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Chapter 0: Introduction
The research program Values for Survival explores thinking and design with which we can live and survive the current times of uncertainty and not-knowing. The results of this research, which include science, policy and design, will be published in Cahiers. In these note- or logbooks results and reflections are documented in time to be an inspiration for the future.
In the coming months we will publish more Cahiers, with different structures, and with other authors studying the values for survival we need in the era to come. In this way we will contribute digitally to the research that was initiated by Hashim Sarkis, curator of the 17th Architecture Biennale of Venice. He posed the question ‘How will we live together?’ and the Dutch contribution answered with the question ‘Who is we?’. These Cahiers on Values for Survival gather answers to these questions. -
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Chapter 1: Polyphonic Cities
Social and ecological urban developments in Europe are increasingly seen in relation to one another. The mapping of these developments takes place at various levels, from personal lives to international politics.
The city is an environment where personal life and the political system primarily meet. It is therefore a challenge to shape values in visions of the future in such a way that people identify with them and cooperation between different authorities is promoted. This chapter opens with a short sketch by Dagmar Keim of the joint shaping of social and ecological urban policy in recent European history. Next, Dirk van den Heuvel illustrates a number of ways in which urban nature has developed in the Netherlands in recent decades. Annelys van der Vet shares subjective atlases that illustrate how personal perspectives shape values for survival on a daily basis. Farid Tabarki talks to civil servants from six Dutch cities about creating their value-driven environmental visions. Klaas Kuitenbrouwer closes with a discussion on how to handle the tensions that arise in urban development. -
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Chapter 2: Multispecies Urbanism
As there are increasing signs that the Earth is depleting and the climate is changing, the relationship between humans and environment is being challenged. Unprecedented forms of care and management are necessary now that it is clear that unexpected threats can arise in a short period of time, and climate-adaptive concepts for urban planning and management are therefore under development.
Debra Solomon introduces Multispecies Urbanism as a philosophy in which a city prioritises care for its nature and ecology, and where humans do not stand alone, but as part of a multispecies reciprocal relationship with the urban landscape. As one example, Amsterdam Zuidoost Food Forest is described as a diverse local community that designed an ecological zone of 55 hectares of increased climate-proof biodiversity. Data, Annemarie van Wezel argues, will offer new possibilities for monitoring these urban ecologies. Studio Wild follows by focusing on plants that are legally banned, arguing that geopolitical relationships have a profound influence on this phenomenon. Arjan van Timmeren observes that in addition to incompetence, unwillingness is also a reason that the combination of technological, networked and environmental thinking has not yet led to sus- tainable cities. He argues for ‘hormesis’, generating a small, controlled and continuous dosage of stress, to increase a city’s resilience. Maria Kaika then explores how the way we respond to failure determines the future we create. She argues this offers better definitions of a ‘smart city’. Finally, artist Lada Hršak describes the research project Fish Eye, a micro- to macro-level study of the waters around Venice, and calls for greater reflection and humility. -
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Chapter 3: Multiplicity of Other
The way people deal with ‘being different’ means that difference is almost unconsciously made invisible, especially when there is power inequality. From different perspectives, we examine how a critical and emancipation-focused paradigm for design, research, and policy can emerge from a ‘difference’ that generates energy, abundance, and success.
Afaina de Jong introduces Multiplicity of Other as a new design strategy challenging the dominant architectural paradigm. With Spaces of Other, she creates free spaces in which diverse and unheard voices are vocalised to create different futures. Azza Karam draws attention to the relationship between power and imagination, arguing that value- and religion-driven politics can lead to neo-colonial relationships and even barbarism. She calls for a return to humility, humanity, and respect for all life on Earth, as encouraged by religions. Mounir Samuel gives a touching, personal poem on life and survival on the borders of judgment in our time. The successful Amsterdam Healthy Weight Programme shows how a systematic approach to research into childhood obesity has made diversity its starting point. The collective Failed Architecture aims to develop new stories, focussing its critical approach on everything that happens after a building is completed. Finally, Halleh Ghorashi makes a passionate plea for an engaged science in which new methodologies can give voice to those who are structurally unheard. -
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Chapter 4: Sharing Research
Cities have become complex systems in which each element interacts with many others. Research in cities requires an integrated and interdisciplinary approach – sharing and collaboration between different fields of knowledge can partly determine the quality of life in the city.
Several authors reflect on openresearch. amsterdam, a new online platform for knowledge development in Amsterdam. This chapter opens with Stone soup, an old European folk tale about the quality that emerges when people share. Caroline Nevejan describes the development of sustainable knowledge infrastructures between several European cities and their universities, arguing that the design discipline has an added value for research and policy. Paul Wouters sees a turning point in the field of knowledge-sharing to connect different life worlds, seeing collaborative knowledge production as an inspiring example. Ino Paap wonders whether physical and traditional knowledge can be exchanged through online platforms and discusses the role that reflection can play. Editors of openresearch.amsterdam describe the creation of the new platform in which colleges, universities, and the local government formally work together. Pinar Sefkatli talks about her experience in working with students, highlighting the importance of sharing work in progress. Finally, philosophy student, Veronica Baas, gives a reflection on the emergence of knowledge in social interactions and how a democratic influence can help determine what knowledge is. -
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Chapter 5: Circular City
Locally and globally, socially and ecologically, physically and virtually, in materials and in data – a circular economy needs many perspectives to be successful. Amsterdam is a pioneer in strategically translating the concept of circularity into practical methods, tools, and projects in the city.
In the first essay, Peter van Assche argues for radical circular architecture – a choreography of material transitions akin to solids into liquids and gases and back again. Eveline Jonkhoff introduces the reasons why a circular strategy is necessary for a city like Amsterdam and describes how it was created with many of the city’s colleagues, companies, and residents. To develop the framework of this strategy, she collaborated with British scientist Kate Raworth, author of Doughnut Economics, who follows with a new article in which she argues that the interconnectivity of people – both locally and globally, socially and ecologically – determines the form of progress. Raworth then shows the first circular portrait of Amsterdam, made with the city and international partners. Juan-Carlos Goilo analyses how information as an actor in cities such as Amsterdam or islands such as Curaçao functions very differently thanks to the global data economy, producing new colonial relationships as a matter of course. Goilo closes by showing the first images of the Amsterdam circular economy monitor made in collaboration with the design agency Beautiful Minds. -
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Chapter 6: Architectures of Trust – Introduction
This Cahier 2 is a distillation of a series of experiments that are part of the complimentary research programme of the Dutch contribution to the 17th Architecture Biennale carried out during the COVID-19 lock-down, when travelling and physical proximity were severely limited. The Biennale organization had postponed the exhibition, and all events associated with it were cancelled. In this totally unforeseen and dramatic situation, new questions arose around the nature of collaboration itself.
Can intuition and experience be shared between people who do not know each other and cannot meet?
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Chapter 7: Arsenals of Globalization
The Arsenale of Venice is nowadays an urban landmark and the core location of the Biennale. Historically, it was the maritime power centre of the Republic of Venice, where the naval and merchant fleet of the city state was mass produced. The formula of self-contained and large-scale shipbuilding yards can be recognized in another maritime city, Amsterdam. Although incomparable in size and age, the Oostenburg shipyard of the trading organization of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) can be considered identical to the Arsenale. Both arsenals represent predecessors of industrial production and urban centres of globalization linked to shipping networks. The exploratory project of archaeologists Jerzy Gawronski and Francesco Tiboni, and Venetian shipbuilding expert Gilberto Penzo aims to show this shared identity through the material culture of shipbuilding tools.
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Chapter 8: Vanishing Homelands
Through a series of interviews, testimonies and dialogues, using investigative journalism and demographic data, we analyze the impact of global warming on two complex and fragile ecosystems. Venice, Italy and Shariatpur in Bangladesh are seemingly in opposite ends of the world. Though separated by geographic, climatic and cultural realities, both places are tied to the same tragic fate, being continuously impacted by rising of global temperatures and sea levels.
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Chapter 9: Tides of Tourism
In this track we investigate tourism as a spatio-temporal phenomenon, with its own daily, weekly, seasonal and yearly rhythms, which are guided and governed as flows and tides. Rhythms, like tides, are temporal and spatial compositions; in an urban context they also gain a policy dimension. Conceptualizing tourism via these frames of reference provides for a reconsideration of the ontologies which surround demographics (that is, the tourist and the local), regulations (local and regional scales), and spatial usages and distributions, while rhythm interventions choreograph how these urban practices intersect. Our exploration takes place in Amsterdam, Venice and Glasgow: cities that have been adapted to tidal rhythms throughout the centuries. The first two cities are faced with overflowing tourism, and have adopted different management approaches, while the latter is looking for ways to invite tourism to enrich the economy of the city. Through the lens of speculative rhythm interventions, our research examines how tourism might be better orchestrated in various urban contexts.
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Chapter 10: Talking Sands - Fisheye
How big is the impact of microorganisms on our planet? The radical COVID-19 crisis pointed out what microbiology has known for a long time. The scale relations and entanglements between social and ecological processes, visible and invisible worlds, are the main topics of Talking Sands-Fisheye.
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Chapter 11: What do we need?
Building on the main question of the 17th Architecture Biennale in Venice ‘How will we live together?’, Zola Can, together with seven ‘story-catchers’, explored what Amsterdammers need in the future. With the question ‘What do you need in the future of the city?’ they did not investigate what people want in the seven boroughs of Amsterdam, because surely everyone wants something, but what they need is a completely different question.
Each district has its own vibe and character. This diversity constitutes Amsterdam’s identity. In the various boroughs, story-catchers collected conversations, images, poems and stories for a period of six weeks. Based on what they ‘caught’, this chapter provides an impression of what residents of Amsterdam need in the future.
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Chapter 12: Protest or not to Protest
With this research, we explored and critically discussed the linguistics and iconography of disruption, protest and engagement – in the context of the ideas related to a multispecies urbanism. We explored these topics in relation to the urban context of Venice and Amsterdam, the 2020/2021 Biennial theme ‘How will we live together?’ and ‘Values for Survival’ as introduced by the Venice Exploratorium. With Protest or not to Protest we looked at the manifestation, contextualization and representation of disruption and activism as a spatial form, and as a form of engagement and care – in the media, online and otherwise.
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Chapter 13: Space of Other
Space of Other is a spatial installation and performative space by architect Afaina de Jong and artist Innavision that explores the relation between space and identity in the context of the gentrifying city. The installation mediates between the public spaces of the city, its interior spaces and its residents altering notions of representation through presentation.
Spaces like identities are constructed. And even though spaces can often seem neutral or given, our movements, activities and life are always dictated by the way space is produced. The same is true for identity. Identities are constructed and not always by ourselves. At this moment in history, we are once more reconsidering notions of identity, while at the same time, cities are becoming more and more universal and generic. Gentrification is displacing residents who have over time created local cultures, causing the loss of identity, community, collective memory and public space.
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Chapter 14: Unfolding Arch of Forging Fantasy
In this track we wanted to research the fan as a communicative tool. Few historic totems carried as much symbolic weight as the handheld decorative fan. Hand fans were absent in Europe during the Middle Ages until they were reintroduced in the 13th and 14th centuries through Venice, when fans from the Middle East were brought by crusaders and refugees from Constantinople. Traders brought them from China and Japan in the 16th century, and fans became generally popular. During a certain period of time, the fan became an ideal instrument of communication in an age in which freedom of speech for women was absolutely restricted. The main gestures were known as ‘the language of the fan’. The earliest such language was made up of individual letters, and later variations were ‘extensions of body language’, mostly to transmit a love code.
Not only are fans beautiful, a great means of communication, used in social etiquette and thus a carrier of expression in many cultures, they are also foremost practical objects to carry on a warm day in times of climate change. The ornate, dramatic and once-ubiquitous item is worth resurrecting now more than ever: wouldn’t it be great to develop an updated messaging system for these battery-free tools to cool down? -
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Chapter 15: Forbidden Garden
For this Exploratorium we will research and investigate the possibilities for a radical new garden on the former site of the 19th-century Orto Botanico di Venezia at San Giobbe. The site has long been abandoned since being used for various other functions like a torpedo factory and an electricity company. Our research is triggered by a 2016 European piece of legislation, which consists of 35 alien invasive plant species that have been put onto a list of Union Concern, which means that these plant species have been degraded to a minority that cannot be traded, imported, sold or grown within the borders of the European Union. We want to provoke this European legislation by dealing with the question of whether spatial, legal and social restrictions always contribute to a more biodiverse society. We want to question the impact of legislation on nature and our built environment by exploring the theme of nature versus culture, and pose questions about what is native and what is invasive. We think that by investigating the role of the garden within our society, together as designers and researchers, we will find new ways of working with nature and our built environment, which are both under enormous pressure. For this we propose that the Orto Botanico di Venezia could be the perfect stage for reinventing the city garden of the present and the future.
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Chapter 16: Radical Observation
From May 2020, two community groups in the process of performing longterm ecological interventions in their own public space began performing and documenting their design and development praxis using a methodology called Radical Observation.
The group based in Venice started activating a location they call the Green Triangle. So Young Han from We are here Venice offers practical support and manages the Radical Observation praxis in Venice, in order to develop the Green Triangle initiative with local residents and community groups and to ensure its lasting impact. The group based in Amsterdam has been working together on their public space location entitled the Amsterdam Zuidoost Food Forest (VBAZO) since 2018. Debra Solomon and Renate Nollen lead this project with more than 60 engaged locals and several municipal departments.
In 2020–2021 both groups intend to share their developments, designs and
radical observations.
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Chapter 17: Zoöp
In this site-specific research, teams from four different cities in Europe critically explored and refined a method that makes legible as well as actionable the development in resilience of multispecies communities, which were approached as Zoöps.
The Zoöp is a new cooperative form of organisation for representing and cooperating with nonhuman ecological communities, developed at the Neuhaus academy for more than-human knowledge at Het Nieuwe Instituut. The term Zoöp is a combination of co-op (short for “ cooperative ”) and zoë, the Greek word for “ life ”. The Zoöp aims to strengthen the legal position of nonhuman life in human societies, and to stimulate ecological regeneration that is not subjected to extractivist economic logic.
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Chapter 18: Sant'Erasmo 2038
“To travel is very useful, it makes the imagination work, the rest is just delusion and pain. Our journey is 56.3% imaginary, which is its strength.”
Sant’Erasmo was until now another struggling local pantry for the restaurants in the centre of Venice, dedicated to mass tourism. The island, with severe difficulties in competing with the global market and after decades of exploitation and environmental abuse, has been suddenly reappointed by the pandemic as a possible fruitful habitat for Venetians, humans and non-humans. This is the starting point of a collaborative project that combines documentary with science fiction, aiming to explore the complex current situation of Sant’Erasmo, and to speculate on feasible and favourable scenarios for its future as a living structure.
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Chapter 19: Scripts of the Lagoon
The project, Scripts of the Lagoon, explores the relation between sound and responsive asemic scripts (scripts that deconstruct culture-specific and structured languages and transforms them into a universal language of pure emotion). The aim is to develop an audio-visual script for transhuman life forms. The interaction between sound, colors, shapes, and motion will create a series of animated audio-visual segments, phrases consisting of unintelligible sounds, that can be assembled and combined in endless configurations, triggered by and responding to movement and light. The sounds of the Venetian lagoon forms the foundation of this exploration and guides the creation of this imaginary script that will act as interface between the underwater and the overwater worlds. Underwater sounds are a central theme of the exploration, whereby sound becomes the force from which data is extracted and used to build an immersive and imaginary world where symbols act as both abstract script and three-dimensional organism.
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Chapter 20: City Science
Between January 2019 and July 2020, over 35 European cities formed the City Science Initiative (CSI) to explore how the science-policy interface operates in light of the emergent urban challenges and crises. It seems that the impact of current national and EU funded research programs needs to be enhanced for tackling cities urban challenges. This report aims to inspire people in municipalities, universities, networks, different layers of government and the European Commission to develop a variety of science-policy interfaces for handling of urban challenges in the near future.
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Chapter 21: Connecting Spheres
Story by: Caroline Nevejan
Images by: Helen Vreedeveld
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Chapter 22: Everything & Nothing
Story by: Juan Carlos Golio
Images by: Francis Sling
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Chapter 23: Nature's Rhythms
Story by: Sirishkumar Manji
Images by: Max Kisman
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Chapter 24: Tuning Together
Story by: Debra Solomon
Images by: Gijs Frieling
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Chapter 25: Rhythm in Fights
Story by: Marie Rosenkrantz Lindegaard
Images by: Cyprian Koscielniak
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Chapter 26: Magic
Vibrations - story & images by: Innavisions
Riddles - story and images by: Rein Jansma
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Chapter 27: Weaving Networks
Story by: Lipika Bansal
Images by: Hitankshu Bhatt
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Chapter 28: Rhythm & Algorithm
Story by: Alessandro Bozzon
Images by: Richard Vijgen
Based on real traffic data from: City of Amsterdam
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Chapter 29: Circles in Five
Story by: Angelo Vermeulen
Images by: Arise Wan & Heeyoun Kim
SEADS (Space Ecologies Art & Design)
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Chapter 30: Surfing the Waves
Story by: Ivo Lima Carmo
Images by: Barrack Rima
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Chapter 31: Whirling Little Girl
Story by: Kaouthar Darmoni
Images by: Wissam Shawkat
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Chapter 32: Being in Sync
Story by: Satinder Gill
Images by: Naji El Mir
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Chapter 33: To Tune or Not to Tune
Story by: Caroline Nevejan
Images by: Huda Abifarès
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