Big up to Trouw!

We are currently working on an event programme for Trouw Amsterdam, a club, restaurant and cultural space in Amsterdam. This new venue was named after a well known Dutch daily newspaper Trouw who used to have its office space and printing facilities in the building before moving to a new location in 2007.

The newspaper uses the word ‘Verdieping’ (or ‘deepening’ in English, as in ‘deepening your knowledge’) as its tagline, and we decided to preserve the term to emphasize the depth of the programme and the fact that the event space is situated below street level.

The newspaper Trouw dates back to World War II and is rooted in the Dutch Protestant resistance. It aims to be a source of contemplation and inspiration for everyone. We don’t believe in any particular god or religion, but we do strive to be a source of inspiration and reflection and we support the spirit of resistance, so we are happy to pay homage to Trouw.

In return, the newspaper has given its ‘sign of approval’ this week by running an article about its namesake. The author expresses her amazement for the fact that an ‘extremely hip club’ has adopted their name and ends her story with an endorsement: “go check it out”. We appreciate that, so big up to Trouw!

Read the article in Trouw (in Dutch).

It’s not where you from, it’s where you at

Today we visited Trouw and de Verdieping to talk with the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam about a possible collaboration. We are pretty excited about the prospect of aggregating organisations to create new projects at de Verdieping.

One would be the role of architecture in hip hop aesthetics, an idea pondered by Michiel and subscribed to by Victor Ponten of Habbekrats. “It’s not where you from, it’s where you at” (sic). If anyone has some examples of this perceived relationship please let me know, we appreciate your candor.

And before I forget, here are some more pictures of Trouw 15 days before opening.

Another day at Trouw/De Verdieping

Today we had a few meetings at Trouw/De Verdieping with people from municipality and ARCAM. Here are some photos and videos of the site.

Site improvement: added projects

After running into Theo Watson on Saturday I decided to improve our site. Theo lectured me on the absense of images and a portfolio on this site. Point taken, Sir. I added an extra page with current projects we are working on, and will add some previous things too for context (like the n8, Boijmans Van Beuningen and Lantaren/Venster).

Michiel and I had a great brainstorm about de Verdieping on Sunday, and we will elaborate on this soon. We listened to quite some music, mostly Radiohead, Hieroglyphics, Dabrye, Flying Lotus and Saelors. And finally we confirmed Flying Lotus and Samiyam on Viral Radio on 1 May, Joker on Viral Radio on 5 June, and Hudson Mohawke, Dimlite and Kode9 & the Spaceape at Beat Dimensions on 24 April.