2010.01

Magdeburg Science Port Competition:
SMAQ wins 1st Prize

SMAQ wins in collaboration with HL landscape architects the 1st prize in the international competition for the re-design of Magdeburg's historical port. The goal is to restructure the former trade port into a so called Science Port as a destination for innovative businesses and a place for knowledge transfer. The project for the Magdeburg Science Port is part of the International Building Exhibition 2010.

For more information please visit:
baunetz.de
competitionline.de
Scienceport Magdeburg

2009.09

International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam

The fourth edition of the International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam (IABR) with the theme "Open City - Designing Coexistence", curated by Kees Christiaanse, presents SMAQ´s manifesto "The Charta of Dubai" and its application: "X-Palm" as part of the exhibition REFUGE, sub-curated by Philipp Misselwitz and Can Altay, at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi).

CHARTER OF DUBAI
With financial cooling and global warming, Dubai´s gated refuges cast long shadows in the desert. The contradiction inherent in the gated refuge - between independent islands and their dependency on outside resources - is located at surface boundaries where various cross-connections are concealed. SMAQ's Charter of Dubai proposes a series of boundary-altering techniques designed to unearth these connections:

re:form - from spectacular image to urban figure; re:cover - from sand as land to dynamic environments of wind and water; re:source - from demanding air- conditioning to light, shade, and breeze; re:block - from controlled check points to a permeable grid; re:zone - from partitioned sameness to an exploration of difference; re:lock - from invisible gates to articulated entries; re:divide - from enclosure exclusion to cultural diversification; re:gain - from property speculation to social appropriation; re:plot - from grand estates to affordable dwelling aggregates; re:use - from under-utilized yards to common courtyards; re:view - from billboard architecture to local types

With these measures, edges are re-drawn via environmental forces, boundaries are reinvented as social connectors, and limits are reset to shorten energy cycles. Expanding, thickening, feathering, and scattering boundaries, here exemplified on The Palm Jumeirah, will allow Dubai to form the robust tissue of a diverse, open metropolis, which it so desperately aspires to be.

IABR International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam
Netherlands Architecture Institute NAi
Museumpark 25, 3015 CB Rotterdam, Netherlands

Exhibition: September 24, 2009 - January 10, 2010

For more information please visit:
International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR)
Abitare

2009.08

Prize for Multigenerational Houses

SMAQ received the forth prize for their proposal in a competition for multigenerational houses and a kindergarten located in Königsbrunn, southern Germany. The project develops a new typology of living apart and together at the same time across generations.

For more information please visit:
competitionline.de

2009.03

SMAQ receives 2nd Prize in Competition for Elmshorn

For their "innovative" proposal SMAQ receives a second prize in the international urban design competition for the re-development of Krückau-Vormstegen. The former industrial area Krückau-Vormstegen is situated in direct proximity to the historical city centre of Elmshorn, a small town close to Hamburg, Germany.

Collaborators: Heilbronner Lachkareff Landschaftsarchitekten, Buro Happold, Johannes Grothaus

For more information please visit:
competitionline.de

2008.11

SMAQ receives AR AWARD 2008

SMAQ receives prestigious Architectural Review Award for Emerging Architecture 2008 (commended).
"Inaugurated in 1999, the annual AR Awards are recognised as the world's leading awards programme for young architects, with the mission to discover emerging talents and celebrate the stars of tomorrow." A distingished international jury assessed over 430 entries in the awards' 10th cycle. The results were announced on 27 November at RIBA, London. SMAQ was awarded for the projects BAD (bath) realized in Stuttgart, Germany.

Jury criteria included sensibility to place and context, awareness of ecological implications, constructional ingenuity, sensitive understanding of materials, and inventivness in handling space. Projects had to demonstrate a clear commitment to improving human life, rather being preoccupied simply architecture as art.

Jury: Sir Peter Cook (London), Peter Davey (Former Editor of The Architectural Review), Sou Fujimoto (Tokyo, Japan), Edouard Francois (Paris, France), Sheila O'Donnell (Ireland) and Paul Finch (Editor of The Architectural Review and Chairman of the Jury).

For more information please visit:
AR Awards 2008
BAD (bath) in the Architectural Review
Additional images

2008.11

SMAQ receives Holcim Award

SMAQ receives prestigious Holcim Award for Sustainable Construction. November 12 the winners of the Holcim Awards from across region Africa Middle East were announced at a ceremony in Marrakech. Almost 5000 projects from 90 countries were entered in the second Holcim Awards competition. Submissions from Africa Middle East were evaluated by an independent jury hosted by the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and headed by Joe Addo. SMAQ was awarded with an acknowledgement prize for the mixed-used responsive urban planning strategy XERITOWN for Dubai, UAE.

XERITOWN - DUBAI

Paramount Xeritown is located in Dubailand, a new extension of the city towards the inland desert. In the design, the built up area has been compressed to occupy only fifty percent of the site as a reaction to the sun condition, to achieve a compact and shaded fabric. Its structure is defined by alternating narrow pedestrian alleys and small squares, typical of Arabic towns. This urban tissue is divided in elongated islands that are orientated so to gain from the prevailing winds crossing the site. The cool breeze from the sea is channelled between the islands and through the longitudinal cuts in the urban fabric, while the hot wind from the desert is deviated above the development.

Credits: SMAQ – architecture urbanism research (Berlin): Sabine Müller and Andreas Quednau with Joachim Schultz; Team: Therese Granberg, Ludovica Rogers, Felipe Flores, Kathrin Löer, Valle Medina, Martino Sacchi; in collaboration with X-Architects (Dubai); Johannes Grothaus Landscape Architects (Potsdam), Reflexion (Zurich), and BuroHappold (London); Developer: Dubai Properties.

For more information please visit:
Holcim Foundation
Xeritown

2008.11

Competition Landesgartenschau Löbau

In the competition for the Landesgartenschau (state garden exhibition) to be held in Löbau in the year 2012 SMAQ receives a third prize for the design done in collaboration with heilbronner landschaft+architektur and Kamel Louafi (both Berlin).

For more information please visit:
competitionline.de

2008.10

Exhibition at Deutsches Architektur Zentrum DAZ in Berlin

GLASHAUS_10, a series by the Deutsches Architektur Zentrum DAZ in Berlin, is presenting SMAQ and their work in a solo exhibition with the title Environment - Umwelten.

EINVIRONMENT - UMWELTEN
The exhibition Environments – Umwelten assembles in an abstract landscape the sites and contexts of four different designs. These, from the small scale BAD (bath) in Stuttgart to the Xeritown masterplan in Dubai, all engage with the relationship between environmental condition and urban usages. Here environmental conditions are intended as the various dynamics involved in the projects, ranging from the climatic factors, such as rain, sun, wind and seasonal changes, to the water infrastructures, traffic flows and usage patterns. The four projects presented propose diverse solutions on how these dynamics can become integral parts of everyday life and on how they can be inscribed morphologically into the context’s ecosystems. With this approach the projects themselves become unique environments that enable new and multiple usages.

Deutsches Architektur Zentrum DAZ
Köpenicker Straße 48/49, 10179 Berlin

Opening: Thursday, October 16, 2008, 19.00
Exhibition: October 17th – December 12th, 2008 Monday to Friday 09:00–19:00 and with appointment

For more information please visit:
Deutsches Architektur Zentrum DAZ
DAZ Press Release
Invitation (PDF 1MB)

2008.09

SMAQ at Venice Architecture Biennale

SMAQ is featured at the Venice Biennale, 11th International Architecture Exhibition Out There - Architecture Beyond Building curated by Aaron Betsky. The Cosy Chair designed for Droog is on show in the S1NGLETOWN Exhibition curated by Droog and KesselsKramer from September 14th to November 23rd 2008. The project Cumulus for Oslo, Norway is featured in the German Biennale Catalogue Updating Germany.

S1NGLETOWN
S1NGLETOWN focuses on the world of contemporary singles. Its relevance is broad, as all of us are likely to belong to this group at some stage in our lives — and likely more than once. In fact, some sources predict that a third of people in developed countries will be living alone by 2026.
S1NGLETOWN is an exhibition that's also a town, an abstract interpretation of a new kind of urban space. Visitors will be able to walk its streets and interact with its products and citizens, and view their homes.

COSY CHAIR
Cosy Chair replaces the mono-functional wall mounted radiator in form of a piece of comfortable furniture that heats locally right where one might sit and rest for a cup of tea, to read a book or watch TV. The Cosy Chair cuts energy consumption by providing a field of differentiated temperatures and heating right where the warmth is used instead of heating the whole volume of the space equally. It is made of fifty meter bent stainless steel tubing that plug into the regular heating system of a building.

CUMULUS
Cumulus is an urban strategy for Olso, Norway that conceives public spaces as related to the environmental dynamics of northern living. The proposal for a mixed-used development (re)binds the different social spheres, programmes and scales of an existing 70ties development and a new urban centre through a concept of water cycling and seasonal expansion and contraction.
An important local environmental force - rain - collected on roofs and facades of the inserted dwelling towers is stored to reflect light and skies into the apartments; it is partially used in communal laundries and finally released at a social event in nearing winter to flood the public in-between spaces of the development: Congealing it expands the central indoor ice skating ring into an open air skating surface. While this temporal icy plane serves encounters of existing as well as incoming communities, spring will drain the waters to bordering allotment ecologies.

For more information please visit:
11. International Architecture Biennale
S1NGLETOWN
Updating Germany
Cumulus
Droog Design

2008.05

Masterplan for Dubai announced

The masterplan for Paramount Xeritown, a 60 hectares site in Dubai, was officially presented at the international property investment and development exhibition Cityscape in Abu Dhabi. The sustainable mixed-use development for 7000 inhabitants will be build within the next three years.

Paramount Xeritown - Dubai

Paramount Xeritown is located in Dubailand, a new extension of the city towards the inland desert. In the design, the built up area has been compressed to occupy only fifty percent of the site as a reaction to the sun condition, to achieve a compact and shaded fabric. Its structure is defined by alternating narrow pedestrian alleys and small squares, typical of Arabic towns. This urban tissue is divided in elongated islands that are orientated so to gain from the prevailing winds crossing the site. The cool breeze from the sea is channelled between the islands and through the longitudinal cuts in the urban fabric, while the hot wind from the desert is deviated above the development.

Credits: SMAQ – architecture urbanism research (Berlin): Sabine Müller and Andreas Quednau with Joachim Schultz; Team: Therese Granberg, Ludovica Rogers, Felipe Flores, Kathrin Löer, Valle Medina, Martino Sacchi; in collaboration with X-Architects (Dubai); Johannes Grothaus Landscape Architects (Potsdam), Reflexion (Zurich), and BuroHappold (London); Developer: Dubai Properties.

For more information please visit:
Cityscape Abu Dhabi

2008.04

Cosy Chair at Salone del Mobile in Milan

During the Salone del Mobile 2008 in Milan SMAQ's Cosy Chair designed for Droog Design is on display at the Fondazione Antonio Mazzotta.

A touch of Green

In the footsteps of scientific researchers and opinion leaders, designers and manufacturers are also claiming sustainability. Droog has always focused on the mental or human side of product design, but there’s more. The presentation in Milan wants to inspire by providing sustainability from all kinds of angles. It is not about pointing out an absolute answer.

What is perfect sustainability? Droog does not pretend to have found the key. We all know that it is a complex issue and to do right on the one hand, often means harmful consequences on the other. Like bio-fuel, which seems good for the environment but turns out to be devastating for food supplies. An awareness of the problem and its dualities has risen and its dynamics are the same in the field of design. Does it help the environment to recycle a one day gathering of paper waste from the office into a resin treated piece of furniture? Maybe not literally, but the intention to limit waste is at least one step in the right direction.

There is no need to keep the entire room on an equal temperature; heating is only necessary where warmth is actually used. SMAQ's Cosy Chair is an inhabitable radiator space, to be plugged into the heating system. Hot watter circulates through the continious tube, looses heat and creates fields of various temperatures linked to specific usages: hot for heating the tea cup, stell hot for feed and socks, warm for the back and luke warm for the legs.

Participating designers: Martín Azúa, Pieke Bergmans, Jenny Bergström, Martino d’Esposito (ECAL) & Franck Bragigand, FormaFantasma – Andrea Trimarchi & Simone Farresin, Gaële Girault (ECAL), Christien Meindertsma, Minale-Maeda, Jo Nakamura, Jens Praet, Tejo Remy, Tobias Rockenfeld, Adrien Rovero (ECAL), SMAQ – Andreas Quednau & Sabine Müller, Arnout Visser.

Fondazione Antonio Mazzotta
Foro Buonaparte 50, 20121 Milan, Italy

Opening: Wednesday, March 12, 2008, 19:00
April 16th – 20th 2008
Wednesday to Saturday 11:00-21:00, Sunday 11:00-19:00

For more information please visit:
Droog Design

2008.03

Post-it City. Occasional Urbanities

CCCB - Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona presents in the Post-it City. Occasional Urbanities exhibition SMAQ's project Call me now! that explores alternatives uses of the mobile phone and its consequences in the capitals Brazzaville and Kinshasa in the Republic and the D.R. Congo.

Post-it City looks at different overlapping uses of urban territory, focusing on the viewpoints offered by architecture, town planning and the visual arts. It seeks to explore the phenomenon by means of the ephemeral cities that infect the everyday city with uncoded, temporary, anonymous uses, with an implicitly critical approach. The exhibition explores the many differing variations of the phenomenon as a basis for documentation and reflection: an industrial estate that becomes an illegal race circuit at weekends, the use of the building-site city for the adventures of explorer nerds, variants of the squatter phenomenon, the use of different wastelands for occasional meetings (nomad camp, rave), the conversion of a daytime campus into an night-time area of sexual transactions, etc. This project brings together a series of parameters that provide particularly interesting themes for contemporary culture: the need to create available spaces, the versatility of the recycling concept, the emergence of new forms of subjectivity, etc.

The Post-it City exhibition includes work by Teddy Cruz (Estudio Cruz), Armin Linke, Map Office, Bas Princen, SMAQ (Sabine Müller and Andreas Quednau) and others curated by Martí Peran, Filippo Poli, Giovanni La Varra, and Federico Zanfi.

Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona
Montalegre, 5 - 08001 Barcelona, Spain

Opening: Wednesday, March 12, 2008, 19:00
March 13 to May 25, 2008
Tuesday to Sunday 11:00-20:00, Thursday 11:00-22:00

For more information please visit:
CCCB - Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona

2008.03

Ah CA va bien Exhibition in Los Angeles

The Los Angeles branche of the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna MAK Center for Art Architecture presents SMAQ's project LA Water in the exhibtion Ah CA va bien.

For their project, SMAQ investigated a Los Angeles dichotomy: How so dry a place has come to be known for a wet lifestyle of green lawns and swimming pools. Building on an interest in exposing infrastructure as integral to urban life, SMAQ explores Los Angeles’ complex system of water supply and usage.
For the exhibition SMAQ confronts the engineering masterpieces of aqueducts and reservoirs that bring water to Los Angeles. They present imagined tales of usage and functionality evoked by the systems’ overall invisibility, access restrictions, and technical facts. Taking these narratives further into the local scale, SMAQ constructs machine that turns Californian wine into water based on the functionality of siphons. Questioning water supply as abstractly reliant and always available, this machine explores water related infrastructure as an event and a social act.

The Ah CA va bien exhibition includes work by Johann Neumeister, SMAQ (Sabine Müller and Andreas Quednau), Hank Schmidt in der Beek, Bernhard Eder and Theresa Krenn.

MAK Center for Art and Architecture Los Angeles
Schindler House
835 North Kings Road, West Hollywood, Los Angeles, CA 90069

Opening: Thursday, March 6, 2008, 19:00
March 7-10, 2008
Daily 11:00-18:00

For more information please visit:
MAK Center for Art and Architecture

2008.01

SMAQ wins Competition in Norway

SMAQ wins the Europan 9 competition for a site located in Oslo, Norway. The project "Culmulus" takes on the challenge of diversifying social structure along with the sustainability imperative. “Cumulus” is an urban strategy that conceives public spaces as related to the environmental dynamics of northern living. The proposal for a mixed-used development (re)binds the different social spheres, programmes and scales of an existing 70ties development and a new urban centre through a concept of water cycling and seasonal expansion and contraction.

An important local environmental force - rain - collected on roofs and facades of the inserted dwelling towers is stored to reflect light and skies into the apartments; it is partially used in communal laundries and finally released at a social event in nearing winter to flood the public in-between spaces of the development: Congealing it expands the central indoor ice skating ring into an open air skating surface. While this temporal icy plane serves encounters of existing as well as incoming communities, spring will drain the waters to bordering allotment ecologies.
Nothing new? Yet, “Cumulus” promotes a synthetic approach to environmental flows and urban inhabitation enhancing each other and triggering an architectural typology of its own.

For more information please visit:
Europan Norway
Europan Europe

2007.12

SMAQ at Deutsches Architekturmuseum DAM

The DAM (Deutsches Architekturmuseum) in Frankfurt is presenting the exhibition Shrinking Cities: Nine Urban Ideas. Besides more than 20 other projects by contemporay architects it feature SMAQ's project Schkreutz. City Map. 1st Edition.

Shrinking Cities: Nine Urban Ideas

In the 1990s, more than a quarter of the world’s big cities shrank, and their number continues to grow. But how can shrinking be shaped?

The initiative project “Shrinking Cities” of the German Federal Cultural Foundation presents for the first time nine urban ideas for shrinking cities at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum DAM: what should the (shrinking) cities of the future look like? Do we want cities compact or perforated, dynamic or regionally organized?

Besides SMAQ's project Schkreutz. City Map. 1st Edition more than 20 works will be shown – first, from contemporary architects like Will Alsop, Hidetosho Ohno, Norman Foster, Raumlabor, and collaborators with projects for Germany, Britain, the USA, und Japan. Second, important concepts on shrinking cities from the 20th-century urban planning debate from Cedric Price, Oswald Matthias Ungers, Ginzburg/Barshch, and Superstudio will be presented.

Schkreutz. City Map. 1st Edition

"Schkreutz. City Map. 1st Edition" is mapping out the new city that has developed around the highway intersection Schkeuditzer Kreuz between the cities Halle and Leipzig. This new peripheral city, called Schkreutz, is locally independent and follows the mechanisms of globalized economic systems.

Deutsches Architekturmuseum DAM
Schaumainkai 43, 60596 Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Opening: Friday, December 7, 2007, 19:00
December 8, 2008 to February 17, 2008
Tuesdays to Sundays 11:00-18:00

For more information please visit:
Deutsches Architekturmuseum
Shrinking Cities
Schkreutz. City Map. 1st Edition (271kb)
Schkreutz. Tunnel Story (184kb)
PDF download project text in German (36kb)

2007.11

SMAQ lecture at AA in London

The Environments, Ecology and Sustainability (EES) Research Cluster of the Architectural Association (AA) School of Architecture in London invited SMAQ to lecture. Andreas Quednau will talk about "... and other environments".

Architectural Association (Auditorium)
36 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3ES
Wednesday, 7th November 2007, at 18:30

For more information please visit:
AA EES Research Cluster
Architectural Association (AA)

2007.08

Al Manakh presents SMAQ project

Volume #12 'Al Manakh' presents one of SMAQ's projects in Dubai in the article title 'Project with the Secret Name'.

AMO / Archis / Moutamarat launched Volume #12 'Al Manakh' on the occasion of the International Design Forum in Dubai (27-29 May 2007).

'Al Manakh' is the first ever comprehensive analysis of the development of The Gulf. It offers a detailed analysis of the history, culture and architecture of The Gulf region including Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Ras Al Khaimah and discusses the implications of the rapid development of these territories for the rest of the world.

This is the first time that the unprecedented urban condition of this region has been comprehensively documented from diverse viewpoints and communicated to outside the region. Voices of architects, intellectuals and developers making The Gulf happen are represented in the numerous essays and interviews that accompany this richly illustrated study. Key figures such as, Rem Koolhaas, Ole Bouman, and Thomas Krens give their take on the current situation in The Gulf, along with their predictions for the future of this 'ultimate tabula rasa'.

Editors: Ole Bouman, Mitra Khoubrou, Rem Koolhaas
Managing editor: Arjen Oosterman
Design: Irma Boom, Natasha Chandani, Sonja Haller
Format: 24×17, 500 pages
Publisher: Archis Foundation
Distribution: Europe, Asia and USA by Idea Books, IPS Pressevertrieb
ISBN: 978-90-77966-12-9

Al Manakh Article:
SMAQ - Project with a Secret Name (492 kb)

2007.05

FollyDOCK EXPO

SMAQ's folly BAD(bath) - water folly on the dock was selected from an international competition with some other twenty designs for building in Heijplaat, Rotterdam. During the FollyDOCK Expo it is open for public viewing. FollyDOCK Expo is part of Rotterdam 2007 City of Architecture.

FollyDOCK is an international competition for artists, designers and architects. The task was to design an original folly - a whimsical or functionless structure - to be built in the Rotterdam dockland area of Heijplaat. Some twenty projects were selected from 398 entries for building.

BAD(bath) is made from a garden hose - about one kilometer long - that holds enough water to fill a bathtub, plugged into a hydrant, unrolled and weaved to a sun-catching surface. The sunrays heat the water in the hose that then fills a bowl for up to two persons to take a bath. Afterwards the water is released to irrigate the surroundings.

The Heijplaat district is sited in the middle of the Rotterdam docks, surrounded by the RDM shipyard, warehouses, harbours and stacks of shipping containers. The follies are distributed to sites on the peninsula where Heijplaat is located.

The FollyDOCK Expo includes follies by Alexander Filimonov, Olga Filimonova (RU); Raumunion (DE); Studio 505 (AU); Hanshan Roebers (NL); Frantzen et al architecten (NL); Aeneas Wilder (GB, Schotland); Luc de Backer (BE); SMAQ (DE/NL) and others.

Opening: May 26, 2007, 15:00
Exhibition: May 26 - September 09, 2007

follyDOCK terrain, Courzandseweg, Heijplaat, Rotterdam

Hosted by the St. Kunsteiland, Rotterdam, Netherlands

For more information please visit:
FollyDOCK
Rotterdam City of Architecture 2007
FollyDOCK invitation (552 kb)

2007.03

Exhibition Searching for an Ideal Urbanity

Among others the exhibition Searching for an Ideal Urbanity at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart is presenting the project Call me now! by SMAQ supported by From/To Europe that is based on the research of moblie phones in Brazzaville and Kinshasa.

When the French philosopher Henri Lefebvre criticized urbanism as an authoritarian and immediately-antiquated controlling practice in the 1970s, he suggested observing the “urban condition” – his term for the time’s shift in the social economic and therefore also urban space – as a complex, independent and unstable network of relationships. Which forms of urbanity have developed in the present? How is the “urban condition” influenced by the local context? How are traditions reflected in it? Is the (public) space the gauge for deciphering change? Because the image of the ideal city as we know it from the renaissance is increasingly dissolving, a new concept of urbanity could function as an instrument for our survival. The exhibition Searching for an Ideal Urbanity is conceived as an initial experiment as a platform for exchanging ideas of the topic with contributions from the areas of architecture, visual arts, design, literature and music.

Initiatiated by Fabrizio Gallanti (Architect, Italy) and Jean-Baptiste Joly, participants: Sarnath Banerjee (Author, India), Dafne Berc/Luciano Basauri (Architects, Croatia), Sanford Biggers (Artist, USA), Susanne Bürner (Artist, Germany), Karin Damrau (Architect, Germany), Seung Pyo Hong (Designer, Südkorea), Dagmar Keller/Martin Wittwer (Artists, Germany), Korpys/Löffler mit Achim Bertenburg (Artist, Germany), Daniel Kunle (Film maker, Germany), Q Takeki Maeda/Jay Chung (Artist, Germany), Andrea Melloni (Composer, Germany), Vlad Nanca (Artist, Rumania), Ligia Nobre (Architect, Brazil) and Paola Salerno (Photographer, Italy), Marzena Nowak (Artist, Poland), Zoran Pantelic (Artist, Serbia), Patricia Reed (Artist, Kanada/Germany), Henrietta Rose-Innes (Writer, South Africa), Alexander Schellow (Artist, Germany), SMAQ (Architects, Netherlands/Germany) with From/To Europe, Ulrike Syha (Writer, Germany), Krassimir Terziev (Artist, Bulgaria), Cobi van Tonder (Composer, South Africa), Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss (Architect, USA), Annett Zinsmeister (Architect and artist, Germany).

Opening: March 29, 2007, 20:00
Exhibition: March 30 - May 13, 2007
Hours: Tue-Thu 10-12, 14-17:30; Fri 10-12, 14-16, Sat-Sun 12-17:30

May 3, 2007, 20:00 lecture "Use of the term urbanity in German architecture of the past twenty years" by Matthias Sauerbruch

May 4, 2007, 10:00-18:00 workshop "Building Urbanity" with Pier Vittorio Aureli, Jean-François Chevrier, SMAQ, Fabrizio Gallanti and others

Akademie Schloss Solitude
Solitude 3, 70197 Stuttgart, Germany

For more information please visit:
Akademie Schloss Solitude
Invitation (370kb)

2007.03

Exhibition Génération Europan, Paris

Génération Europan recalls 20 years of Europan competitions, which since its creation made emerge on the European scene young talents in the fields of architecture and the urban design. In the course of the eight sessions, 430 sites were proposed with the reflexion of approximately 40.000 young designers gathered in 15.000 teams. The juries of the Europan competition awarded a prize to 450 of them. The exhibition redraws the strong moments of this competition and invited SMAQ and ten other winning teams to present the implementation of their Europan proposals as well as recent projects.

participants: Agence Tania Concko, BNR Studio, Bog Wog, Carlos Arroyo, Froetscher Lichtenwagner, Obras, l’AUC, Pierre Gautier Architecture, plattformberlin, S333, SMAQ.

Opening: March 20, 2007, 17:00 - 23:00
Exhibition: March 21 - May 27, 2007

Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine
Palais de Chaillot - Galeries d’actualité
1, Place du Trocadéro et du 11 Novembre, 75116 Paris, France
tel.: +33 (0)1 58 51 52 00

For more information please visit:
Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine

2007.02

SMAQ lectures at IAAC, Barcelona

As part of the lecture series 2006-07 of the postgraduate program "Digital Tectonics" at the Institute d'arquitectura avancada de Catalunya (IAAC) in Barcelona, Spain Sabine Müller represents SMAQ in a lecture titled 'The BATH Project'.

IAAC (Auditorium)
C/ Pujades 102, Poble Nou
Friday, 9th February 2007, at 12:30

For more information please visit:
IAAC

2006.12

Prize for Environmental Tectonics, AA

SMAQ receives for the project BATH a second prize in the Environmental Tectonics Competition that was sponsored by the Architectural Association (London) and the Environments, Ecology and Sustainability Research Cluster as an open one-stage international competition in search of innovative ideas, design projects, new techniques and research initiatives that highlight insights into contemporary directions of architecture and design relative to environments, ecology and sustainability.

Judges: Philip Beesley David Cook Sylvain Hartenberg Sebastian Appl Francesca Galeazzi Carlos Loperena David Lloyd Jones Luigi Centola Dr. J. Daniel Dahm

For more information please visit:
Architectural Association

2006.11

Exhibition Shedhalle Zurich

The Shedhalle in Zurich is presenting SMAQ's research Mobile Kinshasa as part of the exhibtion From/To Europe #3 Roaming Around - Digital Devide, Regional Codes, Copy/South & the Question of Access.

Jochen Becker/metroZones (Curator), Agency (Kobe Matthys): quasi things • Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda: afro@digital • Julien Enoka-Ayemba: „Nollywood“ • herbstCamp Graz: Global Control • SMAQ architecture urbanism research (Sabine Müller, Andreas Quednau): Mobile Kinshasa & Display Architecture

Artist Talks: November 3, 2006, 18:00
Opening: November 3, 2006, 20:00
Exhibition: November 3 - Januar 28, 2007

Hosted by Shedhalle
Rote Fabrik, Seestrasse 395, 8038 Zurich, Switzerland
tel. +41-[0]1-4815950

For more information please visit:
Shedhalle

2006.07

The bathing season started!

Since June 24th, 2006 “BAD (bath) – infrastructural leisure equipment” is open to the public to take a bath in the Solitude palace gardens in Stuttgart, Germany. Just bring your towel and enjoy.

BATH - infrastructural leisure equipment

BAD (bath) is an architectural folly, a usable sculpture. It is based on a 1,000-meter long garden hose, which, connected to a hydrant, can carry enough water to fill a bathtub. Arranged in countless loops, the elastic hose forms the surface of a screen that catches the sun, thus heating the water in the hose.

BAD (bath) explores ways of inhabiting and interpreting the urbanized landscape, based on infrastructural realities and leisure conventions. In the process it exploits an every-day practice and extrapolates the material characteristics of the required infrastructure into ornamental architecture.

Opening: June 24, 2006, 19:00
Exhibition: June 24 - September 24, 2006

Hosted by Akademie Schloss Solitude
in collabration with the Architecture Gallery Am Weissenhof
Solitude 3, 70197 Stuttgart, Germany
tel. +49-[0]711-99 619-0

Bathing Hours:
Tuesdays to Thursday, 10:00-16:00
Fridays, 10:00-17:00
Saturdays and Sundays, 12:00-17:30

Supported by: Höss Design, Thermopal, Rehau, Otto Roth, Adolf-Würth, Irnberger, Reiff Technische Produkte, Karasto Amaturenfabrik, Florian Förster, Steffen Stich

For more information please visit:
Photos of the Finished Project
Construction Diary
Fabrizio Gallanti in Domus
Akademie Schloss Solitude
Architekturgalerie Am Weißenhof

2006.06

BRAKIN book is out

Lars Müller Publishers and the Jan van Eyck Academie just published the book "BRAKIN, Brazaville - Kinshasa, Visualizing the Visible". It is an urban research on the two cities of Brazaville and Kinshasa by Agency,Tina Clausmeyer, Wim Cuyvers, Dirk Pauwels, SMAQ and Kristien Van den Brande.

A group of researchers investigated the public spheres of Brazzaville and Kinshasa, two neighbouring capitals separated from each other by the Congo River. The group subscribed to “visualizing the visible” as a common approach for its research and decided to treat Brazzaville and Kinshasa as one city: BRAKIN. The researchers studied such wide-ranging phenomena as diamond trade, UN-presence, the Congo River, street children, mobile phone advertisements, street trade, roundabouts, land disputes, public space and the remains of housing projects. These phenomena were used as visible indicators for reading the urban environment. Walks instead of archives generated the research. The study of BRAKIN was initiated by Wim Cuyvers and supported by the Jan van Eyck Academie. The researchers and authors of the book travelled to BRAKIN from 27 January – 17 February and 7 – 29 May 2005.


Book launch: July 2, 2006, 11:00-16:00

Hosted by Royal Museum for Central Africa
Leuvensesteenweg 13, 3080 Tervure, Belgium;
and the Panafrica Association
Rue Jules Boullion 31, 1050 Brussels, Belgium;

with screenings, exhibition and lectures by Antoine.Osongo-Lukadi, Bambi Ceuppens, Raf Custers, Vincent Kenis and others.


Book presentation: July 17, 2006, 21:00
Hosted by b_books montagsPraxis and Jochen Becker
Lübbenerstr. 14, Berlin-Kreuzberg, Germany

For more information please visit:
Lars Müller Publishers
Jan van Eyck Academie
BRAKIN book lauch flyer
b_books

2006.06

FollyDOCK exhibition

In an international competition with 398 entries SMAQ’s project “Water Folly on the Dock” was selected as one of the eleven best entries. The exhibition FollyDOCK in the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi) in Rotterdam presents SMAQ's project with 44 other selected entries.

Exhibition: June 24 - September 24, 2006

Opening Hours:
Tuesdays to Saturdays 10:00 - 17:00
Sundays and national holydays 11:00-17:00

Hosted by the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi) Museumpark 25 3015 CB Rotterdam, Netherlands

For more information please visit:
FollyDOCK
Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi)
FollyDOCK exhibition flyer (402 kb)

2006.05

BAD (bath) is under construction

SMAQ's installation BAD (bath) - infrastructural leisure equipment is currently under construction. Construction takes place in the park of Castle Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany. The construction process can be followed via the link below.

Opening: June 24, 2006, 19:00

Hosted by Akademie Schloss Solitude
in collabration with the Architecture Gallery Am Weissenhof
Solitude 3, 70197 Stuttgart, Germany
tel. +49-[0]711-99 619-0

Supported by: Höss Design, Thermopal, Rehau, Otto Roth, Adolf-Würth, Irnberger, Reiff Technische Produkte, Karasto Amaturenfabrik, Florian Förster, Steffen Stich

For more information please visit:
Construction Diary
Akademie Schloss Solitude
Architekturgalerie Am Weißenhof

2006.05

SMAQ lecture at Bauhaus Dessau

Sabine Müller and Andreas Quednau (SMAQ) are invited to lecture within the framework of the Bauhaus Kolleg VII at the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany. In the lecture entitled Reprocessing Urban Issues SMAQ will present three urban research projects: City Boids - Molecular Urbanism (Caracas), Schkreutz. City Map. 1st Edition (Halle/Leipzig) and BRAKIN - Visualizing the Visible (Brazzaville/Kinshasa).

The Bauhaus Kolleg is the postgraduate programme of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation. The topic of Bauhaus Kolleg VII is 'UN Urbanism' and studies the transformation of cities in crisis regions. It focuses in particular on the influence of the United Nations on urban space and architecture, and address the phenomenon of global, crisis-regulating urbanization by investigating select location such as Kabul, Afghanistan or Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

May 18th, 2006 - 11:00
Moderation: Wilfried Hackenbroich
Bauhaus, Gropiusalle 38, Dessau, Germany

For more information please visit:
Bauhaus Dessau
UN Urbanism
City Boids - Molecular Urbanism

2006.04

German Europan 8 Catalogue presents L.A.R.S.

Europan Germany publishes the German Europan 8 catalogue. It presents the winning entries for all sites in Germany as well as the winning designs by Germans in other countries including SMAQ's prize-winning proposal L.A.R.S. for Bergen in Norway.

L.A.R.S., in: EUROPAN 8 - Die deutschen Ergebnisse, european urbanity, Berlin 03/2006, ISBN 3-00-018367-1, page 96.

For more information please visit:
Europan Germany
Europan Norway
Europan Europe

2006.03

SMAQ lectures at the XII Congreso Internacional De Arquitectura in Mexico

During the XII Congreso Internacional De Arquitectura at the Universidad de las Americas in Puebla Mexico Andreas Quednau represents SMAQ in a lecture titled 'Trajectories of Usage'.

The list of speakers includes 3XNielsen, Archikubik, Cleasson + Koivisto & Rune, Pei Partnership Architects, Igor Peraza, Plot/Big, Servo, and Torolab.

XII Congreso Internacional De Arquitectura
Thursday, 30th March - 1st April 2006
Universidad de las Americas Puebla
Auditorio de la Universidad

For more information please visit:
XII Congreso Internacional De Arquitectura

2006.03

SMAQ lectures at the SFT Architecture Congress 2006, Münster Germany

During the SFT Architecture Congress 2006 in Münster, Germany Andreas Quednau represents SMAQ in a lecture titled 'Infrastructural Facades'.

The list of speakers includes: Erick van Egeraat, Kengo Kuma, Eric Owen Moss, Jacob van Rijs (MVRDV), Makoto Sei Watanabe and others.

SFT Architecture Congress 2006
Friday, 24th March 2006, 11:00
Albersloher Weg 32, 48155 Münster, Germany

For more information please visit:
SFT Architecture Congress 2006

2006.02

SMAQ wins Prize in EUROPAN 8 Competition

SMAQ wins second prize in the eighth edition of Europan with the project L.A.R.S. for Bergen, Norway. The topic of EUROPAN 8 was 'European Urbanity and Strategic Projects'. After winning EUROPAN 6 in Burgos, Spain and receiving a second prize in Bern, Switzerland (EUROPAN 5) and Krems, Austria (EUROPAN 7) this is SMAQ's fourth winning EUROPAN project in a row.

The prize ceremony took place in the Norwegian Architecture and Design Center in Oslo, Norway on the 6th of February.

L.A.R.S.
Linking Åsane: Remastering Strategy

Peripheral Center.
The brief asks to build up a town center for Åsane. Rather than to import an a model of urbanity or a "unifier" foreign to the site, L.A.R.S.'s strategy is to pull on-hand conditions and continuities across the location and the highway and let them work with, against or next to each other. Their sudden encounter generates a site-specific mix, a site-specific edition of urbanity. L.A.R.S. bases its methodology on the self-regarding logics of the periphery and plays out individual interests. This strategy of self-concern leads to intersectional surpluses.

Activating Contradictory Potentials.
One of driving conditions at hand is the market driven interest to further extend the commercial program. The existing highway exit meets this demand for added large scale shopping. The other, seemingly opposing, potential is the surrounding landscape and its usages. The Åsane valley offers beautiful views onto the nearby range of hilltops and must be considered as a base for afternoon walks and hikes. L.A.R.S. sets out to explore how these contradictory potentials will become layers between which a whole range of programs may slip and form an integrated connector that not only attaches the dispersed "islets" of Åsane, but becomes a place of dwelling and working itself.

L.A.R.S. is not composed from a common overall idea but draws on accidental encounters and interstices. This is the driving operation for the generation of the urban, programmatic and architectonical layout but it obviously has effects on the social realm. Divers users including large quantity shoppers on the one hand and daily customers on the other, dwellers, workers, passer-throughs, hikers, school kids, watching parents, afternoon walkers, morning runners casually share the space. L.A.R.S. engenders a field where to meet, stumble upon, run into and come across an emerging diversity.

For more information please visit:
Europan Norway
Europan Europe

2005.11

Book and Exhibition Shrinking Cities - Interventions

The second Shrinking Cities exhibition "Shrinking Cities - Intervention" in the Gallery for Contemporary Art in Leipzig, Germany and the related book "Shrinking Cities, Volume 2: Interventions" both feature SMAQ's project Schkreutz. City Map. 1st Edition that was commissioned by the Bauhaus Dessau.

Schkreutz. City Map. 1st Edition

"Schkreutz. City Map. 1st Edition" is mapping out the new city that has developed around the highway intersection Schkeuditzer Kreuz between the cities Halle and Leipzig. This new peripheral city, called Schkreutz, is locally independent and follows the mechanisms of globalized economic systems.

Schkreutz. City Map. 1st Edition, in: Shrinking Cities, Volume 2: Interventions, editors: Philipp Oswald, Hatje Cantz 2005, ISBN 3-7757-1558-4, pp. 301-305.

The book includes projects by Will Alsop, Ruedi Bauer, Florian Beigel, Crimson, muf, OMA, Superflex and essays by Regina Bittner, David Harvey, Juan Herreros, Bart Lootsma and others.


Exhibition Shrinking Cities - Interventions:

Gallery for Contemporary Art (GfZK)
Karl-Tauchnitz-Strasse 11, 04170 Leipzig, Germany

Opening: Friday, November 26, 2005, 19:00
November 27, 2005 to January 29, 2006
Tuesdays to Saturdays 14:00-19:00
Sundays 12:00-19:00, closed on holidays

For more information please visit:
Gallery for Contemporary Art Leipzig (GfZK)
Shrinking Cities
Schkreutz. City Map. 1st Edition (271kb)
Schkreutz. Tunnel Story (184kb)
PDF download project text in German (36kb)

2005.10

AMC and Concept Magazine feature Suburban Living Room

The French architecture magazine AMC - Le Moniteur Architecture and the Korean magazine Concept Architecture feature in their August and October issues SMAQ's installation Suburban Living Room that was on show in the architecture gallery Am Weissenhof in Stuttgart, Germany.

Suburban Living Room

The installation “Suburban Living Room” thematizes, in the context of the Weissenhof housing development (Mies van der Rohe) in Stuttgart, the change of living towards an intersection of infrastructure and the leisure landscape. Whereas modernity was striving for the opening of the interior to the exterior, the ideal of suburban living today, in an age that is characterized by mobility, organizes itself in a sequence of arrival by car and going outdoors. Similarly, in the gallery, street and garden become opposite poles between which the moment of living is suspended. The building as a limit disappears and the “living room” ceases to be interior, but emerges as a relay in the continuity from infrastructure to landscape.

Salon-paysage, in: amc - Le Moniteur Architecture, no. 155, October 2005, Paris, page 40.
SMAQ - Suburban Living Room, in: Concept Magazine, vol.76, August 2005, Seoul, Korea, page 13.

For more information about the project please visit:
PDF download in deutsch (240kb)
PDF download in English (240kb)
Concept Magazine 2005.8 page 13 (300kb)

2005.06

SMAQ Exhibition: Suburban Living Room

The architecture gallery Am Weissenhof in Stuttgart, Germany is presenting SMAQ's installation "Suburban Living Room" and three related projects.

The installation “Suburban Living Room” is part of the exhibition series “Architectures for the Infrastructural Leisure Landscape” with works by SMAQ. It will be carried out in cooperation with the Architekturgalerie Am Weissenhof and Akademie Schloss Solitude (both Stuttgart). Within this framework, SMAQ deals with the transformation of the cultural landscape that is, due to the social and technological changes, increasingly shaped by infrastructure and leisure. The exhibition series will also include the project “BAD (bath) - infrastructural leisure equipment” that will be located in the park of Schloss Solitude in the summer 2006, integrating and linking technical-infrastructure and natural circuits.

The installation “Suburban Living Room” thematizes, in the context of the Weissenhof housing development (Mies van der Rohe) in Stuttgart, the change of living towards an intersection of infrastructure and the leisure landscape. Whereas modernity was striving for the opening of the interior to the exterior, the ideal of suburban living today, in an age that is characterized by mobility, organizes itself in a sequence of arrival by car and going outdoors. Similarly, in the gallery, street and garden become opposite poles between which the moment of living is suspended. The building as a limit disappears and the “living room” ceases to be interior, but emerges as a relay in the continuity from infrastructure to landscape.

Furthermore, as part of this exhibition, SMAQ shows three designs illustrating how the diagram that generates the installation finds its architectural and urban equivalent within different scales and contexts.

Opening: Wednesday, June 29, 20:00

Exhibition: June 30 to July 31, 2005

Hosted by Architekturgalerie Am Weißenhof
Weißenhof 30, 70191 Stuttgart, Germany

Opening Hours:
Tuesdays to Saturdays 14:00-18:00
Sundays 12:00-17:00

Lecture: June 29, 19:00
Staatliche Akademie der Künste Stuttgart
Am Weißenhof 1, 70191 Stuttgart

For more information please visit:
PDF download in deutsch (240kb)
PDF download in english (240kb)
Architekturgalerie Am Weißenhof

2005.06

SMAQ participates in the exhibition: Creative immigration in NL - Typical NL architecture by NO NL architects

The ABC Architectuurcentrum in Haarlem, Netherlands is presenting the exhibition "Creative immigration in NL - Typical NL architecture by NO NL architects". The exhibition includes, amongst others, four of SMAQ's projects and related products.

The exposition shows a selection of design professionals in Holland: architects and graphic designers. None of them has from origin a Dutch nationality but they all work in Holland. For example: children of the immigrants from the seventies, but also the employees and trainees who work by well known bureaus of architects and “the new arrivals”: people from the member countries of the EU. And even the current students at the universities and academies often have foreign parents. A striking phenomenon in Dutch architectural practice is the rising of multicultural influences. Probably within ten years a substantial part of the architecture will be designed by them.

The participants of the exposition "creative immigration" present themselves and give their point of view at the above mentioned theme. In a debate, under superstition of Roemer van Toorn (architecture theory, Berlage Institute) and Olga Vázquez-Ruano, the participants of the exhibition will discuss "How Dutch is Super Dutch".

Participants: Artgineering, Casanova + Hernandez architecten, Architekten Cie Ir. B. Medic & Ir. P. Puljiz, Fün Design Consultancy, SMAQ – architecture urbanism research, Elastik, M.Arch.Dipl.Ing. Olaf Gipser, Olga Vázquez-Ruano MAUD B.Arch., Moriko Kira architect.

Debate and Opening: Thursday, June 23, 20:00

Exhibition: June 23 to August 28, 2005

Hosted by ABC Architectuurcentrum
Groot Heiligland 47, Haarlem, Netherlands

Opening Hours:
Tuesdays to Saturdays 12:00-17:00
Sundays 13:00-17:00

For more information please visit:
ABC Architectuurcentrum

2005.04

SMAQ Exhibition: Architectures for the Infrastructural Leisure Landscape

The Salon Blauraum in Hamburg, Germany is presenting SMAQ's exhibition "Architectures for the Infrastructural Leisure Landscape". The three projects presented are architectural maneuvers that develop strategies of embracement, negotiation and adaptation to activate, take advantage and authenticate the contemporary landscape. The exhibition is supported by the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture.

What SMAQ calls the infrastructural leisure landscape reaches far beyond the foothills of suburbia and has long started to outline a heterogeneous topology, in which territorial limits and functional definitions have ceased to converge. Yet the engineering disciplines rely on a reduced scope of parameters and remain encapsulated in tight regulations, segregating the requirement of efficiency in infrastructure from the wider and more complex fields it interacts with such as dwelling and leisure.

The projects presented in the exhibition "Architectures for the Infrastructural Leisure Landscape" approach such tendencies of segregation with a strategy of open embracement, of negotiation and adaptation to a multitude of circuits. They set out to search for architectural maneuvers that after all may activate, take advantage and authenticate the contemporary landscape.

Opening: Wednesday, April 7, 19:00

Exhibition: April 8 to May 5, 2005

Hosted by Salon Blauraum
Wexstrasse 28, 20355 Hamburg, Germany

Opening Hours:
Tuesdays to Fridays 10:00-16:00
Saturdays 14:00-18:00

Lecture: April 6, 19:00
Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften (HAW)
Hebebrandstrasse 1 / City Nord / Hamburg

For more information please visit:
Salon Blauraum
Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften Hamburg

2005.03

AREA and India Architect feature Highway...ing

The Italian architecture magazine AREA publishes in their March/April issue Infascapes an 8-page-feature on SMAQ's urban research project Highway...ing and the Indian magazine Architect in their April issue a 4-page-feature on the same project

The AREA issue also includes projects by Steven Holl, Zaha Hadid, MVRDV, OMA, Diller Scofidio and the India Architect issue projects by FOA, EMBT, Foster, Herzog & de Meuron.

Highway...ing
Elastic Infrastructural Stranding

Highway…ing reprograms a high-speed road cutting through a larger system of leisure landscapes with housing, pedestrian bridges, parking and sports facilities. It explores a sequence of car-related movements as a base for an integral environmental design.

Highway…ing introduces elastic design practices into a profession related to static form and geometry. While conceptualising processes and orders of events rather than objects, matter becomes mouldable. This allows for the negotiation of supposedly irreconcilable demands: the given oppositions of different speeds, diameters and scales of driving versus pedestrian measurements are intertwined to achieve a greater programmatic and sensual density.

Highway...ing; in: Area no. 79, March/April 2005, Florence, Italy, editor Giacomo Delbene, page 134 - 141.
Elasticity in Urbanism, Sheetal Kaji Chauhan, in: India Architect & Builder, April 2005, Mumba, India, page 72-75.

For more information about the project please visit:
Highway...ing

2005.01

SMAQ lecture in the Salon Rotterdam at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi)

SMAQ and Casanova Hernandez Architects are invited to present their work on Monday the 24th of January in the Salon Rotterdam at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi). The evening will be moderated by the director of the NAi, Aaron Betzky.

Salon Rotterdam
Monday, 24th January 2005, 20:00 - 22:00
Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi)
Museumpark 25, Rotterdam

2004.12

The book IMPLEMENTATIONS presents the development of DotsAndLoops

IMPLEMENTATIONS - negotiated Projects is a new book published by Europan Europe presenting the development of the winning projects from Europan 1 to 6. It includes the progress of SMAQ's Europan 6-winning project DotsAndLoops in Burgos, Spain.
In her thematic analysis Carmen Adriani reads the project as open repeated systems re-founding the language from a new alphabet of basic elements and materials introducing sequence, series, repetion, alteration, and difference.

DotsAndLoops

Based on the winning Europan proposal DotsAndLoops, the Urban Development Plan (P.E.R.I.) defines the southern limit of Burgos as a permeable city edge. On an area of 3.5 ha and with a budget of 16 million Euro 245 apartments, 1500 m2 commercial spaces, 748 parking spaces and public facilities will be implemented.

The negotiating division into private and public plots results in an ornamental pattern of topographical contours pulling the agrarian landscape towards the new city edge in the form of 'park-fingers'. This operation allows for a smooth access of the countryside by the urban public. The volumetric distribution of the largest programme possible adopts the looping typology of the competition: noise-protected courtyard buildings are elevated, making a connection to the landscape possible. They create an artificial horizon within topography of the valley. Beyond this line a varying skyline of towers arises. This on the one hand introduces unobstructed views into the vast surroundings from the dwellings, on the other hand affirms the image of a city when entering Burgos.

DotsAndLoops, in: Implementations - Europan 1 to 6 Negotiated Projects, Paris 2004, ISBN 2-915578-60-5, p. 11, 104-105, 114-117.

For more information please visit:
p. 114-117 - PDF screen resolution (700kb)

2004.11

REACTIVE/ACTIVE lecture at the TU Delft

SMAQ is invited to present their lecture, with the title REACTIVE/ACTIVE, on Thursday the 25th of November at 18:00 as part of the MOB lecture series at Technische Universiteit in Delft.

REACTIVE/ACTIVE, MOB lecture series
Thursday, 25th Noverber 2004, at 18:00
Technische Universiteit Delft, Faculteit Bouwkunde,
Julianalaan134, NL-2628 BL Delft

2004.11

Exhibition BORDER CONDITIONS

66 EAST - Center for Urban Culture is presenting the exhibition "Border Conditions" in their Gallery in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The exhibition includes, amongst others, SMAQ's project "CITY BOIDS - Molecular Urbanism".

BORDER CONDITIONS

The exhibition "Border Conditions" focuses on projects and studies relating to the notion of the "border". The growing need to enable different forms of collective identity within the urban environment is the main objective of this exhibition. The spatial conditions within border zones is demonstrated through examples of international conflict situations and alternative urban practices.
Urban borders are perceived as transition areas in which ethnic, economic, racial, nationalistic, and/or religious conflicts between social groups influence the development of a city. The projects in the exhibition deal with explicit marginal urban areas exposed to alternative urban practices, giving new meaning to the use of the border as a means to demarcate space. These urban border areas, as they are part of specific urban programs show a remarkable tension between large scale economic developments and marginal urban developments and events.

The exhibition includes the works by Elena Bajo + Warren Neidich, Wiesje Bijl, Marieken Broos, Janna Bystrykh, Johannes Buss, Gil Doron, Zeina El-Hoss, Enrik Havadi, Elain Ho + David Gibbs, Jelle Homburg, Joost Hulshof, Zoe Irvine, Henkjan Letteboer, Finbarr McComb, iLan Potash, Olga Russel, Wouter Stoer + Peter van der Knoop, Jasper Tonk + Pieter Sprangers, Marieke van Hensbergen + Joana Torres, Janneke van der Velden, Joris Weijts + Taco Kuijers, Luc Wetzels, as well as the project "CITY BOIDS - Molecular Urbanism" by SMAQ.

CITY BOIDS - Molecular Urbanism

With the “informal” a different, unexplored relation to time and place enters the concept of the city and results in a smoothness unknown to traditional planning. The documentary research "City Boids - Molecular Urbanism" examines highway and street vendors, developmental and stocked-up houses - urban molecules, so to speak - that became protagonists in the production of space within Caracas.

Opportunism, self-organization, limited neighbourhoods and networks constitute the principles at work. The documentation focuses on the organizational logics and time-based practices involved and thus faces at its very core an organizational indeterminacy that questions architectural thinking far beyond the local context. The available means of representation are critically reviewed and developed further. The project takes on the cartographic challenge by introducing computer animation and diagrammatic tools to trace the actual nature of action radii, sequencing and dependencies - parameters that will gain importance in re-conceiving today’s urbanity.

Exhibition: November 6 to December 12, 2004

Hosted by 66 EAST - Center for Urban Culture
Sumatrastraat 66h, 1094 NH Amsterdam, Netherlands
mail@66east.org

Opening Hours:
Fridays 14:00-20:00
Saturdays and Sundays 12:00-18:00

For more information please visit:
66 EAST - Center for Urban Culture
Review in Metropolis M

2004.10

Concept Magazine features SCOOP

The Korean monthly architecture magazine 'Concept' publishes a 13-page-feature on SMAQ's project SCOOP for the Arctic Culture Center in Hammerfest, Norway, as well as featuring the project on the cover of the issue.

SCOOP - Arctic Culture Center; Ha, Kyung-ok; in: Concept, Architecture & Concept, CApress, no. 2004.10, Seoul, Korea, page 57 - 69 and cover.

For more information please visit:
Concept - CApress
for SCOOP see architecture.it

2004.09

BATH - infrastructural leisure equipment

The Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany is presenting SMAQ's latest project "BATH - infrastructural leisure equipment" in an exhibition together with works of Bankleer (Berlin, video installation), Goh Lee Kwang (Kuala Lumpur, sound installation) and Ivan Talijancic/waxfactory (New York).

BATH - infrastructural leisure equipment

Infrastructural and leisure landscapes have become intertwined and dependent on each other. The bath presupposes the architectural overlap of these landscapes. Located in the field between autarky and dependency, the bath integrates and links technical-infrastructural and natural circuits by pirating local resources.

A kilometer-long garden hose fills with enough water for the bathtub and is laid out in the sun so that the water is heated to a comfortable bathing temperature within two hours. After bathing the water is released to water the surrounding vegetation.

The infrastructural element of the hose and standardized wooden slats form the architecture of the bath. Depending on their different material qualities the bath explores the integration of rigid and elastic structures.

Exhibition: September 17 to October 24, 2004

Hosted by Akademie Schloss Solitude
Solitude 3, 70197 Stuttgart, Germany
tel. +49-[0]711-99 619-0

Opening Hours:
Tuesdays to Thursday, 10:00-12:00 & 14:00-17:30
Fridays, 10:00-12:00 & 14:00-16:00
Saturdays and Sundays, 12:00-17:30

For more information please visit:
Akademie Schloss Solitude

2004.08

Exhibition URBAN LEGENDS: The City in Maps

CITY|SPACE is presenting the exhibition "URBAN LEGENDS: The City in Maps" in the Oaklandish Gallery in Oakland, USA. The exhibition includes the works of many international artists as well as the project "CITY BOIDS - Molecular Urbanism" by SMAQ.

Urban Legends: The City in Maps

"Urban Legends: The City in Maps" is an exhibition of maps in all their forms and meanings. The show explores the idiosyncratic ways in which we seek to understand the world around us, and in particular the urban environment, with a visual record of our paths and patterns, both literal and figurative.

Maps depict places -- physical, emotional, anatomical, conceptual -- but often reveal just as much about how places are imagined and represented by cartographers. They can be as simple as a route to the freeway scrawled on the back of a grocery store receipt or as complex as the mapping of synaptic networks in the brain. Maps can be literal records or abstract explorations, and in some cases they provide more questions than answers.

From Jerusalem to Broadacre to Black Rock City, maps have a particularly strong relationship to cities, which are themselves expressions of the human imagination. Descriptive, historical, political, allegorical, utopian, they occupy the threshold between people and place, suffused with our values and aspirations.

Exhibition: August 6 to 21, 2004

Opening: Friday, August 6, 7:00 pm

Panel discussion: Maps and the City
Thursday, August 12th, 7:30 pm
The cartography of urban history and ecology in the Bay Area and beyond

Hosted by Oaklandish Gallery
411 2nd Street between Broadway and Franklin, Oakland, USA
open Tuesday to Saturdays, Noon to Six

For more information please visit:
city|space

2004.07

ARCHITECTURE.IT is featuring SCOOP

The Italian architecture web-zine architecture.it (www.achitecture.it) is currently featuring SMAQ's Arctic Culture Centre project SCOOP in Hammerfest, Norway as its cover story.

SCOOP

As the northernmost town in the world, Hammerfest identifies a vital and unique dynamic: the integration of urban space and town culture with extreme environmental conditions. SCOOP proposes a new harbour concept that is generated through the synergetic overlap of realms. SCOOP reacts to the extreme conditions - reflecting, harnessing, and protecting - to generate a new waterfront where the choice can be made between levels of exposure from direct openness to the sea and wind, to wind-broken, rain-protected, sun-catching. This gradient of zones is the foundation for the new public space of Hammerfest - outdoors as well as indoors.

The Arctic Culture Centre is an extroverted, climatically active and user-interactive bow, dynamically poised between three poles: Hammerfest town centre, the harbour and the beach. The form reacts to local forces, intelligently using what it can from the available resources and giving back to the environment. A reflective and shiny metal skin forms a loosely layered structure that peels at different angles in reaction to different environmental conditions thus accommodating sun shielding, sun-reflecting, ventilation, acoustics, and artificial lighting in combinations.

As the light changes, the Arctic Culture Centre is transformed from a reflective sculptural form into a light-emitting lantern, all the while remaining a vibrant focal point from the city centre.

For more information please visit:
architecture.it

2004.06

Arquitectura e Vida features SMAQ

The Portuguese monthly architecture magazine Arquitectura e Vida publishes a 4-page-feature on SMAQ's work in the section Novas expressões, presenting the suburban housing strategy miscZ for Krems in Austria as well as an interview with SMAQ by Carlos Sant'ana.

Novas expressões: SMAQ, Carlos Sant'Ana, in: Arquitectura e Vida, no. 50, June 2004, Lisbon, page 68 - 71.

For more information please visit:
PDF - screen resolution (850kb)
for miscZ see Europan Austria

2004.06

Europan 7 Spain Catalogue presents the development of DotsAndLoops

Europan Spain publishes the Europan 7 catalogue presenting the results for the Spanish sites and the Spanish winners abroad as well as the implementation and development of the winning projects in Spain during the past Europan sessions including the progress of SMAQ's Europan 6-winning project DotsAndLoops in Burgos, Spain.

DotsAndLoops, in: Europan 7 España Suburban Challenge, Madrid 2004, ISBN 84-931656-8-9, p. 193.

For more information please visit:
Europan Spain

2004.05

Europan 7 Catalogue presents miscZ

Europan Europe publishes the Europan 7 catalogue presenting the European Results including SMAQ's prize-winning project miscZ for Krems, Austria. In the introductory text 'Infrastructural Architecture of the Landscape' Cristiana Diaz Moreno and Efrén Gracia Grinda (Cero 9) discussing 'how a new approach to the natural would enable us to comprehend the value of the production of diversity, and what measures we could adopt to generate this diversity in the fragment of a second nature' refer to SMAQ's project miscZ as an example.

miscZ, in: Europan 7, European Results - Sub-Urban Challenge, Urban intensity and Housing Diversity, Paris 2004, ISBN 2-915578-57-5, p. 114.

For more information please visit:
Europan Austria
Europan Europe

2004.04

Bauwelt presents miscZ

The German architecture magazine Bauwelt publishes their double-issue on Europan 7 presenting a selection of winning entries for different sites all over Europe. Also included is SMAQ's prize-winning proposal miscZ for Krems in Austria with a project description by Simone Niedernolte.

miscZ, Simone Niedernolte, in: Bauwelt 15-16|04, Berlin 2004, ISSN 0005-6855, page 29.

For more information please visit:
Bauwelt
Europan Austria
Europan Europe

2004.04

German Europan 7 Catalogue presents miscZ

Europan Germany publishes the German Europan 7 catalogue. It presents the winning entries for all sites in Germany as well as the winning designs by Germans in other countries including SMAQ's prize-winning proposal miscZ for Krems in Austria.

miscZ, in: EUROPAN 7 - Die deutschen Ergebnisse, suburban challenge - Urbane Intensität und Vielfalt des Wohnens, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-00-0113466-2, page 71.

For more information please visit:
Europan Germany
Europan Austria
Europan Europe

2004.03

Concept Magazine features SMAQ

The Korean monthly architecture magazine Concept publishes a 14-page-feature on SMAQ's work in the section Parameter, presenting the projects miscZ, Highway...ing and Sarajevo Concert Hall.

The issue also includes competition projects by Dominique Perrault, Foreign Office Architect, Zaha Hadid and others.

SMAQ Netherlands, Highway...ing - miscZ - Sarajevo Concert Hall; Jo, Hyeon-jin; in: Concept, Architecture & Concept, CApress, no. 2004.3, Korea, page 64 - 77.

For more information please visit:
Concept - CApress
for miscZ see Europan Austria
Highway...ing

2004.03

Exhibition Wohnen und Freiraum in Krems

The exhibition Wohnen und Freiraum, hosted by ORTE architekturnetzwerk niederösterreich, addresses the question of in-between spaces as a design determining factor and presents SMAQ's prize-winning design miscZ together with selected projects for the Europan 7 site Krems, Austria.

Opening: March 25h, 2004 - 18:00
Location: Steiner Landstraße 3, 3504 Krems, Austria
Dezember 26.03.-05.06., tue-fr 12:00-16:00

For more information please visit:
Europan Austria
Europan Europe
ORTE architekturnetzwerk nierderösterreich

2004.03

INDESEM 03 publication

The book indesem 03 - fast forward, a driving perception featuring the International Design Seminar held at the Technical University in Delft, Netherlands in May 2003 is now avaible. It includes the review of SMAQ's workshop 'Highway Experience', and the essay 'Driving Perception ...' by SMAQ.

Further, the book includes Adriaan Geuze [West 8], Francine Houben [Mecanoo], Winy Maas [MVRDV], Warren Neidisch, Manuel Abendroth [LabAU], Kas Oosterhuis, Rients Dijkstra [Maxwan], Ben van Berkel [UN Studio], Johannes Fiedler and others.

indesem 03 - fast forward, a driving perception, Delft 2003, ISBN 90-9017645-4:
- Workshop review 'Highway Experience', page184-187.
- Essay 'Driving perception ...', page 204-207.

For more information please visit:
Indesem

2004.03

SMAQ lecture at Bauhaus Dessau

Sabine Müller and Andreas Quednau (SMAQ) are invited to lecture at the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany. Within the framework of the 5th Bauhaus Kolleg, SMAQ will present the project City Boids - Molecular Urbanism discussing the impact of informal practices on the urban development in Caracas, Venezuela.

The Bauhaus Kolleg is the postgraduate programme of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation. The topic of Bauhaus Kolleg V is 'Transit Spaces' and focuses on the transitional cities in eastern Europe.

March 4th, 2004 - 11:00
Moderation: Regina Bittner
Bauhaus, Gropiusalle 38, Dessau, Germany

For more information please visit:
Bauhaus Dessau
Transiträume
City Boids - Molecular Urbanism

2004.02

deArchitect presents miscZ

In its February issue, the Dutch architecture magazine deArchitect presents SMAQs prize-winning project miscZ for Krems in Austria, in the article 'Woonfuncties als sprawlpleister' by Eric Frijters.

Woonfuncties als sprawlpleister, Eric Frijters, in: deArchitect, February 2004, Den Haag, Netherlands, p. 12-13.

For more information please visit:
deArchitect
Europan Austria
Europan Europe

2004.01

dérive presents City Boids - Molecular Urbanism

The Austrian magazine for urban research dérive presents the project City Boids - Molecular Urbanism by SMAQ in its January/March issue which focuses on temporary usage.

The issue includes among others also: tempo..rar – Zur Erforschung der Möglichkeiten beim temporaeren Besetzen by Orten Florian Haydn, Robert Temel; Temporaere Nutzungen, Deregulierung und Urbanitaet by Rudolf Kohoutek, Christa Kamleithner; Von der Regulation zur Moderation by Klaus Ronneberger; Tom Waits 4’33” by Büro für kognitiven Urbanismus; Permanent Breakfast Ursula Hofbauer, Friedemann Derschmidt; „Freistellen“ – ein Plaedoyer transparadiso - by Barbara Holub, Paul Rajakovics; Revolution oder „Schöner Wohnen“? by Geronimo.

City Boids - Molekularer Urbanismus, in: dérive, no. 14, January/March 2004, Vienna, Austria, ISSN 1608-8131,
p. 32 - 33.

For more information please visit:
dérive
City Boids - Molecular Urbanism

2003.12

ARTIMAGE - Biennial on Media and Architecture in Graz, Austria

At the ARTIMAGE - 6th Biennial on Media and Architecture in Graz, Austria, SMAQ presented the project City Boids - Molecular Urbanism in the series "On Territories". The presentation was part of the focus "Caracas, Distributing the City Anew", a discussion on a transformative urbanism with the artists Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber from Vienna and the writer Raul Zelik from Berlin.

December 10th, 2003 - 20:00
Kunsthaus Graz, Südtiroler Platz 2, Graz, Austria

For more information please visit:
ARTIMAGE
City Boids - Molecular Urbanism
bitter/weber

2003.12

Europan 7 - Suburban Challenge
Urban Intensity and Housing Diversity

SMAQs wins a second prize (runner-up) for the project miscZ in Krems, Austria.

The project will be exhibited in Salzburg, Austria in the exhibition of the Europan 7 Austria competition results 'Suburban Challenge - Urbane Intensität und Vielfalt des Wohnens'.

Opening: December 9th, 2003 - 19:00 to 21:30
Location: Alpenstraße 51, 5020 Salzburg, Austria
Dezember 10th to 20th, mo-fr 8:00-18:00, sa 8:30-12:00

miscZ

miscZ is a strategy for suburban diversity and coherence and has been developed within Lerchenfeld, a mixed-use area in the periphery of Krems, Austria.

miscZ assumes Lerchenfeld's proximity to the river meadow landscape of the Danube, the direct connection to the regional infrastructural network and the free spirit of spontaneous developments to be its greatest virtues. At the same time it introduces coherence: it infiltrates the district with a 'loose' identity based on strands of usage rather than on image.

miscZ is a strategy designed to release the site-inherent potentials while resolving the friction between planned and unplanned as a dynamic process over time. It integrates the binding to the traffic system which is essential to the businesses with the individual access of the dweller to the river meadow landscape. It defines areas of untied, dynamic commercial development by placing living environments. Coherence and openness start to coexist.

Embracing the fact that landscape has become a function of the urban, the site bears a unique chance to facilitate a housing strategy that responds to the multiple relations living and landscape can take on. Viewing the surroundings and actively using the outdoors for recreation becomes the inherent principle in all the ranges of living offered.

For more information please visit:
Europan Austria
Europan Europe

2003.11

e_competition: POSSIBLE FUTURES
II Bienal Miami + Beach 2003
Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Interior Design

SMAQ receives an Honorable Mention for the project Highway...ing

The competition POSSIBLE FUTURES is an open international competition of "unbuilt" architectural work. 117 registered entries from 27 countries were received. SMAQ's project Highway...ing will be exhibited among the top 30 entries at the Bienal Miami + Beach 2003 exhibition from November 4th to November 14th.

Highway...ing
Elastic Infrastructural Stranding

Highway…ing reprograms a high-speed road cutting through a larger system of leisure landscapes with housing, pedestrian bridges, parking and sports facilities. It explores a sequence of car-related movements as a base for an integral environmental design.

Highway…ing introduces elastic design practices into a profession related to static form and geometry. While conceptualising processes and orders of events rather than objects, matter becomes mouldable. This allows for the negotiation of supposedly irreconcilable demands: the given oppositions of different speeds, diameters and scales of driving versus pedestrian measurements are intertwined to achieve a greater programmatic and sensual density.

2003.10

Pasajes de Arquitectura y Critica presents Highway...ing

The spanish architecture magazine Pasajes de Arquitectura y Critica features the project Highway...ing by SMAQ in its 50th issue focusing on the 1st International Architecture Biennial in Rotterdam.

The issue among others also projects by: Archi-tectonics, Must, J. Mayer H., Monolab, KCAP and West8.

Highway...ing, in: Pasajes de Architectura y Critica, no. 50, October 2003, Madrid, ISSN 1575-1937, p. 38 - 39.

For more information please visit:
1st Architecture Biennial Rotterdam
Highway...ing

2003.08

caracascase
CULTURA-URBANA_INFORMAL exhibition

SMAQ exhibits the project City Boids – Molecular Urbanism.