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Architectural metaphors of knowledge: the Mundaneum designs of Maurice Heymans, Paul Otlet, and Le Corbusier
Full text linkThe author discusses the architectural plans of the Mundaneum made in the 1930s by the Belgian modernist architect Maurice Heymans in the footsteps of Le Corbusier and in collaboration with Paul Otlet. The Mundaneum was the utopian concept of a world center for the accumulation, organization, and dissemination of knowledge, invented by the visionary encyclopedist and internationalist Paul Otlet. In Heymans's architecture, a complex architectural metaphor is created for the Mundaneum, conveying its hidden meaning as a center of initiation into synthesized knowledge. In particular, this article deconstructs the metaphorical architectural complex designed by Heymans and focuses on how the architectural spaces as designed by Heymans are structured in analogy to schemes for the organization of knowledge made by Otlet. In three different designs of the Mundaneum, the analogy is studied between, on the one hand, the architectural structure (designed by Heymans) and, on the other hand, the structure of the cosmology, the book Monde, and the vision of knowledge dissemination as invented by Odet. The article argues that the analogies between the organization of architectural space and knowledge, as expressed in the drawings of Heymans and Otlet, are elaborated by means of a mode of visual thinking that is parallel to and rooted in the art of memory and utopian imagination
Perspectieven op moderniteit, tijd en ruime : een inleiding
Full text linkPerspectives on modernity, time and space. An introduction. The Universal Exhibition that took place in Ghent in 1913, on the eve of the Great War, is easily interpreted as the swansong of the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie. Yet, the period between 1900 and 1914 can also be perceived as the breakpoint of modernity, when the conditions for a more egalitarian society were created. Several things were in flux in 1913. Under societal pressure, one social experiment after the other was unleashed upon the population. Women, workers, and in Flanders also Dutch-speaking intellectuals laid claim to their share of public space and democracy. Furthermore, the Ghent factories functioned with full speed, and the city’s skyline was dominated no longer by bell towers but by smoking factory towers. The Universal Exhibition succeeded in bridging the apparent contradictions of the moment: modernity and tradition, modernity and anti-modernity, men and , civilized and primitive, labour and capital, reason and nostalgia. Through spectacular settings, universal exhibitions presented the separation between the real contradictions of capitalist production and the dream world of consumer culture as if they were unified, whereas in social realty they were actually divided. The Ghent spectacle may have removed itself from social reality, but at the same time it was an illusory refuge where the frictions of alienation that accompanied modernity were neutralized. One of the separations that the Universal Exhibition sought to reconcile was that between Western and colonial cultures. The Congo pavilion with its huge panorama, the Street of Caïro, and the exhibition of the daily life of complete Senegalese and Philippine villages underscored the binary opposition between ‘us’ and ‘the Other’ in a spectacular display. The forces of industrialization were also addressed. In a didactic, immersive environment called the Modern Village, modernization of the agricultural sector was humanized. But also, attractions such as the Scenic Railway or the Waterchute, made the distance between humans and machines merge in a synergetic pleasure of movement and acceleration. However, the most prominent contradiction that the World’s Fair sought to resolve was that between modernity and history. A beautiful poster designed by Léon Spillaert was not used by the organizing committee, as it showed the new Bell Tower of Ghent in juxtaposition with smoking chimneys of factories. The official advertising posters instead presented Ghent as a ‘city of monuments and flowers’. In ‘Old Flanders’, a neo-medieval collage of picturesque buildings which existed or had existed, as well as the ‘Palaces of Cities’, history was reanimated by means of simulation. The same nostalgia had been the source for the renewal of the inner city of Ghent by means of historicizing reconstructions
Tussen stedenbouw en stadsbestuur: de stedententoonstelling van Patrick Geddes en het internationaal stedencongres
Full text linkBetween town planning and city governance. The Cities and Town Planning Exhibition of Patrick Geddes and the International Congress of Cities. The First International Congress of Town Planning and the Organisation of City Life and the Comparative Exhibition of Cities that were organized in Ghent in 1913 are a milestone in the history of town and city planning. The congress that the Belgian socialist senator Emile Vinck and the internationalist Paul Otlet set out to organize aimed to formalize the body of knowledge that was being developed by experts in their study of different municipal problems and systematize their main conclusions and principles into a comprehensive science of the city. Beyond this scientific goal, they also hoped that such a congress would bring together an international group of representatives from different governmental administrations, municipalities and associations. As a complement to the Congress, an exhibition was organized whose principal part was the Cities and Town Planning Exhibition of the Scottish town planner and urban sociologist Patrick Geddes. It continued a tradition of recent exhibitions on town planning, such as the Town Planning Exhibition of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1910 and the Allgemeine Städtebau Ausstellung in Berlin in 1910. According to the British town planner Patrick Abercrombie, the exhibitions in London and Berlin far surpassed the show in Ghent from the pictorial point of view, but ‘to anyone who takes a real intellectual interest in Town Planning, there can be no doubt as to which of the three was the most valuable’. The exhibition took place in a hall next to the Pavilion of Brussels and was embedded in the structure of the Ghent Universal Exhibition of 1913. In its survey-approach to the city, Geddes’s exhibition gave a refreshing interdisciplinary view on how documentation on individual cities could be gathered and how a comparative analysis of that documentation would show the way to establish a broadly defined science of the city which the Congress of Cities also aimed to see formally created
Spaces of information modeling, action, and decision making
Full text linkNowadays, tremendous information sources are preserved, ranging from those of a traditional nature like libraries and museums to new formats like electronic databases and the World Wide Web. Making these sources consistent, easily accessible, and as complete as possible is challenging. Almost a century ago, people like Paul Otlet were already fully aware of this need and tried to develop ways of making human knowledge more accessible using the resources and technology available at that time. Otlet's ideas about a Universal Network of Documentation and the Universal Book are clear examples of such efforts. Computer science currently provides the means to build digital spaces that consist of (multimedia) information sources connected through the Internet. In this article, we give a nontechnical overview of the current state of the art in information management. Next, we focus on those aspects of Otlet's work that deal with the organization of knowledge and information sources. Then we study the potential connections between Otlet's work and the state of the art of computerized information management from a computer scientist's point of view. Finally, we consider some of the problems and challenges that information management still faces today and what computer science professionals have in common with, and can still learn from, Otlet and his work
Introduction: Reconstructing the Identities of an International Non-Governmental Intelligence Agency, 1907–2017
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Brief aan mijnheer de Minister Bourgeois en performancekunstenaar Brett Bailey: van inboorling tot immigrant, heen en terug
No full textTussen exotisme en neomercantilisme: oriëntalistische paviljoenarchitectuur met een politieke boodschap
No full text'Ach, Waarom zou ik het u ook verzwijgen?...' Ontbering achter de schermen van de 'zoos humains'
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