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Artikel
Silent Occupation
Over the course of two weeks in January 2018, 180 students from the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam and I joined forces during the Winter School. In this two-week research and design programme, students of architecture, urban design and landscape architecture explored the Kop van Java (Head of Java Island), an as yet undeveloped plot in the centre of Amsterdam. This new generation of designers is not just designing our built environment, but our mental space as well. How do we experience the space that is designed for us? How does it influence us and others? The space we presume to be our own (privately, architectonically, legally) is not as solid as architectural drawings or documents of ownership might suggest. We have laws regulating the right to have a home, and the quality of that home, but how about the right to silence? Or the right to speak?
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Artikel
Me: Seeing is a creative act
When we appointed the photographer Jeroen Musch as the new Artist in Residence at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, we could not have known that the start of his term would coincide with the death of one of the most influential writers that has changed our idea of seeing, the English art critic John Berger, who died aged 90 on 2 January 2017. In his seminal essay Ways of Seeing he writes: “Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak. But there is another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world.”
Although Berger was initially concerned with how we perceive art, he quickly called our attention to the wider world and introduced looking as a political act that challenges us to exercise our sensibilities and to ask ourselves: ‘What do we see? How are we seen? Might we see differently?’ For Berger, the relationship between what we see and what we know is never settled, and therefore the act of looking becomes an effective tool to discover something (else) about ourselves and the situation in which we are living. -
Artikel
Clay City: Alexander Brodsky Artist in Residence
This publication presents Clay City, the 2019 Winter School at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture led by the Russian architect and artist Alexander Brodsky. He was invited as an artist-in-residence as part of the AIR programme of the Amsterdam University of the Arts. Together with Brodsky, 136 first and second-year students worked tirelessly from 14 to 25 January 2019 to collectively build an imaginary city of clay. Temporarily occupying the Academy’s courtyard, it was an impressive sight: a vast, dense cityscape handmade with an incredible wealth of detail. It took us on an architectural tour through history from ancient Rome to future Amsterdam. Then left to the Dutch elements for six weeks, the city started to disintegrate. This edition of the Winter School was not about choosing a winning presentation; instead it centred on the idea of making something that exceeds the individual to achieve an end result to be collectively proud of.
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Artikel
Forever Young: Ontwerpen aan de continue innovatie van de binnenstad van Amsterdam
De Academie van Bouwkunst Amsterdam is een opleiding voor ontwerpers, door ontwerpers. Jonge, talentvolle studenten worden door gerenomeerde ruimtelijke vormgevers opgeleid tot architect, stedenbouwer of landschapsarchitect. In het studieprogramma is de stad Amsterdam vaak het laboratorium. Ook in de Winter School (januari 2016), waarbij alle studenten samenwerken aan één opgave, staat Amsterdam centraal. Honderdtachtig studenten architectuur, landschapsarchitectuur en stedenbouw vanuit de hele wereld storten zich vol overgave op de vraag hoe de oude historische stad zich kan blijven aanpassen om van betekenis te kunnen zijn voor huidige en toekomstige generaties: Forever Young.