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‘The Auto Drives Architecture’ at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Together with the students of The Berlage Centre, the research team led by Kees Kaan, Juan Benavides, Salomon Frausto, and Dick van Gameren presents “The Auto Drives Architecture” – a contribution to the exhibition “Motion. Autos, Art, Architecture,” curated by the Norman Foster Foundation at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao from April 8 to September 18, 2022.

How will the future car transform the architecture associated with twentieth–century highways and interchanges, from gas stations and car washes to parking garages and motels? What new types of architecture will emerge alongside the future car in the second half of the twenty-first century? How will the private space of the car continue to merge with the public realm?

The Motion. Autos, Art, Architecture finale is devoted to works by a young generation of students who were invited to imagine what mobility may be like at the end of this century. The exhibition’s journey comes full circle by considering the same problems that auto inventors faced more than a hundred years ago— urban congestion, resource scarcity, and pollution—all exaggerated by climate change and now projected onto the future.

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao – catalogue image

Fifteen selected international schools of design and architecture from four continents were given complete freedom to share their visions for the future of mobility. Among them are the Delft’s Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment and their Berlage Center for Advanced Studies in Architecture and Urban Design. The Auto Drives Architecture is a research project consisting of a multiformat program of expert symposiums and lectures, a design master class, a series of documentary films, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao installation, and the publication entitled Architecture by Auto.

Organized and designed by the Berlage, the installation in the Guggenheim is sized according to the footprint of a typical parking spot and the volume of a car—featuring an animated road trip to twelve different buildings across the Netherlands. Travelling from an underground parking garage, filling station, drive-in pick-up point, drive-thru shopping mall, motel, and ridesharing hub, to a drive-in funeral home, drive-in cinema, battery replacement centre, auto camp, car wash, and showroom, the animation tells the story of how the future car—a Mini, the exemplar of a car designed for efficiency in the face of environmental crisis—could offer design opportunities for our buildings, cities, infrastructures, and territories.

Watch the full animation or find more information here.

 

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Kees Kaan at INDESEM 2021 Big Data Pre-event

International Design Seminar, widely known as INDESEM is kicking off their 2021 edition with a Pre-Event scheduled for 9 Decemeber. Kees Kaan will take on the role of moderator during the panel discussion.

One of the speakers participating in the panel discussion is Professor Jantien Stoter, who will talk about the application and potential of spatial data in design. Besides Stoter and Kaan, more speakers participating in the lecture and panel will be announced soon.

INDESEM 2021 explores Big Data within the built environment which is quickly becoming a hybrid of the physical environment and the digital world, where every action, feeling and step of those using the buildings we design can be quantified. What opportunities does this data load present?

In the run up to the seminar in 2021, INDESEM will host a series of online lectures, starting with the Pre-Event on 9 December 18.30 (EU time). Attend here!

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What’s next in design education? – panel discussion with Kees Kaan

On October 15, 2020, Kees Kaan will participate in a BK Talks panel discussion titled ‘What’s next in design education?’ with a group of professors of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at the TU Delft, moderated by the Dean Dick van Gameren.

University education in general, and design education in particular, are at a critical moment. Education and research must confront a multitude of challenges: from the conflict between academy and the profession to the relation to society. Does design education properly address the contemporary cultural, economic and political issues? Does the curriculum of design schools tackle the current environmental and social realities? How radical or visionary is current design pedagogy when compared to previous experimental and collaborative forms of design pedagogy?

Moreover, the current pandemic has deeply impacted the way we learn, research, exchange ideas or encounter others. Faced with immense uncertainty, academic institutions must plan alternative scenarios. What are the consequences for the ways we imagine the future built environment of this full move towards virtual means of representation? Will academic institutions implement a hybrid model of teaching, combining digital and physical learning? What are the opportunities derived from this new situation?

The panel comprising Rients Dijkstra, Carola Hein, Kees Kaan, Winy Maas, Ana Pereira Roders and Sevil Sariyildiz will raise and, hopefully, answer many of these questions.

Tune into the discussion on Thursday, October 15 at 18.30, live on YouTube via the link here.

 

Dutch profiles: Claus en Kaan Architecten

Kees Kaan started collaborating with Felix Claus as Claus en Kaan Architecten in 1988. They have created hundred projects from small private dwellings to urban development, famous for their minimalistic sobriety and conceptual approach.

In this video they are visiting one of KAAN most famous projects, the Netherlands Forensic Institute in Ypenburg, The Hague (The Netherlands).