Category Archives: Heritage

Droste factory Haarlem

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The Droste chocolate factory in Haarlem is an icon of industrial architecture in Haarlem. The complex, founded in 1897 along the Spaarne waterway, was expanded with a new machine building in armed concrete and brick facades in 1911 and with a sober silo building in 1961. In the facade of the main building, the warehouse, a ceramic wall panel was mounted, showing the famous nurse of the Droste commercials.

In 1986 the production of the Droste company moved to Vaassen, in the east of the country. The building was sold to the Dutch Cacao & Chocolate Company, which soon left the historical building as well. Photographer Henny Reumerman captured unique images of the rundown Droste factory while it was empty.

After years of abandonment and attempts to squat the building, the complex was sold to developer DMV, who planned the construction of 220 apartments on the site, realized in 2008. Architects Braaksma & Roos were responsible for the renovation of the warehouse, Max van Aerschot for the silo. The remaining space on the site contains new housing blocks, designed by FARO and A+1 architects.


View Droste Haarlem in a larger map

Detroit unreal estate agency

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The Detroit Unreal Estate Agency is an organization that monitors the public plans, personal and artistic initiatives and other events in the derelict area of central Detroit. It has American and Dutch integrants and sponsoring. It features many rundown buildings and vacant lots,  role model neighborhoods of modernist planning,  urban poetry and ‘un’real estate offered at the price of  a mere $3432.12

http://detroitunrealestateagency.blogspot.com

“Detroit Unreal Estate Agency will produce, collect and inventory information on the ‘unreal estate’ of Detroit: that is, on the remarkable, distinct, characteristic or subjectively significant sites of urban culture. The project is aimed at new types of urban practices (architecturally, artistically, institutionally, everyday life, etc) that came into existence, creating a new value system in Detroit.
The project is an initiative by architects Andrew Herscher and Mireille Roddier, curator Femke Lutgerink and Partizan Publik’s Christian Ernsten and Joost Janmaat.
In collaboration with the Dutch Art Institute and the University of Michigan, generously funded by the Mondriaan Foundation.”

Abandoned Michigan Central station, 2004

Lot 13015 Back

Abandoned property

Russell Yard

Short documentary on the idealist neighborhood Lafayette Park, Detroit, designed by Mies van der Rohe and Hilberseimer

Zeche Zollverein revisited

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Zeche Zollverein is part of the greater regional plan Emscher Park for an obsolete industrial region in the German Ruhrgebiet. The plan is supposed to attract leisure functions, culture, innovative companies and design firms to the green postindustrial setting. The Zollverein project, with master plan by OMA, is still running with lack of funding. The design academy with a brand new building by SANAA went bankrupt for lack of students. On the one hand parts of the complex, such as the Kohlenwäsche and the public space in front of it, are being beautifully renovated for cultural events and museum use. On the other hand, most tourists seem to prefer the rundown parts of the Kokerei, dusty, rusty and derelict.

Map of the premises: the Coking Plant, Mining Shaft XII and Shaft 1/2/8

New walkways through the main railway yard of the coal mine

The Coking Plant (Kokerei)

The Coking Plant (Kokerei)

The Coking Plant (Kokerei)

Mining carts in the old workshop


Short video impression of the complex by Mark van der Schaaf (2006)


Read more:
www.projetosurbanos.com.br/2007/05/13/zollverein-essen-germany/

BK city

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After the dramatic loss of the TU Delft faculty of Architecture in a fire May 2008, the educational structure was kept together in tents at the campus´ sports fields. With incredible speed and creativity a new temporary faculty was improvised in the old university administration building at the Julianalaan. Already some people say it is actually better than the old building, although some activities are still ´homeless´ due to construction delays of certain spaces. In the meantime an ideas competition was launched for the future faculty of architecture.

Also see: post about the destruction of the old faculty in May 2008

The old administration building at the Julianalaan

New work space

New urbanism department

The old faculty building being torn down

Inauguration of the tents at the university sports fields (with gypsy music)

Welfare State / Smashing the Ghetto

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When I entered the exhibition space in Rotterdam and saw the videos of a slum being demolished by digging machines, I was almost certain that it was about some Latin American country. Not Brazil though, since the graffiti on the structures was in Spanish.

I couldn´t be more wrong, the slum was a big gypsy settlement on the outskirts of Madrid. The video is about the good intentions behind this demolition, like social equality and equal rights to housing, healthcare etc.; about how today´s utopia of equality and social integration is destroying cultural diversity (in this case the gypsy culture) and how the slum demolition becomes a spectacle of consumerist society.

The video is a project by Democracia, a Spanish artist collective founded by Pablo España and Iván López. As a travelling exhibition it was part of the Rotterdam Museumnight, 7 March 2009.

“The union between welfare and consumption is the principal characteristic of present day developed societies, with basic needs fulfilled, consumption provides new symbolic meanings that go way beyond the actual object being consumed. Freedom, social progress, solidarity and democracy are accessible through consumption and the targeting of the capitalist worldview is generated through the mechanisms of the performance […].

In this context we propose a meeting between the integrated and the marginalized society at the right time when the welfare state acts in search of justice and equality: One of the largest slum settlements in Europe still survives in Madrid, which is called El Salobral and is found in the Southern periphery of the city. Last March the Community of Madrid and the City Council agreed to its demolition and the consequent rehousing of its inhabitants, with the majority being of the gypsy ethnic group. In this settlement those persons who are clearly marginalized by socio-cultural factors are found together with those who are voluntarily there such as drug dealers in search of an area away from police vigilance. On the other hand, the demolition of the slums and the consequent relocation of its occupants attract new inhabitants who come to this area looking to be rewarded with a new home by the social services. The extinction of El Salobral not only implies the destruction of sub-standard housing but also making the land uninhabitable so that it can no longer be built on.

The project developed by Democracia conceives the staging of the demolition of this marginal community as a performance for all members of civil society. Over and above considerations such as the disappearance of specific cultural forms (that of the gypsy culture), the civil society celebrates the disappearance of the ghetto via a media performance. The “integrated” civil society are the hooligans who applaud the action of the diggers demolishing the ghetto. The path of the marginalized society is its integration in the spectacular consumption society, which will assure them of their basic rights.”

www.democracia.com.es/proyectos/welfare-state/