\nExhibition opening Rotterdam April 20th 2012 <\/strong>&
\nBook presentation Dutch Architecture with Landscape Methods Vol.3<\/strong><\/p>\n
This week we will have the final review of an student research laboratory ‘Design Analysis’ that I have been teaching with Matthew Skjonsberg (West 8) since february this year at Rotterdamse Academie van Bouwkunst (RAvB). The review will also be our final book editing session for our jointly published book \u2018Dutch Architecture with Landscape Methods Vol.3\u2019 (Jauslin, Skjonsberg e.a. 2012) that will be available as print on demand and .pdf by the end of this month.<\/p>\n
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\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\nDuring the last 9 weeks the first year master students of RAVB have been visiting, documenting and analyzing Dutch Architecture with Landscape Methods. What surprised me again, as each time I\u2019ve taught and changed the course, is how deeply students get motivated in this laboratory setting and how sharp they become as critics and analysts when they dive into other architect\u2019s designs. Or as the Director of RAvB Chris van Langen put it our course leads to “huge progress of the students’ capacity in design analysis and the understanding of design mechanisms and to highly enthusiastic reactions of the students.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Such teaching experience and feedback affirms our belief that design research and analysis are essential in teaching design, should it not merely be an artistic academicism but rather an intense academic exercise, practice and interchange – which does not exclude but rather intensifies work on aesthetics. This is very much in line with the Delft approach to landscape architecture our chair expressed in two recent publications with Steffen Nijhuis and Inge Bobbink (2011 & 2012).<\/p>\n In Dutch Architecture with Landscape Methods Vol.3, several groups of students analyze projects from the last 25 years of Dutch architecture as to how they are designed like a landscape. In particular in the Netherlands contemporary architecture is increasingly influenced by the concept of landscape. Like on many other places a new mindset is emerging, transforming the core values of the disciplines of architecture and urbanism: the organization of architectural space as a landscape. Our lab experiments for the development of methods to analyze such phenomena in case studies, understanding how architects use\u00a0 landscape not only as a metaphor but also as a method to design buildings.<\/p>\n The exhibition will present individual analyses of Dutch architecture projects as Cadavre Exquis \u2013 the result of a surrealist game (Brotchie 1991) played on the work of offices NOX, De Zwarte Hond, Mecanoo, SANAA, OMA, Wim Quist, NL Architects, Onyx and MVRDV. All of them where decomposed, according to principles laid out by Steenbergen & Reh (2003)\u00a0 into their ground form, spatial form, image form and program form according to intensely discussed and modified criteria.<\/p>\n Matthew and I also share two common experiences in the fields of landscape and architecture: that of the academia of Prof. Marc Angelil at ETH Z\u00fcrich and the practice of West 8 in Rotterdam. Both studio situations inspired us to engage in hands-on teaching with a lot of experiments – we are exceptionally proud to call this a laboratory.\u00a0 For one of our last workshops at the Laboratory Design Analysis we used the models to occupy a site, and then played a game. The game we played has resemblance to the Surrealist game Cadavre Exquis. Cadavre Exquis, also known as exquisite corpse or rotating corpse, is a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule (e.g. the order “adjective – noun – adverb – verb” or “head – body – legs”) or by being allowed to see the end of the drawing the previous person contributed. In our case the student\u2019s individual ground forms established a set of interconnecting rafts to realize a floating city for the Dutch Delta Games 2028 in the former Dock RDM at the Maas (the location of the Academy) while they traded spatial form, image form and program form according to the rules of the game.<\/p>\n In this intentionally surrealistic game we played, students generated a transformation of their 4 layered architectural composition and a new plot while introducing qualitative criteria. The game board was a rescaled plot of SANAA’s Kustlinie Almere – one of the analyzed designs. Their floor plan of transparent walls was at a small lake in Almere was mapped into another scale as a floating raft at the south bank of Rotterdam\u2019s river Maas.<\/p>\n