own characteristics and identity based on its building typologies. A strategy to create diversity, a sense of belonging and many places to call home within the extensive area. The urban blocks are opened up from the street as well as internally. Public, semi-public, collective and private spaces exist on different levels. This is a result of the lower Floor Space Index in the urban area, which is possible because the square meters are added in the high-rise buildings on the island heads, creating a recognizable view and entrance from the water. The piers that run between the blocks connect the different neighbourhoods with each other. Pocket parks, play areas, meeting places and public amenities are all connected. The small-scale programmes at the pier level will generate an inviting urban space with a direct connection to the waterfront. The connection from waterfront to waterfront is made by a boardwalk, which also leads to the self-sustainable water villas. I made a section over the façade of one of the buildings to show the connection with the street and the quay. The ground floor is made higher for privacy reasons, to create a better outdoor space and this also gives clear views to the waterfront over the quay. The first and second floor have balconies, to have a more open relation to the quays, while the third and fourth floor have loggias. The street is designed for collective use, with a less dominate place for cars. The façade that I designed for this building is open to the quay and this adds to the lively atmosphere. The strict division of the façade is reminiscent of the existing architecture, but is broken up by the different types of outdoor areas. Green is integrated and a differentiation in each level is added. The materials correspond to the rough harbour character, but with a soft touch. As opposed to a traditional urban plan with a fixed result, M4H will keep evolving.

The façade is open to the quay and this adds to the lively atmosphere.

Merwe-Vierhavens (M4H) is a former energy and transhipment port in Rotterdam, on the border between the city and the water. For P3a we were asked to design a new urban ensemble with mixed-use programmes. A place for innovation and urban redevelopment, connected with Rotterdam’s history and existing neighbourhoods. In my design of the M4H area I focused on the water and quays as an urban space. For the urban plan I used the concept of Cityplots (Studio Ninedots, 2014). A cityplot hosts a diversity of building formats, scales and housing types, and therefore different residents and users with a variety of public and green space. Because of this a wide range of func -

wide range of functions and experiences are situated in the plot; no building is the same.

Section. The ground floor is made higher for privacy reasons, to create a better outdoor space and this also gives clear views to the waterfront over the quay.

Section over the façade of one of the buildings showing the connection with the street and the quay.

HARVEST TO CREATE –OPTIMAL USE OF AVAILABLE RESOURCES

and designers in the neighbourhood use waste materials as a source to create new products. Waste material, energy, food and water are ‘harvested’ to create and maintain a sustainable district. In the model I made for this project, there are some flags with sustainable initiatives. But if we really want to make a sustainable plan, many more initiatives are needed.

Therefore, the ecological footprint of the new residents must be drastically reduced. In my plan, I transform the port that has been used for years to import goods into a multifunctional district where sustainability comes first. Because there are too few raw materials in the area and the ecological footprint must be as small as possible, waste materials from the city are used. The neighbourhood will be built to be self-sufficient and should eventually produce more than it consumes. Energy will be generated using the tidal differences of the Maas River. Food will be produced in the neighbourhood and rainwater will be used optimally. Not only during the construction of the neighbourhood but also afterwards, makers, craftsmen

print of the average Dutch person is 5.7 hectares. This means that the way we live now, the 63.9-hectare harbour area could sustainably house 11 people. But the purpose of this project is to create a plan where a lot more people can live and work.

‘April 12 was Earth Overshoot Day for the Netherlands this year. This was the day when the Netherlands used up all the resources provided by planet Earth for this country for the entire year.’ This is how Mathias Lehner started the briefing for the P3a project. The aim of this project was to create an urban development plan for the Merwe-Vierhavens (M4H) area in Rotterdam in such a way that Overshoot Day will not be until 31 December. In my research, I found out that the ecology foot -

Good

Model showing existing and new buildings.

Site plan showing planting and public space.

2.

1.

Generating energy with tidal dams. 79

Buildings to be preserved. Walking route along the waterfront. SECOND-YEAR STUDENT WORK

New

buildings. Car-free parks.

BRIDGING THE DIKE –KEILEKWARTIER, ROTTERDAM

ty and provides space for relaxation and recreation. All in all, my concept for integrating the Roof Park with M4H contributes to a greener and more attractive environment for residents, employees and visitors to the area. Moreover, the concept involves a linear development approach, starting at OudMathenesse and extending to the Nieuwe Maas River. This principle can be adopted for the development of the other docks.

Park and M4H, it is important to bridge the physical barriers located on the dike. One of these is the wall on the harbour side of the dike that separates Oud-Mathenesse from M4H. The wide and busy street profile along it is also a barrier that needs to be overcome. To overcome the barriers, I propose to restore the dike with slopes on both sides, as was traditionally the case, but wider. In this way, Oud-Mathenesse is spatially connected to M4H in a green way. However, this is not enough to bring the two different dike areas together. In my concept for integrating the Roof Park with M4H, greenery plays an important role. By extending the greenery from Oud-Mathenesse across the dike to M4H, I create a green carpet, as it were, for the development of the area. This creates a green atmosphere and identity inside the area. As a contrast, I deliberately chose a hard, formal exterior with a precise street profile. This creates a clear distinction between the different atmospheres and identities of the area. Integrating greenery into M4H has several advantages. Among others, it improves the living environment in the area, as greenery provides cooling and absorbs rainwater. It also contributes to biodiversi -

My project focuses on the dike separating OudMathenesse from the Merwe-Vierhavens area (M4H) to be developed in Rotterdam and the barrier it can form between these areas. As a worker and cyclist in Rotterdam, it fascinates me how dykes serve not only as protection against water, but also separate different areas. It is therefore important to consider the obstruction that the dike creates between the areas when developing the city, and to look for creative solutions to bridge this barrier. The dike and the Roof Park on top of the dike may limit the visual and physical connection between Oud-Mathenesse and M4H. To integrate the Roof

Framework for Adaptable District

Site plan.

Site location in the city of Rotterdam.

Places to connect.

The dike blocks the connection between the city and Delfshaven.

Roll-out of green towards the water.

Porosity inside (left) and robustness outside (right).

building SECOND-YEAR STUDENT WORK

blocks.

green roofs, patio, green façade, gardens workshop, repair café quiet space (library), loud space (gatherings)

gardening, food production building, repairing cooking, sewing, gathering

outdoor the green enveloppe of the building indoor physical components: interior-appliances-objects domestic activities & cultural life

circulation (right).

eldery or non-autonomous people from residential areas around

students + young creatives

Solar incidence (left), exposure to noise (middle) and circulation (right).

ments that bring together the knowledge and experience of the elderly with the energy and skills of the younger individuals. By taking care of their living space, the participants can save money on design and maintenance costs, which can then be reinvested in materials, plants and the organization of the building. The design of the building emerges from the combination of three aspects: the spatial qualities of the site, the organization of activities, and the circulation routes that are based on the needs of the two groups. A big atrium made out of recycled polycarbonate to the south faces the park and brings in sunlight. This type of greenhouse features large rotating doors that can be opened in the summer to create continuity with the park. Small windows that can be opened on the top of the building create natural ventilation throughout the building. The building features two types of units, individual ones for people who want more independence within the collective and grouped units around a shared kitchen. The shared kitchens, stretched along the front on two levels, are directly connected to the communal core, offering a transition from collective to semi-collective to private. This creates permeability and movement through the edges of the communal space. The communal spaces are spread throughout the building, depending on their characteristics. For example, the workshop and repair café are located on the ground floor and are the connecting element to the public life around the building. Spaces dedicated to the cultural life of the building, such as a loud space located above the workshop on the louder side of the building, and a quiet space located on the contemplative side of the building are separated by the heavily planted atrium, which operates as a buffer. The circulation routes are organized around the main communal core. The greenhouse creates a nice climate, encouraging the elderly inhabitants to move around the building, and plants located everywhere along the circulation routes create a landscape in the building, providing a feeling of a walk through nature.

Over the past few decades, many big Western cities have seen a rise in loneliness, particularly in the elderly population. Simultaneously, young people often struggle to find affordable housing due to the tension in the housing market. To address these issues, intergenerational housing has emerged as a solution. This concept involves bringing together elderly individuals and younger individuals or creatives with small budgets who wish to live in a community. This proposition for a housing cooperation is based on the existing creative community and urban mining spot of the Merwe-Vierhavens area (M4H) in Rotterdam. The goal is to gather senior citizens and young people with small budgets who enjoy taking care of their common living space and create mo -

The building's landscape (left), the collective spaces (middle) and the

Perspective of the atrium.

Unit distribution.

M4H is mainly connected to the northern side of Rotterdam. RDM is isolated from city activities but connected to the water.

An island with some key elements (r)evolutionizing RDM and M4H, facilitating a lively new part of the city of Rotterdam. The fundament: everything is circular and made from waste resources. Therefore, the bridge is an experiment in itself, bridging new destinations with circularity. The destination and the bridge should be biophilic in their design, enhancing biodiversity and organic growth. The water quality should be improved, making it more accessible for not only (underwater) animals, but also humans. And the making of the island? Natural sedimentation of the river is key here. A bridge made of waste is open for interpretation. Therefore, the bridges are visualized with Artificial Intelligence. Based on these outcomes, the bridges are designed.

A bridge connects both sides of the city with an island in the river.

Looking closer at RDM and M4H, both areas work very well on their own. They have been experimenting with new ways to learn, work and live in the same area. M4H is mainly connected to the city centre of Rotterdam, while RDM is like an island. Isolated from city activities and accessible via a long route through the south, or by water. Due to the former port functions, the waterfronts are inaccessible to people and nature. In addition, some water edges are heavily polluted. Although RDM has a lush greenery around Heijplaat, parks and accessible green is lacking in M4H. We can conclude: Both RDM and M4H have their own smaller development as innovation districts, improving the direct environments for (future) inhabitants. Which raises the question: How do we make sure that a future connection will not let both RDM and M4H compete, but rather complement each other? The answer? Maybe RDM and M4H do not only need a connection, maybe we need a shared destination. A destination . . . –where we can experiment with the circular economy and waste management, waste streams and other application of city waste; –providing the missing link for the urban green network, strengthening the biodiversity in both RDM and M4H; –that will bring back the accessibility of the water for Rotterdam.

INTRODUCING WASTELAND

As the port of Rotterdam moves towards the sea, the development of the city follows and spreads into the former port areas. The Research, Design and Manufacturing area (RDM) and the Merwe-Vierhavens area (M4H) are both an example of such development, introducing new industries, commercial sectors and housing in Rotterdam. That is why both RDM and M4H are listed as ‘maker’ districts. With the rise of new development, the need for infrastructure is increasing. At the same time, the city of Rotterdam wants to be fully circular in 2050. That will mean decreasing CO 2 emissions in the construction sector and thinking differently about waste streams. Now, about 40 per cent of household residual waste consist of organics (food and garden waste). If collected this waste could be used as biogas or composted building material.

renderings with DALL-E show various directions for a bridge design.

SCENES IN SICILY

For the second year in a row, Paolo Picchi and Martijn Troost took a group of students to Italy. Last year’s trip was to Tivoli near Rome; this year’s destination was Sicily. The subjects were the landscape and the energy transition, but when visiting Sicily it’s impossible to ignore the omnipresent ancient historical manifestations, so these were also on the programme. The group stayed in a farmhouse just outside Syracuse called Porta Pantalica. Immediately after arrival they visited the Neapolis Greek theatre at which Aeschylus’ play Oresteia was being performed that evening. ‘We were just in time,’ says Troost. ‘It was a long sit and the play was entirely in Italian, but it was quite an impressive spectacle.’

The next day, they started on the programme content. ‘The whole trip was a succession of amazing scenic and historical sites,’ says Troost. ‘We started with the ancient caves of Pillirina. These are rocks on the coast from which stone was extracted in ancient times: a kind of quarries by the sea. You can still recognize the rectangular shapes of the blocks hewn from them in the rock formations. We went for a swim there as well. Next, we instructed the students to pair up and make plans to connect the theatre and the landscape. Finally, everyone lined up, feet in the water, and told a random story about themselves, spontaneously and out of the blue. That was a really fun way to get to know each other better.’ In the evening, a second, more strictly organized round of introductions followed at the farm, on the theme of ‘my landscape’, with everyone showing five landscape images that showed where they were from.

An absolute highlight followed on the second day of the trip: a hike through Pantalica, a gorge near Syracuse. ‘The gorge used to be a refuge for the Indigenous people, in case of exterior threats,’ says Troost. ‘Sicily was very fertile. If you owned the island, in the Greek period, you were king of the world. The rock walls of the gorge were dug out. People lived there and were buried there. You can still see all of those graves.’ The guide, Luca di Giacomo, related the history of the gorge and Picchi talked about the local vegetation. Farming used to take place in the gorge because it was shaded. Due to droughts, there is no more farming here anymore, and authorities are trying to find an answer to the question of how to bring it back. The gorge extends to the theatre in Syracuse. A man-made irrigation canal ends at the theatre.

The walk ended at a small river, which is where the students had their first working session. The assignment was to create a story inspired by the theatre and the gorge, which could be performed as a personal theatre piece. That same evening, at the ruins of the royal palace of Anaktoron, the theatre pieces were detailed and narrated.

On the third day, an excursion led to the Castello Eurialo and the Dionigian Walls, where, among the ruins, the third working session took place, entitled ‘Trust the friend, trust the eye and trust the hand’. Picchi divided the students under his guidance into pairs, who took turns telling what they saw in the environment while the other sketched what they heard. Troost gave his students chalk and paper, instructing them to draw the environment without looking at the paper. Not carefully, but using grand gestures, under loud encouragement. ‘Put those lines on the paper! Go for it! Fire away!’ Troost: ‘This makes for beautiful, Picasso-like drawings.’ In the afternoon, students got to recover during a visit to a market in Syracuse.

Day four was all about lectures. These took place in one of the buildings of energy company Archimede ENEL and were delivered by Mara Benadusi from the University of Catania and Alessandra Scognamiglio from the ENEA national agency for new technologies, energy and sustainable economic

From 9 to 15 July 2022, a group of students led by landscape architect Paolo Picchi and artist Martijn Troost went on a study trip to Sicily. They not only explored energy landscapes, but also enjoyed the ubiquitous ancient history.

Text DAVID KEUNING Photos PAOLO PICCHI

development. Archimede ENEL is located on the outskirts of Syracuse, on the coast, in an energy landscape and right next to the only real area of natural beauty that borders the city, the LIPU Riserva Naturale Saline di Priolo. For years, the energy landscape served as a site for petrol production and power generation, but it is currently transitioning to solar energy, among other things. Since the area of natural beauty and the energy landscape are neighbours, they set out to work together. The students attended lectures by staff from both institutions on this collaboration in the morning, and worked on future scenarios for the area in the afternoon. On the last full day, the students took a walk along the coast, according to Troost, ‘a kind of Fjord-like environment. Very beautiful. There we passed an old tuna factory on a small bay, where we went swimming. Fish were once conceived and slaughtered there. From there, we continued to walk along the coast, processing all the experiences of the week.’ The final part of the programme took place in the Archimede ENEL factory grounds. In groups of two, the students delivered presentations on their fantasy image of the (carbon-free) landscape of the future in 2050. How would they design it, based on all of the impressions gained over the week? The collective ideas formed a proposal to Archimede ENEL for the design of the area. ‘We had a real party,’ says Troost. ‘There was a small theatre, consisting of red cloth on a stage, with food and drink. The director of the factory, the director of the nature reserve and the deputy mayor of Priolo enjoyed it and liked the proposals.’ The next morning, everyone went back home, with a huge mountain of knowledge about Sicily’s ancient history and inspiration for dealing with the sustainable transition of energy landscapes. ←

DESIGNING AS A COLLECTIVE ACT

Fallen trees, be they oak or elm, almost always end up in the waste incinerator. Pruning them and transporting them to potential users is complicated. There is no network of storage spaces, sawmills, carpenters and traders that can create a chain from tree to board and furniture. During the 100% Tree workshop that concluded the Erasmus project Crafting Wood, we demonstrated what we can make from fallen trees. We collected seven of them: three oaks, a cypress, an elm and two robinias.

With the help of master carpenter Lorin Brasser, students and lecturers from eight architecture schools – Amsterdam, Delft, Vaduz, Antwerp, Trondheim, Darmstadt, Cologne and Volos – built a new chicken coop for urban farm Schoterhoeve in Haarlem-Noord in six days. On the first two days we worked in five groups; each designed and manufactured one section of the coop. Every building component – construction, façade, roof, night shelter and fencing – had its own specifications. We examined these specifications and related them to the properties of the wood species available: oak beams for the main structure, elm for the substructure, robinia and cypress boards for the gable and roof cladding. We devised and made specific, demountable joints, such as mortise-and-tenon, dovetail, cross-lap and clamping joints.

From 14 to 20 August 2022, the 100% Tree workshop that concluded the Erasmus project Crafting Wood took place in the Westpoort in Amsterdam. In six days, students and teachers from eight European schools of architecture built a new chicken coop for urban farm Schoterhoeve in Haarlem.

Text MACHIEL SPAAN Photos JONATHAN ANDREW

The participating architecture schools included the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture (Machiel Spaan), Delft University of Technology (Gilbert Koskamp), University of Liechtenstein, Vaduz (Carmen Rist-Stadelman), NTNU Trondheim (August Schmidt), University of Antwerp (Mario Rinke), Darmstadt University (Felix Waechter), Cologne University of Applied Sciences (Max Salzberger) and Thessaly University, Volos (Maria Vrontissi). The other partners included Ssse|OvO (Pierre Jennen), LB Carpenter workshop (Lorin Brasser), MakerSpace (Martijn Troost), Platform Tree_Timber_REengineered and the City of Haarlem.

On day three, we brought the five building sections together in a single design. Next, each group continued to work on its coop section while continuing to consult with the other groups on dimensions, connections and joints. The final oak beam structure consisted of four trusses arranged on a radial grid, each truss comprising four double columns in a V-shape, attached to a roof beam by pin joints. The façade was attached to the double columns with a mortise-and-tenon joint and had an adjustable slat system of cypress boards and small elm beams. This allowed the chicken coop to open and close. The roof was divided into eight elements of robinia strips, overlapping like slates and nailed to elm beams with dowels from the Lignoloc wood nail gun. The roof elements were attached to the structural beams with oak clamp joints. The night shed, with its elm construction and robinia gables and roof, stood between the oak trusses. This is where the nest boxes and perches were located. The fence was made of elm beams stacked on top and next to one another, enabling multiple demarcations of the outdoor space. The chicken coop brought seven discarded trees back to life. The project is an example of circular design and manufacturing from various perspectives. We used available and local materials to build the coop. The designs of the coop sections and the structure as a whole followed from the material and its application possibilities. Connections are detachable so that the chicken palace can be dismantled and moved. Manufacturing and designing constantly alternate. The design is not a starting point, but the result of processes of manufacturing, negotiating and joining. The designer is one of the links in the chain. Designing is a collective act. ←

HIGH LIFE

Text WOUTER SIBUM Photos MAIKE VAN STIPHOUT

The call for the EMiLA Summer School in Inverness in August 2022 immediately caught my attention. Having done all of my academy projects in the Netherlands, I was curious about a different environment. The com bination of mountains, lochs, oceans, printmaking and a youth hostel promised to be an experience beyond my day-to-day worries.

During the evening immediately following our arrival in the cold Scottish Highlands we were treated to a series of lectures. Sedimentologist Nikos Kourampas kicked off on the geology of Culmaily Burn, the area we would be visiting that week. Lucie Loosen showed us how to apply ink on paper printing techniques. Hers was an introduction to a second goal for the week: depicting the landscape in print. Lucie not only refreshed our memories, but also provided a lovely glimpse into her own work. Our accommodations took some getting used to. I cannot exactly remember the last time I slept in a bunk bed in a room with six others for a week. The bus ride in the morning made up for a lot. We saw a sizeable bay with dolphins and gorgeous mists around the mountains. As the weather cleared, the more insanely beautiful the hues against the grey Scottish skies be came. Nikos turned out to be an energetic guide, draw ing in the sand with a large knife and moving frighten ingly fast through the group with that very knife in hand, rushing past both students and lecturers. In passing, he exposed the different layers in the subsoil of a rampart on the beach, the side of a ditch or an old open pit mine.

The next day, Lucie and her assistants provided a workshop. We learned to make prints by scratching into Tetra Pak material (on the silver side), then inking them and rolling them through a pasta machine together with some paper. This produced all sorts of weird results, from abstract shapes to remarkably accurate visualizations of things we had seen at Culmaily Burn the day before.

EMiLA stand for European Master in Landscape Architecture. Taking part in the Summer School were the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, École Nationale Supérieure de Paysage Versailles, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Universitat Polytècnica de Catalunya and guest university Arkitektur- og designhøgskolen i Oslo. The trip was organized by the University of Edinburgh / Edinburgh College of Art.

In the context of the EMiLA Summer School 2022, landscape architecture student Wouter Sibum took a trip to the Scottish Highlands.

For the second excursion to Culmaily Burn, each team was assigned a part of the site. My team dealt with the open pit mine halfway up the hill, which had a passage towards Silver Rock. On maps and diagrams, we drew the ways the surrounding hills had formed, realizing that it was actually a highly cultivated area. From stone pit to newly planted carbon offset forest: people had turned over every square metre of the area at least twice. The summit of Silver Rock looked tempting and we decided to climb it. At the top the wind was strong, but the panorama of the surroundings and the Scottish Highlands was beautiful.

Back in the studio, we decided to draw this view and use it as a template for our presentation. We made more detailed prints using the pasta machines and enlarged them using a copier. Our diagram depicted the landscape, described it and showed the ancient lower layers, the ever-flowing creeks and the upper layers created by human intervention.

The week provided us with a much-appreciated change of scenery. Did I forget to mention some of the highlights of the week in this text? Perhaps I did. Did I lose my passport but find it again under my mattress? Very likely. Did we have to rush to catch the bus with a hangover in the morning because we had been at the pubs until the lights came on? Probably.

But the biggest impression was made by the Highlands themselves: without working on a direct design brief or thinking about solving a particular problem, this amazing group of international ‘landscape nerds’ got deeply involved in the Scottish landscape. We addressed all of the layers of the landscape, from design to politics to Anthropocene, during a week that was refreshing and fantastic for all participants. ←

LETTING LOOSE

The Architecture and Circular Thinking lectorate (ACT) co-organized the Letting Loose Festival, an inspiring afternoon held in the context of the CircolLab collaboration

Text DAVID KEUNING Photos LUUK KRAMER

Led by lector Peter van Assche, the ACT lectorate participates in the Sprong group CircolLab, a collaboration of research groups of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (HvA), the Windesheim University of Applied Sciences, the Amsterdam University of the Arts and more than 30 practices. Together, they are investigating what technological, social and economic innovations the Amsterdam Metropolitan Region needs to accelerate its circular transition. Researcher at the ACT lectorate Laura van Santen, Quirine Winkler (Windesheim) and Marian Zandbergen (HvA) jointly organized the Letting Loose Festival, which took place at the Marineterrein on 13 April. The nature of letting loose raises not only technical questions (how to design buildings and consumer goods in such a way that their components can be dismantled and reused without damage), but also psychological ones (how to break free from ingrained habits that hinder the circular transition).

After an introduction by moderator Tracy Metz, Reint Jan Renes, lector of Psychology for a Sustainable City, gave a talk on the psychology of change. He introduced a large number of psychological notions, each representing an entire field of research and all playing a role in the transition to an unknown future. Examples included experiential vagueness (difficulty relating to abstract goals), complexity and uncertainty, threat of social status, personal versus community interest, group pressure, the bystander effect, status quo bias (the tendency to maintain the current state of affairs), the default effect, fear of regret, loss aversion and the endowment effect (valuing what you already have more than what you don’t have).1 According to Renes, a proper understanding of these psychological effects can help accelerate the circular transition.

The more than 100 participants were then divided into six groups for a tour led by CircolLab lecturers and partners. A total of 18 locations at the Marineterrein were visited on different routes, where innovations, insights and questions were presented. At two of the locations, guest lecturers from the Academy of Architecture were on hand. Machiel Spaan presented the results of a workshop he organized from 18 to 25 March as part of the Erasmus programme Crafting Circularity. During the workshop, 40 students from five European architecture schools designed and produced objects using second-hand building elements, including a fence, a beam and a railing. Form study class coordinator Marlies Boterman presented experiments with mycelium (fungal filaments) and talked about how this natural material can be used for circular product design. In addition, HvA researchers Federica Colombo and Ruben Logjes discussed some of the themes of the European Green Deal using propositions on which participants had to indicate their position in advance. For example, the proposition ‘achieving behavioural change in consumption means that cultural operators, educational institutions and companies have to take an activist role’ generated much discussion among the participants.

After the excursions, the participants in the six groups, led by Tracy Metz, took to the stage to share their reflections on the afternoon. Lector Walther Ploos van Amstel (HvA) advocated combining the ‘stuff, the fluff and the soul’ in transport logistics, in other words the hard side, the soft side and the inspiration. Lector EvertJan Velzing (Windesheim) thought it was time to ‘walk the talk’, in other words to put our money where our mouth is. And Deborah Sumter’s group introduced the saying ‘don’t be gentle it’s a rental’, about the phenomenon that users are generally less careful with shared assets that they don’t own. All in all, there is still a lot of work to be done, but the many exchanges that took place during this inspiring afternoon gave us the confidence that a lot can be done in a short time. ←

1 See, among others, Johan. E. Korteling, Geerte L. Paradies and Josephine P. Sassen-van Meer, ‘Cognitive Bias and How to Improve Sustainable Decision Making’, Frontiers in Psychology, Volume 14, 28 February 2023, doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1129835.

FAREWELL FRIENDS

Sven Stremke, Dirk Oudes and Paolo Picchi concluded the High-Density Energy Landscapes lectorate with the presentation of the book Power of Landscape.

Text DAVID KEUNING Photo JONATHAN ANDREW

Although the energy transition appears to be a technical challenge first and foremost, those who attended the book launch of Power of Landscape on 6 October 2022 at the Academy of Architecture knew better afterwards. ‘We should embrace the fact that the energy transition is an emotional endeavour,’ said former lector Sven Stremke, ‘not a technical effort. This book is catering to the right side of the brain. If you acknowledge that fact, the book provides some answers to the question of how to deal with the pain – and the pleasure – that come with the energy transition.’ Moderator Sophie Stravens highlighted the reason for the book launch: in 2017, Stremke was appointed lector at the Academy of Architecture together with researchers Paolo Picchi and Dirk Oudes. The High-Density Energy Landscapes (HDEL) lectorate ended five years later with the publication of a book that brought together much of the lectorate’s research. Just before that, on 30 June, Oudes had received his PhD from Wageningen University as a result of his research at the Academy of Architecture. Picchi had completed the successful Metro cooperation project with the city of Amsterdam, for which the HDEL lectorate had organized a whole series of workshops on energy transition for city employees. In a short speech, director Madeleine Maaskant also recalled a wide range of contributions the three had made in the field of academic education, including the P5 Energize in collaboration with the Province of Utrecht, the design competition Big Friendly Giant, the lecture series Arcadian Anthropocene, the Summer Schools in Italy organized by Picchi and the research training for Amsterdam University of the Arts lecturers by Oudes.

Next up was Italian designer Daniella Moderini, who gave an online lecture about her energy projects at the intersection of architecture and landscape architecture, including the experimental wind farms of San Chirico and Spina, the Biccari wind farm, the Sasso Pisono geothermal plant and a design for an offshore wind park in the Adriatic Sea – all very well thought-out and attractively designed energy landscapes, which could serve as examples for similar projects elsewhere. Stremke referred to the original function of the building in which the academy is housed: it was once a charity in which poor city dwellers were issued peat to heat their homes. ‘Today we celebrate the publication of a book about the energy transition.’ He recalled that the city of Amsterdam was importing coal from Colombia until December 2019, when the coal-fired power plant in the Westelijk Havengebied was closed; an impressive aerial photograph of the Cerrejón coal mine showed the gigantic scale of the devastation of the Earth’s surface that this mine caused. ‘The landscapes we create are not innocent,’ said Stremke. ‘Quite the opposite is true. Our consumption patterns affect those living in the proximity of these energy landscapes. And yet we continue to alter the surfaces of the Earth, in unprecedented and irreversible ways. Our energy demands entail costs that are hardly mentioned in the newspapers. A series of mines in North-

ern Alberta, Canada, comprises an energy landscape that is larger than all of England, or three times as large as the Netherlands. It’s the only energy landscape on this planet that can be seen from outer space, without binoculars.’

Many of these energy landscapes are outside the field of vision and awareness of the average citizen, but even the renewable energy landscapes with wind turbines and solar panels appearing in Western Europe evoke negative associations from many of them. In the United Kingdom, more than 800 respondents took part in a survey about the Clevehill solar power plant – the largest of its kind in that country. The goal of the research was to find indicators for community acceptance or opposition. Of the ten most frequently mentioned objections to the Clevehill solar power plant, nine related to landscape features, including wildlife and habitats, the size of the solar plant, and the character of the landscape.1 Together they amount to 70 per cent of all determinants for community acceptance. In other words: two thirds of all objections against renewable energy relate to landscape. ‘That’s not aligned with the way that public subsidies for renewable energy are organized in the Netherlands,’ said Stremke. ‘In our book, we question the strong focus on technology when it comes to renewable energy. It’s about a changing environment, the landscapes in which we live, work and recreate.’

After a lecture by Oudes and a discussion led by Stravens, Josja van der Veer, director of the Space and Sustainability Department of the City of Amsterdam, received the first copy. She expressed her gratitude for the collaboration with the academy as part of the Metro project. A second copy was for Ben Kuipers, chairman of the Nederlandse Vereniging voor Tuin- en Landschapsarchitectuur (Dutch Association for Garden and Landscape Architecture), who recalled that his father was a coal merchant. Things can change. ←

1 See Philippa Roddis, Katy Roelich, Katherine Tran, Stephen Carver, Martin Dallimer & Guy Ziv, ‘What Shapes Community Acceptance of Large-Scale Solar Farms? A Case Study of the UK’s First ‘Nationally Significant’ Solar Farm’, Solar Energy 209 (2020), 235-244.

The Amsterdam University of the Arts consists of six academies, each with their own libraries. When the first academies merged in 1987, they expressly decided not to have a single central library: they felt that libraries should be as close to students and educational facilities as possible. Although this advantage still stands today, a consequence of this choice was that all of the libraries also continued to use their own catalogue systems, with different types of metadata and object descriptions. The first central catalogue to span the six different applications was not realized until 2009.

‘When I joined the Academy of Architecture in 2004, my first job was to oversee the transition from the then collection system to Adlib,’ says Academy of Architecture librarian Matty Gaikhorst. Adlib provides the collection management software that is mostly used by museums today. ‘But over time, Adlib for libraries became obsolete. The software was not web-based; you could only access it on location.’ Slowly, the need for something new arose. Many university libraries are connected to WorldCat, but this does not sufficiently match the needs of an institution like the Amsterdam University of the Arts. In the case of music titles, for example, WorldCat does not offer the possibility to distinguish between album titles and the titles of individual music tracks. For the benefit of the alliance of academy libraries, the Amsterdam University of the Arts represented by Gaikhorst conducted an inventory of the software in use at other universities of applied sciences. From this, Koha emerged. Because it is open-source, it can be adapted relatively easily to changing circumstances – the possibility of future-proofing the system was an important factor in the final decision. Another consideration was that Koha can also be integrated with Ebsco Discovery Service, allowing a large number of databases from outside the Amsterdam University of the Arts to be added to the catalogue.

Once this decision was made, the six different systems of the Amsterdam University of the Arts’ academies all had to be migrated to a single database in Koha. This was quite the job; Gaikhorst and her colleagues carried it out with the support of the French company Biblibre, which helps libraries migrate and host library systems. A huge amount of testing preceded the introduction, to ensure that all the different types of metadata from the Amsterdam University of the Arts’ six arts disciplines were properly in place in the new system. Now that Koha is in use, students and staff have all kinds of possibilities that they did not have before. For example, they can simultaneously search the Amsterdam University of the Arts’ catalogue and external databases and subsequently filter the results. Users can now save their own borrowing history, reserve books and other objects, extend loan periods, create bibliographies and even make purchase suggestions. Gaikhorst hopes Koha will make the Amsterdam University of the Arts’ libraries more accessible to students and staff. ‘It is important that students are taught the good information skills they need to conduct thorough research. This certainly also applies to art students. The library, now more than ever before, offers every conceivable opportunity for this.’ ←

Koha currently:

– accesses and describes 1,572 Kaltura videos

– facilitates 40,000 loans annually

– accesses and describes a total of 302,404 library collection items

– accesses 18 databases with hundreds of thousands of (full text) records

– conducts 14,000 to 20,000 searches annually

On 14 February, the librarians of the various Amsterdam University of the Arts academies presented the new Koha library system at the Netherlands Film Academy. Years of work preceded this introduction.

Text DAVID KEUNING

DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE

Text MILDRED VAN DER ZWAN and MARJOLEINE HAVIK

The International Classroom is central to the Academy’s educational philosophy. It aims to maximize the impact and outcomes of education and is the context in which all activities take place. An important prerequisite for a successful and inclusive International Classroom is a common language. At the Academy this is English. Although English is widely spoken, it is important to recognize that most students will not communicate in their mother tongue.

The chosen language should be incorporated into the curriculum and classes, and teaching, as well as in all communication and conversation that takes place at the Academy. The use of any other language may compromise the sense of inclusiveness. The International Classroom seeks to prepare students for a professional future in a potentially international and intercultural workplace. In addition to language skills, there are many other skills developed in the International Classroom that are highly beneficial to students’ professional development. One such skill is intercultural competence. Classrooms are diverse environments where people with different personalities and experiences come together. The International Classroom harnesses cultural diversity skills. Collaborating with people who have different perspectives, interpret situations and interactions differently, and give different meaning to behaviours and values can be challenging. Developing intercultural competence will prepare students to respond appropriately and effectively in their future intercultural interactions. This can be done by reflecting on one’s own attitudes towards difference, learning about and understanding other people’s perspectives, and creating shared meaning. Interculturally competent teachers and staff are able to support students throughout their learning process. This support can range from effectively facilitating intercultural teamwork and incorporating diverse professional perspectives to adapting teaching styles and formats to meet the needs of the International Classroom. When students are more aware of (the limitations of) their own frame of reference and learn to enjoy the added value of other perspectives, they will be able to interact more constructively with their fellow students. The intercultural competence course will lead to an inclusive, accepting and adaptive learning environment where students feel safe, heard and valued. ←

As of the academic year 2023/2024, students will follow a new course in the first quarter of the second year, called Intercultural Competence. It aims to support the goals of the International Classroom at the Academy of Architecture.

PUBLICATIONS

Sven Stremke, Dirk Oudes, Paolo Picchi

POWER OF LANDSCAPE: NOVEL NARRATIVES TO ENGAGE WITH THE ENERGY TRANSITION

Rotterdam: nai010, 2022

The transition to a post-carbon future is in full swing. Across the globe, fossil fuels are giving way to renewable sources of energy, bringing energy provision closer to our homes than we’ve been used to. The development of new energy landscapes, based on technoeconomic choices, often meets with resistance. Is there a better way to bridge the growing gap between urgency and action? What if the energy transition is not about technologies? What if, instead, it is one of the driving forces behind a changing living environment, the places where we live, work and recreate?

Power of Landscape explores various energy landscapes in Europe and the United States in the past, present and future. The starting point of the book is the meaning that the landscape holds in terms of quality and emotion for its inhabitants and other landscape users. In doing so, it builds a bridge between the world of renewable energy and our living environment for the first time. The book offers a surprising perspective on how landscape can play a more central role in realizing the energy transition in a way that is both sustainable and attractive.

Roos Bekkenkamp (ed.)

GRADUATION PROJECTS 2021-2022

Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, 2022

Every autumn, the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture hosts a Graduation Weekend, in which all graduating students from the previous year have the opportunity to show their graduation work to the public. The exhibition design in 2022 came from Rosa Jonkman and James Heus. ‘Binding Together’ was a 99 per cent circular exhibition, giving new life to used local products. Not everything needs to be new or perfect – we already have more than enough stuff. The exhibition took place from 4 to 6 November. The projects on show were published in the accompanying book.

Lenora Ditzler, Marcel Kok, David Rademacher

BENDING THE CURVE: DESIGING ECOLOGICAL FUTURES

Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, 2022

Bending the Curve (P5O5), a research and design studio that took place in the autumn of 2022, looked at the global biodiversity crisis and ways to ‘bend the curve’ of biodiversity loss through design interventions. One million species are at risk of extinction. On current trends, the drivers of biodiversity loss are expected to accelerate, with major consequences for nature and people. It is important to achieve nature-positive development, which means halting biodiversity loss and restoring nature. Such efforts need to be aligned with mitigation efforts to achieve a net-zero climate and build resilience to the impacts of global warming. Nature offers important solutions. However, unlike net-zero climate, it is not yet clear what nature-positive development strategies might look like. So while international agreements on nature provide a direction, there is a clear role for designers, architects, urbanists and landscape developers in shaping such nature-positive, ecological futures.

AFTER SHELL

A JUST TRANSITION DESIGN CALENDAR

2020–2060

Dirk Oudes

LANDSCAPE-INCLUSIVE ENERGY

Selçuk Balamir and Duygu Toprak AFTER SHELL: A JUST TRANSITION DESIGN

Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, 2022

Just as the (R)evolution Planet programme is a curriculum in progress, so too was the Summer School, which attempted to do justice to the theme of ‘just transition’. To be fair to all involved, choosing an experimental pedagogy that revolved around a multi-faceted design problem in eight short days was no easy feat. It required intersecting elements of spatial justice, decolonial reparations, ecological regeneration and degrowth economics, all of which were rather unfamiliar territory for the students. The programme was also intended as a meeting between climate justice organizers and spatial design professionals, two communities that rarely get the chance to work together.

The Just Transition Design Calendar aims to showcase the wide range of approaches and skills used by the students of the Summer School, from critical thinking to the analysis of complex situations, and from spatial intervention to speculative storytelling. It also serves as a reminder of the diversity of interventions and interconnected relationships necessary for a just transition. Let us travel through four decades and six continents. From such humble beginnings, may the most profound transformations emerge!

TRANSITION: LANDSCAPE AS CATALYST IN THE SHIFT TO RENEWABLE ENERGY

PhD dissertation, Wageningen University, 2022

Progress in the energy transition and landscape degradation are often mentioned in the same breath. This perceived degradation stems from the changes that our familiar and cherished landscapes are undergoing. Wind turbines, solar fields and other energy technologies are transforming landscapes, driven by (inter)national energy transition goals to mitigate climate change. As a result, landscape is seen as an ‘obstacle’ by many actors in the energy transition. This dissertation explores whether ‘landscape’ can be transformed from a perceived obstacle to a catalyst for energy transition in the twenty-first century. This thesis provides the building blocks for a so-called ‘landscape-inclusive energy transition’. First, it presents a methodology for defining regional energy transition goals based on landscape characteristics and local stakeholder preferences. It then reviews the literature on large-scale landscape transformation projects in order to draw lessons for the energy transition. Finally, a typology of multifunctional solar fields is developed to improve decision-making on siting and design. These findings are useful for setting energy targets, designing renewable energy projects, developing energy policies and supporting the implementation of a landscape-inclusive energy transition.

The research described in this thesis was financially supported by the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture.

The field of garden and landscape architecture works on a daily basis with the natural and the cultural, the tangible and the imaginary, the practical and the poetic. In his inaugural lecture as head of the Master’s programme in Landscape Architecture, Joost Emmerik argues that it’s the duty of the discipline to shape the multifaceted interconnectedness between humans and nature: beyond the anthropocentric idea in which humans are above nature to a radically inclusive attitude in which humans realize that there is no separation, that they are part of that nature. Emmerik wants this idea, and the design practice that follows from such a radical principle of equality, to take root in the Academy of Architecture during his tenure.

Selçuk Balamir Dirk Oudes

Joost Emmerik TAKING ROOT

Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, 2022

CALENDAR 2020-2060

Text KIRSTEN HANNEMA

DESIGNING SYSTEM CHANGE

Using an elegant wooden clamp, a thin panel wall is suspended from the historical truss construction on the top floor of the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture. It is a system as simple as it is ingenious, allowing the attic to be partitioned in countless ways without any major rebuilding or wasting building materials.

The 1:1 scale model is part of architecture student Phuong Đào’s plan to make the academy building more sustainable; a design challenge that is part of the umbrella study programme (R)evolution Planet – Building towards a Sustainable Future. By this ‘curriculum in progress’, the Academy aims to position itself as a design and research institute that – in response to climate change and the pursuit of an inclusive society – ‘develops solutions and perspectives for the future of Amsterdam, the Netherlands and beyond’. Self-evident as that sounds – many educational institutions, governments and companies want to be more sustainable – it means quite a lot. Rather than on the building of constructions (responsible for 40 per cent of CO2 emissions worldwide), architects will have to focus much more on rebuilding and the ‘building’ of circular systems. This involves more than switching from concrete and steel to wood and hempcrete. It means developing completely new production lines for biobased materials, closing material and energy flows, and interlinking spatial issues around nitrogen, agriculture and housing – simply put: designing smart connections. Đào’s wooden connector is symbolic in this respect.

Making the monumental academy building more sustainable is one of the seven assignments students took up in the past two months; other groups focused on the future of Schiphol Airport, the upscaling of circular housing construction, ‘nitrogen epicentre’ Stroe in Gelderland, biodiversity in the Tilburg-Rotterdam region, lithium (raw material for electric car batteries and solar panels) and Isla Chira near Costa Rica, an island struggling with problems such as plastic soup and overfishing. These topics show that a new vision of the role of design and designers also requires other forms of design education. On 25 November, the students presented the first results of their research by design. What lessons can be learned from them?

‘We did not go there thinking we could “fix” things with design,’ lecturer Billy Nolan of the Costa Rica group said about the ten-day study trip they made to the South American country, where they collaborated with local design agency A-01. ‘This assignment is about the learning process for the students, to let them ask themselves: What role can we play here – if any?’

What struck architecture student Frederike Hakman most during the visit to Isla Chira was a conversation with a young resident who said: ‘As soon as I get the opportunity, I will leave the island for the city.’ Her plan Celebrate Identity wants to show that there is something to stay for, by reviving forgotten crafts as a way to give residents a future perspective. To encourage collaboration, she laid out a dirt path structure across the island, with a wooden ‘market pavilion’ from which crafts and food can be sold in the middle, creating opportunities for eco-tourism.

On 25 November, students presented the results of the design and research project P5O5, under the umbrella study programme (R)evolution Planet – Building towards a Sustainable Future. What does radical sustainability mean for design and design education?

Fellow student Marija Satibaldijeva was particularly impressed by the oyster farm she visited, at which women perform physically demanding labour from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. She designed an improved floating oyster farming method coupled with a new waste disposal system. A solar-powered boat collects waste from the ocean and brings it to the harbour, where it is sorted and processed, including into packaging material for oysters – which are distributed around the island by the same boat. The floating structure, designed with local materials, also includes a seafood restaurant.

Whereas Isla Chiara is a small fishing community, the Flevoland group was tasked to build as many as 600,000 circular dwellings (two-thirds of the total housing challenge the government has set itself to meet by 2030). Landscape Architecture student Mads Leuverink linked this challenge to that of making agriculture more sustainable, starting with the decision to switch from butcher’s meat to cultured meat. This would require far fewer cows, reducing nitrogen emissions while creating space for nature development and the creation of production forests for biobased building materials. In a flashy video titled Welcome to Cow Paradise, Leuverink explains how he would combine (existing) scenic areas into one large free-range area for cows and city dwellers, managed by ‘new cowboys’, using the green corridors he designed. Focusing on Lelystad, Hannah Liem wanted to use the transition to the circular (building) economy to improve people’s lives and create jobs; she sees opportunities in the production of building materials such as hempcrete and mycelium (fungi), which have proven themselves but lack production facilities. By ‘loading’ the existing Visarenddreef with these new functions, repurposing existing buildings for the growing of mycelium, it’s transformed into a busy axis that allows the city to proudly present itself as New Nature Capital.

In Stroe in the Province of Gelderland, 50 km away, students focused on the nitrogen crisis. Yorick van Eetvelde discovered that one of the causes of the crisis is monoculture in agriculture. Local farmers mainly grow maize, using a lot of artificial fertilizers and pesticides that enter nature via groundwater and air. Van Eetvelde combines the transition from monoculture to so-called strip cropping – in which crops that support each other grow side by side – with the realization of 25,000 biobased dwellings, designed as part of the landscape.

The most concrete design challenge, by which the Academy of Architecture searches its own conscience, is making the academy building more sustainable. This is on the agenda at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, but no detailed plan has materialized, yet. ‘We asked the question of how to use the in-house design talent that we have in order to think this through in a smart way,’ says lecturer Marieke Berkers as she explains why this was turned into a design challenge.

Architecture student Emmy Jansen thought of transforming the building into a ‘water machine’ in which rainwater is collected on the roof, channelled through the building to the courtyard and purified into drinking water by plants. This would not only be more sustainable, but also cheaper, Jansen calculated, who asked the water company for the academy’s bill. ‘Finding out one has to produce hard figures and calculations represented an important learning moment for students,’ says Berkers. ‘With this kind of complex challenge, you can’t ignore technology if you want to be able to say anything meaningful.’

While Jansen looked to engineering, Phuong Đào started his project from an anthropological point of view. He posted himself in the courtyard to observe and question users and passers-by about their (mental) well-being and appreciation of the building. This revealed, among other things, that the building now has both too little meeting space and too few enclosed spaces. He then came up with the idea of opening up the attic floor and turning it into a ‘learning landscape’ with movable interior walls and separate furniture. Berkers says this system fits well with new forms of education, which are less about individuals’ designs and more about collaboration, not only between different design disciplines, but also with scientists, policymakers and local residents. She speaks of a ‘school of process’. ←

European flights are replaced with HSR. The impact of Schiphol on the environment is largely reduced thanks to the replacement of European flights by trains. The new station allows Schiphol to keep its international network while building new connections between people and between landscapes in its direct surroundings. New dynamics emerge in Schiphol with the multimodal network making it a connector at all scales. By connecting the new station to the existing building, and therefore existing system for security and baggage processing, multimodal travel is possible and effective.

RECONNECT SCHIPHOL

Reconnect Schiphol proposes a new system for the airport but also a new transportation network in Europe. Banning European flights while simultaneously developing a High Speed Rail system in which Schiphol is a major hub would be a solution for a legitimate future. By connecting differently to a bigger scale, it brings the opportunity to also reconnect the space at a smaller scale.

In order to imagine legitimate futures for Schiphol, the first step was to determine what a legitimate airport is and what the impact on its system would be. While researching the topic, I came to the conclusion that an airport is legitimate when it does not offer flights to destinations for which acceptable alternatives exist. The question then was: What is an acceptable alternative?

MULTIMODAL HUB

With the new HSR station, Schiphol becomes a multimodal hub. Only intercontinental flights keep running (flights with no acceptable alternatives) and

The aim of the project is to reconnect Schiphol to its direct environment. Schiphol currently offers 317 destinations worldwide, connecting disparate parts of the world. But the airport is a cut in the landscape and in the route between the cities around it. It is a closed system that works independently of its environment and strongly impacts the region. With the project Reconnect Schiphol, the system opens to its surroundings. Half of the airport buildings are reused to bring new functions to the site and four of the six runways are turned into a large public park that hosts various activities. The ground floor of the new High Speed Rail (HSR) station is open and flexible, and can be used for different functions. By bringing new functions on site, Schiphol becomes more than just an airport. It is a new public space, a new connector for people at all scales.

RECONNECT SCHIPHOL

I defined an acceptable alternative through different factors such as travel time, available services, offer and major reduction of the environmental impact. I found out that among the 440,000 yearly flights going through Schiphol, over 80 per cent are European, which represents over 350,000 flights a year. European flights have alternatives, but are they all acceptable?

Section showing the High Speed Rail (HSR) station, public space and connector.

INTERCONTINENTAL DESTINATIONS

AmsterdamUtrecht LONDON

RotterdamDen Haag

HAMBURGBERLINFRANKFURT

EUROPEAN DESTINATIONS DESTINATIONS

BRUSSELS PARIS

Reconnecting the piers.

Reconnecting the Netherlands.

Plan of Schiphol airport with the High Speed Rail (HSR) station.

a new public space.

around us in a variety of ways. They can be produced by burning or evaporating substances, as well as by animals and humans themselves. Just how much is emitted varies from subject to subject. Unfortunately, aviation emissions are one of the main sources of UFPs. This is due to the combustion of kerosene in today’s jet engines. This study looks at the dangers that particles pose to people and the contribution that Schiphol makes to this pollution in the Netherlands. It also compares Schiphol with similar airports and their surroundings to see what the possible future dangers are. Ultimately, the study serves as a bridge to the search for a way to eliminate these particles completely. It also explores ways in which Schiphol could potentially contribute to this and possible design options that could play an important role in the future. Some of the assumptions made in this study are mainly related to the exact air pollution by UFPs in the environment and which external factors contribute to this. It also looks at alternative fuel components and possible fusions in fuel that could reduce the amount of UFPs emitted. Schiphol has a large area of land where a biofuel plantation could be established to make an additional contribution to the final process.

Almost everyone is well aware of the fact that airports and aviation in general are a major threat to air quality. Some problems are bigger than others, but we are often not fully aware of all the health implications. Ultra-fine particles (UFP) are a case in point. UFPs are the smallest possible particles released during the combustion of aviation fuel, after which they are suspended in the air and pose a health hazard. UFPs are actually created in the air

Alex de Jong and Clemens Driessen

Schiphol: Exploring future airport ecology

space

This image shows the entire process behind the idea of the project. It starts with waste water from the city of Amsterdam and turns it into biofuel for the planes flying out of Schiphol.

A cross section of Pier-E at Amsterdam Schiphol airport. The redesigned Pier-E houses part of the algae farm. A new pier focuses on light and green energy.

This diagram shows how Schiphol functions as an algae farm and how the pier plays a role in this in connection with the rest.

The core of the pier houses an atrium with lots of light and a gathering place for people.

This cross section shows how the algae farm process forms within the pier itself, and how the elements work together.

The algae farm expands over a longer period of time, slowly turning Schiphol into a green valley in North Holland.

SILENT SCHIPHOL

Runways (top left), Schiphol size 16.5 km 2 (top right), no birds 226 km 2 (middle left), building height regulations 450 km 2 (middle right), building typology regulations 175 km 2 (bottom left).

from residential areas that are otherwise considered uninhabitable due to noise levels. This investigative research explores how a high-density neighbourhood is able to deflect sound.

humorous, as silence is mostly without action. What if persistent sounds could be countered by design intervention? For years, the anechoic chamber has been used as a silent realm for testing sound, on a human scale for audio recordings and on a much larger scale for testing aircraft noise. If the geometry of the acoustic panels works to reduce the roar of jet engines, could the same theory be applied to the landscapes and urban plans surrounding Schiphol? This theory explores the rescaling and unravelling of the network of the Anechoic Cube to form the structure of an urban plan around Schiphol, based entirely on redirecting the acoustics in the atmosphere away

Many people living around Schiphol Airport experience the negative health effects of living with ex cessive noise on a daily basis. These include stress, anxiety and sleep disturbance in the short term, and coronary disease and early-onset dementia in the long term. The study of how humans create silence might seem

A recording studio-scale anechoic chamber (left), an aircraft-scale anechoic chamber (middle) and a neighbourhood-scale anechoic chamber (right).

Combination of typologies.

Axonometric.

Typologies in neighbourhood.

Section with sound waves.

AMMONIA PLANTSCAPE

Ammonia is produced locally in a plant from manure and surplus solar energy. It needs to be produced in large quantities to be cost effective; basically it’s a ‘super battery’ that stores excess green energy on a regional scale. The plant will be placed freely in the landscape, forming a bridge between the Veluwe and the Stroe, and will show the ammonia production chain in an interactive way. Along the route, the orchid reveals the state of nature and acts as a barometer for the soil.

Two interviews were conducted in this context. The first was with Ginus, a biologist who discovered the Veluwe Helleborine, an orchid that grows almost exclusively on the Veluwe and requires a very specific biotope. The second with Gijs, who owns a transport company in Stroe. He wants to replace his old diesel lorries with zero-emission battery-powered vehicles, but is unable to do so because the energy grid is overloaded. Saving and transporting energy is a big problem due to the spatial limitations of green energy production and storage in the region. To find a solution, we turned to ammonia. Did you know that ammonia can also be a sustainable fuel? It’s like hydrogen, very good for long-term energy storage, but more compact and less explosive, making it a great fuel for large machines like those used by farmers. Ammonia emission rights will be exchanged between net producers and captors, making ammonia capture a revenue model.

operates. Changing the system will not only affect farmers, but also other partners in the food chain such as meat processing and transport.

Stroe is a village on the edge of the Veluwe nature reserve. It recently became famous for large protests against the nitrogen reduction policy. Due to the high intensity of livestock farming, the region produces a lot of ammonia, which is the main nitrogen compound. Nitrogen is one of the most important elements in nature, but too much of it leads to a one-sided biotope. Species that require arid soil, such as the orchid, are disappearing. If livestock farming is to remain viable in the region, major changes are needed in the way the region

Map showing the village of Stroe in the Veluwe nature reserve.

Concept plan.

patterns recognizable to the target species, combined with defining barriers and making them traversable, you can link human and natural habitats into a species-inclusive habitat. By translating animal behaviour into a spatial language that we can understand, we can make conservation policy more effective. My research covers the whole of Costa Rica. I used our project site, Isla Chira, a fishing island in the Gulf of Nicoya, as a case study. Chira is home to four of my target species (there are no jaguars on the island). By projecting their ‘daily system’ onto the island, I was able to find the places where habitat fragmentation had occurred. By listening and trying to think like other species, I was able to design a new ‘species-inclusive pattern’ for the island.

Despite Costa Rica’s commitment to nature conservation, change is still not happening fast enough to counteract the negative effects of human habitats. Species loss continues. Costa Rica’s Reforestation Programme (PES) was adopted in 1996 and was quite progressive for its time. Under the PES, Costa Rica was able to increase its reforestation rate from 21 per cent in 1987 to the current 52 per cent in 2010. Currently, the PES is really intertwined with ecotourism. Many of the reforested areas are home to ‘ecoresorts’ or ‘ecovillages’. Costa Rica may have turned the tide on deforestation, but planting trees won’t solve the human impact on nature. By removing, altering and burying landscape patterns, humans have taken away the ability of other species to move freely across the landscape. These patterns are essential for non-human species to navigate the landscape. In my P5O5 project, I aimed to translate animal behaviour research into a spatial framework. The species chosen (the jaguar, the Jamaican fruit bat, the chestnut mandibled toucan, the black howler monkey) and the tico and tica (Costa Rican Indigenous people, human, male and female) are all strongly associated with the PES programme and ecotourism. As we listened to the story of the jaguar, bat, toucan and howler monkey, they would tell us about their own habitat and what they need to cross into or live in the human habitat. By mapping the daily systems of my target species, I found out what they need to navigate and use the landscape as their habitat. My hypothesis was that by reintroducing landscape

Homo sapiens

Human

NAME

NAME

SCIENTIFIC

DIET Omnivore, diet consists of various processed foods, farmed plants and meat

Melis and Billy Nolan

Luz

Nonnatural, humans live in an artificial landscape that can be divided into three subcategories: the living landscape, the production landscape and the transportation network.

7.98 billion

HABITAT

Vida: Costa Rica and the island of Chira

POPULATION

Pura

RANGE

195 countries are inhabited by the human species

TERRITORY Territorial species that live together with individuals of the same social group but are hostile towards other groups of the same species. The attitude to other animal species differs. It is hard to assess how a human will react to other species.

The Jamaican fruit bat spreads the seeds in fruits to diversify the forest. It follows structures of trees, waterways and transitions in vegetation.

black howler monkey's entire life takes place in the canopy. It can jump 4 m far from tree to tree. Deforested land is a barrier because, without a connected canopy, it cannot move to a different habitat.

at once. The proposed design could inspire other islands and cities in the Gulf of Nicoya to take the same initiatives because it is simple, scalable and recyclable.

For me as a designer, this project has taught me to look at the current situation and try to use existing resources to create a better future. For example, instead of building a whole new neighbourhood in a city, I try to look at problem areas and improve them, or use unused spaces to make a real difference. The most valuable lesson has been to look at people’s everyday lives and involve them in the design process. After all, we are creating cities for people to live in.

I tried to use existing solutions and upgrade them where possible. The solution I focused on was oyster farming, and I improved it by proposing to make it more efficient with additional infrastructure. In the new oyster farm, the women can do their work much more efficiently and comfortably. The new system also allows for easier expansion with a modular system where oyster farm lines for oyster nets (lanterns) and new platforms are connected. This allows them to clean and sort oysters on a daily basis in the same place. This new oyster farm has been incorporated into the island’s new infrastructure and a newly proposed waste management system. Waste will still end up on the island’s beaches and islanders will have to dispose of it at home rather than burying or burning it. The new system will create new jobs as there will be people to help collect waste from different parts of the island and store it on a mobile waste collector that will eventually take it to the sorting recycling plant. The recycled waste can be used for parts of the construction of the oyster farm platforms. The new design on Chira will help to address the problem of waste pollution, which will finally bring back the aquatic life and improve fishing, which is part of the Chira people’s identity. The island has the potential to become an example of sustainability, tackling multiple challenges

The P5O5 project on Chira Island has inspired and encouraged me to get more involved in the daily lives of the people, because the designs we create can improve their lives. The biggest challenge they face is waste pollution that ends up in the Gulf of Nicoya, which leads to an overfishing problem and less fish for them to catch. This is a big problem because the people of Chira are a strong fishing community. People are already taking action, such as setting up oyster farms around Chira, but this is just the beginning. My design proposal could solve several related problems for Chira at the same time. The aim of my design proposal is the creation of a regenerative and sustainable community in Chira.

Luz Melis and Billy Nolan

Map of Costa Rica, with the island of Chira in the Gulf of Nicoya top left.

Waste collector.

Impression of the new working area.

New waste management and logistics in the Gulf of Nicoya around the island of Chira.

CALLING ON COSTA RICA

In late October 2022, nine intrepid students stepped off a boat, hoisted their backpacks above their heads, and waded through shallow seawater to reach the shoreline of the remote fishing island of Chira (population 2,000) in the Gulf of Nagoya off the west coast of Costa Rica. As their luggage was piled into a minibus, they headed inland on foot, in the heat and humidity, down the dirt track that serves as the island’s main road, meandering its way from one side of Chira to the other. One hour later, a wooden sign painted bright turquoise announced their arrival at ‘Posada Rural La Amistad’, just before the heavens opened. Waiting to welcome them to this ‘Eco Lodge’ – a scattering of timber structures set among mango and fig trees – was the lady of the house, Liliana Martínez. She had just finished preparing plenty of Gallo Pinto, a meal of rice and beans, with fried eggs and sometimes plantains, that is something of a national dish in Costa Rica. Setting into new surroundings had never been this easy. Liliana is one of a number of women who clubbed together to set up this hostel as a way of supplementing the dwindling income earned by their husbands from fishing. As rising sea temperatures and the accompanying proliferation of algae (the ‘red tide’) affect fish stocks, fishermen have to spend more and more time out at sea to catch enough fish to make a livelihood.

The difficulties facing the fishermen are emblematic of the problems facing the island, where life is a struggle for survival and everything, even potable water, has to be imported from the mainland. In an attempt to improve fortunes, some women set up a craft studio and shop while others developed an oyster farm, both with varying degrees of success. A waste separation plant was left half-built for reasons that would never become completely clear. Outside efforts to assist in establishing initiatives often run aground because of a seeming lack of community support. Like many islands, there was something impenetrable about Chira.

Undaunted, the Academy students set to work and came up with all sorts of strategies designed to make the life of the islanders that bit easier. They included a floating farm to grow staple crops; a covered market hall that doubles as a community centre; underwater structures that stimulate the growth of coral; an island-wide waste collection and treatment system; a jetty that extends as far as the offshore oyster beds to ease the burden on the women and improve the efficiency of oyster production; a 100-km-long tourist route from the capital San José to Chira that introduces visitors to the country’s culture, history, gastronomy and precious landscapes; and a proposal to think about landscapes not from a human perspective, but from the perspectives of various fauna, and to adapt them accordingly.

All of these proposals were fed by days spent exploring the island, climbing its peaks, walking its roads, boating along its mangroves, swimming in its waters, eating its Gallo Pinto, listening to its sounds, talking to locals, getting a sense of the place, the people, and their problems.

Costa Rica is sometimes dubbed the ‘Switzerland of Central America’ because of its stable democracy, its lack of an army (abolished in 1948), and its relative affluence. Despite its tiny size (51,000 km2, slightly bigger than the Netherlands), this thin sliver of mountainous land separating the Pacific from the Caribbean boasts a multitude of microclimates. Sharp differences in topography, altitude and rainfall mean that dense jungle and rainforests quickly give way to tropical dry forests or volcanos (of which there are 200). It is also one of the most biodiverse places on Earth, with something in the region of half a million species, or about 5 per cent of the Earth’s total.

While it is impossible not to be filled with awe by the stunning scenery, the students came away with a strong sense of just how precarious this paradise is, and keenly aware of their responsibility to help safeguard its survival, and that of the communities who call it home. ←

In the P5O5 studio tutored by Aura Luz Melis, Raul Correa-Smith and Billy Nolan, students produced designs for Chira Island and beyond.

Text BILLY NOLAN

HEALING SITES

Architect and Academy alumna Lesia Topolnyk won the Prix de Rome 2022 with her project No Innocent Landscape. She uses architecture to lay bare Ukraine’s wounds.

Man-sized coal plinths, scrap metal objects. Is this the work of an architect? In an exhibition space of Rotterdam architecture centre Het Nieuwe Instituut, Ukrainian-Dutch architect Lesia Topolnyk developed her views on the theme of Healing Sites. Topolnyk received the Prix de Rome, which is awarded every four years to a young Dutch architect, from Gunay Uslu, state secretary for culture, in December. In her project No Innocent Landscape, Topolnyk links the shooting down of flight MH17 in 2014 in the Donbas in eastern Ukraine to environmental problems in that same area. The Donbas landscape has been dug over and degraded by coal mining for a century and a half; the region is also rich in lithium and rare earth metals. The Ukrainian government had plans to mine these –analysts say this was one of the reasons for Russia’s annexation of the Donbas.

Topolnyk examined how all of this coincided at the MH17 disaster site near the Ukrainian village of Hrabove. She ‘deconstructed’ the events to lay the foundations for change – or even healing. Her work includes a short film, sculptures, graphic work and concise, poetic texts, but it does not include a concrete design, as one would expect: no landscape, space or building. In a talk we had at the Het Nieuwe Instituut café, Topolnyk explained why her work is architecture, too, why especially work like hers is architecture. ‘For the first time in my life, I felt very strongly that this was work I had to make.’

Why is this work so important to you?

‘I wanted to translate my own feelings into something spatial. I remember the day flight MH17 was shot down very well. It was a traumatic period for me. I had recently moved to the Netherlands at the time. First the Ukrainian revolution happened, next the annexation of Crimea, and then the plane was shot down.’

‘All of this brought back childhood memories. I used to live in Dnipro, a major city in central Ukraine. I spent the summers with my grandparents, in an area where coal had been mined, like in the Donbas. It seemed very peaceful there, very green and almost forgotten. But the hills that dominated the landscape there are artificial – they consisted of coal pit waste. Only later did I realize that the water in which I had been swimming had been polluted as well.

‘As an architect, I have always been interested in the way world problems affect places. That is also why I did not stay in Ukraine once I finished my studies: I didn’t expect to be able to follow my calling there. In Ukraine, architects mainly design villas for the rich, with lots of gold and luxury.’

The work in your exhibition looks like that of an autonomous artist, not an architect.

‘Yes, these days people expect architects to make concrete drawings, or models. But before I can add something to that place near that village in Ukraine, I first have to make visible what happened there. I wanted to combine the damage in the landscape, the loss of lives, with dreams, feelings, the invisible. That is architecture, too: the architecture of a new way of living.’

Don’t you think you eventually have to design something, too?

‘That’s possible, I’m good at that, too, but in today’s complex world you have to resist the desire to build something new all the time. Sure, I could have built a monument, or something like that. But that would not have made people understand how everything is connected. People don’t know the place where MH17 was shot down. They only see the surface. To change that, I developed new, short narratives that fit that place.’

Written impressions, illustrated with black-and-white pen drawings, paintings and photographs, are important to No Innocent Landscape. For example, Topolnyk writes about the mine system that connects Russia- and Ukraine-dominated areas underground, thus breaking down borders – and how methane clouds escaping from the mines cross those same borders. And she sketched a No Way Bridge, an impossibly long gangway over a hill →

Text HESTER VAN SANTEN Photo AAD HOOGENDOORN

of coal pit waste. Unconventional, but for Topolnyk, being awarded the Prix de Rome feels like recognition of precisely that way of working.

‘I used a different approach and it was well received. It was a very personal project as well – even the working process itself was personal. My parents, my sister and her daughter came over from Ukraine in March. My father helped me build the installation. We made the plinths from coal and silicone, I was completely black. My father and I worked on the installation here at Het Nieuwe Instituut, from morning to night. I had never done anything like that with my father before. This way, the exhibition also became a healing site for myself.’

You are a storyteller. Do you also design concrete projects?

‘Yes, for the past ten years I’ve worked for architecture offices, also because I had to, for my work visa. In addition, I have my own design studio StudioSpaceStation – I work seven days a week. In recent years, I’ve developed a few projects independently, like a sketch design for the Maritiem Museum in Rotterdam. But I haven’t built anything myself, no.’

Architect Marlies Rohmer stated that it is increasingly difficult for young Dutch architects to make a name for themselves. Have you noticed this, too?

‘Definitely. Like with my project for the Maritiem Museum. I was selected, as were two other offices, to investigate the potential of the space. But only large, established offices were subsequently commissioned to create the design. Since the financial crisis in 2008, developers have become increasingly queasy about taking risks.’

‘But I have hope and besides, I want to be independent. I don’t have to work for offices anymore, because I recently got a Dutch passport. When I worked at MVRDV, I saw that architects have good intentions – for example to green urban districts – but everybody knows that these are often lost at a later design stage. I don’t want to devote my life to that.’

As an independent architect, you are free to mostly come up with concepts. Don’t you mind if it ends there? ‘Of course it’s interesting to actually make something. At Fabrications, I worked on the plan for Amsterdam’s Bajeskwartier; at MVRDV, I worked on De Modernist, among other things, a tower block with offices and apartments that is being built next to Rotterdam’s central station. But that project was all about square metres. I witnessed the revolution in Ukraine. I feel I should at least try to do some good in the world.’

You’ve just won 40,000 euros and a residency of your choice. You can do whatever you want for a whole year! ‘Hardly. Half the money goes towards paying taxes. And I’m going to donate part of it. My cousin is volunteering in Dnipro; my family in the Netherlands doesn’t have an easy time of it, either. But it’s true: I don’t have to take on any work that I don’t want to do for a bit. And I’m really looking forward to the residency. I don’t know where I want to go, yet. Perhaps to Ukraine, there are all kinds of new cultural initiatives going on there. These are emerging precisely because of the war. I see a lot of people who are traumatized, and I can feel it, myself: I can release my bottled-up emotions in my artistic work. My family having to come over, the suffering of others, the apps from people saying goodbye . . . As an artist, I am more immersed, emotionally. This work is not just imagination, I really believe in it.’ She is visibly moved.

How are you feeling right now?

‘All of those stories friends tell me, all of those terrible images, make me very emotional. I just do what I can: I share my experiences and thoughts. Perhaps I could have given a less artistic interpretation, and then maybe people would have taken me more seriously, but this is what I wanted to do. I think this way, people get more connected to it. Get to experience it.’ ←

This article was previously published in the Dutch newspaper NRC of 14 December 2022. The nominees for the Prix de Rome 2022 also included Arna Mačkić and Kim Kool and Willemijn van Manen of Studio KIWI, all of them alumni of the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture.

Topolnyk received the Prix de Rome from Gunay Uslu, state secretary for culture, in December.

Since Anna Zań graduated in 2021 from the Academy of Architecture she’s been working as a freelance architect. Currently, she’s also a guest teacher at the Academy. ‘I’m in between stages: Will I work for myself or will I work for someone else?

I’ve given myself time to explore these options. The Academy has really helped me to define what matters to me and what sort of architect I would like to be. I’m trying to trust it. My ambition is to either find the perfect practice or to create one myself, which is of course not so easy as a young designer.’

One of the most important lessons from the Academy for her was critical thinking. ‘For instance reflecting and questioning assignments I receive. I’ve also learned to be open to research and translating extensive exploration into an actual design. That was crucial for me. Also over time, I’ve gained more confidence in sharing my ideas, although it’s still a work in progress.’ That helped her in questioning and finding her own drive. ‘What is important for me, to continue work as an architect, researcher and designer? Focusing on this personal development is quite unique at the Academy. That’s also due to the scale; since it’s very small the chances are big that it becomes very personal, throughout the path you follow, building your ideas.’

The educational model of the Academy, with invited guest teachers, also helped her to shape that path. ‘You encounter different professionals. Some have a way of working that especially inspired me.’

It became clear to her what values are important: ‘Environmental sustainability and looking beyond what is currently seen as sustainable design and trying to be critical towards that. In some of my current research projects I focus on material explorations and biobased building methods. My graduation work also explored the subjects of sustainable material production, reuse and building in balance with nature. I continue to work in line with those ambitions as much as possible. although it’s quite challenging due to the commerciality of the field.’

Her work was also partly inspired by the work of landscape architects from the Academy. ‘Besides the focus on individual development at the Academy, I’ve learned to ask others there, beyond the scope of architecture, to search for answers beyond my discipline. I love the in-between zones of architecture and landscape, and would like to develop in this niche.’

One challenging aspect of the Academy was the notorious workload. ‘But everyone is aware of that. The biggest problem is that everything, both work and education, is extremely exciting but there is a matter of time and the perfect balance.’ ←

After four intensive years of study and attaining their Master of Science degree, alumni move out into the wide world. How have they fared since?

Text TARA LEWIS

ANNA ZAŃ ARCHITECT

Six months after graduating, Lieke Jildou de Jong started working for the City of Groningen. Today her office, Landscape Collected, is in full swing.

‘The idea is that people can join the collective to work on a better world together, on an equal level. They can be landscape architects, urban designers or architects. As of April, there are two of us already.’

She was able to develop her vision at the Academy of Architecture. ‘I was given the space to position myself as a designer, to define what I stand for and how this relates to landscape architecture. I discovered this by carrying out free commissions, in which research is the foundation for each design. One important lesson I learnt was that there is no single way to address everything and it is therefore important to be critical and work on your learning ability.’

The lecture series also helped with this. ‘The lectures not only provide background information and input, but also ensure that the discourse in the field and the zeitgeist are etched in your memory, much more so than if you were working alone. I think that working alone, you lose this focus on innovation quicker, due to the issues of the day.’

This is why she feels the combination of study and work is very valuable. ‘I grew from intern to project leader in four years.’ At the office, some of the focus was on clients and communicating with them. ‘As a result, we learned about the interests at play, apart from any specific design – about things like money, policy, tenders, participation and municipal visions. I thought that was important to learn. At the Academy, you do not get all that many questions about the commercial, practical side.’

During the design studios, the focus was more on creative development. ‘I mainly find my inspiration outside the discipline and that was encouraged by the lecturers. They were able to refer me to relevant artists and scientists. Talking about what fascinates you and gaining confidence in that are important ways to develop.’

Fellow students are also an important factor. ‘You learn an awful lot from others, during encounters and conversations and by questioning each other.’

Her current design practice is very similar to the way she combined work and study during her time at the Academy. ‘That’s almost one-to-one. I try to spend half my time doing research, asking questions and getting answers. I work a lot with ecosystems, so knowledge of context and other experts is very important. I’m also developing myself artistically, asking myself how I can visualize things.’ The rest of the time, she runs projects. ‘This means dealing with clients and very concrete, often practical challenges. I find that interaction relevant, because you learn what the questions are, what people come up against. On the other hand, I investigate fundamental questions, for example regarding the dynamics between policy and the management of farmers and how this manifests in the landscape. This also reflects our field.’ These are not the type of questions she gets from clients. ‘But they do need to be asked and asking them makes me a better contractor.’

Knowledge of policy and government processes would be a welcome addition to the Academy curriculum as far as she is concerned. ‘You are trained as an independent designer with a vision. But if you don’t know where to make that vision land, realizing it becomes quite the challenge.’ ←

LIEKE JILDOU DE JONG LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT

TARA LEWIS

PRIZE EMPLOYER

HAMEL

Lieneke van Campen has been managing partner at Karres en Brands, a landscape architecture and urban design office in Hilversum that regularly employs students of the Academy of Architecture, since 2013. She herself was also working at Karres en Brands when she graduated in Landscape Architecture from the Academy in 2005.

How many Academy students do you employ and how are things going?

‘We have four students working for us at the moment, one of whom has put his studies on hold. In the past we’ve employed up to six at a time. We pay the Academy students’ tuition fees, so we draw up study contracts. I stay in touch with all of them. We keep an eye on how things are going, how they’re balancing work and study. I was particularly worried during the Covid-19 crisis; I contacted director Madeleine Maaskant because I saw my people struggling, working online from their tiny rooms. They would sit in front of their screens from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. and only log off when they had finished their projects. They’re all so keen to study at the Academy, but I also want them to be healthy while they’re here. If they fall ill because it’s all too much, then the scales will have tipped and that will do no one any good. Madeleine took the signal from the field seriously.’

What else does Karres en Brands do to ensure that students are in a good position to combine their work with their studies?

‘At every performance or mid-term interview, the students and I discuss the importance of balancing work and study, in that order, as well as the equally important existence of a personal life. Everyone needs rest and time to relax.

If you have a partner who is fed up with you because you’re always busy, something is obviously wrong. I really try to make them aware of that. I see students who are incredibly ambitious and talented. A lot of them are also perfectionists, so they always set the bar high, even when they don’t have to. At work, we regularly discuss what the requirements of assignments actually are. Sometimes you just have to do a project properly, without adding anything extra. If you are bidding, you want to win, so you always go the extra mile and work right up to the final deadline. But sometimes you really do too much, go on for too long. Sometimes it’s much more efficient to have a short consultation with the team or a partner involved, make decisions and move on. So that’s what we talk about together. Of course, sometimes people work overtime just before a deadline, but that has to be balanced. Even at the Academy.’

Of course, there are a lot of offices out there where putting in overtime is the norm.

‘Yes, so I hear. I think this is unacceptable: as an employer, you have a responsibility for the wellbeing of your employees. Of course, our lights are also on some evenings and our people occasionally work over the weekend. I’m usually aware of this and I tell them: “It’s a beautiful day, why don’t you go outside for a while.” Some people respond better to this than others. Also, at the Academy, I sometimes feel that lecturers make too much of certain projects, that they push the students for yet another model or extra visualizations. But at some point you run out of hours and as a student you have to decide what you are going to do or not do.’

‘Perhaps lecturers need more guidance in this regard, to ensure that they don’t overwhelm students by sending them yet another email the night before a project. The pressure to perform can be devastating in this industry, with all these tenders, and you sometimes see this reflected in students. Lecturers can teach them how to balance that. I was a very disciplined student myself, so Saturdays were my day off and Sundays were spent on work for the Academy. In those days, in my opinion, the final result was judged much more on the merits of the whole and less on the merits of the best drawing or model.’

‘In January and February I supervised the Design and Management class. I liked it because it gave me another chance to see the Academy from the inside. This class didn’t include any homework, so the students really had to work on the spot.’

Four employees of Karres en Brands are studying at the Academy of Architecture. Managing partner Lieneke van Campen, herself a graduate of the Academy, talks about her experiences as an employer.

Text

Photo ARJAAN

So, why does Karres en Brands hire employees who study alongside their work?

‘We think it’s always good for people to develop. If they don’t, they stagnate while the profession moves on. Of course, you can grow without the Academy, but it helps. One of the things I really liked about the Academy is that you work as part of a team in the office, whereas at the Academy you can do your own thing and find out what you stand for. Without having to make the compromises that you have to make in a team. It’s a good combination because you learn to formulate, sharpen and defend your points of view.’

You’re training students together. How does that work?

‘I don’t treat students differently from other staff. We want students to participate fully in projects and take responsibility for them. Some pick up on that quicker than others, but that’s not a bad thing. As they progress in their studies, they are given more responsibility here. And as they move towards project management, we provide them with project management training and discussions with peers about situations they might encounter in the field. But we do this for everyone.’

‘If students need to learn, do or discover something, they can always come to me. In that sense, I see the role of co-educator as quite informal. And sometimes students will simply sit down with a colleague to talk about their Academy assignments. We also want to act as a sounding board.’

‘And although we pay their tuition fees, if a portfolio requires a type of project that we simply can’t offer to achieve the final learning outcomes, we try to find a creative way of working together to solve this. But the students have to raise the issue themselves. Some find it easier than others.’

How do the learning outcomes of the extracurricular curriculum match the demands of the profession today?

‘I couldn’t say, I’d have to look it up. What I noticed when I was teaching the Design and Management class recently was that there was little knowledge of how tenders are put together: from their structure to the way they are written. Beginning staff don’t do that at Karres en Brands yet, either, they take steps towards that at some point. But I do think it is important that everyone working on a project knows how the tender is put together, or what the requirements of a competition are. You need to know what everyone is working on, what the planning is, when certain deadlines are or when there is a public presentation, for example.’

Basically all of the facets of a project?

‘Yes. It’s the project manager’s job to communicate that well. And it’s important to have a clear starting point where everyone knows what the plan is. So that if I can’t find the project manager, I can ask a project member how things are going, or when an important presentation is going to take place. It’s everyone’s responsibility. When I was teaching the course, I noticed that not everyone was aware of their own position as a cog in the machine, both internally and externally. This has nothing to do with financial information, by the way, but with knowledge of the process. I think that was what my students liked most, that they started to understand how things work. So you can be a good designer but still have no idea how processes develop or how things are organized. Whether you’re self-employed or working in an office, I think that’s essential. In the past it was a little bit underestimated, but fortunately it’s getting more attention now.’

How is knowledge development organized at Karres en Brands?

‘Quite well, when I look at where we are as an office and the discussions we have. We have a very international staff, we share a lot with each other. There are so many outside influences that people bring in. In a one-person office it’s a different story, you still have to get your input from somewhere and that’s where your like-minded fellow students come in. There are 50 of us here who you can talk to and get involved with. We keep each other sharp and up to date on new topics. What’s going on? What have I found out in one project and can I take that with me to the next one, to add a new layer to it?’ ←

QUESTION TIME

After the most recent employer meeting was held online, this year’s meeting, on 16 February 2023, is once again a physical edition. The turnout is high: an estimated 70 employers and other interested parties are gathered in the Balkenzaal to discuss various topics related to students and employership.

Director Madeleine Maaskant and professional experience coordinator Nico van Bockhooven give a short introduction and subsequently students Coco Vink and Constanza Gómez Guzmán present their lessons from the Design and Management practice module. During this practice module, which is organized by Alijd van Doorn, students choose a project they are working on (or have worked on) at their employer’s and analyse this project in terms of, for example, management, organization and the collaboration of teams. The students also make suggestions for improving the process.

Coco Vink begins by explaining the structure of Venhoeven CS, the company at which he works. There are a number of teams led by team leaders. Leading them are four partners, who themselves are led by the founder of the firm, Ton Venhoeven. The project analysed by Vink consists of two towers with 735 student dwellings on the campus of Eindhoven University of Technology that are currently in the final design stage. The design not only centred on student wellbeing, but also paid heed to rent levels. The university issued a tender, with a DBFMO contract for 50 years. Woonbedrijf had prepared a business case for the building and then engaged Heijmans as the contractor. Heijmans in turn had contracted a host of other parties, including a façade builder and prefab bathroom builder. Because of this construction, Venhoeven CS did not have full control over the design, as the contractor had handed over responsibility for it to other parties. Managing of all of these involved parties was quite complicated due to the chosen tender form. In addition, Eindhoven University of Technology had its own quality committee as well. This committee had different views on design quality than VenhoevenCS, which caused the design process to take much longer than planned. A project manager or mediator could have helped to reconcile all the different interests.

Constanza Gómez Guzmán is a landscape architecture student and public space designer at the city of Amsterdam working mainly on Buiksloterham, a former harbour area in Amsterdam-Noord. Buiksloterham is the city’s pilot project in the field of sustainability and circularity. For one thing, it will include a circularly built bridge. When working on a circular product, designers must inventory which circular materials are available before they can start designing. This is why the project is working with a construction team, which means that the contractor is involved in the process at an early stage. A standard working process is linear: first, the designer goes to work, next, the engineer and finally, the contractor and the result is a finished product. The disadvantage of this working method is that the drawings have to go back to the designer after the contractor has made a risk calculation and specification. If things go wrong, the designer will have to start all over again. Establishing a construction team offers an alternative for this model that works better for complex projects like ones including circular bridges. Because the engineer and contractor are involved in the design from the start, material scouting can not only begin very early in the project (as is the case in linear work processes), but also continue during construction. Risk identification takes place much earlier as well. Working with a construction team is more complicated than by a linear process, however, as some tasks are performed by multiple team members. The use of circular materials does reduce expenditure on new materials, but it comes with other costs, which we are only now seeing for the first time. For example, second-hand materials need to be tested and certified before they can be used. The lifespan of recycled materials is usually shorter than that of new materials. Also, scouted materials often need to be stored somewhere for a long time. Gómez Guzmán concludes that involving collaboration partners in a multidisciplinary team at an early stage increases the chances of achieving sustainability goals. Circularity need not be more expensive, but it does involve a new way of spending money. Finances and teamwork should evolve, embrace flexibility and catch up with the advancement of ideas.

On 16 February 2023, the Academy hosted an employer meeting that provided opportunities for discussion about the external curriculum.

Text DAVID KEUNING

After these two presentations, Van Bockhooven discusses the nature and set-up of the concurrent education model, using the law governing higher education and academic research (WHW, Wet op het hoger onderwijs en wetenschappelijk onderzoek), Dutch Architect’s Title Act (WAT, Wet op de Architectentitel), Professional Experience Period Regulations (Regeling beroepservaring), Additional Rules for the Organization of Architectural Study Programmes (Nadere regeling inrichting opleidingen architect), European Directive 36/2005/ EC and the way these are interrelated. These laws determine the mutual responsibilities of study programmes, students and employers, but are not known to everyone in detail, so an explanation of them is useful to ensure everyone has their role clearly in mind. A discussion then unfolds among those present on four topics: the importance of a good working environment (including a safe environment and awareness of language and culture), the nature of the employment (the type of work, the type of contract and appropriate remuneration), the balance between study, work and private life (workload and study load) and employment (level of knowledge, background and language of students). In the process, questions and comments of various kinds emerge from the audience. The first speaker compliments the Academy. The speaker also studied there and has the impression that the Academy is now much more conscious of the topics mentioned than before. →

Location: Science Park Eindhoven

Traditionally VenhoevenCS is a very horizontal organisation. When it was founded, it even had some communistic ideoligies when it came to organisation structure. However since it started growing exponentially, we now operate on a very efficient team structure, which looks very hierarchal on paper, but is only slightly so in practice. Projects get divided by the teams and within a team we have all the members needed to complete the full project.

We picked up this project after tenderphase with Team 1, with Hermen as the project leader and principal architect. However, Manfred was also closely related to the project (as he did his studies in Eindhoven and lived there for a long time, he wanted to be closely involved). This sometimes caused unclarity, as we had 2 project architects with sometimes different opinions.

As said, the TU/e wants to expand their campus with affordable and qualitative student houses. For this it has listed a tender which consists of a DBFMO structure. In this case, the winning team would lease the ground for a period of 50 years, on which they have to design, build, finance, maintain and operate the student houses. Here the problem of avoiding responsibility already starts (TU/e doesn’t want to have any responsibility and thus leases their ground for 50yrs).

Woonbedrijf, a (social) housing corporation decided to participate (which is quite unusual for a corporation to participate in a commercial tender) and acted as the main tenderer in our team. They made a closing business case with on one side all the costs (building, maintance, operational, etc) and on the other side the rent of the 735 houses over 50 years. They don’t know much about actually building, so they made a contract with Heijmans who took over the responsibility of the buildings costs.

Heijmans knows that the majority of the costs is usually the facade and the construction, so it made contracts with a constructor and a pre-fab facade builder that would take the responsibility for those costs, aswell as a pre-fab bathroom supplier.

This fragmantation was of course superficial, not taking into account the overlap of tasks / responsibilities, which caused for a messy colaboration. Next to that it also made it so that a big part of the design was already decided for us as architects, which made it difficult for us to have the desired impact on the design and quality of the building.

The TU/e has their own beauty committee that takes over the role of the municipal committee. It’s a committee that has been in place since 20 years and consists of 4 old school modernist architects and teachers from the TU/e. VenhoevenCS has a playful and humanistic design philosophy that contradicted with the vision of the committee (hence the low architecture score). This made for endless discussions and a design process that lasted way longer than needed (and counted for in the budget).

My proposal consists of 2 parts.

Part 1 is about the project structure within the office. Instead of having 2 project architects who sometimes operated seperately from eachother and made the process unclear, it would have been better for the design team to have just 1 project architect.

Of course discussions and interactions between the project architect and partner can still be possible, as long as there’s only 1 point of contact for the design team.

Part 2 is about the fragmantated responsibilities. Ideal there would just be a shared responsibility by Heijmans and VenhoevenCS, causing us to work together better. These responsibilities would then be supported by a team of advisors and consultants. The facade, bathrooms, etc. could then be tendered on the market to still get a good price.

Alternatively, if fragmentation of the responsibilities is deemed necessary by Heijmans, it would have helped if there was at least a mediator or project manager, who would act as a spider in the web of all these responsibilities.

This tiresome process didn’t only lead to frustration, it also created a lot of extra work that we hadn’t counted on, causing us to spend more money on the early phases than we were getting paid for. We also lost money in DO phase, trying to put the project in Revit (should’ve just hired a drawing company).

However, we managed to earn some back in the TU and supervision phase.

Honoraria

Costs

Teamworking for Circularity in Public Space

Buiksloterham: Pioneer Circular neighborhood

Asterpad+ Project: Park with circular bridge

Asterpad+ bridge will be one of the circular bridges of Buiksloterham. The design will be built upon the found materials, which must be sourced as locally, cheap and fast as possible.

“First the ingredients, then the soup”

The next speaker asks about the ratio of Dutch to nonDutch students. Director Madeleine Maaskant explains that the maximum number of students who can study at the Academy is determined by the capacity of the Academy building. This limits the number of new students to 75 per year. A total of about 300 students are enrolled. Of them, about 50 per cent study Architecture, 25 per cent Urban Design and 25 per cent Landscape Architecture. The Academy receives more and more applications every year. The application deadline is 1 April for foreign students and 1 May for Dutch students. Students who survive the first round on the basis of their portfolio → are invited for intake interviews. These interviews also address expectations regarding, among other things, accommodation and study costs. Foreign students must be able to make a promising start and complete the programme successfully. The Academy also attempts to create a diverse mix of students (in terms of group composition, disciplines, gender and so on). The Academy accepts about 30 to 35 per cent foreign students a year, including up to ten non-EEA students.

TEAMWORKING MODELS (TASK DIVISION)

Bouwteam is a collaboration model in which the contractor is chosen and involved in an early stage of the project. This way, they participate in the preparation phase and design process, with the goal of sharing costs and risks, as well as advising on manufacturability.

Circularity is a complex topic which requires a lot of knowledge, so working with a Bouwteam is an attractive option. It makes it possible to make adjustments before the realization agreement is concluded. The contractors also play an important role in material scouting.

The process has evolved, but the way in which the finances are organized needs to catch up in order to succeed in our ambitions.

Standarized model: UAV/RAW (traditional)

PROJECT STAKEHOLDERS

Land & Development (Grond & Ontwikkeling) *client

Alternative model: Bouwteam in Circularity projects

Public Space Designers + Engineers + Contractors working together

TEAM DISFUNCTIONS ASSESMENT

Constanza Gómez Guzmán is a landscape architecture student and public space designer at the city of Amsterdam.

Several employers are concerned about the workstudy-private life balance. Students used to take one day off for a final presentation, nowadays they take two days to a whole week. Employers find it worrisome that employees are taking days off for this purpose and therefore no longer have any free days left for holidays. How does the Academy see this? Relieving work pressure and stress is an important issue for the Academy and has its full attention. Van Bockhooven points out that students work 32 hours a week and devote 20 hours to their studies, with one day of rest a week. However, many students spend more time on work and study than that. They produce things that are not listed as required in the study guide. The Academy stresses time and again that students do not have to make new posters for assessments; they can re-mount the work they produced during the course and for various final presentations.

One attendee asks to what extent lecturers who teach are coached about the amount of work they set students. Head of the Landscape Architecture programme Joost Emmerik explains that the heads are tasked with choosing subject, theme and location. They urge lecturers to motivate students rather than compel them to achieve a certain end result. Head of the Architecture programme Janna Bystrykh tells students to carefully inspect the deliverables listed in the study guide. It is important to stay focused on the learning process rather than on the illusion that one can design an entire building, including details, in 16 weeks. Everyone knows that this cannot be done. It is about the narrative and about reflecting on the process, not about whether all the drawings are there.

Education manager Henri Snel talks about his initiatives to make assessment criteria more transparent and offer more space for reflection, so that it is clearer to students what they are being assessed on. This can reduce some of the stress. Many students (like many employers) are ambitious and produce more than the study guide requires. This has to do with work ethic, competition among students and work culture. One attendee feels that students are sometimes afraid to present the employer’s work during a practice assessment because it is not trendy enough. Van Bockhooven thinks this is an important observation. Examiners assessing the external curriculum do not assess the quality of the design as such. The learning outcomes of the external curriculum pertain to the design stages and the construction process. In the educational curriculum, students learn to design, and it is only there that they are assessed in this respect. Another attendee brings up the relationship between Form study classes and Tools. The speaker, who graduated two years ago, took Form study classes, only to find out later that Tools existed as well. The speaker regrets that the choice between the two does not lie with the student. In practice, you have to be able to detail well and to handle building aesthetics requirements. The speaker experienced a shortcoming in the field of detailing.

Maaskant explains that the choice between Form study classes and Tools depends on the student’s previous education and is made by the Academy. Students with prior training in building technology and architecture at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, for example, are deemed to have sufficient technical knowledge and enter the Form study programme. After all, the Academy is part of the Amsterdam University of the Arts. The Tools trajectory is a pathway for students with different previous training (for example in the arts) and is basically taken after the premaster, which serves as a bridging programme. Together, the premaster and Tools form a whole. Next, an attendee asks about the number of students who do not complete the study programme. Are there a lot of dropouts or delays? Head of the Urban Design programme Markus Appenzeller explains that before he became head, he was a member of the Graduation Committee. He came across students who took 4.5 years to graduate. The process has since been streamlined and now includes a graduation clock, among other things. Very few students who start their studies fail to finish them, but delays do occur regularly. For several reasons, students sometimes take a six-month or one-year break and then pick up where they left off. The Academy keeps a close eye on these students and is in regular contact with them to see how it can ensure that they resume their studies. In doing so, it offers individual tailor-made solutions.

Finally, one of the attendees asks what the Academy thinks about the Dutch language proficiency level among foreign students. Maaskant explained that the Academy’s educational curriculum is entirely in English, even though officially, the Academy has a bilingual study programme. This is because the Academy has no influence over the language of instruction in the workplace. The Academy offers free Dutch classes for foreign students. There are students who speak Dutch fluently after four years and there are also students for whom this is much less true. Some students find it unnecessary, because they can get on very well with English in their working environment.

The evening shows that the exchange of knowledge between employers and the Academy remains important. The aim is to give students, as employees, as many opportunities as possible to develop their talents; not only in the workplace, but also inside the Academy walls. ←

KUIPERCOMPAGNONS GRADUATION AWARDS

In 2022, the KuiperCompagnons Graduation Awards were awarded for the fifth time. Winner of the first prize in the Masters’ category was landscape architect Lieke Jildou de Jong with her graduation project at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, Freshwater Farms on Saline Soils. Her proposal is to use empty farmyards to collect and infiltrate excess rainwater, restoring underground freshwater capacity. Aboveground, uninhabited water yards serve as nature zones for insects and animals. Some are accessible and offer walkers relaxation and space for contemplation. The jury, led by Gijs van den Boomen, the director of KuiperCompagnons, found the project extremely effective and poetic at the same time. Landscape architect Niek Smal, who’s also an alumnus of the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, won the second prize ex equo with his project Watertrots, a proposal to restore freshwater supplies in North Holland.

PRIX DE ROME

Architect Lesia Topolnyk won the Prix de Rome 2022 with her project No Innocent Landscape. Please see the interview with her elsewhere in this publication. Three of the four finalists of the Prix de Rome Architecture 2022 were graduates of the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture. Apart from Lesia Topolnyk, they were Arna Mačkić and Studio KIWI (Kim Kool and Willemijn van Manen). The fourth finalist was Dividual (Andrea Bit and Maciej Wieczorkowski). They all responded to the Healing Sites theme. The four installations were exhibited at Het Nieuwe Instituut from 18 November 2022 to 9 April 2023. In its report, the jury wrote: ‘Lesia Topolnyk argues that in current conflicts architecture can no longer exercise control by relying on its conventional tools and ways of thinking. With the project No Innocent Landscape, she wants to embrace chaos: not as a distortion, but as the only means by which she can gain insight. She proposes a series of new axioms to break through the blockage of unsolvable issues. The jury considers that it is an unusual achievement to directly question her own role as an architect and designer and to analyse how her profession works.’

AHK GRADUATION PRIZES

The AHK Graduation Prizes were awarded for the eleventh time on 26 January 2023. During a festive award ceremony in the Melkweg, the best graduation projects of the 2022 graduates were put in the spotlight. The prize in the Master category was awarded to architect Steven van Raan, who graduated from the Academy of Architecture with his project Exhibition for Imagination. From the jury report: ‘In Exhibition for Imagination, architecture is stripped back to the essence: a connection between art and reason. In high-quality research that is elaborated in great detail, Steven van Raan makes the case for more feeling in architecture, away from the megalomaniacal and pragmatic plans of developers. Beautiful and very much necessary in an architectural landscape that is becoming increasingly impoverished.’

FOUR AWARDS FOR NIELS GEERTS

With his graduation project Healing House, architect Niels Geerts obviously struck a nerve. He won a whopping four awards: the third prize in the Thesis of the Year Award 2022 by Codin.Compete, the third prize in the Charette Architecture Thesis of the Year 2022 by the architecture competitions platform Charette, a third prize in the Architecture for Health Student Award 2023 by the European ENAH network, and an honourable mention CultureFORM category of the Polish Tubądzin Design Awards 2022. From the Architecture for Health jury statement: ‘The work deals intensively with a patient-centred concept for health care close to the city. The jury appreciates the author’s intensive examination of the topic and the good elaboration.’

NVTL AWARDS

On May 12, NVTL presented the NVTL Awards 2023 in Utrecht. Landscape architect Hanna Prinssen won the NVTL Award in the Talent category with A Fire Scape, her graduation project from the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture. According to Prinssen, climate change will make fire a more prominent part of the landscape in the future, including in the Netherlands. Landscape architects play an important role in designing new resilient landscapes and preparing society for a life with fire. Prinssen: ‘Shouldn’t we think on a more strategic level about the various combustible landscapes of the Netherlands? Vegetation is one variable, but we should also look at other components on a larger scale. Shouldn’t we start making room for drought and [...] fire in the drier periods of our landscape?’ She received the award during the closing event of the 100th anniversary of Royal NVTL.

INTERNATIONAL ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE ROTTERDAM

In the IABR 2022 parallel exhibition ‘Future Generation’, the curatorial team showed several graduation plans by graduates from the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, including: Lesia Topolnyk, Lieke Jildou de Jong, Ziega van den Berk, Jean-Francois Gauthier and Hanna Prinssen. The 2022 IABR, which took place from 22 September to 13 November, revolved around the theme ‘It’s about time’ and addressed the consequences of the human footprint on planet Earth. The exhibition ‘Future Generation: This is 2072’ showcased the best architectural graduation projects realized from 2018 to 2022 in Belgium and the Netherlands. All of the academies and universities with Master’s programmes in the Lowlands were invited to contribute, resulting in the submission of 75 projects by 13 institutions. The selected projects addressed the increasing time pressure on combating climate change.

LECTURERS

ABOUT THE AMSTERDAM ACADEMY OF ARCHITECTURE

This annual review is published by the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, an international school that offers space to experiment, produce and reflect in the heart of Amsterdam, providing a laboratory and workplace in one.

Established in 1908, the Academy is now part of the Amsterdam University of the Arts (AHK) and offers three Master’s programmes: Architecture, Urbanism and Landscape Architecture. The interdisciplinary courses prepare students for practising spatial design as a discipline on the cutting edge of visual art, construction engineering, civil and cultural engineering and the spatial sciences in a national and international context. Students study and work simultaneously, combining academic learning with professional development. All of the guest teachers are practicing professionals, forging a strong connection between the school and the job market. Graduates are entitled to independently practice one of the three disciplines taught at the Academy. The degree meets the admission requirements that are defined in the Dutch Architect’s Title Act and is notified with the EU. The graduate has direct access to the Dutch register of architects, urbanists and landscape architects and is qualified to compete in the European market. The Academy has its own place in the cultural life of Amsterdam and places itself in the professional debate through lectures, workshops, events and exhibitions.

P1a (AUL) SPACE Burning Man Amsterdam Patrick Roegiers / Last Chance for the Hyperdike Kinke Nijland, Léa Soret / Swimming with the Other: Designing as immersive practice Anna Fink / An Activist Radio Station in the Torensluis Quita Schabracq / New Plant Rosa Jonkman / 100 x 100: One hectare in the city of Amsterdam Charlotte van der Woude / The New Waag: An ephemeral spatial Protest Pedro Silva Costa / Build upon Zaan Timber Tradition Rogier van den Brink / City of Trees Tobias Kumkar

P1b (A) SCENOGRAPHY Across Differences Valentina Fantini, Giulio Margheri / The Smallest Spatial Unit, or a Bed Manifesto Anastasia Smirnova, Alexander Sverdlov / Greek Myths Freyke Hartemink / The Amsterdam Toilet Project Susana

Constantino / Common Kitchens: A seat at the table Pnina Avidar, Claudia Schmidt

P1b (UL) PLACE Station for the Excluded Ania Sosin / No Man’s Land Sjaak Punt, Hanna Prinssen / Garden and Motion Clemens Karlhuber, Zuzana Jančovičová / To Be Defined Max Tuinman

P2a (AU) BUILDING AND CONSTRUCTION Rethinking Workscape Pavel Bouse / Living the Dike Emanuele Paladin, Bruno Wöber / Dissolving Boundaries Juliette Gilson / Living under Conflict: Towards self-determination, self-sufficiency and self-development Irene Luque Martin, Johnathan Subendran / Air-Scape Francisco Lobo, Romea Muryń / New, Hybrid, Renewed Iris Wijn, Steven Broekhof, Alejandro Fuentes / Smart Urban Mix: Opportunities for living, learning and production on business parks Eric Frijters, Elmira Jafari

P2a (L) HUMAN AND ANIMAL Human-Inclusive Nature or the Garden of Dreams Thijs de Zeeuw, Mirte van Laarhoven

P2b (AL) BUILDING IN LANDSCAPE Who Are You and What Do You Need? Ira Koers / Future of Farming Willemijn van Manen, Kim Kool / Rural Rituals: Adapting the farm to the forest that was once there Anna Zan, Justyna Chmielewska / Growing Spaces: Building with living nature Lieke de Jong, Alexander Beeloo / Cultivating the Multispecies Supermarket Ronald Boer / Caress the Soil Aura Luz Melis / How to Lend-A-Land: Towards new modular materials in the countryside Irene Wing Sum Wu, Sebastian Bernardy

P2b (U) NEIGHBOURHOOD What’s Wrong with Noord? Iruma Rodriguez / Making the Multicultural City: Bullewijk Imane Boutanzit, Jacopo Grilli

P3a (AUL) DISTRICT Cité Bleu, Rotterdam Jeroen Geurst / Keilekwartier: Expo 2030 Burton Hamfelt / Double Plus Good Mathias Lehner / Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue Andrew Kitching / Framework for Adaptable District Olga Marelja / PostDock: Envisioning a mixed district for future Rotterdam Sandra Bsat / M4H: Mix 4 happiness Oleksandra Naryzhna, Anastasia Paliy

P3b (A) RESIDENTIAL TYPOLOGIES It’s not a Numbers Game Christiaan Schuit, Dennis Meijerink / Rotate 90 Degrees

Left Bruno Vermeersch / Housing Collab Sophie Valla / Strategic Design Skills for Collaborative Housing Laura Weeber

P3b (U) CITY The Inhabited Bridge: Allowing transitions Mauro Parravicini, Danielle Cannatella / The Metabolic Bridge: Tackling the transitions to come Irene Luque Martin

P3b (L) PLACE IN URBAN LANDSCAPE The Edge Effect JeanFrançois Gauthier / Meeting the River Brigitta van Weeren

P4/O4 (A) COMPLEX BUILDING AND MATERIALIZATION De Ceuvel 3.0 Jos de Krieger, Amber Beerink, Anke Wijnja / A Circular Workshop: Crafting Circularity Machel Spaan, Jeroen van Mechelen, Cathelijne van Andel / Symbiocene Simulation Kuba Jekiel, Ziega van den Berk, Francesco Carrasso

P4 (UL) REGIONAL RESEARCH AND DESIGN Rotterdam Water

Strategies: Where do we want to live? Raul Correa Smith, Saline Verhoeven / Voorne-Putten: Paradise squeezed between Rotterdam Harbour and the Delta Works Roel van Gerwen, Giacomo Gallo / Design after Shrinkage: Re-envisionning the future of weakened metropolises Lea Soret, Robert Younger, Philippe Allignet

P5/O5 (AUL) RESEARCH AND DESIGN Revolution Academy Machiel Spaan, Jerryt Krombeen, Marieke Berkers / Stroeland: Inclusive city and inclusive landscape Pieter Jannink, Ziega van den Berk, Jeanne Tan / Polder of Circular Revolutions Eric Frijters, Lieke de Jong, Yani / Pura Vida: Costa Rica and the island of Chira Raul Corrêa-Smith, Aura Luz Melis, Billy Nolan / Schiphol: Exploring future airport ecology and space Piero Medici, Alex de Jong, Clemens Driessen / Bending the Curve: Designing ecological futures David Rademacher, Lenora Ditzler, Marcel Kok / Energy Dreams: Lithium extraction and the consequences of endless energy appetite Marina Otero, Ameneh

Solati, Lua Vollaard

P6 (A) INTEGRAL DESIGN Clap along if you feel like a... room without a roof... Jo Barnett, Karlijn Besse / Rebuilding Ben Jarrik Ouburg, Renaud Haerlingen / Frankenstein in the Polder Max Rink, Victor Munoz Sanz

P6 (UL) INTEGRAL DESIGN: VISION, PLAN, DETAIL Metropolitan Materials: Boston wood Martin Probst, Remco van der Togt / Zuidas All-Inclusive Maike van Stiphout, Jaap Brouwer / Natural Density: A new practice of urbanity in balance with nature Jana Crepon, Martin Aarts

P4 EXTRA (UL) Herman Zonderland, Yttje Feddes

P4/O4 EXTRA (A) Jeroen van Mechelen

P6 EXTRA (AUL) Herman Zonderland, Yttje Feddes, Bart Bulter

O1 (A) SPATIAL REPERTOIRE Rebecca Bego, Magnus Weightman, Geurt Holdijk

O1 (U) SPATIAL REPERTOIRE Eric-Jan Bijlaard, Liza van Alphen, Bram Klatser

O1 (L) SPATIAL REPERTOIRE Willemijn van Manen, Silko van der Vliet, Philippe Allignet

O2a (A) EXACT AND SOCIAL SCIENCES IN DESIGN Footprint

Marten Kuipers / Climate-Driven Migration Rachel Keeton / Care Ania Molenda / Justice Claudia Rot / PostGrowth Yağiz Söylev

O2a (U) URBAN INSTRUMENTS Building the Atlas of Amsterdam

Kim Krijger, Sander Maurits

O2a (L) ECOLOGY AND BIODIVERSITY Rob van Dijk, Koen Wonders

O2b (AUL) REFLECTION AND ARGUMENTATION Ecosystems of Architecture: An architecture firm’s guide to staying relevant (if also alive) Adham Selim / Who Runs the City?

Anna Torres / Rooted: The ecosystem of the underground Norbert Peeters / Revealing Coexistences Nathanaëlle Baës-Cantillon / How to Deconstruct your Favourite Meal and Reconstruct it as an Ecosystem Ganesh Babu / Bridge, In-Between Burcu Köken / Novel Narratives Mahla Ebrahimpour / Don’t Punish the Air: Shifting away from a human-centric perspective Esther Mecredy

O3a (AUL) PEOPLE AND SOCIETY Marieke Berkers and Merten

Nefs (coordinators), Wouter Pocornie, Joske van Breugel, Anna Fink, Jord den Hollander, Ekim Tan, Carolien Schippers, Ronald Boer, Chiara Dorbolo

O3b (A) RESIDENTIAL TYPOLOGIES: SPACE, MATERIALS AND CONSTRUCTION Freedom of Living Bart Bulter, Meintje Delisse (coordinators) / Pioneering CPC and CoOp Mark Snitker / Queer Architecture?! Paul Vlok / Collective Housing Daria Naugolnova

O3b (U) URBAN SYSTEMS AND INFRASTRUCTURE Christiaan Rommelse, Stephan Boon

O3b (L) FIELDWORK Treasure Hunt: Deep mapping laboratory 2022 Marjolijn Boterenbrood, Isabel Andriessen

O4a (UL) REGIONAL RESEARCH Mapping Voorne and Port of Rotterdam Tobias Woldendorp, Merten Nefs

O4b (U) URBAN REGIONS Amsterdam Influenced Jacopo Grilli, Mark Boulas

O4b (L) TIME AND PROCESS Rob van Dijk, Koen Wonders

O6 (AUL) PAPER Arjen Oosterman (coordinator), Billy Nolan, Jeanne Tan, Vibeke Gieskes, Alexandra Tisma, Lilet Breddels

O5 EXTRA (A) Gilbert Koskamp

O6 EXTRA (AUL) Arjen Oosterman, Vibeke Gieskes

REFLECTION CLINIC (A) Jo Barnett, Dex Weel, Peter Defesche, Maartje Lammers, Gianni Cito, Lieke de Jong

REFLECTION CLINIC (U) Arjan Klok, Jerryt Krombeen, Jacopo Grilli, Ania Sosin

REFLECTION CLINIC (L) Maike van Stiphout, Remco van der Togt

REFLECTION CLINIC EXTRA (L) Hanneke Kijne, Roel van Gerwen, Mirjam Koevoet

REFLECTION CLINIC EXTRA (AUL) Abdessamed Azarfane

GRADUATION CLINIC Vibeke Gieskes, Paul Kuipers

V1a (AUL) INSPIRATIONAL MATTER Marlies Boterman (coordinator), Ricky Rijkenberg, Kaita Shinagwa, Paul Kuipers, Annemarijn Haarink, Daria Khozhai

V1b (AUL) NATURAL MATTER Marlies Boterman (coordinator) / Citybird Lecture Pieter Aaldring / Bird Hides Ad Kill, Joost Kreuger, Addy van de Plaat, Wouter Slors / Birdhouses

Hemp Christina Eickmeier, Thomas van Nus / Birdhouses

Japanese Knotweed Lucie Havel, Remko Anderweg / Birdhouses Cattail Iris Veentjer, Roel van Gerwen / In collaboration with Nico Dekker (Staatbosbeheer), Marijke Kooijman (Slatuinen), Mediamatic, Molen de Paauw, Culture Club

V2a (AUL) SELF-GROING MATTER Marlies Boterman (coordinator) / Fabulous Funghi Simone de Waart / Entangled Life

Marjolijn Boterenbrood / Building Pigeon Towers with Waste Mycelium Arne Hendriks / Transparant Life David

Habets / Click Life: Developing mycelium modular building blocks Jeroen van Mechelen / In collaboration with Mediamatic, Culture Club

V2b (AUL) TECHNICAL MATTER Marlies Boterman (coordinator) / Metal-Like Henri Borduin, Rinus van der Berg / Growing Seats Tanja Smeets / Aluminium Tejo Remy / Steel Seats Thierry van Raay / In collaboration with Buurtwerkplaats

V3a (AUL) BUILDING MATTER Marlies Boterman (coordinator) / Tires Lika Kortmann, Jason van der Woude / Wool Marije Remigius, Ruben Bus / Used Cardboard Machiel Spaan, Patrick Roegiers

TOOLS 1 (A) BUILDING TECHNIQUE Jos Rijs, Jean Marc Sauer, Aad Krombeen, Adri Verhoef

TOOLS 1 (UL) LANDSCAPE ANALYSIS Mirjam Koevoet

TOOLS 2 (A) STRUCTURAL DESIGN Aad Krom, Jean-Marc Saurer, Jos Rijs, Adri Verhoef

TOOLS 2 (UL) ANALYSIS OF LANDSCAPE AND CITY John Westrik

C1a, C1b AND C2a (AUL) HISTORY AND THEORY: ARCHITECTURE, URBANISM AND LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE Nicholas Korody, Daryl Mulvihill, Joost Emmerik

C2b (AUL) HISTORY: PHILOSOPHY AND ART Bert Taken

C3/C5 (AUL) PRACTICE, METHODOLOGY AND RESEARCH

Nadya Nilina and Katja Hogenboom (coordinators), Reinder Bakker, James O’Callaghan, Lonny van Ryswyck, Michael Ramage, Andrea Klinge, Bjarne Mastenbroek, Kuba Snopek, Klaas Kuitenbrouwer, Stephan Petermann, Marieke van den Heuvel, Michelle Provoost, David Godshall, Siobhan Watson, Richard Dagenhart, Ronald Boer, Francis de Wolf, Teddy Cruz, Fonna Forman, Lee Altman, Jennifer Fiebig

C4/C6 (AUL) THEORY, SOCIETY AND DESIGN Yassine Salihine, Sénamé Koffi Agbodjinou, Tosin Oshinowo, Ameneh Solati, Jacintha Scheerder, Andrew Segrave, Simone C. Niquille, Miriam Hillawi Abraham, Galo Canizares

ELECTIVES Drawing and the Basics Hans van der Pas / How Do You Present Yourself and Your Design Work? Marjolein Roeleveld / BIM Roland Stuij / Plant Knowledge Ton Muller

PRE-MASTER A&T Jos Rijs (coordinator) / Building Physics Rens ten Hagen / Tools 0 Jos Rijs, Jean-Marc Saurer, Jan Bart Bouwhuis / Mathematics Rens ten Hagen / Structural Design Gerard Bierlaagh / Design Project Jos Rijs, Paul Vlok, Paul Kuipers / Architect and Building Rogier van den Brink, Gus Tielens, Jos Rijs, Paul Kuipers, Jurrian Knijtijzer, Jarrik Ouburg

MINOR A Paul Kuipers (coordinator)/ Architecture Tools Baukje

Trenning, Marlies Boterman, Paul Kuipers, Paulien Bremmer, Ricky Rijkenberg / Book Making Edwin van Gelder / Building Analysis Paul Vlok / Model Making

Kaita Shinagawa / Architect and Building Mijntje Delisse, Rogier van den Brink, Gus Tielens, Marcel Lok / Photography Jeroen Musch / Excursions Paul Vlok / Material and Design Marlies Boterman, Erik Vermue, Paul Kuipers / Lectures Oene Dijk, Jeroen Piels / Presentation Drawings Ricky Rijkenberg / Project Paul Kuipers, Maarten Vermeulen, Paulien Bremmer

PRE-MASTER AND MINOR UL Mirjam Koevoet and James Heus (coordinators) / Studio U David de Kool, Sander Maurits, Martha Seitanidou / Studio L Boto van der Meulen, Sjaak Punt, Mark Vergeer, Niek Smal, Mirjam Koevoet / Lectures Andreas Mulder, Flora Nycolaas, Fred Feddes, Gabrielle Bartelse, Harma Horlings, Jerryt Krombeen, Klaas Jan Wardenaar, Koen Vermeulen, Koos van Zanen, Martijn de Wit, Pepijn Godefroy, Roel Wolters / Exercises and Excursions Ania Sosin, Bieke van Hees, Iruma Rodrigues, James Heus, Jan Eiting, Jerryt Krombeen, Koen Vermeulen, Mark Vergeer, Marlena Rether, Mathieu Dercx, Mirjam Koevoet, Oleguer Teixidor del Rio / Workshop Willem Hoebink, Paul Rijntjes / Project Mirjam Koevoet, James Heus

WINTER SCHOOL (AUL) Mari Bastashevski (artist-in-residence), Kyra Michel, Antoine Iweins, Jacopo Grilli, Ziega van den Berg, Anna Zan, Kuba Jekiel, Irene Wing Sum Wu, Justyna Chmielewska, Andre Cramer, Kyra Michel

START WORKSHOP Sanne Samana, Marette Ebert, Jacopo Grilli, Laurens van Zuidam, Joana Guiné, Rebecca Wijnruit, Laura Bolscher, Alessandro Solci, Ilaria Lusetti

PRACTICE MODULE DESIGN AND MANAGEMENT Alijd van Doorn (coordinator), Martin Fredriks, Rowin Petersma, Martijntje Stam, Chris Luth, Leon Emmen, Tamara Rogić, Lieneke van Campen, Els Leclercq

PRACTICE MODULE DESIGN AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP Thijs Meijer, Marin Fredriks, Annegie van Dijk, Frans Boots, Jorm van Otterloo, Rie Meertens

PRACTICE COACHES Léa Soret, Martin Fredriks, Frans Boots, Judith Korpershoek

MIDSUMMER NIGHT LECTURE Hans Ibelings

The Amsterdam Academy of Architecture would also like to thank all assessors, graduation mentors, graduation committee members and staff members.

Amsterdam Academy of Architecture

2022-2023

Annual Review

Editorial Board

Madeleine Maaskant and David Keuning Managing Editor David Keuning

Translation and Copy Editing

InOtherWords (D’Laine Camp and Maria van Tol)

Graphic Design

Mainstudio (Edwin van Gelder and Moritz Eggmann)

Printing Tuijtel, Hardinxveld-Giessendam

Publisher Amsterdam Academy of Architecture

© 2023 Amsterdam Academy of Architecture

www.academyofarchitecture.nl

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy or any storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Whilst every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture does not accept responsibility for errors or omissions.