MAKING CITY_The Exhibition 3

To conclude the review of the main exhibition of the 5th IABR, and with it the series of blog posts dedicated to the event, is time to visit the last group of projects that throw ideas, strategies and doubts about the future of cities.

This time they are focused on issues directly related to the nature of the city; as boundaries, housing mass and density:

MAKING CITY_The Exhibition 2

Following the review of the exhibition “Making city”, it’s time for visiting the selected projects by the organization to explain other three approaches to the term making city.

This time they deal with social status (newcomers to the city’s population) and environmental issues (the case of cities in relationship with the water and agriculture as part of urban life):

MAKING CITY_The Exhibition 1

These are the last weeks of my time living in Rotterdam. To conclude the review of the 5th IABR I’ve been doing until now in the blog, I’d like to make a review of the main event (In content and duration) that is taking place at the NAi.

Is the exhibition “Making City”, which opened on April 20^th 2012 and will be available until August 12^th on the main floor of the NAi. It presents a series of stages, of “Living Environments” through nine approaches to the term “Making City”, each one of them starting with a premise and ending with a conclusion applicable to the city.

Crowdfunding Urbanism

Crowdfunding is a term applied to a collective cooperation through a network of people to get funding or other resources, often using the Internet as the mean to achieve it.

It’s been applied to different cases: new artists starting their careers, product design, private projects that contribute to a community… and even to urban planning and design.

Urbanists Talk 3: Gert Urhahn

Finishing with the lecture series “Urbanists Talk” that the NAi has been organized within the 5th IABR Making City, is the turn of Gert Urhahn, who made his speech after  Pablo Allard on June 7^th.

Gert Urhahn was Senior Urban Designer for the Municipality of Amsterdam between 1985 and 1990. He founded Urhahn Urban Design in 1991 and have been particularly experienced in renewal strategies for harbour and waterfront related projects. He is specialized in complex assignments where various stakeholders are together aiming to find a sound and tailor-made solution, as a senior designer or as supervisor is a member of the International Federation for Housing and Planning (IFHP) and of the advisory body of the Amsterdam council (ARS).

Who makes our future?

On June 12^th was held at the NAi an interesting debate within the activities of the 5th IABR, entitled:             “Who makes our future?“

Debate that served as the presentation of the book “Dutch New Worlds“, a PhD work by Christian Salewski for the ETH Zurich, with the participation of following panel of guests:

Urbanists Talk 2: Pablo Allard

On June 7^th took place at NAi the second (and last) lecture of the series “Urbanists Talk”, which this time included the participation of Pablo Allard and Gert Urhahn.

I have decided to separate their interventions to maintain the structure of short entries of the blog, so I will begin with the first of them, Pablo Allard (Gert Urhahn is one of the authors of “The Spontaneous City“, of which I spoke not long ago in an entry)

Pablo Allard is a Chilean Architect and Urban Planner, Dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Art at the “Universidad del Desarrollo de Santiago y Concepción” and Principal at URBANICA Consultants.

Architecture in “growth-crazy” cities

On May 29 was held at the NAi the debate “Architecture in growth cities crazy: Turkish Approaches for Sustainable City Making” organized by the 5th IABR and the municipality of Arnavutköy, commemorating the 400th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Turkey and the Netherlands.

In order to deal with the question of the rapid growth of Istanbul (one of the test sites of the Biennale) an interesting panel of professionals from areas directly related to the process of making a city were invited:

Urbanists Talk 1: Jeffrey Inaba

Within the series of lectures “Urbanists Talk”, part of the program of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2012; on May 3 came to visit the NAi Jeffrey Inaba, founding director of the Columbia Laboratory for Architectural Broadcasting (C-Lab) in which is also editor of Volume magazine, and founder of the architecture firm INABA (Los Angeles).

His speech was preceded by a presentation in the media that highlighted the term city 2.0, and how it is formed by the convergence of technology, automobiles, higher education and political strategies.

International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2012 Review

From April to August 2012 is taking place in Rotterdam the 5th International Architecture Biennale (IABR) under the motto “Making City “.

Trying to give answers to the question “How do we make city? ” the Biennale proposes a series of exhibitions, lectures, debates and events during these months. IABR is organized based on their own research program, through their own projects and collaborations with the Dutch government and a selection of best practices worldwide, exploring different ways to act in the city.

The projects exhibited take place in cities like New York, Paris, São Paulo, Delhi, Rotterdam, The Hague, Groningen and Almere, showing that standard solutions are not enough anymore, the development of cities in the future will involve much more interaction between disciplines (and of them with their users).

Since I currently live in Rotterdam I will dedicate a category in this blog to explain and analyze the various proposals for the future of Urbanism into the 5th IABR.