_____Tim.de.Boer.org

image from wikimedia commons

This article is only available as short summary in english.

The municipality of Amsterdam is trying to gentrify the red light district “De Wallen”. They argue the current situation is to unsafe and attracts too much criminal activities. They proposed to cut prostitution related activities by 50 %. To gentrify the area they proposed some key projects that are developed by housing corporations. What is interesting is the fact that in most cases gentrification elevates the value of real estate involved. But what Tsaiher Cheng (from Boundary Unlimited) showed in her research is that in this case the value actually falls. The value will (probably) only rise after a very long time. This means the restructuring is a very capital-intensive enterprise.

Boundary Unlimited is researching other methods of gentrification in “De Wallen”. They are inspired by the typologies for housing variuos creative industries that surfaced in Asian cities. They do not cut prostitution, they work with the left over spaces above the windows or behind the streets. This smart strategy means the value of the real estate will not fall sharply during the transformation. They make a much more gradual transformation possible.

The Dutch article appeared in the ‘Blauwe Kamer’ -2010-nr. 1 – . Its the dutch ‘parent’ magazine of ‘scape.

Wives of employees of the gaming company Rockstar (famous for Grand Theft Auto) are protesting against the long hours that their husbands have to work. See Gamasutra.com. The Spouses wrote a letter to the managment of the company to complain about the twelve hour workdays, the regular overtime on saturday and the 70 hour workweek that is quite common at Rockstar nowadays. They even say the pressure to work even more is growing.

The workhours sound sooo familiar to an architect. Working into the night, no overtime payments, coming in on weekends to work on competitions and 70 hour workweeks are even quite common at some architectural firms. Yet i have never heard of protest of the spouses against these conditions. Why? Is it because architects have no spouse? Is it because they are architects themselves? Is it because architects do not complain, because they like architecture to much? or are the spouses just happy that there husbands are never home?

In any case according to the sources on the internet it is not the first time this happened in the gaming industry. In 2004 employees were awarded millions when a similar case against EA was brought into court.

In this  series of images I will not focus on the architectural qualities of the featured architecture but on the way these designs are shown in renderings and artist impressions. How are these designs sold to the general public?

This time a image from the Baljurk in Den Haag, designed by Archipel ontwerpers. The upper image is hardly an artist impression. It is more likely a undoctored image from a 3d modeling program. In the picture we see a very selective way of dealing with the surrounding buildings. The detail in the design makes it stand out more in relation to the surroundings. The classical looking building on the left is also new, but in the rendering it remains very schematic, it blends in with the existing buildings. They tried to enhance the relation between the new building and the public space by adding a terrace in front of the building. A door to the terrace is missing in the rendering however. Unfortunately, in real life the lower floor is even occupied by a cookery store and the terrace was never realized. (the entry door did make it into the final design though, it’s quite prominent in reality. 

Available in the 24/7 sandwichshop tshirt store this black tshirt with nice Glittery Gold print to support the Goldstone Report -and whats in the report- . The prize is only 14,90 (ex shipping) and one euro will go to an olive tree planting project in Palestine.

Order in Europe via Spreadshirt

Order in America -and rest of world-  via Spreadshirt USA

Recently I bought a large amount of an old Dutch architecture magazine: The Archis. I now have all the issues from 1986- 2000. I heard much about the supposed greatness of the magazine but that turned out to be true. The old Archis is better than the new (Volume). A lot of the articles from the issues of 1986 are still relevant today. One example: In one issue there is a long article on the Dutch coasttown Scheveningen and the plans for renewal there. Even in 2009 the issues they raise are still relevant.

It’s a shame this content is still not available digitally in such a nice way as The New Yorker already has done. There is not even a searchable database on the subjects the magazine covered in the past. Luckily the issues can still be bought secondhand. And the expercience of buying it was also very good. A nice recepetion with coffee and a good conversation about Architecture. Thanks Marian & Hans!

A picture of the site model made for Secret Project 001. this model has been outside for almost a year now. Eventually this model will be complemented with a model made of non-aged concrete.

The last couple of months I have been closely involved in the competition that was organized by the 24/7 Sandwichshop. We were quite overwhelmed by the amount of entries, but really pleased at the same time. Last week we annouced the winners on the website. Go and check it out!

Since the 1990′s youth that are causing nuissances in public space are being dealt with in a weird way. In a lot of cases the nuissances are solved not by pointing the youth on their responsibilities as a member of society (and thus caring about not causing disturbances). No, they are solved by providing the youth with their own space (JOP or translated youth meeting point) far from the public eye, where they can do the things they do  without bothering nayone but themselves. This development fits perfectly in the general development of public space: I.E.  an amazing array of very specific uses and designs of public space are coming into existence and are run in an almost private matter. I am planning to research this through the specific case of the JOP’s. How did they come into existence? How are they planned? Where are they exactly?

I will publish preliminary results on this blog or email me for more information