open citymaking
Film review (2009) Oil Rocks – City above the sea, Marc Wolfensberger, 2009 for the AFFR – Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam A panoramic view is revealing a network of platforms floating above the sea amidst the Caspian. A Rolls Royce, as if from another world, is driving along these dark wooden platforms, with stairs leading …
Film review (2009) Mai Iskander, Garbage Dreams, 2009, for the AFFR – Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam Cairo is a city of 18 million people, which up to 2003 was able to manage its solid waste at almost zero cost to its municipal administration, thanks to the Zabbaleen. Coptic Christians, who moved from the countryside to the …
Conference paper in collaboration with Ania Molenda – Digital Storytelling in Times of Crisis, Athens, 2014 While storytelling is about the construction of a story by setting up a timeline of events, design is based on the construction of a physical narration by organising spatial relationships. This paper builds up an analogy between storytelling and …
Naturally Amateurs is a collaboration with Ania Molenda. Read the full article at Ruimtevolk. If we are to restore our urban ecosystems and make our cities more ours, we need to make them more open to amateur experimentation. Cities are man’s natural habitat. Humans created the city to make the environment they inhabit better and …
a halfway house for ex-prisoners in Rotterdam Converting part of an architectural icon into a halfway house for prisoners and ex-cons is not your average brief, but one that Personal Architecture were faced with at the Exodus Cube in Rotterdam. Cristina Ampatzidou talked to the architects and assesses a tricky commission. In 1974, Piet Blom …
Vacancy can be considered a plague in Western cities. With the exodus of businesses from the city centres, almost one out of five buildings is left unutilised. Whether waiting for demolition, better times, or a new owner, for most of them the state of emptiness cannot last long if decay is to be prevented. Whilst …
Does “traditional” have to mean “old”? Not according to Greek food stores The Mediterranean diet needs no introduction. Thanks to the region’s mild climate, surrounding countries have been raising and producing a large variety of healthy and high-quality foods for centuries. At the same time, and over the past few decades, our palates have been …
The troubled history of a key masterwork of one Greece’s most significant post-war modernist architects, Takis Zenetos’ FIX brewery building in Athens, might just be about to have a happy ending. Due to open as the new National Museum of Contemporary Art in March next year, Cristina Ampatzidou traces a tortuous road of disuse, mutilation, delays and lawsuits …
This year’s Architecture Film Festival in Rotterdam, which took place from the 10th -13th October was bigger than ever. With three days of the best architecture in the dark, talks and parallel events over the course of a miserably wet weekend, Rotterdam was certainly an interesting place to be. The theme of the 7th AFFR …
Vacancy is one of the greatest problems facing contemporary cities, with almost one in five buildings remaining empty in municipalities of more than 250,000 inhabitants. And while empty storefronts are not an inviting sight, these are also associated or at least correlated with other social and economic challenges like compromised safety, homelessness, and growing unemployment. …
They are all located in the heart of global cities; in the case of Intercalary Spaces (Damien Faure, 2012) it’s Tokyo and in the case of the Skyhouse (Jonathan Robinson, 2013), it’s New York. But there are vast differences between inhabiting a fancy Manhattan apartment and living in a Tokyo ‘pet house’. The Skyhouse, by …
A playground from garbage For Daniele Pario Perra, “low cost” does not have to mean cheap. Instead, the artist focuses on the most efficient use of resources, ranging from materials and energy to invested efforts. While normally associated with low quality, low cost does not have to be shoddy: A sole focus on cost often …
Both very simple and infinitely complex, food is an extremely powerful factor in our lives. After all, every human on the planet needs to eat – ideally, 2,000 calories a day spread out over three meals. But where does this food come from? And what are the ecological, social, and ethical implications of this process? …
In The Hague, the Future City exhibition just opened its doors at the city’s Museon. Curated by Pop-up City, the playful show explores the major trends and ideas that promise to re-shape our cities – and our lives within cities. The exhibition’s curators, Jeroen Beekmans and Joop de Boer, decided to bypass utopian scenarios …
Passionate with chicken while a student, the humble bird was only the start of Giuseppe Licari’s continuous transaction with nature in his art. Trees and plants are dominating his work producing poetic, yet uncanny images of a contained nature. In 2007 Licari, dismantled, burned and then surgically reconstructed a chestnut tree inside the white cube …
Amsterdam has a new attraction: urban food tourism. Why is the history of culinary culture so important to understanding the city today? Inspired by the work of Carolyn Steel, author of the book Hungry City and advocator of the intrinsic relationship between food and urban landscapes, the Amsterdam-based Cities Foundation embarked on a research project …
City Secrets through the Eyes of its Locals Dopios owes its existence to one of those momentary flashes of inspiration: When Alexandros’ friend came back from a trip, she thought out loud just how much more authentic her experience would have been if she had known a local to show her around. This immediately prompted …
How to change Cities from behind your screen Conference paper in collaboration with Ania Molenda and Eva Kekou – Hybrid City Conference, Athens, 2013 In recent decades urban planning processes seem unable to keep up with the pace of city development. The extended use of online media in order to make urban planning more …
DordtYart heralds the beginning of a new season: Located in a former shipyard, this park for contemporary art in the periphery of Dutch city Dordrecht invites ten artists to present one of their existing works – and produce a new one on site. In addition, three artists in residence profit from DordtYart’s generous facilities and …
Read the article on Uncube Magazine website Apparently in Greece, not everyone appreciates the added quality that architectural design can contribute to living space. In a country where an architect’s title is protected but not their practice, architects sign few of the new building permits and contribute to the design of even less of them. …