Leaving Brussels | May 10, 2009

On Sunday May 10 MovingCities flew back to Beijing. A short inter-European flight from Brussels to Stockholm was followed by a longer Stockholm-Beijing flight. Only the first leg of the travel provided excellent conditions for aerophotography, especially while flying over a cloudless Belgium and The Netherlands.

While figuring out and writing down possible principles for accidental aerophotography, it is unavoidable to touch on the opposite end this issue. The fear of flying. This series are the result of a desire to fly continuously over this earth, very similar to the necessity Marciello, played by Sean Penn, was subjected to in Thomas Vinterberg’s 2003 movie “It’s all about love“. In this ‘apocalyptic science fiction’ Sean Penn philosophises on an encroaching weather apocalypse from the back of an airplane, seemingly continuously phoning and overlooking the earth. This character used to have fear of flying, cured it by an overdose of drugs and is in now a slave of the sky.

Landing in Stockholm | May 10, 2009

For those with a fear of flying, check out the recent momus -memo aptly called “Fear of flying“. The recent disappearance of Air France flight 477 over the Atlantic, urged momus for some instant memoirs of moving over the globe. Bookmark, follow and read Fear of flying. An extract:

When I fly, I usually take a window seat at the rear of the economy cabin. I’m happy if nobody is sitting anywhere near. I never read or listen to music or watch the movie. All I do is gaze out of the window — I find the landscapes, even the blandest ones, incredibly beautiful.

Likewise.

Brussels - Rotterdam | May 10, 2009

Rotterdam | May 10, 2009

Amsterdam | May 10, 2009

Stockholm Bromma Airport | May 10, 2009

Stockholm Arlanda Airport | May 10, 2009

Smoking Spot at Arlanda Airport | May 10, 2009

Pictures by movingcities.org

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Brussels >> Stockholm

View from Parking58 | May 5, 2009

After grinding the euro out Ground Euro, MovingCities went scanning the skyline from two of Brussels’ largest urban balconies, the RAC and PARKING58. The RAC (Rijks Administratief Centrum) was the location of Brussels’ most brutal buildings. Some video’s for disappearing buildings.

RAC (large site on the right) | GoogleEarth

On the site of the largest ensemble of post-war modernist buildings in the Brussels inner city area stood, and only for two decades, the Finance Tower, also know as “La Femme” (link in dutch only). There “La Femme” loomed over the city, reminding it of the intense struggle it had with a century of non-stop urban change. Around 2002 this building was mysteriously sold (in a case of typical real-estate corruption in Brussels and Belgium) and, under the pretext of renovation, the 145 meter building was teared down.

Désenchantée by Kate Ryan | video still

With it an exceptional piece of Belgian architecture disappeared, but not before being immortalized in the notorious Désenchantée-video clip (watch it!) of Belgians’ finest Eurotrash star Kate Ryan and, even more importantly, in the Anton Corbijn directed HeadHunter-video clip (watch it over and over!) of Belgians’ legendary fathers of electronic body music FRONT 242.

HeadHunter by FRONT 242 | video still

Today, plans are being developed by Studio Arne Quinze. He is hired by the real-estate developers keep control over the conceptual design and asked to propose guidelines for the architectural design of the buildings and connected public spaces.

Next to the Studio Arne Quinze plan for the RAC, the developers released this document to the public. In it you can read real radical real-estate blablabla of following kind;

By taking advantage of the competences of conceptual architect studio led by Arne Quinze, the real estate partners have radically opted for a creative approach to existing and new spaces. This expresses the clear wish to boost a new élan and a pole of attraction for this part of town that was long cut off from the happenings in the city.

“La Femme” was also the backdrop of the “The Art of Adult Architecture or The Politics of Pornographic Planning“-piece that Bert de Muynck published in 2005 for a special issue of Cut-Up Magazine.

After the RAC, a visit to the best free view of the whole town, Parking 58. Situated in the center of the town, it is a 10 floor parking space with a top floor offering a 360 degree view of Brussels. A couple of snapshots.

View from RAC | Brussels, May 5, 2009

View from Parking58 | Brussels, May 5, 2009

Pictures by movingcities.org

Brussels Capital of Europe | MovingCities

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Brussels snapshots | La Femme & Parking58

Ground Euro | May 5, 2009

The recent plans developed for Ground Euro painfully show the reality of the city of Brussels. On top of that, the infamous Capital of Europe was recently unmasked as the most boring city in Europe and a fire broke out in the Berlaymont building, the European Union commission’s headquarters. Between 2003 and 2006 MovingCities followed and participated in the discussion around the presence of the European Union in Brussels and recently went back to take a couple of snapshots and follow-up on the new facelift-strategy for the area.

The discussion about the kind of architecture that best represents Brussels’ role as Capital of Europe was sensational for a second. A lot a strategic, iconographic and political energy was targeted towards this issue in the period of 2003-2006; this most likely due to the expansion the European Union underwent in that period. An expansion which faced some of its leaders with the obvious reality that there were no architectural structures on Ground Euro uniting the different cultures, nor representing the values the European Union standing for. In essence this wouldn’t need to be a dramatic task for an architect, politician or cultural scientist. If it wasn’t in Brussels.

The Image of Europe | Ground Euro | September, 2004

Between 2003 and 2006 it felt like something was happening, when the whole spectacle ended in a circus tent in the heart of Ground Euro. At the time we published “The Image of Europe“-review on that exhibition:

In The Image of Europe exhibition, Koolhaas/AMO constructed an epic history of Europe and the EU with multiple ambitions: to provoke a new iconography, to devise a communication strategy, and to construct a narrative for a continent that certainly has been and still seems to be splintered by political quarrels between nations. If The Image of Europe was sold initially as propaganda to effect change in a complex situation, it should also be considered the hard outcome of the Erasmus Group’s soft discussion on Europe three years ago, the present result of which is without a doubt a construct of realpolitik.

Ground Euro | May 5, 2009

This European content-circus afterward traveled to Munich and Vienna. Since then silence has surrounded the project. The circus is probably dismantled and Rem Koolhaas has been recuperated to become part of the “Reflection Group“. On December 14, 2007, the European Council decided to establish a group of prominent personalities selected on the basis of merit so to identify the key issues which the Union is likely to face in the future. Their mandate is to assist the European Union in effectively anticipating and meeting challenges in the longer term horizon of 2020 to 2030. News about their meetings and discussions seldom reach the public, one reason being the fact that after this issue was recently addressed in the press, former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez (chair of the Reflection Group) stated “that at the moment members needed to discuss (this issue) between themselves. He nevertheless admitted that a debate could take place after the summer.”

Operation Facelift | © by JDS Architects 2009

In April 2008 the EU announced “Operation Facelift“, a competition (organized by the Brussels-Capital Region, in close collaboration with the European Commission and Brussels-Town) for the restructuring of Ground Euro. From 35 teams applying for this, the following 5 teams were selected: Christian de Portzamparc (FR), Fletcher Priest Architects (UK), Xaveer de Geyter Architecten (BE), OMA (NL) and JDS Architects (BE). Stirring away from earlier ambitions to make the area “icon-friendly”, the purpose of the design exercise, anno 2008, was to ride the “eco-train”:

The area covered by the competition is the zone around the “rue de la Loi” between the inner metropolitan ring and the “chaussée d’Etterbeek”. (…). It aims to create an eco-district bringing together the main European administrative centre, diversified housing and cultural and leisure facilities which are accessible to all. This project also meets the shared wish of the European Commission and the regional authorities to reorganise the Commission’s existing premises along the “rue de la Loi”. This would bring the Commission’s holdings within this zone from the current 170.000 m² to 400.000 m² (projected surface area).

Operation Facelift | © by Fletcher Priest Architects 2009

Operation Facelift | © by OMA 2009

The competition was won by Christian de Portzamparc (FR) with a project that, according to the press release, has following qualities:

The urban design proposed by the winning team fulfills the specifications of the competition and addresses the goals of the master plan for the European district: to create an original urban form bearing a strong and symbolic identity for Europe, and integrating perfectly with the adjoining neighbourhoods; to carry forward a convivial and environmentally-friendly city project combining offices and housing, and giving priority to soft transport modes (public transport, pedestrians, cyclists).

Operation Facelift | © Christian de Portzamparc by 2009

This is the type of comments that would legitimate the ambition all other proposals as well. In the wake of this decision a couple of good articles have been written about this issue; “Grand New Designs for Brussels” (Der Spiegel), “Brussels’ EU quarter set for spectacular facelift” (EurActiv) and “Making Brussels beautiful” (euobserver).

Operation Facelift | © by Xaveer de Geyter Architecten 2009

In the mean time, all offices have put their Ground Euro proposals on their websites, the ones of Christian de Portzamparc (FR) and Fletcher Priest Architects (UK) do not provide a direct link, while the results of “Operation Facelift” by JDS Architects (BE) can be found here, by OMA (NL) there and by Xaveer de Geyter Architecten (BE) here.

A couple of snapshots of Ground Euro. The European Capital’s reality in your face…

Ground Euro | May 5, 2009

Pictures by movingcities.org

Brussels Capital of Europe | MovingCities

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Brussels | Ground Euro & Operation Facelift

Leaving Lisbon | May 4, 2009

Landing in Brussels | May 4, 2009

Pictures by movingcities.org

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Lisbon >> Brussels

Brussels | April 16, 2009

Lisbon | April 16, 2009

Pictures by movingcities.org

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Brussels >> Lisbon

Belgium | April 2009

According to statistics Belgium is 99% urbanized. Driving through it, one is forced to rethink one’s “Chinese” perception of urbanization. Belgium is fully peri-urbanized, offering a strongly mixed territory of housing developments, roads, warehouses, churches and open fields. Some coined “nebular city” for this development which is most visible in Flanders, located in the Northern half of the country.

Flemish architects, academics, urban researchers and critics appropriated some years ago the Italian concept of the “città diffusa” in order to describe their habitat. They translated this first into the Dutch “nevelstad” and then into the English “nebular city”. In 1999 the Italian architect, critic and nowadays editor-in-chief of Abitare, Stefano Boeri published “The Diffuse City“, a more appropriate translation of the term, in which he makes following analysis of this condition:

Cities that no longer have edges, that look today like nebulas dotted with a swarm of buildings standing in isolation or heaped together incongruously. The new urban dimension that has been laid over the top of the modern city examined in the books by Rossi, Gregotti and Aymonino, though without cancelling it out, reflects a society where the number of people and forces capable of modifying space has increased enormously. And this in turn has radically altered the relationship between the principles of difference and variation that had been codified in the texts of urban morphology thirty years ago. Today the principle of difference no longer acts in the way it was thought to at the time between the nineteenth-century city and the Renaissance one, between the public spaces of the periphery and the great industrial zones but between the individual molecules of an urban organism that has expanded enormously: between the suburban house and the adjoining shopping centre, between this and the adjoining block of apartments, between the car wash and the industrial shed with attached residence, between the bypass and the small area of farmland.

Belgium | April 2009

In Flanders, the contrast between the city and the countryside has ceased to exist. Although mentally there is still a separation, physically one moves from one node of urban life to another; the connecting roads are flanked with houses. Movement here means through eroding physical boundaries between city and nature, merging it all into a semi-urban pattern. In 2002 the Belgian architect Xaveer de Geyter published “After-Sprawl: Research On The Contemporary City”, a research on the actual state and potential transformation of this condition. Although largely known to many architects, few has been written so far about the work of Xaveer de Geyter, one noted exception being ‘The Urban Defender’ by Naomi Stead. She writes de Geyter’s vision down as following:

But while architects have a long tradition of being both intellectually and aesthetically snobbish about suburbia, De Geyter takes a middle ground. His position is distinguished by a simultaneous pragmatism and hopefulness; the answer, he argues, is not to reject the suburban sprawl outright, or to endlessly complain about it. “It’s not like we think the car should be the centre of our lives. There are many voices today against the car, but in some sense we are against this, because it’s a false discussion so long as two thirds of the Belgian population actually wants to live this way. Our work is a reaction against this dichotomy, it is dealing with the actual existing situation.” The answer is to embrace sprawl as a reality, to see its positive potential, and to admire its vitality. In this way, this diffuse condition can be seen as a rich and productive field, indeterminate and therefore full of possibilities.

For now, some unsnobbish snapshots from the land of the after-sprawl.

Belgium | April 2009

Pictures by movingcities.org

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Driving through Belgium | part II

Belgium | April 2009

In 1968 the Belgian architect Renaat Braem published a manifesto on his native country called “The Ugliest Country in the World”. In 1979, on the eve of the 150th anniversary of Belgian independence, architect and artist Luc Deleu (T.O.P. Office) laid ‘the last stone of Belgium’ in his small front garden in Antwerp. Today, rather surprisingly, Belgium still exists. Some snapshots and background to a 99% urbanized territory.

Lineair City | Renaat Braem

Renaat Braem is one of the primary exponents of post-war architecture in Belgium. He completed his studies in architecture in his native town of Antwerp, with a visionary plan for the creation of a 100 kilometer ‘lineair city’, right through the heart of Belgium. As the only Belgian ever to do so, Braem was in 1936 apprenticed to Le Corbusier, who recommended him for CIAM membership the following year. In “The Ugliest Country in the World” (1968) manifesto he denounced the absence of town and country planning in Belgium. As most Belgian architect he had a love-hate relationship with the architectural and urban development of his country, of which “The Most Beautiful Country in the World” (1986) manifesto bears witness.

In “How Belgium Got Its Present Look” Belgian architecture critic Francis Strauven gives a short and poignant overview of the tensions, comparing this with the development of The Netherlands, embedded in this small European territory:

Whereas in the Netherlands the landscape has largely been preserved, in Belgium it has been almost entirely overrun by building. Buildings spring up on just about every road, both the major and minor ones, including former country lanes, and it is not only housing of every type and size, but also, scattered amongst them, a variety of retail and catering businesses, offices and showrooms, small and medium companies – a varied mixture in which not a jot of planning is to be found. If the Netherlands looks like a model of environmental planning, in many ways Belgium seems to embody its opposite.

The Last Stone of Belgium (1979) | Luc Deleu

Architects not seldom feel a sense of despair and relief to work in this condition. Exemplary for this is the work of artist and architect Luc Deleu (T.O.P. Office), whose The Unadapted City-project (1995-1999) presents a culmination of his thinking, which also can be found in his ‘Orbanistic Manifesto’ (1980). The aforementioned Francis Strauven described the work of Luc Deleu as anarchistic, conceptual and concerned:

In 1970, shortly after graduating, he had emphatically already taken leave of architecture, going on to assume: the role of a conceptual artist-architect. In the course of the seventies he launched about 75 ‘proposals and recommendations’ for the transformation of the environment, from the development of urban agriculture and horticulture, including public poultry and urban dung heaps to the restoration of public transport, the conversion of monuments into social housing, and the installation of mobile marine cities using recycled passenger ships and supertankers. Deleu’s anarchistic attitudes were based on a clear ecological awareness. In the ‘Orbanistic Manifesto’, which he published in 1980, he pointed to the problem of worldwide malnutrition and the limits ofnatural resources.

D.O.S. '98 - Brikabrak - model scale 1/333 (detail, 1998) | Luc Deleu & T.O.P. Office

Dinkytown - plan | Luc Deleu & T.O.P. Office

In 2004, the Muhka, a contemporary art museum in Antwerp, displayed the work of Luc Deleu in a show called “The Unadapted City“:

This organism conceived as a 22 km long linear city(1), was designed for 120.000 inhabitants. Its distribution scheme is of quintessential importance for the development of The Unadapted City, because it formulated its underlying principles which are at odds with the usual way of organising an urban development. Subsequently, an atlas of facilities for large-scale urban developments, consisting of 10 plates in different languages (according to the inspiration of the moment) was developed.

At the time MovingCities went seeing the show, and published the “Tune in & Turn on“-review on Archined:

Is Luc Deleu a realist, idealist or visionary? To be honest, it’s a question I’d prefer not to answer. After seeing the exhibition Values in Antwerp’s MUHKA, I’m occupied by just one question. What purpose is served by the work of Luc ‘Self-Power Man’ Deleu, the self-appointed orbanist?

For now, some snapshots while moving through Belgium.

Belgium | April 2009

Pictures by movingcities.org

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Driving through Belgium | part I

Stockholm | April 7, 2009

On Tuesday April 7 MovingCities flew from Stockholm to Brussels to embark on a five week inner-European journey. Departing under clear skies, Stockholm rapidly disappeared into an abstraction organization of architectures. With a new tag, called “aerophotography”, we document our past and future impressions of monitoring cities from the sky/airplane.

Brussels | April 7, 2009

Recalling a previous post on this subject, documenting a flight from Brussels to Lisbon (August 2008), in which we made reference to the Aviopolis-publication by Australian theorist Gillian Fuller and artist Ross Rudesch Harley. Recently they elaborated further on their findings in the Australian media & culture magazine “M/C Journal”. In an issue called “Still”, guest-edited by David Bissell and Gillian Fuller, Fuller & Harley published a visual essay called “Light-Air-Portals: Visual Notes on Differential Mobility”:

In this photo essay I’d like to pull a different thread and ask whether it’s possible to think of aeromobility in terms of “uneven, differential mobility” (Bissell 280). What would it mean to consider waiting and stillness as forms of bodily engagement operating over a number of different scales and temporalities of movement and anticipation, without privileging speed over stillness? Instead of thinking mobility and stillness as diametrically opposed, can we instead conceive of them as occupying a number of different spatio-temporal registers in a dynamic range of mobility?

Stockholm | April 7, 2009

With our new “aerophotography”-tag, MovingCities wants to document our abstracted view of processes of urbanization that goes along with the visual experience of leaving and landing in the world’s cities. Trying to grasp the world much alike Alastair Gordon described in his “Naked Airport”-book Rudyard Kipling’s experience:

As early as 1907, Rudyard Kipling, the English author and world-traveler, had written about the airplane with remarkable prescience: “The time is near when men will receive their normal impressions of a new country suddenly and in plan, not slowly and in perspective; when the most extreme distances will be brought within the compass of one week’s–one hundred and sixty-eight hours’–travel; when the word ‘inaccessible,’ as applied to any given spot on the surface of the globe, will cease to have any meaning.” Lindbergh realized Kipling’s prophecy: he not only linked two hemispheres, he redefined the concept of “arrival.” Destinations would no longer be approached in the traditional perspective of Renaissance space, nor from the gradual, ground-view of trains, busses or ships, but rapidly, from the air, with the city appearing oddly splayed in abstraction. The gateways would no longer be harbors and railroad stations. Now it was the airport, a place of blinding lights and unexpected urgency.

Stockholm - Brussels | April 7, 2009

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Stockholm >> Brussels

The airport not only transforms a body on the ground into a body in the air, but it also involves the incorporeal transformation of the travelling body — as a citizen, a passenger (pax), a baggage allowance, an accused or an innocent. The airport constitutes a space where a series of contractual declarations (I am Australian, I have nothing to declare, I packed these bags myself) accumulate into a password where I am free to deterritorialise on a literal level — I take flight, but not without a ‘cost’. I have been scanned, checked and made to feel guilty. I could be a body containing wrong bodies (a smuggler), a body that could explode (a ‘terrorist’), or I could be a body with no rights (an ‘illegal alien’). As Bukatman might say, ‘the subject has been propelled into the machine’ (1993: 17). I’m not sure I’d evoke the relation in such transitive terms, but one thing is quite sure: ‘the subject’ is definitely in trouble at the airport.

Staying away from the terror of transit, following rules and regulations, registering luggage, scanning bodies, buying the newspaper in three different languages. And on the plane some attempts in amateur aerography.

Brussels Airport | August 27, 2008

Flying over Brussels | August 27, 2008

Flying over Lisbon | August 27, 2008

Pictures by Bert de Muynck | movingcities.org

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Brussels > Lisbon

Beijing seen from flight CA933 | Beijing, February 18, 2008

Paris, February 18-19, 2008

Driving through Belgium | Paris-Brussels, February 19, 2008

Brussels - Tel Aviv, February 19, 2008

Pictures by Bert de Muynck | movingcities.org

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Beijing > Paris > Brussels > Tel Aviv