In February 2004 I presented a lecture for the Dutch Art Institute (DAI) in Enschede, The lecture focuses on several theories of shelter in an increasingly complex urban environment. The lecture is titled "Spaces Between Servitude and Statement"
It indirectly pointe towards DAI's prospect to be relocated elsewhere in Enschede.
The Dutch Art Institute is a postgraduate art institute that, in 2004, claimed an abandoned industrial building in Roombeek, a neighborhood that was heavily hit in 2000 by an enormous explosion caused by a fireworks factory located there. Basically the lecture addresses on a theoretical level, the necessity of providing art students with an optimal working environment that should be located right in the heart of an urban community. These working conditions not only should be utilitarian, but first and foremost should provide staff and students with a an optimal creative and evocative envirionment.
3. 1
The House, from Cellar to Garret
The significance of the Hut
2
House and Universe
3
Drawers, Chests and Wardrobes
4
Nests
5
Shells
6
Corners
7
Miniature
8
Intimate Inmensity
9
The Dialectics of Outside and Inside
10
The Phenomenology of Roundness
5. On Monday, October 12, 1654, shortly after half past eleven in the morning, one of
Delft's powder magazines exploded and devastated a large part of the city. The
“Delftsche Donderslag” was said to have been heard as far away as the island of
Texel, seventy miles north of Delft.
When the magazine exploded, it contained about ninety thousand pounds of
gunpowder. The force of the blast was so great that most houses in the immediate
vicinity were destroyed and buildings throughout the city were damaged. The two
major churches, the Oude and the Nieuwe Kerk, were also damaged. Although the
number of people killed is not known, it has been estimated that deaths were in
the hundreds. Among the casualties was one of Delft's most famous painters, Carel
Fabritius.
6. Egbert van der Poel
(1621-1664)
View of Delft after the Explosion of 1654
Oil on wood, 36,2 x 49,5 cm National Gallery, London
7. Carel Fabritius
1622 - 1654
Self-portrait, ca. 1650
oil on panel, 65x49 cm, Museum Boymans-Van Beuningen
8. Carel Fabritius
A View of Delft, with a Musical Instrument Seller's Stall
Oil on canvas, 15,4 x 31,6 cm, 1652
National Gallery, London
9. Dutch Art Institute
becomes
Carel Fabritius Institute
A great talent who died too young
(James Dean Effect)
13. Bridal Chambers
Hieronymus Bosch
The Garden of Delights (The Earthly Paradise), Prado, Madrid
14. Fermez l’espace!
Fermez la poche du Kangourou!
Il y fait chaud.
Close space!
Close the kangaroo’s pouch!
It’s warm in there.
Maurice Blanchard - Le temps de la poésie
26. Quand les cines de notre ciel se rejoindront
Ma maison aura un toit
When the peaks of our sky come together
My house will have a roof
Paul Eluard - Dignes de vivre
27.
28. In winter like in summer
Night and day I walked
Over the plain, the hills
And the river too,
To bring back the hard stones
Chiselled by nature.
My back paid his share
I braved everything
Even death.
In the evening after dark
When man is resting
I work on my palace.
No one will ever know
How hard it was.
With the moments of leisure
My occupation gave me
I built this Arabian nights’ palace
Where my memory is engraved.
40. “ I believe that as technology advances in architecture,
the closer it comes to nature.”
John M. Johansen Architect
(1916)
“It’s not biomorphism in the sense
that it is imitation of natural form,
better is learning how nature organises,
and in the same way we can organise
our buildings and our cities.”
(quotes from an interview with Hans-Ulrich Obrist)
58. Steven Holl - Museum of Human Evolution, Burgos
Atapuerca Cave and museum - routings
59. Sometimes the house of the future is better built, lighter and larger than
all houses of the past, so that the image of the dream house is opposed
to that of the childhood home. Later in life, with indomitable courage,
we continue to say that we are going to do what we have not yet done:
we are going to build a house.
Gaston Bachelard - The Poetics of Space
63. Mies van de Rohe - Farnsworth House. 1950 Shigeru Ban, Curtain Wall house, 1995
Mies van der Rohe invented the glass curtain wall,
but I just used a curtain
Shigeru Ban
78. Utilitarian Minimalism
(appropriated aesthetics)
L’espace m’a toujours rendu silencieux
Space has always reduced me to silence
Jules Vallès, L’enfant
90. Scenarios
(epilogue)
At the door of the house who will come knocking?
An open door, we enter
A closed door, a den
The world pulse beats beyond my door.
Pierre Albert Birot
91. Yet listen well. Not to my words,
but to the tumult that rages in
your body when you listen to yourself.
René Daumel
92. plane of events
nouns
verbs
time
Here, as time flows across the page from left to right,
is a tiny part of the ocean of the Streams of Story,
a handful of the thousand thousand and one tales.
An event is the intersection of noun and verb,
of subject and action…
something happens
Edward Rolf Tufte - Visual Explanations
96. Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA)
Programmatic Lava
Urban Design Forum, Yokohama, Japan - project 1992
97. Georges Perec Writer
(1936-1982)
"All I know is that the puzzle is called 'The Life and Works of Georges Perec.'
But I don't know what the solution is!"
Georges Perec
101. The hallucinatory effect derives
from the extraordinary clarity
and not from mystery or mist.
Nothing is more fantastic ultimately than precision.
André Robbe-Grillet