The Squatted New Town, Modern Movement meets Self-organisation in VenezuelaOn the 6th of January 2021 Simone Rots defended her PhD research “The Squatted New Town, Modern Movement meets Self-organisation in Venezuela” at Delft, University of Technology. She has completed this research at the Department of Urbanism of the Faculty of Architecture, with Han Meyer as promotor, Remon Rooij as co-promotor and Ana Maria Fernandez Maldonado as daily supervisor.
This is the text of her laymans talk that explains the content of the research and defines which lessons can be learned from dissertation for the current and future practice of urbanism.
23 February 2021
Publication "New Towns on the Cold War Frontier"This is a BOOK IN PROGRESS by Crimson Historians and Urbanists. Its title is: "New Towns on the Cold War Frontier". At this moment, we present you a list of contents, an introduction and some chapters, each in itself the size of a book and independently readable. In due time there will be more chapters, added one by one. Eventually, the book will be printed in one volume of about 1800 pages. But this will take a while. We and our other authors simply can’t wait that long. Our essays want to get out there and partake in the many discussions on urban planning especially in the developing world.
4 March 2020
Book presentation: ‘A City of Comings and Goings'Crimson Historians & Urbanists warmly invites you to the book launch of ‘A City of Comings and Goings' on July 11th 2019 at the Independent School for the City in Rotterdam. During this launch we will also celebrate the return of the exhibition 'A City of Comings and Goings' to Rotterdam that was on show earlier at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2018.
3 July 2019
New publication Ontwerpen aan het spoor by Crimson Architectural HistoriansOn September 25th 2014 the publication Ontwerpen aan het spoor (edited by Michelle Provoost and Annuska Pronkhorst with Wijnand Galema) was presented. This richly illustrated book was commissioned by Bureau Spoorbouwmeester and published by nai010 publishers, and traces how, after World War II, the design of pretty much everything on and around the Dutch railway was used to provide the traveller with a recognizable, safe and comfortable travel experience. With essays on trains, architecture, communication, art, railway bridges and the privatization of rail by Wouter Vanstiphout, Cassandra Wilkins, Wijnand Galema, Timo de Rijk, Ewan Lentjes and Victor Lansink.
26 September 2014
Hugh Maaskant. Architect of ProgressArchitect Hugh Maaskant (1907-1977) played a major role in modern Dutch architecture. He designed revolutionary, complex, large-scale buildings with metropolitan allure, like the Groothandelsgebouw and the Euromast in Rotterdam and the Scheveningen Pier. In Maaskant: Architect of Progress architecture historian and Maaskant expert Michelle Provoost places Maaskant in an international and historical perspective.
Hugh Maaskant is considered the godfather and forerunner of the generation of Winy Maas (MVRDV), Adriaan Geuze (West 8), Willem Jan Neutelings and Rem Koolhaas. Yet he was underappreciated for many years. Provoost describes Maaskant’s work as part of the optimistic, stimulating aspect of post-war reconstruction and the exciting world of the 1960s. She also places him in the context of Dutch architecture, both of his time and of later generations, particularly the ‘Super Dutch’.
18 December 2013
Het langste gebouw van RotterdamOp 4 oktober 2008 presenteerde Hofbogen BV de langverwachte Toekomstvisie De Hofbogen, Het langste gebouw van Rotterdam aan het grote publiek. In deze Toekomstvisie ontvouwt de Hofbogen haar plannen en ideeën die zij het afgelopen jaar voor het Hofpleinviaduct heeft ontwikkeld met partners in de stad, variërend van ondernemers, bewoners, (deel)gemeente en experts. Het omvangrijke boekwerk bevat bovendien alle onderzoeken die daaraan ten grondslag liggen.
8 October 2008
WiMBY! Hoogvliet[UK] For six years Crimson Architectural Historians and journalist/politician Felix Rottenberg have immersed themselves in Hoogvliet, the modernistically planned New Town in the harbour area of Rotterdam. Their mission was to transform this bland and boring borough into a vibrant urban area. While the biggest housing demolition project of the Netherlands was being carried out around them, they tried to respond to the challenges posed by Hoogvliet and by thousands of similar post-war towns and housing projects over the whole world.
Going by the moniker WiMBY! (Welcome into My Backyard!) Crimson and Rottenberg have spared nothing or noone to fulfill their mission. They retold the eventful history of Hoogvliet in a dramatic manner; they mobilized local entrepreneurship and talent and have worked with the best architects and urban planners to develop a co-housing project, schools, a community park and a cultural center. They have organized many festivals and events and struggled with bureaucracy and mediocrity. This richly illustrated book is an epic, hilarious and sometimes grim report on six years of autonomous urban renewal from within. Welcome!
25 May 2007
De lessen van WiMBY! 2001-2007In dit boek wordt teruggeblikt op het resultaat van zes jaar vrije R&D in Hoogvliet. De vraag die hierbij centraal staat is: heeft een onafhankelijke, flexibele, maar vooral atypische organisatie als WiMBY! een zinvolle bijdrage kunnen leveren aan de kwalitatieve opwaardering van Hoogvliet en heeft de acupuncturele WiMBY!-aanpak mogelijkerwijs een voorbeeldwerking voor andere wijken en steden elders in Nederland? De inhoud van dit boekwerk is de tekstuele weerslag van een aantal intensieve gesprekken die Felix Rottenberg, mandaathouder van WiMBY!, het afgelopen halfjaar voerde met een aantal leidende en prominente spelers in het Hoogvlietse speelveld, variërend van politieke bestuurders en corporatie-directeuren tot bewoners.
25 May 2007
Maak een stad.Mechanized, expanded, bombed and reconstructed: from the late 19th to the mid 20th century, Rotterdam was the plaything of external forces. Grand schemes to give elegant and coherent shape to the city failed one after the other. One man who succeeded in profoundly influencing this unmanageable city was the architect J.H. van den Broek (1898-1978).
This compact paperback contains more than 280 illustrations, including many photographs taken by the author.
16 June 2005
Maaskant.In de Nederlandse architectuur hebben weinig gebouwen de glamour en onbeschaamde allure van werken als het Johnson Wax-kantoor in Mijdrecht, de Euromast, het Hiltonhotel en het Groothandelsgebouw in Rotterdam of het Provinciehuis in Den Bosch. Al deze gebouwen zijn van Huig Maaskant. In dit boek wordt zijn werk beschreven als onderdeel van de enerverende en opwindende wereld van de jaren vijftig en zestig, waarin alles ieder jaar weer een beetje beter, groter en rijker werd. Alleen door een handvol intellectuelen werd getobd over de negatieve kanten van automobiliteit, technologie, massamaatschappij, verstedelijking of toerisme, de rest van Nederland gaf zich over aan het ongebrijdeld genieten van de nieuwe mogelijkheden en verworvenheden.
16 June 2003
Profession: Architect.An architectural office that has kissed goodbye to the idea of a harmonious body of work, a single recognizable style and an individual artistic endeavour, a firm whose 'anti-oeuvre' is defined by social and economic developments. Such is de Architekten Cie., since 1988 the umbrella name for the practices of founding members Pi de Bruijn and Frits van Dongen and newcomers Branimir Medic/Pero Puljiz and Pieter van Wesemael. Fellow co-founders Carel Weeber and Jan Dirk Peereboom Voller recently left the fold. In this first serious publication in which the architects present themselves as a group (de Architekten Cie.) Crimson Architectural Historians and lensman Marcel Molle, rather than humbling themselves before The Architect, flaunt their critical independence.
1 January 2003
Too Blessed To Be Depressed.Forced to find beauty in mediocrity, poetry in pragmatism, history in the absence of monuments and the future in the past, Crimson has been shaped by the experience of living and working in Rotterdam, the city that never thinks. Over the past seven years they have produced research projects, plans and initiatives that range from purely historical studies, book reviews and critiques of contemporary architecture to exhibitions, panoramas and urban planning schemes. For them, history is not a clear-cut period in the past but a total panoramic experience in which mythology, truth, writing, building and demolition intermingle. The Crimson historians don't keep their distance, they dive right in.
1 January 2002
Post.Rotterdam'Post.Rotterdam is an imaginary urban landscape, an alter-ego of the city itself, initially composed of four circular panoramas, in a sort of 'journey-collage' of its recent history proposed by Michelle Provoost, Wouter Vanstiphout and Ewout Dorman (Crimson), in a second instance, within the entitled Hyperscapes, it is shaped by a collection of nine architectural containers which express with audio-visual support, the product of the most significant Rotterdam architectural offices selected and analysed by Pedro Gadanho (CUC).
1 January 2001
WiMBY!In 2001 ging de Internationale Bouwtentoonstelling (IBT) Rotterdam-Hoogvliet van start met als overkoepelend thema WiMBY! (Welcome into My Backyard!). Hoogvliet, een Rotterdamse satellietstad dicht bij haven en industrie met hoogwaardige voorzieningen voor de hele regio, staat model voor de idealen van de stedenbouw in de wederopbouwperiode in Nederland. De actuele ontwikkelingen op stedenbouwkundig gebied vragen echter om een vergaande herstructurering van de oorspronkelijke opzet van de stad.
1 January 2000
Mart Stam's Trousers.In the last several years, the Netherlands has successfully exported the image of a young and adventurous Modern Dutch architecture. While the rest of the world's young architects look on with envy, a euphoric and self congratulatory atmosphere suffuses the work of young Dutch architects and critics. One of the most appealing features of this 'Nineties Dutch Modernism' is its historical connection to what many feel to be the moral authority of early 20th century Dutch Modern architecture. Indeed, it is this tradition of moral modernism which is still thought to define contemporary Dutch architecture. Unlike in the United States and in many European and Asian countries, Modernism in the Netherlands was never threatened by postmodern relativism. Modernism, it might be said, remained pure. Mart Stam's Trousers, Stories from behind the Scenes of Dutch Moral Modernism examines how this new image of contemporary Dutch architecture has been constructed by carefully revisiting the image of Dutch Modernism on which it draws.
1 January 1999
Re-Urb.In Re-Urb analyseert Crimson, maatschap van architectuurhistorici, elf recente concepten voor herinrichting en hergebruik van stedelijke gebieden, vari‘rend van de Waagstraat in Groningen tot het Herdenkingsplein in Maastricht. De documentatie en analyse van deze uiteenlopende en toonaangevende plannen geven een verrassend beeld van het actuele denken over Nederlandse stedenbouw in een historische context.
1 July 1997
