Chair Introduction – autumn 2013

The group made their first impressions after a general site tour, followed by a brief lecture on the office and selected projects by ShoP architects founding partner, Corie D. Sharples.

In the following days, students presented their work in combined sessions at Columbia GSAPP. Through discussions about the Midtown, both Delft and Columbia students gained useful local insight from guest critics including Eran Chan and Juan Roque Urrutia of ODA. Additionally, the group explored the mid-Manhattan library project with a tour by Mecanoo associate Jasper Tonk and visited the latest projects of Diller Scofidio + Renfro – The Shed and the New MoMA.

Stemming from the week long field trip, students will have developed a good spatial understanding of the city, in order to formulate clear conclusions, reflect and build towards their thesis topics. By a critical examination of New York’s Midtown, the studio aims to eliminate the traditional and perhaps linear processes of planning, urban design, and architecture.

The graduation studio consists of both individual and group work, focusing on different research topics tested on the same site. The students will need to develop a vision, a design scenario for the site, rendered by the individual project interventions. Keep updated on the activities of the studio here.

https://kaanarchitecten.com/academic/complex-projects-ny-midtown-studio-trip/

Introduction of the book by Kees Kaan, as the Head of the Chair, was followed by a panel discussion with city representatives and a guided tour of the AMS Mid-City models.

Complex Projects teamed up for almost two years with Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions and the municipality of Amsterdam, to focus on the theme AMSTERDAM 2050. The book is a systematization of the work of more than 80 graduate students and 6 tutors with the input from researchers and invited critics on a case study on 9 different locations in Amsterdam.

The research-through-design process of documenting and analysing the present urban conditions of the City of Amsterdam and investigating various trends directing future urban development resulted in design solutions and visualisations of the predicted development of these locations.

By using Amsterdam as a living laboratory, graduate students, researchers and teachers of the architectural design chair of Complex Projects at the Department of Architecture at TU Delft Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment have been interested in seeing how ‘growth’ and rapid ‘changes’ – growth of numbers of inhabitants and tourists, and change of energy, mobility, health and leisure concepts – will affect the City of Amsterdam on a time horizon 2050.

How can innovations be introduced to the domain of architecture and urban design? The creative exploration presented in this publication aims to understand today’s structure of the City, to explore possible future scenarios and to speculate on new architectural typologies new technology and ways of living may construct.

Get your copy of the book here.

https://kaanarchitecten.com/academic/ams-2050-urban-makeover-on-display/