Cascina Sant’Ambrogio in Milan
This June, Non-fiction’s partner Michiel van Iersel will participate in the New Farms for Expo workshop, organised by New Generations, in which designers from over the world are going to collaborate on a vision of the reuse of abandoned in-urban farm houses, the Milanes ‘cascines’. This connects to the overall theme of the EXPO Milano 2015,”Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life”.
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Situated on the Wibautstraat in the east of Amsterdam, Trouw was a nightclub, music venue, cultural space and restaurant housed in the former newspaper printing facility of several national newspapers. Trouw combined food, music and the arts, and was the first nightclub to receive the 24-hour permit from the city of Amsterdam. After six years of experimenting and over time slowly establishing itself as one of the top nightlife and cultural venues in the city and beyond, Trouw closed its doors on 3 January 2015.
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We have been travelling quite a lot recently. While Juha was talking about the future of cities in Manchester, Michiel gave failed architecture-workshops in Geneva and Belgrade, while Radna was presenting Future Vintage in Mannheim, Germany…
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Failed Architecture (FA) is an independent research project and travelling forum, founded by Non-fiction, focusing on individual buildings and urban environments that are either malfunctioning, displeasing and/or have failed to stand the test of time. Based in Amsterdam, the FA-team travelled to Copenhagen, Sofia and Skopje to conduct research and host debates before coming to Belgrade for a workshop from April 2 -6 2012 at GRAD, European Center for Culture and Debate.
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The fourth edition of the Non-fiction week notes makes it a tradition. That is mainly because of the fact that the number four seems to be an important one: four members of Beatles, Olympic Games and World Championship is being held every four years, there are four terrestrial and four giant gas planets in the Solar System, mammals have four heart chambers, all insects with wings except flies have four wings and most importantly four is the atomic number of beryllium. We hope that this edition of Non-fiction week notes will be as interesting as the aforementioned facts about this great number. Enjoy the reading because we do it just 4 you.
Besides Juha, Boris and Adéla, Joske Koning, who collaborates with Boris, joined us too.
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We continue our weekly updates on what is happening in the Non-fiction office. This time Juha and Boris take the time to answer some questions, while Michiel is in Copenhagen and Adéla is in Prague. This is our way to share experiences, probe new ideas, and document all the things that take place in and around our office.
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On the occasion of the national Day of Architecture on 30 September 2011 the Danish Network for Young Planners (Netværk for yngre planlæggere) invites Failed Architecture to Copenhagen. Started by Non-fiction in 2010 as a blog it has evolved into a series of debates at De Verdieping in Amsterdam and other cities. In Copenhagen we will discuss criteria (‘benchmarks’) for quality and failure in modernist housing estates in an international East/West perspective. — Read more ›
Non-fiction’s Michiel van Iersel will be co-hosting a public debate during the Skopje Architecture Week on Friday June 3 in the Macedonian capital. Earlier this year Non-fiction initiated Failed Architecture, a blog and series of public debates at De Verdieping in Amsterdam that focus on buildings and urban environments that have failed to stand the test of time and are currently neglected, abandoned or even vandalized or demolished, because of changing economic, social, political and/or physical circumstances. Through our efforts we hope to save some of these ruins from oblivion.
We got in touch with the Skopje Architecture Week through Ljubo Georgiev, architect and speaker at the last Failed Architecture event in Amsterdam. In his role as curator of the next Sofia Architecture Week in Bulgaria in November 2011, Ljubo was invited by the organization in Skopje to contribute to this annual event. Given the current debate on the legacy and future of Modernist architecture in the Macedonian capital, he proposed to organize a Failed Architecture event with the aim to re-energize the local discussion and introduce new and effective perspectives on how to deal with building that have become a burden.
The debate is called “Creativity against destruction: How creative entrepreneurs can save our buildings” and will focus on the potential of temporary and creative use of (vacant) buildings for sustainable urban and cultural development. We would like to reflect on possible strategies and practical tools that help ‘creative entrepreneurs’ to establish culturally and economically viable cultural venues that become a force to be reckoned with by local politicians, real estate developers and the public at large.
In short: how can creative individuals and initiatives become sustainable urban players and how can underutilized and undervalued spaces be re-activated through artistic and creative means? And on a more fundamental level: how can we, creative producers and mediators, re-imagine and re-appropriate our built environment and how can we prevent certain types of buildings from being neglected, abandoned or even demolished?
The meeting consists of juxtaposing opinions of 3 speakers on the question ‘How/Can creative entrepreneurs save and re-activate our built environment?’
The speakers will give short presentations, which will then be followed by a public debate. The list of speakers is not confirmed yet, but will consist of various local and international experts and Failed Architecture’s co-founder Michiel van Iersel. The discussion will be led by Ljubo Georgiev (partner at de+ge architects in Rotterdam, the Netherlands).
For more information and tickets visit the Skopje Architecture Week website.
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About Skopje
Skopje is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Macedonia with about a third of the total population. The city developed rapidly after World War II, but this trend was interrupted in 1963 when it was hit by a disastrous earthquake. In 1991 it became the capital centre of independent Macedonia. A major international relief effort saw the city rebuilt quickly, though much of its old neo-classical charm was lost in the process.
The new master plan of the city was created by the then leading Japanese architect Kenzo Tange. International financial aid poured into Skopje in order to help rebuild the city. As a result came the many modern (at the time) brutalist structures of the 1960s, that can still be seen today, such as the central post office building and the National Bank.
(Source: Wikipedia)