Boundless optimism, since it all turned to the fifth day of IJburg, such as multiplication ARCAM organized by the date of the referendum that the project is not blocked. The merriment began with the sun during the excursions on the Harbor Island afternoon, and ended with the conclusion of the discussion Chairman Martin Kloos evening top the telephone, the only building on IJburg there certainly is.

Apparently surprised Kloos noted after the pep talk of Klaas de Boer (Director Planning Service Amsterdam), Igor Roovers (IJburg project), Han Michel (director of one of those developer consortia) and Vera Yanovshtchinsky (an architect of the first blocks on the Harbor Island) that it all appears to be a lot better than he and many like him these days the media have understood. And it surprised Kloos, who do not like the naiefste known, in turn, a large part of the room, including yours truly. Read the rest of this entry »

Under the prosaic title “Infrastructure as a showcase for the ingenuity” was the Dutch Architecture Institute (NAI) its second Major Projects debate. The stakes were clear: “The infrastructure can play a leading role in organizing the rest of the country.” What should have been a fierce debate among politicians, critics and designers turned into a private chat between developers and officials. Nieuw Amerongen Frido of reports.

Construction of the Betuwelijn

The discussion has already crippled by the initial absence of the two speakers. Michelle Provoost critic (author of Asphalt) let sickness turn up and Minister of Transport Tineke Netelenbos was absent because of construction fraud investigations. She had a duty of confidentiality. Read the rest of this entry »

The NAI is July 3 to a exhibition on the work of architect AF Aalbers. Aalbers, born in Rotterdam, worked from 1924 to 1930 and from 1946 to 1961 in the Netherlands, in the intervening period (1930-1942) he worked in the Dutch East Indies. It was his Indian work Dorothee Segaar, curator and co-author of the same name, in 1977 inspired an investigation into the work of Aalbers. The lack of an archive was, however, that Segaar as a true Miss Marple had to work.  Another closet corrects the cry.

DENIS bank (De Nederlandsche first Indian Sparkasse), Braga, Bandung Jl (1935).

Armed with a keen eye to “Aalbers one”, a camera, an address book with names of former employees and residents and by technical illustrators, she asked over the years a work list together of 65 works: 22 Dutch, one Belgian Congolese (design competition) and 42 Indian. Most of the designs for the Dutch East Indies (27) was achieved in Bandung. This town, as envisaged in 1916 as the new home of central government in the Dutch East Indies, was the seat of the agency founded in 1931 been “Aalbers and De Waal, architects’. Read the rest of this entry »

The Buffalo & Attica Railroad, Buffalo’s first eastbound rail line, was built in 1843. Amazingly, the original right-of-way of the Buffalo & Attica, laid out over 166 years ago, is still in use for rail transportation today.

Opening to passenger and freight traffic on January 8, 1843, the Buffalo & Attica Road completed the last link in a chain that connected Buffalo to New York City for the first time by rail. Bypassing the Erie Canal only 18 years after the canal’s completion, the rail lines promised a trip to New York in 25 hours, far quicker than the 6 days it would take on canal boats pulled by mules named Sal. The Buffalo & Attica Road, the embryo of a system of iron highways that would Read the rest of this entry »

O, boy, what an amazing door! The Larkin O Building, constructed in 1907 as one of multiple additions to the sprawling Larkin factory complex, contains an odd second-story door that appears more like one that would have opened out onto a ground-level sidewalk.

It’s not only an appearance. The door did once face onto a street – the Van Rensselaer Street viaduct, in fact. Until a couple decades ago, this section of Van Rensselaer Street from Roseville to Seneca streets was an elevated viaduct allowing the passage of trains underneath, along the tracks of the Erie Railroad that have since been removed. Read the rest of this entry »