Dear followers, Failed Architecture has had a wonderful time on Tumblr, but we decided that - since FA evolved into a more substantial research project - its online presence would have to grow along. 

Therefore, you can now find us at FAILEDARCHITECTURE.COM, where you can find more background stories, interviews, in-depth articles, and research reports.

Our Facebook page will continue to be a platform where we share projects, news and articles that we come across and like. You can join the discussion there, or by connecting on Twitter.

Prefer to meet in real life to discuss and work with us? Then join one of our upcoming events:
November 5-9, we will do a 5-day workshop in Berlin.
November 19-23, we will do a 5-day workshop in Sofia.
December 19 and 20, Failed Architecture Festival will take place in Amsterdam.
Stay tuned on our new website! 

Thanks to Tumlbr for hosting us. 

September 26 | 20:00h | TrouwAmsterdam | €5 | English | Talks & Debate

With:Owen Hatherley (writer and journalist, a.o. the Guardian), Wouter Vanstiphout (architectural historian and holder of Design as Politics chair TU Delft), Rudy Stroink (architect and real estate developer), Kai van Hasselt (urban strategy consultant at Shinsekai Analysis)

Check the Facebook-event

During Failed Architecture #9, we want to examine the role of market forces in our current living environment and the persistent urge of local administrators for ‘too-big-to- fail’ iconic architecture. What are the pros and cons of the marketization of urban space, and what are the underlying reasons for the continuing governmental support for large- scale office and luxury housing developments? We address these issues by looking at British examples and by analyzing Dutch cases such as Amsterdam’s Zuidas and Amstel III, and Rotterdam’s Calypso and De Rotterdam developments.

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Utopian thinking and architecture go hand in hand. Envisioning a new world and exploring how its new conditions can best be organized are an architects’ core business after all. This is not only so because architects imagine futures as they could be or, more often, as they should be, but also because architecture is the ultimate way for a new political or social order to express itself. As such, architectural utopian thinking has been under close scrutiny in our late modern society. During Failed Architecture #8, we did not only want to put utopia to trial once again, but we also wanted to take a look at how current architects peer into the future.

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June 20 | 20:00 hrs | Trouw, Wibautstraat 127 Amsterdam | English | 5 Euro

With a.o.: Hans Ibelings (architecture historian), Edwin Gardner (architect and critic), Frank Havermans (artist), Bastiaan Gribling (Cityscapes Gallery), Hedwig Heinsman (DUS Architects) and Bastiaan Kalmeijer (The Why Factory)

Utopian architecture has been around since mankind started designing the built environment. Especially over the past century, many imaginative utopias have been designed, all presenting better futures and suggesting that we are not living the way we ought. Famous examples are Le Corbusier’s ‘La Ville Radieuse’ and ‘Plan Voisin’, Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City and Constant’s New Babylon. These utopian designs never came into existence and always remained imaginary.

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After traveling to a.o. Belgrade, Copenhagen and Sofia the FA-mobile team organised a one-day workshop on the case of Zalmhaven in Rotterdam on the 20th May. This summary of the day was kindly provided to us by Allison Schifani.

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juhavantzelfde:

Constant, New Babylon (by Victor Nieuwenhuijs & Maartje Seyferth)

On the ever excellent BLDGBLOG site I discovered an interview with Mark Wigley, co-founder of Volume magazine with Rem Koolhaas and Ole Bouman, about Constant’s New Babylon. In this interview, Wigley talks about Constant’s criticism of his own work:

“So you’re absolutely right to stress the extent to which a supposed society of liberation is actually a control society. But it’s interesting to look at Constant’s own criticism of the project.

He does New Babylon for about twenty years – till he becomes convinced that he’s made a terrible mistake. He realizes that, if you give everybody a playground in which they can unleash their desires, then it won’t be a 60s paradise of love and solidarity and all that – people will actually kill each other, because we’re dark, miserable creatures. He was very affected by the failure of May ’68 in Paris, and by the Vietnam War, and by the death of a child of a close friend of his – so he really started to see people as their own enemy.

He spent the last four years of the project showing the horror of what it would be like to live in New Babylon. He’s the only architect – or let’s say quasi-architect – I’ve ever known that spent not just one image but four years’ worth of images to show how horrible life would be in his own city.”

The architect of the utopia came to realise the reality of his ideal city would not live up to the intentions.

Something else extremely interesting I found was this 15 minute documentary on Constant from 2005, the year he died, made by his son Victor Nieuwenhuijs with Maartje Seyferth. Here you see a buoyed Constant in 1962, very convinced of the idea of having created a utopian solution for improving society in the future. It greatly shows amazing footage of the tentacles of his autogrowing network city.

For the 7^th edition of the Failed Architecture debate and talk show, on May 9 at De Verdieping/TrouwAmsterdam, we had chosen a somewhat provocative title to evoke the discussion we wanted to have.  By naming it ‘Ruin Porn’, we wanted to address the widespread fascination with ruination and decay in photography, urban analysis and other media. Apparently, we were not the only ones interested in this issue, looking at the large turn up it generated. As a follow-up, we will screen the documentary Urban explorers. Into the darkness at De Verdieping/TrouwAmsterdam on Thursday the 7th of June.

We had invited several guests to explore the different dimensions of this fascination.

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After traveling to a.o. Belgrade, Copenhagen and Sofia the FA-mobile team will organise a one-day workshop on the case of Zalmhaven in Rotterdam on 20th May, as part of the conference ‘Prototyping futures / Occupying the present’ (find more info below).

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Waiting Hall, Michigan Train Station. By Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre ©Galerie Fontana Fortuna, Amsterdam

Talks and Q&A | Wednesday May 9 | 20:00h | English | 5 euro

With a.o.: Hans Aarsman (photodetective), Rob Funcken (photgrapher), Kim Bouvy (artist) and Jarrik Ouburg (architect). Hosts: Michiel van Iersel, Mark Minkjan and Tim Verlaan (Failed Architecture)

In previous editions of Failed Architecture, we have primarily looked at the why, how and when of failed architecture, trying to get a grasp of the various dimensions of failure and to understand according to whom certain buildings or built environments are malfunctioning. This time, we will try to figure out why many people like to see and talk about failed architecture and whether this influences the future of failed buildings.

Aestheticization of modern ruins is popular: we love romantic, wistful pictures with perfect compositions and dramatic light, beautifying decay and mortality. Over the past years, the number of so-called urban explorers has grown, visiting or breaking into derelict buildings. Just take a look at the infinite number of pictures of abandoned buildings, ruined factories and rundown train stations on Flickr and other websites and blogs. These ruinous structures seem to be much more to us than just piles of rubble.

Detroit is the primary example. The extreme case of decay, deindustrialization and poverty after a prosperous century has become the mainstream case of failure fixation and a popular subject in picture, writing and film. Where does this fascination come from? Why are we so preoccupied with failure in photography, urban analysis, literature and other media? And does this obsession help or obstruct attempts to restore urban ruins and learn from past failures? These and other questions will be answered.

Psychiatric Hospital Bloemendaal. By Rob Funcken.

We have invited several guests to discuss the beauty of failure with us:

Hans Aarsman is a photography journalist, photographer and writer. Aarsman will analyze forms of failure photography in order for us to understand the underlying motives of the photographer and the collective love for beautiful decay. 

Rob Funcken is a Brussels-based photographer, graphic designer and former urban explorer. He has been invited to talk about the act and glamour of urban exploring, and why so many people are intrigued by the act of urban exploring and the photography connected to it. 

Kim Bouvy is an artist working with photography and text, exploring the ways our urban environment is perceived and valued and how that again is being reflected in visual culture and architecture and urbanism. 

Jarrik Ouburg was trained as an architect at renowned offices in Switzerland, Japan, Belgium and The Netherlands, before he founded his own office in 2008. Starting in September 2012 he will be the new (parttime) head of the Architecture department at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture.

Location: De Verdieping / TrouwAmsterdam | Wibautstraat 127 | Facebook Event

Simultaneously with this edition of Failed Architecture, the solo exhibition “The Ruins of Detroit” of the renown Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre is programmed at Galerie Fontana Fortuna in Amsterdam.

Savamala streetscape, Belgrade

Failed Architecture is coming to Belgrade, from April 2 - 6, for a workshop focusing on the Savamala neighbourhood, in collaboration with KC Grad. Please join us for a week of urban exploring and co-creation.

The makeup and dynamics of our cities are continuously subject to changing demographics, market forces, political volatility, aesthetic preferences, technological advancements and other variables. Within cities, this creates differences between areas and neighbourhoods. Some areas are more popular than others for particular population groups, businesses and (hence) for flows of capital, causing a variety of local development paths and differing spatial articulations as a result of the aforementioned variables. Next to the changing makeup of the built environment, this can cause social frictions and morphing identities.

The local expression of urban dynamics will be the subject-matter of the first FA-mobile edition, which will take place in Belgrade, April 2-6. It is a cooperation with Grad (European centre for culture and debate) and will concern itself with the Savamala neighbourhood.

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St. Peter’s Seminary, Cardross.

Le Corbusier never had one of his designs built in the UK, but the closest thing to a British Corbusian building might be St. Peter’s Seminary in Cardross, Schotland. The building was designed by the Gillespie Kidd & Coia office and completed in 1966. One of head architects, Isi Metzstein, died last month, something I only found out after visiting the site last week.

What you find when you go there - hidden on a hilltop just outside of Cardross, west of Glasgow - is amazing and horrific at the same time. The majestic piece of modernist architecture, featuring many imaginative elements, was practically obsolete by the time it was completed. The catholic institutions had witnessed decline, and by the end of the 1970s only some 20 students attended the college.After merely twenty years of use as a catholic college, seminary and monastery, the structure was abandoned in the early 1980s.

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In previous editions of Failed Architecture, it was often not without question whether a building or part of the built environment was failed. To whom is it failed and in what sense? Is it not possible to rejuvenate or reuse a piece of architecture? Many of the cases discussed were not failed per se but perhaps subject to certain shortcomings or unexpected outcomes – they deviously evolved from what their designers or planners had in mind.
               

This could not be said of the failures that were addressed during Failed Architecture’s sixth edition. Put forward were technologies, materials or designs – less ambiguous and susceptible to different interpretations – that turned out to have unforeseen negative implications for inhabitants, users, repairmen and janitors. Two speakers were invited to talk about this matter: professor Peter Luscuere and assistant professor Hielkje Zijlstra. Luscuere approached the topic from a mortal point of view and demonstrated how buildings could literally kill people. He discussed ten ways in which buildings can cause irritation, sickness or even death. In his presentation, he explored the numbers of non-natural mortal accidents in the Netherlands, of which around half is classified as ‘private accidents’. These private accidents represented to a large extent building-related mortality scenarios, according to Lucsuere. By addressing these ‘mortal mechanisms’, including fire and suffocation, explosions, overheating, electrocution and falling, but also poisoning (most common: CO-poisoning), infection (through ventilation systems), sickening (e.g. asbestos) and even depression (due to dysfunctional lighting, no view or bad acoustics), Luscuere demonstrated how faulty technologies or ill designs can negatively influence people’s wellbeing.
               

Hielkje Zijlstra’s lecture was titled ‘Lost in space’, by which she referred to buildings that were out of place in their urban environments because of an ill connection or a mismatch between the building and the public space. Installations and services meant to connect buildings and places, and guide their users, are more often than not obstacles to users and inhabitants instead of helpful devices. By using the TU Delft Campus as a case study to exemplify these mismatches, Zijlstra demonstrated how details of a place were not corresponding to their context and how the use and functioning of a place or a building were affected by non-effective or incomplete interventions. By showing incorrect or confusing signage, hidden passages, unfinished constructions and other faulty details on and around the TU Delft Campus, she concluded that the details were undurable and not fitting the context (or culture) of the place. In her final words, Zijlstra argued that architecture changes the condition of space and that architects, planners and city officials are jointly responsible for the inside and outside space of a building and the connection between the two. According to Luscuere, the same goes for buildings equipped with non-operating technologies; a better understanding and co-operation between the implementers of technology, designers and users will result in less ‘lethal’ buildings.

Talks and Q&A | Wednesday November 23 | English | 3,50 Euro

In the sixth edition of Failed Architecture, we will focus on the more concrete, technical and practical failures of architecture. Which seemingly clever building technologies or materials have turned out to have unforeseen negative implications for the inhabitants, users, repairmen and janitors? Which types of buildings are more often subject to failure or usage problems? When can we speak of just unforeseen complications and when are architects or contractors to blame? Which cases are exemplary and what lessons can be learned for future architecture?

- Peter Luscuere will give a lecture titled ‘How buildings kill’, in which ten mechanisms that lead to irritation, sickness or even death will be discussed. Peter Luscuere is professor in Building Technology at Delft University of Technology, guest professor at Tianjin University, China and former director of engineering consultancy Royal Haskoning.

- Hielkje Zijlstra will further zoom in on the night’s theme and elaborate on how buildings can get lost in urban space, hitherto resulting in a missing link between the former and the latter. Services and installations meant to make life in the built environment easier are more often than not obstacles for users and inhabitants instead of helpful devices. The TU Delft campus will serve as a case study in this lecture. Zijlstra is associate professor in Building Technology at Delft University of Technology. 

The evening will be hosted by Michiel van Iersel (De Verdieping). Tim Verlaan (UvA) and Mark Minkjan (independent researcher).



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This edition of Failed Architecture is part of a dual programme on concrete architectural failures. Next time we will focus on how inhabitants and users actually deal with their failed environments, exposing inventive ways of improving standardized apartment blocks and central service systems from a pan-European perspective.

Location: De Verdieping / TrouwAmsterdam | Facebook event

We have been invited by Ljubo Georgiev, co-curator of the Sofia Architecture Week 2011, to contribute to this year’s edition of this annual festival. It will take place between the 1st and the 6th of November and runs under the theme Architecture Unlimited?. SAW11 will deal with the extent, in which architecture can (still) function as a transformative tool for the urban environment in an age in which utopian ideals are replaced by city marketing, and making improvements in the cityscape is often subordinated to making profit.

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Ever since the riots in Great Britain broke out in the first week of August, media and experts have been discussing the relation between architecture and social behaviour. During our fifth edition on the 5^th of October we discussed this theme from historical, sociological and planning perspectives.

Obviously, social unrest tends to concentrate in urban environments. Rioting and the city have always been closely interlinked throughout history. In the first contribution to our fifth edition, historian Dennis Bos elaborated on the urban aspects of the 1871 Paris Commune. During this illustrious social disorder, a revolutionary self-elected government ruled the city for 72 days. Ending in utter defeat, it nevertheless was remembered and even sanctified by the international socialist, communist and anarchist movement as the first workers government in history.

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