If you ever happen to be in the town of Heerhugowaard in the north of Holland, you should go to the bathroom. Of course not just to any bathroom, but to the one in recreation park Strand van Luna. That’s where Danish art collective Superflex and Amsterdam-based Nezu Aymo Architects have built their „Power Toilets“: a replica of the rest rooms in the UN Security Council in New York, based on some photos taken secretly by an employee. An inconspicuous box in a recreation area in a provincial Dutch town houses the exact same top-secret toilets which are frequented by Ban-Ki moon & Co: if that isn’t worth a detour, what is?
The New Museum (Neues Museum) in Berlin, part of the Unesco World Heritage Museum Island, built by Andreas Schlüter in 1856 was heavily destroyed in World War II.
After 40 years being a ruin it is now renovated in an extraordinary way by David Chipperfield. About 4.000 visitors a day are fascinated by the Nofretete (Nefertiti) bust, the Greek and Aegyptian collection and the respectful restoration of the only museum with an original interior of the German Historism in the 19th century. The New Museum finally opened on 16th October 2009.
The reconstruction of the New Museum is only a part of the general renewal of the Museum Island. In 2010 David Chipperfield will add a contemporary entrance building: The James Simon Gallery. Here will start the new underground „archeologic pathway“, which will connect the four museums with a distinct thematic approach to each institution.
The first new building in the neighbourhood of the island by Chipperfield was the Art Gallery „Am Kupfergraben“, finished in 2007.
„Ticket B - Architectural Guided Tours in Berlin“ offers from now on special tours to the urban development of the Museum Island with short inside visits in parts of the museums in cooperation with the Foundation „Preussischer Kulturbesitz“.
A composition for highway A40 – the most important east-west traffic connection in the Ruhr area, which cuts across the urban space, connecting people in one sweeping motion. It’s one of the highways with the highest traffic volumes in Germany.
The duration of “Symphony A40″ corresponds to the time it takes to ride along A40 at a constant speed of 90 km/h. Mongkok was inspired by a journey from Dortmund in the east of the Ruhr area to Duisburg in the western part of the region.
“Symphonie A40″ is published and presented by FAR, the Rhein-Ruhr member of guiding-architects.net.
The CD is available in German, Austrian and Swiss bookstores (ISBN 978-3-00-027017-8). For orders in other countries, please send an email to FAR: mail@far.la . FAR delivers the CD worldwide. Also available from Amazon.
The time has come: on Thursday 21 May 2009 the museum “Sammlung Brandhorst“, designed by Berlin-based architects Sauerbruch Hutton, will open its doors. From May 21 to May 24 everybody has the chance to see the collection free of charge from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.
The museum will complement the Munich Pinakothek group of museum buildings, providing exhibition space for a large private collection of contemporary and 20th century modern art. The different types of illumination coupled with the conscious variation of the sequence, size and proportion of the rooms in three sections create subtle divisions. The façade was given a unique look with different layers and polychromatic glazed ceramic bars.
Karriere is a new café/restaurant/bar situated in Flæsketorvet – the meat district of Copenhagen.
It is a new venue with huge ambitions – and the credentials to go with them: world class artists (Olafur Eliasson, just to name one) across a range of artistic disciplines have defined the functions and design of the place, making art part of a social space shared by a broad audience.
At Karriere, art wants to be a natural part of meeting, eating, drinking, relaxing and having fun, spurring communication, reflection and play.
From 20 until 22 February, the annual guiding architects network meeting took place, this time in the Ruhr area. We made a little film during the meeting, which gives a nice impression of our members and what we do during the meetings. This time, we held our usual presentations about the past year, talked a lot about the new website and the blog, but also about organizational issues and marketing ideas, we ate some typical Ruhr-area pea soup and finally did a guided tour to local architecture, led by local member Detlev Bruckhoff.
The Ruhr area is famous for its series of landmarks, created by international artists on top of former mining dumps and in converted industrial buildings. One of the most important artworks is the Tetraeder (Bottrop/Ruhr area), realised by Wolfgang Christ and Jürgen LIT Fischer in the 1990s, during the period of “Strukturwandel” in the Ruhr area. Now the Tetraeder is the focus of attention again, due to an artwork that triggered a huge public discussion in the Ruhr area. The question is: who is allowed to define the public space?
Tetraeder in Bottrop by Wolfgang Christ and Fred F.’s aliens at the foot of the sculpture.
52-year-old Fred F. from Bottrop has created some images of aliens on the platform on top of the mining dump which serves as the base of the Tetraeder. He made them from old stones, which he collected on top of the hill and sorted according to colour (light grey to dark grey). Then he re-decorated the hilltop.
When the Regionalverband Ruhr rebuilt the platform and brought it back to its original state, it caused a landslide of public indignation: Many people in the area are convinced that Fred F.’s aliens were artworks as well.
The Centre for International Light Art in Unna/Ruhr area is the only museum worldwide which focusses exclusively on artworks from the field of lighting and illumination.
Soon a new artwork by James Turrell will be opened to the public. There’s a short movie about this work and the underground museum on the website of Der Westen – unfortunately only with commentary in German, but the images should speak for themselves.
As we’re already talking architectural documentaries (see the previous post): the one not to miss this year is Koolhaas HouseLife.
In this film, we see Guadalupe Acedo, housekeeper in Rem Koolhaas’ famous villa in Bordeaux, stoically struggling with the tricky sides of modern architecture. Dragging her vacuum cleaner up a spikey steel staircase, dusting the book shelves while passing by on the lift platform, trying in vain to make the fully automatic door-opener open the door. And what’s more, in the interview with Koolhaas which is included in the DVD, something previously unseen happens: Koolhaas, who isn’t exactly known as a prime exponent of jollity, smiles! “You see here two systems colliding: the platonic conception of cleaning and the platonic conception of architecture”, he says. Well, he’s certainly got a point there. Check out the trailers on the website.
A composition for highway A40 – the most important east-west traffic connection in the Ruhr area, which cuts across the urban space, connecting people in one sweeping motion. It’s one of the highways with the highest traffic volumes in Germany.
