The fantastic works of Antoni Gaudí and the Amsterdam School still appeal to the imagination. And although the architects never met each other, they were children of the same period. They looked for beauty and individuality in a world which was becoming increasingly functional and impersonal.

At the heart of their designs are nature and its organic forms, craftsmanship and traditional materials. At the same time, though, they did not turn their backs on modernity, embracing new techniques an...

Tom Avermaete, Klaske Havik, Hans Teerds (Red.)

Architectural Positions

On Architecture, Modernity and the Public Sphere

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De publieke ruimte verandert. Waar mensen elkaar vroeger bij voorkeur op het stadsplein troffen, lijkt nu de hotellobby de aangewezen plaats. Architecten van wereldfaam, zoals Rem Koolhaas, Aldo Rossi en Daniel Liebeskind, spreken zich uit over de consequenties hiervan voor de architectuur.

De verandering van de publieke sfeer is een van de cruciale thema’s in het huidige...

The world loves Paris for its beauty. But Paris is in peril. Despite polls and lawsuits showing that residents oppose skyscrapers, the city’s leaders have started developing colossal skyscraper projects at the old gates of the city. They destroy the traditional street furniture that adds to the charm of Paris. The city is becoming filthy. In this book, forty-nine experts, many of them Parisians, show that Paris City Hall threatens to damage Paris irreparably. They call on the world to aid P...

For more than 20 years, work was done at the East side of the Grote Markt square, with the Forum as the cultural heart of the intervention. Commissioned by the City of Groningen, NL Architects designed a new type of building, moving way ahead of the international competition in the multiple assignment early 2017.

At the opening in late 2019, the daring, visionary design concept finally took concrete form: a series of stacked squares, opening up and overlapping a rich cultural programme.

With ...

Serious Fun is about architecture and urban design games that have been conceived and created by architects, urban designers, artists and game developers since the end of the twentieth century – from doll’s houses to construction games and city building games, from SimCity to Block by Block.

The games are looked at from both a game technical and an architectural-critical point of view. As much attention is paid to the games themselves (the way they look, their construction and rules) as t...

All over Europe, cities struggle with an accumulation of environmental crises like global warming, the depletion of natural recourses, pollution and the extinction of species. If we want to keep our cities liveable, we have to make them circular and climate adaptive.

Making our planning methods, production processes and building economies circular in order to remove the causes of the environmental crises, is a tough assignment. Turning our cities into climate-adaptive environments, ready to c...

Op dit moment leeft de helft van de wereldbevolking in steden. Binnen twee decennia zal dit oplopen tot 60 procent. Extreme rijkdom en extreme armoede komen naast elkaar voor, maar steden blijven magneten die mensenmassa's aantrekken. Steden bieden voor velen de mogelijkheid voor werk en inkomen, scholing, en betere voorzieningen. In een achttal thema's geeft het boek een intrigerend beeld van deze ontwikkelingen en schetst het een mondiaal toekomstperspectief.

Cities in Transition onderzoek...

For English see below

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Van Le Corbusier tot MVRDV en van Diller+Scofidio tot Peter Eisenman: ontwerpers loerden al vanaf het einde van de jaren ’20 naar film, benieuwd of dit medium de representatie en communicatie van architectuur en stedenbouw zou kunnen verbeteren.

De films in Spots in Shots laten ons de gebouwde omgeving op een verrassende en verrijkende manier ervaren. Hun makers vertellen via omwegen over architectuur. De verhalen gaan niet zozeer over de materie, constructie en bek...