Workshop by Jelte Boeijenga

‘Follow the Money’ Students working on the assignment. For the first workshop of this year’s graduation studio ‘Follow the Money’ we invited Jelte Boeijenga; researcher/advisor on spatial planning and urbanism, with a strong focus on the aspect of finance in city making. Jelte started the workshop with an eye-opening lecture based on his research ‘Money and the City’ – sketching the sometimes alarming financial situation of the 25 largest Dutch municipalities. As a consequence of the current financial and economic crisis the national government is taking harsh austerity measures, while following a policy of decentralisation. This means that more and… Read More

Lecture: Follow the Money

Click to see the lecture Last Monday, Wouter Vanstiphout gave a lecture at the TU Delft architecture faculty as part of the master education in urbanism. Just as our current graduation studio, the lecture was titled ‘Follow the Money,’ and was focused on the complex correlation between economy and architecture or urban planning. Wouter started his lecture with an explanation of the current financial crisis and its effects on architecture. From foreclosures in Las Vegas, through ghost towns in Spain and China, to the risky politics of ground development in the Netherlands, he ended his lecture with a more positive… Read More

Residential Francisco Hernando, Seseña, Spain

Last week we kicked-off our new graduation studio ‘Follow the money – Finance, Architecture and the City.’ In order to illustrate the complex entanglement between money and architecture, we showed our students a selection of case studies, amongst which the case of Residential Francisco Hernando in Seseña, a municipality in the Spanish region of Castilla-La Mancha, just 40 km south of Madrid. Until the late ninety nineties, the area of Seseña was mainly used by its residents for coaxing grain and corn out of the dry earth. However, in the midst of the Spanish real estate boom, when the first… Read More

Planning for Protest

If you are planning to visit the Lisbon Architecture Triennale this autumn, make sure you don’t miss the exhibition Planning for Protest – exploring both the social and the architectural definitions of protest by taking a closer look at how public spaces shape both the physical and psychological backdrop of these public events. Organised by Ben Allen, James Bae, Ricardo Gomes, Shannon Harvey and Adam Michaels, 12 architectural offices in 12 cities across the globe have examined the role of architecture in shaping, defining, or limiting the flow of protest within their respective cities. Each contributor rendered eight drawings exploring… Read More

FAILED ARCHITECTURE #10: Beyond Failure

Can we benefit from failure? Can dystopia be productive? Is there a future for architecture criticism? These and other questions will be asked during the event ‘Failed Architecture#10: Beyond Failure’ on Thursday 13 June, in Trouw/De Verdieping, Amsterdam. The event is organized by the research platform Failed Architecture who have been exploring the dark sides of architecture and urbanism, from long neglected industrial ruins and abandoned new towns to Britain’s riot-torn neighbourhoods and the corporate takeover in sell-out-cities. For Thursday they invited speakers as Ole Bouman, Matthias Böttger and Darryl Chen to explore a wide range of perspectives on the possible successes… Read More

De Bouwbubbel van Rotterdam

Crisis or no crisis, Rotterdam continues to construct new buildings. In front of the central station, foundations are being laid for a 120m high mixed-use tower, just behind it looms the almost finished colorful complex ‘The Calypso’, a bit further down town, a giant market hall will be constructed, and ‘The Rotterdam’ -the country’s largest building- has recently reached his highest point. Many citizens are proud of these new developments: they make Rotterdam a contemporary city, full of architectural masterpieces. But how come large real estate projects are still being constructed in Rotterdam, while they are suspended or canceled in… Read More

Symposium de Energieke Stad

On Tuesday the 26th of March 2013, Wouter Vanstiphout was one of the guest speakers at the symposium named: “The energetic city”, organized by the Dutch “creative industries fund.” During his talk, Wouter argued for a strict division between the government’s responsibilities and that of the market, concerning urban development and investments in real estate. Wouter’s text and the video recordings can be found below, or click here to download the text in pdf (unfortunately all in Dutch only). skip to 01:08:30 for Wouter Vanstiphout’s talk De scheiding van Markt en Overheid In Rotterdam woedt al een paar maanden een… Read More

Resort Castelfalfi

In 2007, the German travel company TUI, bought an almost abandoned Italian village plus its surrounding land, to turn it into an 11.000 hectare holiday resort. Our PhD candidate Els Leclercq wonders if this approach is desirable and if so could this be a solution to the problematic shrinkage of other European villages. Castelfalfi, once a thriving agricultural village with 500 inhabitants, located near Florence in Tuscany, depopulated rapidly during the ’60’s. Only two people remained while buildings deteriorated rapidly, until the German tourist operator TUI bought the village and surrounding countryside in 2007 with the intention to develop the… Read More

Design as Politics presents: Follow The Money – Finance, Architecture and the City

Also the coming semester the chair of Design as Politics will offer a master graduation studio to architecture and to urbanism students. After having focused on inequality (‘In the Ghetto’, 2010-2011), on vacancy (‘Rotterdam-Detroit’, 2011-2012) and on Democracy (‘We the People’, 2012-2013), we will focus on Money in 2013-2014. Why Money? What does design have to do with money? We would say: everything! Money has become the central critical issue for architecture and planning. How to plan and build when public and private funds have dried up? Why design new buildings, when the existing ones are not even finished or used? Why… Read More

Video Recording Venice Takeaway Debate – The Working Village

Click on image to watch video. Wouter Vanstiphout was at the AA, London last week, to participate in the live think thank ‘The Working Village’, exploring Darryl Chen’s concept of a radical entrepreneurial village. Chen argues that audacious urban planning could spur entrepreneur-led economic growth. Against a backdrop of failing high streets and dying neighbourhoods, this debate asked whether there is a radical way of putting planning in the service of the economy. Could the Localism Act be a mechanism to spark growth? How radical can or should we be in rethinking how we draw plans for our cities? Speakers:… Read More