Arts Flanders Architecture

Dutch Belgian joint proposal selected to design the image quality plan of the Groene Singel in Antwerp

vai — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:47:37 +0000

Homepage image:

Maxwan, Karres & Brands (NL) and HUB (BE) together with Goudappel Coffeng and Antea Group entered a proposal for the redevelopment of the Groene Singel in Antwerp.
The joint proposal has now been selected and the group is commissioned to design an image quality plan for the Groene Singel in Antwerp.

source: Archined.nl

Architecture

Italian magazine DOMUS publishes a special issue on Belgian architects de vylder vinck tailleu

vai — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:44:56 +0000

Homepage image:

Italian magazine DOMUS issue 954 with a special on Belgian architects de vylder vinck taillieu and a cover designed by the architects.
‘They use the Domus cover as a field of action cleared of preconceived images and open to all. A homage to the blank sheet, empty space and silence, it transfers to the magazine the features of a notebook.’

The architects De Vylder, Vinck and Taillieu have only recently joined forces. In their work, they take a characteristically intuitive approach: they see design as similar to browsing through a pile of leaves until you find something, as distinct from the prevailing paradigm of the ‘architectural concept’.
Inspiration full of fantasy, images that evoke random associations, for them these are a means of shifting boundaries, of abandoning a purely determinist pragmatism and fueling the imagination and poetry.
The design and building process is ongoing and should through improvisation be able to respond at any moment to strict government regulations or the whims of the parties involved. These disruptive elements do not impose limits, but provide input for a turn in a new direction, a one-off intervention in the design and an additional stratification of the architecture. For that matter, the buildings by de vylder vinck taillieu architects are never completely finished: being incomplete gives the user the freedom to intervene so that it stimulates their creativity.

Their renovations and single-family homes, their changes to the urban fabric to create the dance studios for Les Ballets C de la B and their transformation of the Schermenhuis scenery store at the Bourla theatre did not go unnoticed. And their work is successful internationally too. In 2006 Herzog and De Meuron and Ai Wei Wei asked them to design a 1000 sq. m. villa in Koakoashina, a Chinese district still to be developed. In 2010 the Japanese curator Kazuyo Sejima invited them to create an exhibition at the twelfth architectural biennale in Venice.

Visit the website of the Flemish Architecture Institute to view a selection of de vylder vinck tailleu's projects.

Later this year the exhibition De Vylder Vinck Taillieu Architects travels to Austria.

Architecture

Flemish Architecture Institute and deSingel coproduce exhibition on Andrea Branzi

vai — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:40:35 +0000

Objects and Territories

Homepage image:

The Flemish Architecture Institute and deSingel international arts campus coproduce an exhibition focusing on the work, architecture as well as furniture and object design, inventions and other creations, of the Italian architect Andrea Branzi.

The characteristics of the Renaissance artist Filippo Brunelleschi that the Italian architect Andrea Branzi (Florence, 1938) admires are typical of him too. Branzi’s work as a designer, architect and theorist is permeated with a constructive, material and aesthetic research system that captures a specific moment of culture and civilisation. Just as Brunelleschi invented Renaissance architecture with his ingenious creations, in all his work Branzi is also the forerunner of a new spirit of the age.

In the late sixties, when many architects were still designing and building in the modernist idiom, Branzi, together with the revolutionary Archizoom group, put forward the ‘no-stop city’, a theoretical project involving the metropolitan city. They foresaw that the infinite variety and uncontrollable complexity of our contemporary world would require a new architecture. Urban planning and architecture would become soft and diffuse, with uncertain forms that would define a fluid and continuous space.

Objects and Territories runs from February 17 until May 26, 2012 in deSingel.

Architecture

Office KGDVS creates scenography for exhibition at CCA Montreal

vai — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 21:49:52 +0000

Imperfect Health: The Medicalization of Architecture

Homepage image:

Health is a focus of contemporary political debate in a moment of historically high anxiety, but are architects, urban designers and landscape architects seeking a new moral and political agenda within these concerns?
Imperfect Health: The Medicalization of Architecture examines the complexity of today’s interrelated and emerging health problems juxtaposed with a variety of proposed architectural and urban solutions.

The Canadian Center for Architecture commissioned Office Kersten Geers David Van Severen to create the scenography for this exhibition.

> Find more information on the exhibiton

Architecture

Paul Vermeulen wins Flemish Culture Award for Architecture 2010‐2011

vai — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 08:05:51 +0000

Homepage image:

The Flemish Minister for Culture, Joke Schauvliege, presented the 2010-2011 Flemish Community Award for Architecture to the architect Paul Vermeulen.

For almost 30 years now Paul Vermeulen has been a practicing architect who also writes as well as being a critic who also builds. He occupies a unique position, even in Europe. His career is founded on a strong personal commitment. In his work – both in his penmanship and in his architectural designs – he has succeeded in achieving that rare combination of sharp observation, a thorough analysis, and attention for his craft. In so doing he draws from a wide reference frame, including his love of literature.
His articles on architecture are fed by a highly precise analysis of the tangible reality surrounding us, but also by the more invisible ideas, expectations and societal notions that underpin it.

Paul Vermeulen’s critiques, which have been published in trade publications as well as in the general press, are often reminiscent of letters. Their direct nature and limpid style contribute to making the architectural discourse more accessible, to a wider audience. He once explained that his choice of architecture was fuelled by “a naive enthusiasm for the streets and buildings of my native city”. And time and again, he has succeeded in infecting his readers with this naive enthusiasm.

The jury motivated its decision as follows: “Attention for architecture has increased significantly in Flanders. But all too often the emphasis is placed on the spectacular or novel aspect. Writings which succeed in involving their readers in the complicated considerations that underpin the design of buildings are the exception rather than the rule. Paul Vermeulen always keeps the longer term of architecture in mind, even when writing about the here and now.”
Because the architectural debate in Flanders urgently needs more impassioned and expert critics like him, the jury wishes to provide Paul Vermeulen’s quiet and authentic voice with a broader platform, thus encouraging others to follow in his footsteps.

Flemish Minister Joke Schauvliege: “Architecture does not always have to cause a commotion. It can also be experienced in silence and defined in all its purity. This laureate takes a carefully considered and sensitive approach to his work, and much to my satisfaction, he also focuses on sustainability.”

The laureate of the Culture Award receives a bronze statuette by Johan Tahon and a cash prize of 12,500 euros.
Every other year the award goes to an architect, alternating with a Design Award. The award ceremony took place in the run-up to the fifth Architecture Day on Sunday 9 October at deSingel in Antwerp.

Architecture

Memorabilia

vai — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 10:39:07 +0000

Call for entries

Homepage image:

Design Liège launches an open call to all designers and design students of all nationalities to participate in MEMORABILIA.

The aim of the call and of the exhibition MEMORABILIA - designing souvenirs, is to gather a selection of objects which contain representative and recognizable traces of the history of each designer, of his/her place of birth or living, of his/her ethnic group, of his/her cultural background, in order to offer to the public a mosaic of little hints of souvenirs, of ways to the memories.

Deadline for the applications is March 15, 2012. The exhibition will take place in the “Espace Saint-Antoine”, a desecrated church in the “Musée de la Vie wallonne” in Liège, from 5th until 28th October 2012, within the framework of RECIPROCITY.

On the homepage of RECIPROCITY you can find all practical information and the registration form.

Architecture

Brussels-based collective Rotor curates OMA exhibition in London

vai — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 09:16:13 +0000

Homepage image:

Until February 19, 2012 the Barbican Art Gallery will be showing a major exhibition on the very influential architectural practice OMA.
The exhibition OMA / Progress is guest curated by the Brussels-based collective Rotor, who were behind the much praised Belgian Pavilion at the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale. With unprecedented access to OMA’s archives and daily practice, Rotor has selected and arranged a wide range of materials, relics, documentation, imagery and models yielding fresh perspectives on OMA’s built and yet-to-be built projects and conceptual work.

Rotor comments: ‘Our ambition is to make a portrait of OMA without expecting consistency. What we try to do is reach beyond polemics to create a space where nuance is possible’.

Architecture

Young Creators, Thinkers, Dreamers: PT Architects

vai — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 18:59:12 +0000

platform for young architecture teams

Homepage image:

PT architects present their ideas in the architecture series Young Creators, Thinkers, Dreamers.
During two seasons deSingel and the Flemish Architecture Institute offer eight young architecture studios an opportunity to present their ideas on architecture, urban planning and landscape design to a broad audience.

Young Makers Thinkers Dreamers - Architecture in Flanders demonstrates a faith in the challenge of a stimulating assignment, the necessity of constructive discussion, and the power of the architectural drawing. But above all in making the acquaintance of the makers, thinkers and dreamers in a new generation of designers in Flanders. Poetic, creative, socially committed, questioning, investigative and critical.

> Young Creators, Thinkers, Dreamers; with, amongst others: io-architecten, PT-architecten, Bel architecten, Doorzoninterieurarchitecten.

Architecture