Open Architecture and its Discontents

The qualities that characterise open works of art have become prevalent in mainstream architecture theory. Trying to elucidate why openness appears to mean so many different things and at the same time remains an ethereal concept, it seems worthwhile to reflect on potential justifications for its use. While the notion can be effectively and...

¿Independencia o xenofobia?: La arquitectura y las paradojas de la descolonización

The act of decolonizing can have quite different meanings, depending on the definition of the term colony used. In architecture, so-called decolonial studies suggest an opening towards new forms of knowledge. On the other hand, those who practice said studies often fall into different forms of determinism, which end up hindering that potential....

Placing Urban Writings: Narrative Technology and Possible Futures for the European City

The essay departs from the question: How can stories be used for the development of cities? <br/><br/>In response, a theoretical framework is delineated that recognizes the built environment as a model that is both telic (a vision of a possible future) and technical (the means required to attain that future). By adopting this framework, the...

Delft: Views on Delft

Around 1661, Johannes Vermeer painted what has become one of the most famous city views: the View of Delft. The city of Delft is depicted from across the water of the River Schie. We see the city as a collection of brick buildings with lower and higher towers, peaking into the sky, and being reflected in the water of the river. The light looks...

Historias Entrelazadas: Una conversación sobre arquitecturas abiertas con Esra Akcan

Espacios Abiertos en la Ciudad Latinoamericana

Una y Tres Arquitecturas Abiertas

Truth, Change, Knowledge and Understanding

Book review of the second edition of Site Matters, edited by Andrea Kahn and Carol J. Burns

Narrative Methods for Writing Urban Places

This fifth issue of the Writingplace Journal examines different narrative methods, understood as procedures, techniques or ways of relating or recounting events, and how they can be used to appraise and imagine the city. The editorial process of the issue has been developed within the context of the EU-funded COST Action ‘Writing Urban Places’,...

How to Speak?: A conversation with Alberto Pérez-Gómez about the necessity of Language to Understand and Practice Architecture

Elaborating on a host of historical and theoretical references, in this conversation Alberto Pérez-Gómez suggests a course of action for the development of the architectural discipline; opposing the banality of scientism and rationalism, and recognizing instead the need for a degree of obscurity and ambiguity as essential to the full exercise of...

Writing, Filming, Building: Using a Taxonomy of Moviegoers to Appraise Spatial Imagination in Architecture

How do we envision possible futures for the built environment? What allows us to imagine spaces that do not yet exist? While superstitious approaches to these questions often explain spatial imagination as an ineffable or arcane process, this article advances a simple description of how built space can be understood, envisioned and ultimately...

Architecture as Exchange: Framing the Architecture Competition as Contact Zone

The editorial introduction to this issue of Footprint follows a double trajectory. On the one hand, it describes an ambition for architecture historiography. The social sciences have long recognised the need for more comprehensive and inclusive methods for writing history. Among them, comparative literature scholar Mary Louise Pratt’s ‘contact...

Transactions; or Architecture as a System of Research Programs

This study of the historiography of architecture and the built environment develops the thesis that well-known modernist histories of architecture, such as those written by Reyner Banham, remain unable to appraise the many nuances and complexities that characterize modern architecture. It is argued here that, among other reasons, they are unable...

Transversing Formalisms

In the editorial introduction of this issue of Footprint, the question of architectural form is approached from a population of minor perspectives. Inspired by Bateson’s metalogues, the authors wish to bring forward multiple questions on architectural form instead of a single generalizing one: from ‘what is form’ to ‘how, when, where and why is...

Accommodating the Commons: Social-Spatial Practices in Bogotá

The article describes research and design carried out in the Graduation Studio “Positions in Practice” (2015-2017) of the Chair of Methods and Analysis at Delft University of Technology , which focused on the urban context of Bogotá, as a laboratory for the definition of architectural positions. The study was part of the larger investigation ...

Nadere invulling van het voorgestelde ontwerp voor de nieuwe teenconstructie bij Ter Heijde

In deze notitie is het ontwerp van de nieuwe teenconstructie van de duinvoetverdediging bij Ter Heyde behandeld. Deze teenconstructie is nodig gebleken na analyse van de uitgevoerde ontgrondingsberekeningen, die een kuildiepte nabij de teen voorspellen tot uiterst N.A.P. -3 m. Als principe oplossing is door de Directie Zuid-Holland gekozen voor...

Zuidwal (Maasvlakte). Analyse schade en ontwerp taludbekleding

Tijdens de stormperiode op 28 en 29 februari en 1 maart is een schade van ongeveer 10.000 m2 ontstaan aan de glooiing van Basaltonzuilen aan de noordzijde van de Maasvlakte. Ten aanzien van een schade met een dergelijke omvang dringen zich twee vragen op, namelijk: - Hoe kon deze schade bij de opgetreden golfaanval ontstaan? - Hoe zwaar moet de...

Versterking van de hoogwaterkering ter plaatse van de Koopmans - en Vissershaven te Vlissingen in het Kader van de Delta wet

In Vlissingen , vlak naast het monument van de Ruyter op het Keizershoofd ligt een tweetal kleine havenbekkens . Gelegen in een architec tonische fraaie en vooral oude omgeving, maken de Vissershaven en Koopmanshaven deel uit van het stadsgezicht . De Koopmanshaven had vroeger een veel gro ter oppervlak , maar naarmate de stad Vlissingen groeide...