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…

On 17 May Juha talked about real-time connectivity in the city at FutureEverything. This annual festival of art, music and ideas in Manchester, was held over four days at various venues across the city and included a conference at the Museum of Science and Industry.

On May 16 Michiel presented Failed Architecture to students Interior Architecture at the Haute École d’Art et de Design (HEAD) in Geneva, Switzerland, together with architect Ljubo Georgiev. They were invited by Maarten Gielen, who is a visiting professor at HEAD and is a founding member of the Belgium specialist in material flows Rotor in Brussels.

Radna was invited by Ubbo Gronewold to present Future Vintage in Mannheim, Germany, at several venues in the period of April 26 – 28. Future Vintage is a music platform and radioshow dedicated to discovering the history and future of soul, jazz, hiphop, electronic & psychedelic music. It’s presented by Radna and Reinier Klok, who joined Radna in Mannheim, and various guest DJ’s and is broadcasted every Tuesday from 8-9PM on Red Light Radio, live from Amsterdam’s red light district.

From 2 – 6 April the team of Failed Architecture, including its founder-member Michiel together with architects Maja Popovic and Ljubo Georgiev, went to Belgrade, Serbia, for a workshop focusing on the Savamala neighbourhood, in collaboration with European Center for Culture and Debate GRAD. The FA-team got a feature in Belgrade’s Novi magazin, and is returning to Belgrade in May for Mikser Beograd, the annual arts festival.

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.

To make the event site-specific, Scandinavia’s second tallest housing complex Domus Vista (read more below) frames our “walkshop” and debate. Different stakeholders, marking the problem field, meet at the walkshop in Domus Vista’s high-rise and surroundings. We invite planners, residents, architects, journalists, politicians, etc. to test methods and discuss questions like:

• What is it that makes many people criticize modernist public housing estates as failed architecture?
• Is it because of physical, social or cultural conditions?
• Is the modernist ideal about educating and improving the people through urban planning and social engineering still relevant?

The walkshop (working while walking) opens up the debate in Domus Vista’s bankruptcy-threatened community-cum-shopping centre. International and Danish experts present their views on why housing estates from the post-war period are often regarded as failures and how this affects urban planning and regeneration. The Danish situation is put into perspective by experiences from the Balkans and Holland. Failed Architecture events have previously taken place in Amsterdam and Skopje. In the autumn FA moves to Sofia and Belgrade.

Programme September 30 @ Domus Vista (in English) 

16.00 – 16.15 – Introduction to the day’s programme, Failed Architecture and Domus Vista.
16.15 – 17.00 – Experimental walkshop, testing methods in Domus Vista and surroundings.
17.00 – 17.15 – Short break
17.15 – 17.45 – Presentation of questions and conclusions, produced by the walkshop. The different ‘actor groups’ present their viewpoints for each other and the experts.
17.45 – 18.00 – Short break
18.00 – 18.45 – Public debate, moderated by Michiel van Iersel (Non-fiction and founder of Failed Architecture), with presentations by  Ljubo Georgiev (Dutch/Bulgarian architect), Claus Bech-Danielsen (Head of Research at Centre of Housing Research, Professor mso, ph.d. Architect MAA at Danish Building Research Institute), Niels Bjørn (urbanist) and Signe Sophie Bøggild (architectural historian).
18.45 – 19.30 – Open mic, moderated by Michiel van Iersel.
19.45 – 22.00 – Balkan beats and refreshments.

When?
There is programme from 16.00 until 22.00. Since the event has two parts, you can either join us for the whole day or just participate in the debate, open for everybody. To sign up for the walkshop please visit NYP’s website (limited space).

Go to  event.

Where?
Domus Vista, Nordens Plads 4 2000 Frederiksberg Copenhagen.

Click here to see Domus Vista on the map.

More about the venue: Domus Vista 
Domus Vista is located in Copenhagen at Roskildevej in Frederiksberg and is with its 102 metres the tallest residential structure in Denmark and the second tallest residential building in Scandinavia. The tallest building is Turning Torso in Malmø, which was completed in 2005.The building was designed by architect Ole Hagen and was completed in 1969. It was built by builder Harald Simonsen, who also took part in the construction of Hostrups Have in Frederiksberg. Domus Vista has 30 floors and 470 apartments. The lower floors were originally a hotel with restaurant, banquet facilities and living rooms. The hotel was closed in early 1970s. Instead, the living room part of the building is now housing a shopping centre and a library. (Source: Wikipedia)

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)

For the January edition of Time Out (magazine) Amsterdam our office for cultural innovation Non-fiction was asked to give a vision of the city in the year 2020, together with KesselsKramer, LAgroup, Concrete and Benthem Crouwel. Since we discard the idea of a blueprint for the city of the future and strongly believe in the power of co-creation and collaboration, we invited a few dozen of people we know and/or admire to to speculate on the future of the city (of Amsterdam). By juxtaposing perspectives from both in- and outsiders and by combining utopian visions, critical reflections, personal fantasies and (more) mundane thoughts, we wanted to provide a kaleidoscopic view of the future of the Dutch capital.

We had been given a two-page spread (basically two A4 pages) to present our vision of the future and in order to maximise the number of ideas we invited our friends and colleagues across the globe to answer a simple question: “What will you be doing in Amsterdam in 2020?”, in 140 characters. A Twitter-message from the future. As we are moving into the next decade, Twitter is at the very front of communications innovations, and gathering all these tweets into a tweetdeck gives a recognizable and playful collaborative vision of the city (of Amsterdam) in 10 years.

The final result (thanks to our buddies at Vandejong) is a densely packed information-grid, giving an overview of 36 seemingly unrelated opinions and doom scenarios. But upon closer inspection fascinating patterns appear: our participants think that Amsterdam eventually will merge into a bigger metropolitan area, that it will suffer severe flooding, that the historic city centre will become an abandoned open-air museum and that the outskirts will become the new hubs of urban vitality and (re-)development.

In contrast, there are also people who hold a unique believe that by 2020 the city will be either connected to Utrecht by a high speed electro-magnet train, will still lack a new art museum or subway line, or simply will be and stay the ‘same old, same old’.

The magazine just hit the stores, so check it out or contact us if you wish to receive a copy! And please join us for the ‘2020 vision’ event at De Verdieping on Thursday 28 January at 8 pm in collaboration with Time Out Amsterdam, bringing together the contributors and other visionaries to discuss the propability of our predictions…

We wish to thank all the contributors and the people who are still sending us their submissions. We are very happy with the outcome of this collaborative effort. In the new year we will continu this ‘crowdsourced’ investigation into the future potentials and failures of a complex city.

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