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Form, Funding and Political Purposes of Urban Parks
Full text linkThis paper examines the political motivations behind the establishment of public urban parks in western Europe and the United States, and addresses issues affecting the funding of those parks. It does this through a chronological examination of park development, arguing that the physical form and facilities provided in parks reflect the purposes for which they were designated. As such, the form and purpose of parks therefore reflect, in their various forms and functions, the intentions and values of their funding agencies. The paper examines principal sources of funding for public parks, and documents current challenges in funding urban parks with public money
Revealing the Heritage of Post-Military Landscapes
Full text linkIn Germany, the fall of the Iron Curtain led to the extensive withdrawal of allied troops stationed there, as well as the reduction in number of the German armed forces. This process was accompanied by the repurposing of formerly restricted military terrain in both urban contexts and the countryside. Post-military landscapes are full of traces of former usage and comprise a heritage that ranges from their earlier civilian history to their militarisation, from past to recent conflicts. This paper focuses on the remembered and forgotten narratives of these fascinating sites and relates them to current management policies for the development of former military sites. Two examples show how landscape design can contribute to preserving or even revealing the forgotten political dimensions of post-military landscapes
The Social Aftermaths of Landscape Architecture: Urban Parks and Green Gentrification
Full text linkTo date, the scholarship of landscape architecture has ignored the evolving research on green gentrification, which studies the mechanisms behind the social aftermaths of urban environmental improvements. The paper uses a case study analysis to prove that landscape architecture practice shares with other planning professions and policy makers the responsibility for the displacement of residents following environmental improvements. The paper analyses the inclusion of social structures, social justice, and the social impacts of projects in the professional discourse, scholarship, and practitioners' design discourse. The interpretations of the case study and the scholarship maintain that there is a desire to include social structures and social justice in the discipline's traditional mandate for preservation and representation of the relationship between culture and nature. However, partially admitted deficiencies in tradition, knowledge, and methodology have thwarted this goal in both the practice and scholarship of landscape architecture. The research on the social and economic benefits of a project’s performance is uncritical of the lack of assessment of the detrimental social outcomes of projects. By demonstrating and criticising the state of the art concerning the treatment of social structures in landscape architecture, the paper attempts to expand the discussion about the discipline's scope, performance, pedagogy, and research
Re3 Glass: A new generation of Recycable, Reducible and Reusable cast glass components for structural and architectural applications
No full textA spectacular glass brick system - developed to make the historic storefront of the Crystal Houses (Chanel store) in Amsterdam transparent - illustrates the great potential of cast glass blocks in structures. But it also reveals the need to make such constructions more sustainable. This project shows a novel, strong, circular and aesthetically pleasing building material from discarded glass, providing a solution for the problem of glass waste. Initially, different interlocking mechanisms and types of glass waste were explored. Then, physical prototypes were cast to experimentally evaluate their structural performance. The displayed glass bricks prove that glass is not only a 2D, transparent material. Instead, it can be a 3D component of unlimited shapes, colours, textures and opacity
Superkilen
Full text linkDanish visual artist Kirstine Autzen portrayed Superkilen as it is in Summer 2017. For Autzen, photographing a public space means taking in impressions, and at the same time making images that convey these impressions in a strictly visual manner: grabbing the camera precisely when someone or something does something. Autzen states that photographing in itself is a kind of analysis. She traversed the area several times, waiting for the opportunity to photograph a specific situation with, for instance, the right light or passers-by, and in doing so, she starts to feel at home and to see the design as an underlying structure or intention. The choice of when and how to hit the shutter is to her, in essence, normative and ostensive: ‘THIS I like’; ‘THAT I don’t like’, pointing and pointing out through the photographic image. The images then speak of positive and negative experiences and are a way of declaring ‘authorship’ and to indicate a norm for engaging with the world.
The images of Superkilen presented here were made with no client in mind. They are about the relationship between the Superkilen design and its surroundings, and the way people were using it. Autzen noted seeing people everywhere: going through on their bikes, hanging out informally, playing. Though feeling sad about the poor maintenance, the intense use by a wide variety of people was uplifting. Autzen sums up her experience: “Superkilen now feels like well-worn sneakers that lost their factory colours: worn out, but ready for real love.
Contingency, debate, and popup ‘hygge’ at Valby Pavilion: Situating temporary public urban settings in design critique
Full text linkPublic spaces emerge through a diverse field of practices and events that combine to make space and create meaning. In today’s design and planning practice, temporary interventions play an increasing role in the creation and rethinking of public space ‘on the go’. In such transitional interventions, ‘the project’ is both physically and symbolically created through entangled actions of design with somewhat non-designed and informal practices and DIY aesthetics, as well as various narratives and modes of communication.Temporary public spaces thereby challenge established ways of evaluating and critiquing spatial settings as determined design solutions or ‘classic’ architectural works—in terms of what they do and how they can be qualitatively understood as part of contemporary place-making approaches. This article forms a critique of the project Valby Pavilion, a temporary space in Valby (Copenhagen, Denmark) that serves as a test setup for the future use of its highly contested site. Through a juxtaposition of selected theoretical perspectives from art and architectural criticism to relational site thinking and performance studies, the discussion of the project elaborates upon which aspects require detailed attention when performing a critique of temporary urban public spaces. The article concludes that critical examination of a number of issues (intentionality and origin, the role of spatial adaptions, appropriation, events and situated public debate, dominant planning paradigms, and the characteristic aesthetics of the informal) helps to fruitfully locate public settings initiated under the ‘temporary project’ label within design and architectural critique
BK Booths: without research, design lacks direction
No full textThe Netherlands has always had a lack of space and so using it well has always been a priority. Designing the built environment means allocating resources to maximise value – so it is natural that design plays an important role. The TU Delft is just the place where we ask the question, ‘How can we do this even better?’
How can we reuse old building stock?
How should we react to our increasingly automated lives?
How does it work to live in a war-torn city?
How can we make climate-proof cities?
How can we create self-sufficient and adjustable personal living spaces?
How can we achieve affordable housing for everyone?
Which tools do we have at our disposal?
Take Africa: it is expected that population growth will double by 2050, to 2.4 billion people. This is the place with the greatest potential to make more people’s lives better. It is the place where improvements can be made which have a major impact.
In an Addis Ababa neighbourhood, for example, the city was planning a series of high-rise building blocks, made from costly imported concrete. Our Master students discovered how the neighbourhood could instead profit from people-oriented, small-scale dwellings constructed from local materials. Through research by design, we generate the knowledge about how to make things more local and more sustainable.
On show for the very first time at the Venice Biennale, the BK Booths present the latest architectural research, researched for you by students, post-docs and other designers from TU Delft Bouwkunde.
As one of the largest architecture faculties in Europe and leading design academy, TU Delft Bouwkunde plays a key role in design-oriented research. Our research on architecture and the built environment ranks the best in the world.
Much of the knowledge we generate at TU Delft Bouwkunde is science with a high degree of societal relevance. This appeals to the curiosity of other researchers, designers and the broader public alike. Our research contributes to the body of knowledge of architects and urban managers and planners.
This issue of Spool provides an overview of the ten projects that are exhibited in Venice:
From Landscape to Roofscape: Pavilions for Okana Un-war Space in Sarajevo, 1992-1996From Egocity to WegocityDouble Face 2.0: A lightweight translucent adaptable Trombe wallVoid Capital: The City of Perpetual Modernity3D Data for Urban IssuesProduct Development Lab (PD Test Lab)Re3 Glass: A new generation of Recycable, Reducible and Reusable cast glass components for structural and architectural applicationsRhizome: a growing horizontal stem of affordable housing in Menen, Addis AbabaTools of the Architec
From Landscape to Roofscape: Pavilions for Okana
No full textLandscape to Roofscape shows the development of a flourishing community centre, located in the centre of the small village Okana in West Kenia. The feasibility and potential of the student project triggered the design for a sustainable and innovative pavilion to grow far beyond a theoretical level. The design is based on field research on cultural patterns and local architecture, in which interviews, sketches, literature research, and the work in 1:1 scale models were used as data source. Directly after graduation, the students managed to construct the project together with local builders and an international group of volunteers in just four months. Within less than two years from initial idea to finished construction, the design fulfils its goals towards creating architecture with a strong societal impact on poorer parts of the world
Tools of the Architect
No full textWhat tools, procedures, and methods do architects use? The triptychs on display show their approach both in analytical and designerly ways. The first panel of each triptych represents an architectural question; the second panel represents a method. The third panel showcases the confrontation of that question and method. The project thus expands known architectural tools such as drawing, writing, and modelling. Through their thorough exploration of architectural tools, the presented triptychs show an in-depth understanding of the specific qualities of the architectural project. A better insight into the capacity of these methods supports more locally responsive and socially inclusive architecture, aiming for an urban architecture of collectivity
The Vicissitudes of Criticism in the Landscape Metropolis
Full text linkThe editors of this themed issue of SPOOL place the discussion on the possibilities and impossibilities of criticism within the field of the design disciplines at centre stage. We are especially interested in how criticism can make an active contribution to taking a position vis-à-vis what we have called, in earlier issues of SPOOL, the contemporary condition of ‘the landscape metropolis’. Criticism is an important means of reflection on the creative processes and interventions that are part and parcel of this landscape metropolis. It throws light on particular projects by describing and explaining them, but also by evaluating and generalising these reflections in relation to an entire discipline, be it landscape architecture, architecture, or urban design. As Miriam Gusevitch sharply notices: “Criticism is riskier than commentary. It is willing to judge and to condemn, to stake out and substantiate a particular position. Serious criticism is the careful and thoughtful disclosure of dimensions that might otherwise elude us...