In the midst of central Amsterdam’s gentrification wave a luxury department store has been given the name of the ruthless 19th century Parisian planner. The irony of the reference demands a closer look at these two periods of urban redevelopment.
”It signifies the direction in which Amsterdam is going: it’s on its way to becoming an incredibly liveable, comfortable, clean and pretty city; but of course, the cost is its soul.”
I formulated my thoughts about current urban developments in Amsterdam. You can read them on Failed Architecture.
From the Sky Lounge of Deloitte’s new HQ - the “world’s most sustainable office building” - you can see Crystal Tower, a 13 year old, 20.000 sqm building Deloitte left behind empty. Talking about sustainability. (bij The Edge)
City of symbols: Egypt’s National Democratic Party HQs were set ablaze during the 2011 revolution. The blackened carcass is now rocking an ad for Egypt’s £30bn capital to be: New Cairo.
‘Roosevelt’s erection’ (187m), built in 1961 with CIA bribe money and Soviet help, recieved a fatwa in the 1990s because its shape amidst greenery could excite Egyptian women.
Tahrir today: new (defensive) landscaping, a flagpole erected, and the Nile Ritz-Carlton almost reopening. The square’s subway station is out of use and the former NDP HQs are still ashy. (bij Tahrir Square - ميدان التحرير)
“Frank Gehry’s Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris’s Bois de Boulogne (above) and his Panama Biomuseum (below) flagrantly disregard their settings, reducing architecture to mere superfluous spectacle, over-exaggerated and detached from reality."
"More than that, the attention attracted by works like those of Gehry and Hadid impedes the rethinking of architecture that is so desperately overdue. We need to move on from the adolescent search for momentary excitement and spectacle to a more mature architecture of synthesis and subtlety that reveals its understated riches over time. But that would entail architectural academe and media developing a much more searchingly critical attitude to architecture and how it is assessed so as to help us move forward to an architecture relevant and adequate to the manifold challenges of our time. To do this it also would help if we ignored, and starved of the oxygen of publicity, the architectural nonsense too long applauded in our times.”
Great time-lapse running up to Amsterdam’s Week of the City, which is about to take off. This year’s theme is the city’s ring road A10 and the ringzone surrounding it.
From November 5-9, you can explore this dynamic part of Amsterdam in a vast programme. There will be ring walks, debates, lectures, films, art projects, ring safari’s and more activities.
