More foreign travel recently with trips to Montenegro and the Netherlands.
The latter was particularly interesting with regard to architecture, engineering and the symbiosis between the two. Along with Steve Watts of Davis Langdon and Mark Sarkisian of SOM I had been invited to the Technical University or Delft to critique the mid-term Architectural portfolios and give a lecture on high rise design. Not my forte compared to Steve and Mark who are the real experts in the field but hopefully I added a different approach to the issues.
Anyway, the students had been grouped into multi disciplinary teams and had made some amazing progress in resolving a complex brief. I was struck by the fact that one student in each team was a dedicated BIM adviser which meant that the designs were sometimes conditioned with a certain repeatable nature possibly in order to include the BIM assessment which may have been a shame. Student portfolios should be an opportunity to imagine the unimaginable and try new things, new forms and new technology. Another observation, which could equally be made made about architecture students in the UK, is that the students spend a huge amount of time in the preparation of their final design and are more reticent about showing how they got there, for example by showing us their thought process through sketching. In its way this may be as equally interesting or relevant as the final presentation.
Although the critiques were in Delft we stayed in Rotterdam which is an interesting place, a structural engineering play ground. Going for a stroll early in the morning turn the corner and there is an office building with a huge cantilever. Another, supported by just its core is being planned nearby and another with an external mega prop against dynamic effects (I think) is within walking distance. One has the impression of city without hangups, an imaginative approach to budgets and building and unconstrained in its form making.
At dinner with Dutch Architects I asked why this is so. They replied that this had been a tradition for some time and that it was because they were ’unafraid’. Define ’unafraid’? Not easy to be honest but they felt that because there was a general acceptance that this tradition, which has helped breed the likes of OMA, was established designers started with a confidence that their ideas would meeting a supportive response. They also stated that this freedom didn’t come with a price, less than €2000/m2 build cost was mentioned. Some research is needed.
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