Talks

“Panorama NL”
Daan Zandbelt

Panorama Nederland is a future perspective for the spatial design of the Netherlands. It shows how the major social issues of today can be the key to welcome, structural improvements in the future. An optimistic and attractive picture of the future. The Netherlands faces a number of complex issues. Climate change, the aging society, the switch to renewable energy, the acute shortage of housing and the sustainability of agriculture. Each and every one of which we will all experience the consequences, in our landscape and in our lifestyle. With Panorama Nederland, the Board of Government Advisors sketches an optimistic and attractive picture of the future. A Netherlands that remains extremely recognizable for everyone, but that works fundamentally differently in all kinds of areas. It is up to the imagination, the desire as an engine.

— Daan Zandbelt (MSc) (1975) graduated with honorable mention from Delft University of Technology as an architect and urbanist and studied in Chicago at UIC. During his studies he organized INDESEM’98. In 2002 he founded Zandbelt&vandenBerg, architecture and urban design, in Rotterdam with Rogier van den Berg. The office operated succesfully for ten years with a team of around 10 employees. It estabislished a recognized position in the Dutch ecosystem of offices in urbanism and architecture. In 2013 Daan founded ZAUD (Zandbelt Architecture Urbanism & Design) an office for architecture and urbanism, in which he conducted projects in the same fields. In 2014 he joined as a partner De Zwarte Hond, an office for architecture and urbanism based in Rotterdam, Groningen and Cologne. From 2003 till 2016 he was part of the Chair of Metropolitan and Regional Design at Delft University of Technology, where he was assistant professor. Since 2016 Daan is ‘rijksadviseur’, government Advisor on the Built and Rural Environment. As such he advises the National Government and its partners solicited and solicited on spatial issues.He is part of Quality teams that supervise keyprojects such as the revitalization of the Afsluitdijk and the stations of the Zuidas (the Dutch CBD) and Schiphol airport. He sets out research-by-design projects to promote new fields of interest for the national government. And last but not least, last year, he launched Panorama Nederland with the CRa, to promote spatial planning at the national level and as an input for the new National Plan (NOVI).

“Overexploited Territories”
Muriz Djurdjevic & Thomas Paturet

“Our intervention aims at confronting the classical debates for and against the primacy of economy and employment, against the argument for maintaining landscapes and ecosystems intact. Should we exploit or maintain? Parallel to this argument exists the discussion around the benefits for local versus national populations, global or European interests. What our research shows is that planning (whether it be on land or on sea) is never truly biased, regardless of the efforts by the concerned actors to provide neutrality. In the end, it amounts to a political process linked to a specific paradigm or logic. Our work intents to raise questions and generate ideas on how the exploitation, using the the Baltic Sea as case, could be organised so humans can adequately manage and use the resources offered by the sea; today and in the future. Planning will become crucial in the Baltic Sea where user pressures are currently relatively manageable but are expected to witness a strong shift in the years to come.”

— Muriz Djurdjevic & Thomas Paturet graduated in 2016 from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne under the supervision of the Laboratory Basel. Their thesis “Atlas of Overexploited Territories – Baltic Sea” was exhibited at the 2016 Venice Biennale within the Baltic Pavilion. In 2016 it won the “Best Énoncé Théorique” prize awarded by the Architecture Faculty of the EPFL. Their master project “Voyage au centre de la mer, vers un archipel industriel,” follow-up of their thesis, won the Arditi Prize for the Best Diploma Project at the EPFL as well as an Anerkennung Next Generation Prize at the Swiss Arc-Awards. It was published in the “Archizoom BestOf 2016” and the “Graduate Directory 2017” in Wallpaper* Magazine. Since 2016, Muriz works at Herzog & de Meuron in Basel, Switzerland. Former editor at ATLAS OF PLACES, he now curates the collective HdM Pills proposing an alternative reading of Herzog & de Meuron’s work. Since 2017, Thomas works at MADE IN in Geneva and as a teaching assistant for the Charbonnet-Heiz Studio at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. He is also the editor of the online journal ATLAS OF PLACES.

“Mobilis in Mobile”
Dirk Sijmons

In this talk, Dirk Sijmons outlines the implications of the observation that we are living in the age of mankind, the Anthropocene. Four philosophical approaches towards the Antropocene are identified (Denialism, Eco-Modernism, Post-Humanism and Anthropocentrism 2.0) and the future political energy between these approaches are briefly sketched. The four stances are illustrated with examples from design and popular culture showing how they could function as navigating tools in a new geological era.*

*The talk was originally presented under the framework of ‘School’s Out! #2’ on Friday 22 February 2019, at the Independent School for the City.

— Prof. Dirk Sijmons, landscape architect, studied at Delft University of Technology. He worked at the Nature Conservation unit of the Ministry of Culture, Recreation and Social work from 1977 until 1981. From 1981 until 1984 he was head of the strategic policy development and research coordination unit of the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature Management and Fisheries. From 1984 until 1990 he was head of the Landscape Architecture Department of the Dutch Forestry Commission. From 1990 until 1993 he was coordinator of the Landscape Architecture study programme of the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam. In 1990 he was one of the three founders of H+N+S Landscape Architects. In 2004 Dirk Sijmons was appointed Dutch Government Advisor on Landscape. He received the prestigious Edgar Doncker award in 2007 for his contribution to Dutch culture. From 2008 until 2015 Sijmons was professor of Environmental Design at Delft University of Technology. In 2014 he was the chief curator of IABR ‘Urban by Nature’. In 2017 he received the prestigious premier award for Landscape Architecture, the IFLA – Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Award – the highest honourable carrier prize for contribution in the field of Landscape Architecture.

“Constructed Natures”
Filippo LaFleur

Following a recent reconceptualization and discussion to overcome the nature – culture, economy – ecology and urban – rural dichotomy, a year-long project was set to study the extent/ feasibility of the idea that an alternative path for infrastructure and regional development is possible. As seemingly unrelated fields, ground and atmosphere hold an inseparable bond: The Carbon cycle. Largely overlooked, the capacity of the ground to produce and sustain cycles of decomposition, recycling of organic matter, growth of plants, and carbon sequestration must be explored ‘by design’, in order to unravel possible future urban landscape transformation. In this talk, Filippo LaFleur presents the precedents and recent outcomes of the year-long project on the Architecture of Carbon Sequestration as an envisioned take on infrastructure design and ecology under extremes.

— Filippo LaFleur has been a researcher at the Department of Urbanism, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft since 2015. He is principal investigator within the Delta Urbanism Interdisciplinary Research Group under the frameworks of Transitional Territories Studio and DIMI Delft Deltas Infrastructure and Mobility Initiative ‘Special Projects’. His interest lies at the intersection between landscape, urbanism and ecology in regards to spatial and temporal transformations of both land and maritime landscapes. Through projects he investigates interrelations between natural processes, societal practices, and (geo)political dynamics. He has a strong emphasis on the agency of spatial interventions and on the role of representation and design as research instruments.

“There is no place but here”
Taneha Kuzniecow Bacchin

Our actions are being guided by extremes and by scarcity mentality that profoundly shape and reduce our vision of the environment’s future: radical climatic changes, extreme weather conditions, natural disasters’ higher frequency, increase in average temperatures and sea levels rises are often matched with lack of knowledge, resources, insight and action. This mindset is what shapes the unlikelihood of mitigating carbon emissions, restoring the extent of polluted grounds and increasing the supply of depleted resources. What we see is the rising of narratives and dialogues on the impossibility of life as we know it, the loss of any form of (re)assurance, where few trajectories of change seem to unfold and intersect: acceptance and release, nihilism and inaction, continuing repair or retreat, and finally novelty by means of a creative revolution are at the center of discourses. All debatable.
If architecture cannot produce life but simply frame it by affording and/or constraining movements within a given environment and time, what is the design space that is left in each of these trajectories? Can we still act without the weight of self-criticism and the fear of failure?

This brief introduction aims at setting the stage of the invited talks, ranging from a historical and philosophical reading of navigating the anthropocene (Dirk Sijmons), to an architectural and political position on overexploited territories (Muriz Djurdjevic & Thomas Paturet), and finally to the emancipation (or radical take) of spatial design by constructing new natures (Filippo LaFleur) and portraying an optimistic/ attractive future Panorama (Daan Zandbelt).

— Taneha Kuzniecow Bacchin is an architect, researcher and educator. She is Assistant Professor in Urban Design, Research Leader and Coordinator of Education of the Delta Urbanism Interdisciplinary Research Group at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft. She leads the Transitional Territories Graduation Studio and, together with Birgit Hausleitner, the EMU European Post-Master in Urbanism Spring Semester. Her research focuses on the relation between landscape architecture, infrastructure and urban form. Her current projects deal with the changing nature of the territorial project addressing extreme weather and resource scarcity. She is committee member of the International Water Association and serves as reviewer for several water journals. Her work has been funded internationally and exhibited at the Venice Biennale 2002, and 2018, and São Paulo Biennale 2013. Her upcoming books are Bio-Territoriality: the Architecture and Politics of Urban Nature, and Adaptation by Design, together with Filippo LaFleur.