dear Urban

the reason i'm writing you today is because...

architecture as an experience about life...

Monday, 19 March 2007

One more tour in Chinatown, this time at night.

Slowly, one after the other, cars arrive and park through Wagenstraat. The people leaving the vehicles either go home or head to one of the many restaurants. Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Indonesian, Turkish... There's space for every taste. It pose no surprise that we can't see Chinese in the streets... a small glimpse to the door bells its all that is needed to understand that almost no Chinese live on this quarter. Chinatown is a place for work, a place for commerce during the day and restaurants during the evening, but handed over to the Dutch during the night.

Its now dark, cold and rainy, the North of Chinatown - Grote Marktstraat - is completely empty, all the commerce is closed and no body seems to live there...

Sunday, 11 March 2007

Fear in Den Haag


During the travel experiences in chinatown in Den haag , we wanted to take a pedestrian policeman as a subject. But after a while we wanted to answear: why there is no police presence in this area: it was because the area is full of camera!!!.
It is interesting to see all this hide power of control and to understand why? the first answear was to map all this camera and we started to see all the "view"control between the 2 stations and the old city center..

somes books references and movie on this subject :

The book is a historical, economic, and cultural dissection of Los Angeles, its residents and their lifestyles and their interactions with real estate developers. Davis contrasts the campaigners for 'slow growth' with the needs of minorities living on the margins and the never ending growth of Los Angeles with environmental considerations.


blade runner

Monday, 26 February 2007

space, body, time, numbers


Jean luc Godard
LE MEPRIS
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Jean Luc GODARD
ALPHAVILLE
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Darren ARONOFSKY
PI
link imdb

Saturday, 24 February 2007

map
n.
    1. A representation, usually on a plane surface, of a region of the earth or heavens.
    2. Something that suggests such a representation, as in clarity of representation.

  1. Mathematics. The correspondence of one or more elements in one set to one or more elements in the same set or another set.
  2. Slang. The human face.
  3. Genetics. A genetic map.
v. tr. mapped, map·ping, maps.
    1. To make a map of.
    2. To depict as if on a map: Grief was mapped on his face.

  1. To explore or make a survey of (a region) for the purpose of making a map.
  2. To plan or delineate, especially in detail; arrange: mapping out her future.
  3. Genetics. To locate (a gene or DNA sequence) in a specific region of a chromosome in relation to known genes or DNA sequences.
  4. Mathematics. To establish a mapping of (an element or a set).

source: American Heritage Dictionary

Thursday, 22 February 2007

Last Saturday, February 17, we could experience the celebrations of the Chinese New-Year - The pig year. Chinatown, Den Haag has the centre of the festivity, with the speeches, drums, the Dragon and Lion dances, and noisy and smelly fireworks. Later, on the city hall the festivity continued with martial arts and other performances.

Clearly this wasn't a regular day in Chinatown Den Haag. Nevertheless this celebration spirit doesn't fade the fact that the majority of the people with Chinese roots came from outside the neighbourhood. Reinforced security, casino supported dancers, non-Chinese leading people... By paying attention to a few details it's easily readable the marketing behind this event, and the lack of the spontaneity that should be in the origin of the celebrations. On the windows, it was clear that this is no long a pure Chinese quarter...

Push the images to see them in context:






Wednesday, 21 February 2007

The “choreographing space” workshop was a unique experience. It wasn’t a dance workshop as preconceived, but a kind of “body awareness” exercise.

From the first year of my education as a architecture student that I has confronted with the importance off the human body as the subject of space, and modulator of scales and relations. This emphasis on the relation whit the outside takes away the awareness of our own body, and the systems that makes it a whole.

The relation with the other humans is always seen as subject off social regulation, always keeping an “acceptable distance”. This workshop brook that preconceived concept allowing us to explore the social relation on its basic state, when the search for the equilibrium emerged as the unreflected main collective goal.


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