Partizan Publik has four main research projects at the moment: 'Liberty City: freedom fighters in Amsterdam', 'Social Engineering in the Amsterdam Metropolis', the 'Detroit Unreal Estate Agency' and 'Social Housing After the Soviets'
Or actually - finding a wind turbine - for electrification was one of the outcomes of a meeting Partizan Publik had with people from the Tolhuistuin about designing a self-powered Neighbourhood-Coffee-Bar-Bus.
1. Bus, Buiksloterham. 24 January 2010.
Inquiry with our friends from Design 99 in Detroit proved very usefull. Mitch Cope explained that for their Power House project they use the Air Breeze wind mill. Mitch also explained he's using a Deka 8a8d 225 amp/hr battery.
2. Power House by Design 99, 16 December 2009. Air Breeze on the roof.
3. Power House by Design 99, 16 December 2009. A Deka 8a8d 225 amp/hr battery.
4. 'Look Out with Wind Turbine' by Marjectica Portc. 24 January 2010 Piraeus Building
5. 'Look Out with Wind Turbine' by Marjectica Portc. 24 January 2010 Piraeus Building
It will be an interesting assignment to figure out how to use a wind turbine for the electrification of the bus. But besides that we still have to do work on isolation, heating, the roof, the floor and furniture. Help and advise is more than welcome.
Housing Corporation Ymere, which owns about 100% of the housing stock in the Van der Pek neighborhood in Amsterdam - North has made two buildings available for testing out future model homes.
1. Looking from the Van der Pekstraat towards the Tolhuistuin.
2. The boarded up building on the Van der Pek Street.
The buildings at the Van der Pek Street and the Begonia Street, which will be transformed from eight household blocks into something new, are boarded up at the moment. The neighborhood use to be totally social housing for lower income families.
The families are in a process of being relocated to elsewhere in Amsterdam and during the last years these houses where inhabitants by artists.
3. The Van der Pek Street
4. Side view of the building on the Van der Pek Street.
A critical discourse on these urban renewal development in Amsterdam is coming together. Take a look for example at the Nomads in Amsterdam - West project or at the work of academic Justus Uitermark.
5. Gardens behind the building.
6. The boarded up building on the Begonia Street.
7. Front view of the building on the Begonia Street
8. View from the Buiksloterweg on the transformation of the former Shell terrain.
In fields of business, politics and design unfamiliar partnerships focused on the necessity of radical urban change seem to be occurring. These collaborations are focused on sustainable innovation among communities of different types of users. Local neighborhood strategies are enriched with experiences from elsewhere on the globe. Industrial research organizations are trying to mobilize knowledge from across the globe to innovate better and faster. Municipalities are trying to stimulate neighborhoods and their industrial base.
The incentive of these experimental collaborations, which could perhaps be referred to as ‘community labs’ is a refreshing type of culture of engagement: a process–oriented collaboration, with an open type of communication, which is not necessary end-goal driven, yet focused on sharing knowledge in order to improve.
This type of engagement can be observed among artists and architects. It is emerging out of a sense of urgency and seeks to exploit the opportunity for a new kind of artistic agency in post-industrial cities, in which, to paraphrase curator Charles Esche, ‘regional art and site-specific production are combined, a kind of everyday life art’. The role of Design 99 in Detroit is notable in this context. The architect and artist that make up this collective do not only work as commercial design consultants, they collaborate with neighbors in a social and economic deprived neighborhood where urban governance has failed to make a difference in order to develop a more sustainable security level in terms of energy and security.
These unfamiliar partnerships can also be seen to emerge in business and social institutions. The roundtable projects of economist Jeremy Rifkin are of interest. In collaboration with national and city governments Rifkin intends to develop a system for generating clean energy and of sharing the production surplus through an exchange network with the neighbors. In collaboration with architects as Stefano Boeri, he is developing a scheme for buildings that can produce energy.
A third example is the lightning division of the Dutch company Philips, which is collaborating with local governments and museums in Eindhoven in order to further develop their society driven innovation approach. In a quest to find the successor for their successful home lab, an innovation test facility, Philips opened its communication channels to communities.
As Rifkin says, if successful, these projects could very well help what explore different types of human settlements. These cooperative projects, which have a clear local basis yet are very globally linked in the peer-to-peer world wide web. They could represent a form of transformation in which a small community supervises a process of improvement in close communication with the larger urban community, which is perhaps more skeptical and less flexible.
Sources: Jeremy Rifkin, The Hydrogen Economy (New York 2003), URL: http://www.bamboostones.net/, Stefano Boeri Lecture, 'Sustainanable City', Amsterdam 18 March 2009.
As a supplement to VOLUME # 22 The Guide, Partizan Publik presents the separate publication Beyroutes, a guidebook to Beirut, one of the grand capitals of the Middle East. Beyroutes presents an exploded view of a city which lives so many double lives and figures in so many truths, myths and historical falsifications. Visiting the city with this intimate book as your guide makes you feel disoriented, appreciative, judgmental and perhaps eventually reconciliatory. Beyroutes is the field manual for 21st century urban explorer.
Beyroutes was initiated by Studio Beirut in collaboration with Partizan Publik, Archis and the Pearl Foundation. Supported by Prince Claus Fund, Fund Working on the Quality of Living and the Netherlands Embassy in Lebanon.
The launch wil take place at Athenaeum News Centre, Spui, Amsterdam, December 22, 5-7pm.
As a supplement to Volume #20 the Warren Special Report: From Crisis to Project imagines the redefined American Dream. Analyzing an utilizing the current crisis, the report seeks to imagine future suburbia taking Detroit's largest suburb Warren as a rolemodel. Bold visions, tools for transitionmanagement and new forms of organization and collaboration are the result of an ongoing research practice leading the way from Crisis to Project.
Was the Apollo 11 moon landing a hoax, a Stanley Kubrick studio recording? Dark Side of the Moon, a French documentary by director William Karel claims to present the truth: the moon landing was a brilliant piece of science fiction, instead of a major scientific and technological breakthrough.
How far was the US government willing to go in their competition with the Soviets? Karel poses that not only did Kubrick help the USA fake the moon landings but that he was eventually killed by the CIA to cover up the truth.
As a supplement to Volume 21 Partizan Publik published Microrayon Living, which is basically an inventory of everyday life strategies and D.I.Y. practices in the Post Soviet Microrayon. Together with several local partners we conducted research in Gldani, Tblisi and in Veshnyaki, Moscow, two identical city quarters in terms of layout, the former at the periphery of the former Soviet Union, the latter in the center of power. Striking similarities and differences came to the fore.
Vast urbanizations in developed, developing and under-development countries have one common denominator: an immediate need for quality housing. Housing the billions: never before were those involved in architecture and construction confronted with such a challenge. A one-fits-all solution seems unthinkable since most mass housing schemes in the past failed and originated in dictatorship or total absence of power. Based on an analysis of one of the housing experiments of the past, the Soviet Microrayon, Volume proposes a new prototype. A housing block, which is custom-made but mass-produced and conceived via open source standards.
Today we met at de Balie to brainstorm how the exhibition and publication could look. We heard from the NAi that our space will be a 3×3m room, and we developed the following concept:
As our space is located at the exit point of the “collective city” exhibition, the idea is to build a portico entrance in the space, either at the exit from the rest of “collective city” exhibition (conceptual coherence) OR as the exit into the stairwell to the rest of the “open city” exhibition (visual coherence? – exit into the stairwell).
A stack of newspapers will allow visitors to take home the content of our exhibition, while newspapers in the rack will be for on site consumption.
Mock-up Portico entrance at the biennial exit (collective city section): - two sofa-chairs - stack of give away newspapers - bulletin board - newspaper rack (grand cafe style) - painted wall (funky -cheapest- green) - code-lock/intercom on the door - extra authentic details … like garden, etc
Students Joeri Jörg and Koen Elzerman initiated a place where people can leave items (clothes, books, sleeping-bags and domestic products) which they do not need anymore, while other people still might be happy with it. In this manner people can contribute to the daily-struggle that people have to cope with their limited economic situation. Amsterdam North is a district with many socio-economic problems, and the exchange closet delivers a micro-economic service for those who need it.
Similar to this alternative form of recycling, the focus lies on informing people about homelessness and addiction as important societal issues. The city of Amsterdam wants to initiate new asylums spread over the city, but history has shown some bad examples of starting such an asylum. The NIMBY-effect (‘Not In My Backyard’) can ruin the relation between asylum and neighbourhood, while people rarely realise that the asylum fulfils an important part of the societal needs. Above that, the line between having a house and homelessness is not that big as people might think. It does not take very much to lose your house and become homeless, especially in Amsterdam North.
The crew exists of people who have lived on the street, have been addicted or have worked in prostitution. They concentrate on telling their personal stories to the visitors of the Mosveld market, the place where the closet is situated. Goal is to decrease the NIMBY-feelings which people have in relation to these marginalised groups of society.
The launch on Saturday 13th of June showed that people respond very positive on this form of interaction. Most of them understood the importance of facilities for homeless and addicted people, and several people spoke out their enthusiasm about the project. One of the strengths of the closet is that it does not only serve the homeless and addicted people: it also benefits the local residents and the deprived neighbourhood around the Mosveld market.
Publications in the media (NoordNieuws (2), De Echo and Het Parool), widespread enthusiasm by project partners, the city district of Amsterdam North and housing corporation Ymere, social partners and the local residents form the basis of a long term continuation of the project.
After the successful launch of the closet, both students are now in discussion with several social partners, in order to ensure the sustainability of the intervention. The students will be related to the project until these negotiations result in a societal coalition which can maintain the exchange closet as a social facility, embedded in the neighbourhood.
You can also view the final presentation of the ‘Addicted to the City’ case at the Amsterdam City Hall last week.
Is there a way to involve neighborhood residents with a developing city park?
The 4 students of the ‘Green Team’ of the minor ‘Social Engineering in the Amsterdam Metropolis’ researched the development of the new ‘Noorderpark’, an urban park that is now being developed into one of the largest city parks of Amsterdam. Compared to other parks in the city, the Noorderpark is lagging behind in the number and diversity of its park visitors. Can the Noorderpark become as widely and highly appreciated as the popular Westerpark or the Vondelpark?
The Green Team observed a remarkable ‘invisibility’ of the Noorderpark within the adjacent neighborhoods and the borough of Amsterdam Noord. Together they created an elaborate ‘visibility’ campaign with green ‘welcome in my backyard’ posters on the windows of empty social housing, with guerilla sign posting all over the neighborhood and, together with the people of ‘Streetprov Amsterdam’, they organized a performance and a video about the ‘secret of North’: the beautiful Noorderpark.
How can old and new communities be connected through a new form of social architecture?
The 4 students of the Overhoeks/Van der Pek case researched the possibilities of improving social ties between two neighbourhoods in Amsterdam: Overhoeks and Van der Pek. The former is being developed at the moment, the latter is and ‘old, traditional neighbourhood in town. What’s special is that the two are situated literally in each others shadow. According to the students, improving social ties implies “encountering each other on a regular bases in a natural and informal way”. To empower this process, the students developed the concept of the ‘Floating Market’. Their pilot was situated on the Johan van Hasseltkanaal, which wasn’t more than a physical barrier between the two neighbourhoods before their intervention. The ‘Floating Market’ transformed this barrier into a place where people can meet. The concept is based on the floating gardens developed by ‘Provo’ Robert Jasper Grootveld. The gardens consist of 1,00 x 1,00 x 0,50 foam blocks, each of them having a floating capacity of 500 kilograms. Tied together, these foam blocks form an incredibly stable floating surface.
Based on a purely economic relation the market could function as a shared icon for the two neighbourhoods and also as a positive impulse for the wider area as well.
You can also view the final presentation of the Overhoeks/vd Pek Team at the Amsterdam City Hall last week.
Last week the university minor program ‘Social Engineering in the Amsterdam Metropolis’ reached it’s ‘official’ tipping point at the Amsterdam City Hall. The students presented the results of their 16 weeks lasting full time research trajectory to the mayor of Amsterdam Job Cohen and an elaborate jury of professional social engineers. The jury consisted of Linda Brasz (foreperson, chief secretary borough Amsterdam North), Franka Kanters (manager at private social housing cooperation Ymere), Jos Gadet (senior policy maker at the Department of Spatial Planning Amsterdam) and Bert de Reuver (member directory board IIS). The students seized the moment to put forward their case in front of this audience of influential ‘agents of change’.
To what extent do rules and standards lead to a just society? Planned utopias proved not to lead automatically to a free and equal way of living, or all-inclusive solidarity for that matter. State governance seems fated to produce a certain form of social marginalization.
Could engineering a just city entail the conscious incorporation of the lawless, the untamed and the subversives within our city borders? Do these groups, which are evading or excluded by the system, represent a way of living that we could learn from? How can their rules inspire us in engineering a more righteous place, a just city?
Yale University Professor James C. Scott is author of the most eloquent critique of the tradition of high modernist planning Seeing like a State (1998). His latest research focuses on the contrast between the lowland city-state and its labor control vs. the non-state-hill periphery in South East Asia. Based on this expertise he will comment on how the city should be studied as a living, breathing and dynamic process.
To what extent can a brave city be planned? History shows that Dream + Power + Lack of Resistance = Utopian Totalitarianism. The reign of big ideas over a blissfully ignorant society.
Engineering happiness could potentially mean balancing out planned utopias. We wonder, how to practise our urban freedom? Blissful ignorance or freedom of initiative? Routine or improvisation? What’s the function of spontaneity in pushing the boundaries of public normality? Can improvisation improve urban daily life? Raise awareness of the collective and forge solidarity? What are the rules that keep our society alive and which boundaries do we need to push to give our cities future?
American and international media coverage of the cultural activities by actors as Design 99, the Detroit Unreal Estate Agency and others in Detroit tends to highlight how artists makes use of the current real estate crisis, how they are attracted by easy living in $100 houses and the post-industrial spectacle of the city. Without trying to negate these qualities of Detroit, I would like to argue that there might be something more to it.
Speaking as a member of the Detroit Unreal Estate Agency, I'm curious about the lessons that can be learned from Detroit. Learning from Detroit starts I think with a re-evaluation of the urban development discourse that engineered the city, and a different understanding of what engagement with this place and its people means.
Below I drafted some of the credentials of the Unreal Estate project: The Unreal Estate project intends to tap into the inventories of local assets and expertise in the city. In an interdisciplinary team we imagine stimulus strategies for local make-ability. As such, we don’t necessarily work against the effects of deindustrialization, suburbanization and outsourcing. Renovating the postindustrial city - along the lines of Richard Florida’s creative class – or, in turn, seeing the urban ruins as artistic opportunities is not our central motivation.
We respect that Detroit’s urban environment is still the home of many individuals and families, who ‘built’ their lives here. Align to this, it is our ambition to design or support stimulus strategies for urban transformation that lead to a resilient user-based city, which is enabling a vision on local opportunities. And, simultaneously, we intend to re-interpret and built on the value of decay, as well as, the intrusion of wildlife in the city. Decline is also creation and growth of something else if we can reframe our expectations, and offers different potential for co-existence, and strategies for urban development.
We intend to understand in artistic ways how urban engagement, as well as, urban play work under this condition. The collapse of the free market ideology creates a sense of emergency and the opportunity for a new kind of artistic agency, in which, to paraphrase Charles Esche, regional art and site-specific production are combined’, a kind of everyday life art.
Thus Unreal Estate project poses these questions: How to intervene on the city seeking the participation of the less advantaged people? Is it possible to start urban transformation as artists avoiding the traditional patterns of gentrification and economic exploitation of symbolic values? How to imagine a new equilibrium between the city, the human communities and the natural elements (plants, water, wilderness)? How to exchange culturally between this particular (urban) situation and other places in the world?
We realize that Detroit is an important example of contemporary urban living and, potentially, a case for a hands-on study on future urban scenario’s, which are also applicable for other places in the United States and in the rest of the world.
Yesterday I made a 20mi / 32km bike trip in Detroit. From Hamtramck to Downtown and back. Traveling this distance by bike gives you a good sense of the vast scale of this city, although this distance is but a small fragment of the size of the entire Metropolitan area of Detroit.
Where some of my initial thoughts on the derelict homes, factories, warehouses and skyscrapers were tainted by romanticism, now they're drained in the realization that this is an urban reality that is everywhere. An omnipresent sprawling landscape of destruction, generated by the rationality of hyper-capitalism. Fed by the misplaced escapism of the American dream, of starting over-and-over-and-over-and-over again in the suburbs, sub-suburbs, exurbs to the point that the notion of urbanity evaporates completely.
How to reinvent living together, 'a community' and perhaps even civilization on top of the ruins of the raison d'être of the previous one...
Can we build a happy city? Can we engineer happiness?A Masterclass on creative industry, social cohesion, participatory planning and creating new worlds. What is left of the highmodernist ideals? How do they translate into the Wijkaanpak, the national push to uplift the Dutch ghettos? And what instruments have we got to engineer society and change people in their beliefs and behaviour?
The American philosopher and architectural critic Nader Vossoughian wrote on the global polis and its engineer of happiness Otto Neurath.
He has a strong vision on the knowledge economy, how it creates ignorance and intelligence. Is ignorance bliss? Or do we set course to develop a responsible participatory community? What is the ethics of urban transformation?
With workshop-contributions by No Academy and Design2context.
Presented by the Office for Social Engineering, Fund BKVB/355, Art Beyond Borders and Felix Meritis.
Our days are gloomy days. Yet all these crises present opportunities for a positive outcome as well. They could open the way to a fundamentally different way of social engineering, green planning and a new financial system. In the reshaping of our world after the crisis, a sustainable city is possible.
Stefano Boeri understands non-growth and human retreat as producing valuable urban eco-systems. Reforestation protects natural zones and green corridors shelter animals from the anthropocentric world. These potentially create new ways of exchange between wildlife and human beings, a new ethical order of urbanity.
Stefano Boeri (1956) is an architect, director of Boeri Studio and editor in chief of the international design and architecture magazine Abitare. Boeri teaches urban design at the Milan Polytechnic, he is visiting professor at the Harvard Design School and he is the founder of the research agency Multiplicity. With Rem Koolhaas he co-authored the immensely influential Mutations project. Boeri will share his visions on sustainable utopia and dystopia in an urban context.
A story of how innovation and creativity may change the way we build, engage and live… for decades to come.
BEIRUT: Walk its streets, visit its hip quarters, check the destroyed but completely resurrected city centre, talk to the armed soldiers at the street corners, listen to the old and not-so-old war stories from the cab driver, explore its old, new and upcoming neighborhoods. Only a few cities in the world offer so many layers of hidden meaning as Beirut does. In the public realm of this town there seems to be merely suggestion, projection and differences of opinion that somehow interact with people’s daily movements and actions.
Participate in the BEYROUTES guide project organized by Studio Beirut, Partizan Publik, Pearland Archis. A project that enables you to go beyond an exotic visit to the people, buildings and places of Beirut, and to get engaged: in its past, present and future. To produce a guide that provokes to construct your own anecdotes, actions and architecture of the city.
If you want to contribute in writing, drawing, research, photography or design: sign up now for the 2nd RESEARCH workshop at ranije[at]yahoo[dot]com
The agency will produce, collect and inventory information on the ‘unreal estate’ of Detroit: that is, on the remarkable, distinct, characteristic or subjectively significant sites of urban culture. The project is aimed at new types of urban practices (architecturally, artistically, institutionally, everyday life, etc) that came into existence, creating a new value system in Detroit.
During the Beirut Summer Workshop on Public Space, Partizan Publik conceptualized a side project. Together with the workshop participants we re-designed the Lost of Room of the Lebanese National Museum.
In the Lebanese National Museum the room dealing with modern history is not there. Apparently there is no agreement on what Lebanon’s ‘National History’ is. Yet Lebanese seem to be united in the love for their capital. Although it is a contested and violent city, Beirut encapsulates many places, which are full of sweet, loving, memories and nostalgia. Indeed it is a city saturated with favorite places.
Click here to view the online result of this project.
Partizan Publik is devoted to a braver society. The Partizans explore, produce and implement social, political and cultural instruments, which generate positive and sustainable change to people and their surroundings.
To what extent do rules and standards lead to a just society? Planned utopias proved not to lead automatically to a free and equal way of living, or all-inclusive solidarity for that matter. State governance seems fated to produce a certain form of social marginalization.
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