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 …
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 …
The picture of eleven steel workers eating lunch on a girder 250 meters above ground with Manhattan under their feet and Central Park in the background is famous. It is considered the most iconic picture of what New York is all about: hard working common men building a city of wonders. The picture was first …
Even though the Automats became an integral part of the American fast food culture, they were actually a German invention. Long before arriving to the United States in 1902, there were already successful automatic restaurants in the Berlin zoo as far back as 1895, in the international exhibition of Brussels in 1897 and “buffets automatiques” …