Beautiful animated movies

No city, no urban, just a few short and artistic animated movies, see:

Father and daughter from Michael Dudok de Wit.

Balance from Wolfgang & Cristoph Lauenstein.

The Thomas Beale Cipher from Andrew Allen.

 

Rio de Janeiro

The first trip I took to Rio de Janeiro in 2009, it struck me how the city and the rain forest burst and overlap each other, complementary entities of opposite natures.

For those arriving from Europe, even from my Mediterranean Europe, the word “exotic” gains new references. Colours, sounds, aromas, dimensions, temperature and humidity, all that makes the site for us is exotic. For example while strolling the Aterro do Flamengo Park, designed by Burle Marx, I found palm trees that seemed to have a blonde hairdo. Someone explained to me after that it were flowers. Those palm trees flourish once for about one year, and then the trees die. Curiously coinciding with the celebration of the centenary of the birth of the landscape architect that designed the park.

The apparent natural flora in that context is, of course, artificial. A large number of trees that identify with tropical Brazil are actually from other tropics. Since King João the VI boosted the introduction of African, Indian and Asian species in Brazil, when the court of Portugal moved to the city of São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro, the unique conditions of the site catalysed its development and multiplication.

In other words, King João VI and the removal of the court of Portugal face to the invasion of Napoleon “created” much of the raw material that Burle Marx had to work with in Rio.

Two thoughts occur almost simultaneously at the moment. The first about the globalization, the one that occurred then and the contemporary. And the eternal necessity of “creolization” of global influences in order not to lose or to create an identifiable identity. The second concerning the nature, or rather the almost complete absence of natural, as opposed to what is humane, in most of our habitable world.

Our search for individuality and identity is not new. A way to recognize people, places and things at the same time that it is an affirmation of freedom. Nor is new the invention of a more natural nature by man, the search for a more perfect or flawless creation. The action of time is a common factor that first dilutes and then harmonizes what we today might see as aberrant. In this process, perhaps our main role is to help Time.

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Na primeira viagem que fiz ao Rio de Janeiro, em 2009, impressionou-me o modo como a cidade e a floresta tropical se sobrepõem e irrompem uma na outra, entidades complementares de naturezas opostas.

Para quem chega da Europa, mesmo da minha Europa mediterrânica, a palavra “exótico” ganha novas referências. As cores, os sons, os aromas, as dimensões, a temperatura e a humidade, tudo o que faz o sítio é, para nós, exótico. Por exemplo ao percorrer o Parque do Aterro do Flamengo, concebido por Burle Marx, encontrei palmeiras que pareciam ter uma cabeleira loura. Explicaram-me depois que eram flores, as palmeiras floresciam uma vez durante cerca de um ano, para depois morrerem, curiosamente coincidindo a ocasião com a celebração do centenário do nascimento do paisagista.

A aparente naturalidade da flora naquele contexto é, naturalmente, artificial. Um grande número das árvores que identificamos com o Brasil tropical são, na verdade, originárias de outros trópicos. Desde que D. João VI impulsionou a introdução de espécies africanas, indianas e asiáticas no Brasil, quando a corte teve a sua sede na cidade de São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro, as condições ímpares do sítio catalisaram o seu desenvolvimento e multiplicação.

Ou seja, grande parte da matéria prima que Burle Marx teve para trabalhar no Rio foi “criada” por D. João VI e pela retirada de Portugal da corte perante a invasão de Napoleão.

Dois pensamentos surgem quase em simultâneo neste momento. O primeiro a propósito de globalização, a de então e a contemporânea, e a eterna necessidade de “crioulização” das influências globais para não perder ou para criar uma identidade própria e identificável. O segundo a propósito da natureza, ou melhor da quase completa ausência do natural, por oposição ao que é humanizado, na maior parte do nosso mundo habitável.

Não é nova a nossa busca por individualidade e identidade, uma forma de reconhecermos pessoas, sítios e coisas, ao mesmo tempo que é uma afirmação de liberdade. Nem é nova a invenção da natureza mais natural pelo homem, a procura da natureza mais perfeita ou da criação sem falhas. A acção do tempo é um factor comum que primeiro dilui e depois harmoniza o que nos pode parecer hoje aberrante. Neste processo, talvez o nosso principal papel seja o de ajudarmos o Tempo.

Sérgio Proença, researcher urbanism

make your own map

 

World MAP – Open Street Map -  Data CC-by-SA – 2012 – see http://worldmap.harvard.edu/

Sport in the City IV

Sport in the city can taken place in special sport facilities or just in the public space. Like her in the urban park El Turia in Valencia.

space to meet, space to escape

Tempelhof is one of the most important places of connection in Berlin. In 2010 it changed from an airport with important historical meaning into a public accessible and large open space middle in the city. This somehow empty place forms a place for many activities: to meet, to show, to walk, to sport or just to do nothing. It is a new space for every citizen or visitor of Berlin. In parallel to each other  for many individual persons or groups of people it forms a new meeting place. This time not as a place that connects Berlin to other places of the world, but just as a meeting place, big and open. This is very special in a very urbanized city as Berlin. So for the time being, please do not plan or design it further. Just give it time and space to transform en develop itself to a unique space in the city. Give it a serious opportunity, let´s give it 25 years. That is a good time to think and a good time to escape the dynamic of the street life for a moment.

See also: link (in Dutch)

urban highways: the fast road paradox

Since the existence of highways and other regional roads (´fast roads´) destinations like historical cities are not directly connected with each other. The regional road system became autonomous, just based on car mobility & traffic principles and detached from the local place and urban logic. At the same time this regional road system itself created new ways of organizing the urban area, planned and unplanned.

In this there is a fundamental difference between highways and other fast roads like a regional road or a city boulevard. Highway exits and nodes influences directly and indirectly the urbanization (local street and road pattern programs), regional roads allows creating direct addresses and is a linear organizer for urban programs.

In the planning and realization of fast roads, in general, traffic issues lead and dominate the process of design, engineering, financial and decision making. Based on the principle of efficient mobility & speed and safety of the traffic users, these roads, highways in particular, have a quite specific set of guidelines and design norms. In practice this means that highways, because the physical separation with any other roads and traffic flows, are detached from the local environment. In a broader scale, fast roads connect places with each other. At a lower scale, they form a barrier. This is always the fast road paradox.

 

street life XXII

Just a moment of a street space in Valencia.

connected to the landscape

Being in an urban environment and at the same time directly connected with the surroundings is a strong and valuable quality. In this photograph the sub river of the Rhine: the ´Kromme Rijn´ flows into the city of Utrecht. It creates a beautiful condition for an urban park with specific housing typologies, which are designed carefully with respect towards the urban green structure. At the same time the river connects the city directly with the landscape, where water is often a strong and continuous element.

Some say: architects cannot make cities …

If it is at all possible to make and create a city, which is an illusion, it is above all that we all make the city together: all people: young, old, woman, men, poor and/or rich. A big controller is absent. Cities are just moving forward step by step. Sometimes for a while good planned, sometimes with great luck or unexpected disasters.

So what is the news? Perhaps that people in the design world itself, including architects and planners, thought that they could make cities? Or that other people do have a great believe in the power of the (spatial) design? But is it not much more interest to understand and interact with the existing situation, social and spatial?

I think a city is never finished and therefore it should be always ready to use. At least it should be. Rather inventing complete new models, the challenges lays more and more in making the actual better. If possible with a little bit of courage and vision, but at the same time realistic and also with the knowledge of an accountant. Working together for collective aims is essential, no matter you are a citizens, designer, politician, economist, jurist, traffic engineer or somebody who loves to live in the dynamic environment of a city.

For 2012: let´s keep on making the city, together!

 

Inspiring ingredients for excellent urban life and places

Creativiteit betekent dat je niet kopieert.

De grens tussen beïnvloed worden en afkijken is heel vaag.

Creativiteit betekent dat je elke dag van mening verandert.

Kennis is essentieel om producten te kunnen beoordelen.

 

Creativity means that you are not copying.

The edge between influence and copying is very vague.

Creativity means every day changing your mind.

Knowledge of products is essential for a good evaluation.

 

Ferran Adrià, topchef van elBulli

(free translation of Dutch into English)

Doubled streets

A significant part of our urban structures result from the sum of consecutive real estate developments. However, some mechanisms of mediation that could assure the integration of each development in its surroundings seem to be missing. Many times, the outcome is a collection of fragments incapable of constructing any kind of intelligible structure.

In the image, the grid proposed by the new development (to the right) runs parallel to the existing street with no connection what so ever. Instead of upgrading the existing infrastructure, it duplicates it with no apparent reason (besides the idea of exclusivity that comes with segregation). Streets coming from the left side will not be continued. In front of the façades of the existing houses, there will only be an anonymous green barrier. No one knows what that sidewalk is there for anymore.

This urban space is the consequence of the overlapping of different and disconnected elements, typologies, regulations, marketing principles, etc. The fact that the image of the new buildings quotes Lisbon downtown – symbol of the idea of a continuous urban grid – is just an ironic detail.

invited guest: Nuno Travasso

 

Cat & Dog cities

One could divide the cities of the world into two categories: in cat and dog cities. The type of animal says a lot about the character of a city. Dog cities are beautiful, social, easy to recognize; if you leave  Amsterdam Central Station the city rolls over you; Paris is easily recognizable by the boulevard structures made by Haussmann.

Cats cities are ugly, have no clear center, lack structure, leading to getting lost. The attitude of a cat city is: “find your way yourself! I won’t tell you!”. However, cat cities do have a strong, tough and obstinate character. Rotterdam, London, Berlin: cats cities. Not coincidentally cities where in the past bombs rain descended.

invited guest: Vincent Kompier

Observations of urban reality by Álvaro Domingues

Urban agriculture

Quando não houver emprego na economia capitalista, voltaremos à horta. Quando esse tempo chegar, as escolas das várias profissões serão apenas fantasmas brancos. No Porto, a única escola que restará será a FAUP, Faculdade de Agricultura do Porto.

When in the capitalist economy there is no employment more, we eventually go back into the kitchen garden. When that time arrives, schools of various professions will become white ghosts. In Porto, the only school that will remain will be the FAUP, Faculty of Agriculture of Porto.

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Gentrification, Low cost dwelling

Profanar é o acto de retirar algo da esfera do sagrado. Não é o caso. Ter uma casa é um dos mais sagrados direitos do homem. Quando não houver casa para o homem, que Deus lhe dê a sua. Pode não ser apropriado mas é distinto.

Desecrate is the act of removing something from the realm of the sacred. It is not the case here. To have a home is one of the most sacred rights of a person. When there is no home more, may God give you his. It may not be appropriate but this is distinct.

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Transgenics

Cultura-mundo é como Gilles Lipovetsky denomina as fusões que se alimentam de qualquer referente cultural que circula na esfera global da cultura. Quando tudo é global, o local, por definição, é uma expressão da globalidade.

´Culture-world´ is like Gilles Lipovetsky calls: the fusion which feeds any cultural reference that circulates in the global sphere of culture. When everything is global, by definition the local is an expression of the globality.

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invited guest: Álvaro Domingues

sport in the city

Sport in the city is a design research on the spatial possibilities of sport in a multifunctional, compact and urban neighborhood. In five European cities:  Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen, Porto and Valencia the research explores the spatial integration and mixing of sport in an urban environment.

See: www.sportinthecity.net

Team: Vincent Kompier and Daniel Casas Valle

lost in fragmentation?

The last two years I explored and discovered the region of Porto. Almost every week I walked or drove in this region. First, I was visiting specific projects or places. Later, I was doing ´day tours´, without a fixed route, direction or goal. In this visits and day tours I was interested in observing the spatial logic of the region. In this weblog you can find some reports of these journeys.

With a notebook and a camera I try to observe and register my own view on the fragmented urban landscape in the region of Porto. Fascinated about the urban phenomenon, I was sometimes amazed with unexpected combinations. But often it felt like a random collection of not finished components or broken structures. Despite the enormous (building) construction force in the last 25 years, the question remains: what is the added collective value of all this individual or partial investments? What are the new structures or spatial areas that keep the urban program and use together? And what is the spatial quality of these (urban) spaces?

Randomly I selected 15 photographs of my personal journey. Every place has an unique story. Some photographs tell a generic story, others photographs show specific places with a strong identity.

 

 

See the location of each photograph:

01           02           03           04           05           06           07           08           09           10

11           12           13           14           15