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TU DELFT ARCHITECTURE 14th MAY 2008
Janita Han on Wed, May 14, 2008
Today. Walked around the building. Accepted the truth. Prayed for hope. TU DELFT FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE DESTROYED BY FIRE (For the headlines on the event in the Dutch news, click RTL) I entered the faculty of architecture at 9.10am, got to the 5th level and there was water all over the floor. The lifts were not working so I walked up all five floors. I walked to the tap and got myself a cup of water. After approximately 5 minutes, the alarm sounded. I was still carrying my cup of water while going with the flow of people leaving the building. We were all herded to the carpark- that was when the fire at the 6th floor became visible. The fire looked small, so at that time people were more struck by wonder than worry. The email sent out by the faculty administration announced that the fire started from a “short circuit caused by a faulty water pipe” at the 6th floor. The fire could not be controlled and continued to ravage the rest of the building. At approximately 5pm or so, part of the building collapsed. At 5.18pm, D.J. van den Berg, President of the Executive Board, released an email statement saying that “no conclusive statement can be given about the exact cause of the fire”. Fortunately there were not casualties in the fire. This is the closest I’ve been to a headlines tragedy. With the initial wave of sensationalism worn off, I now feel a sense of loss. Loss for people whose works have gone up in flames. Loss of a place that I had some emotional attachment to. Loss of an entire faculty. As I type this I can still see, from my window, smoke billowing from the destroyed building. At home home now, I turn to my bible for some key to the event, and chance upon Deuteronomy 5:4 “The Lord talked with you face to face on the mountain from the midst of the fire.” This gives me a sense of awe of how powerful God is. Am also reminded of the verse from 2 Corinthians 4:18 “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” The temporal nature of the material world and its systems is quite often overlooked until it collapses. It has collapsed this time- literally. Sanford Kwinter was in Berlage to launch his book, Far from Equilibrium, that was 20 years in the making. Looking every bit the mad scientist that he was, Kwinter captivated with his sincerity and self-deprecating attitude. If you’ve ever tried to read his book Architectures of Time, you will realise that everything you’ve thought was deep and complex writing was really only surface treatment. The book, written within a 20 year time frame, where much of the essays which were published in the ANY magazine in the 90’s, was produced as a reminder that today’s culture was a production of the past, whether a past that had happened or not- radical an-amnesia, he calls it. In the 1990’s, he put together all possible arguments of why one should throw the computer out of the window, at a time when the computers was just beginning to appear on the desktop. To him, his writings were merely “exercises in humour..exercising one’s duty in public with levity” , not so much as moral scoldings. The idea of having fun is encapsulated in the book introduction as such: “It is hoped that the present book will serve as an example of what Michel Foucault once described as a decisively missing aspect of much 1960s militantism: the insight that agitation was never meant not to be fun.” I crept up to him in the cafeteria and asked for him to sign the book. He was nice to initiate some conversation. Despite my belief that I could make small talk with anyone, the fact that Kwinter listened to everything I said made it a tad intimidating, yet surprisingly refreshing. I pored over his book and was pleasantly surprised at various fun things in it- change in font size, secret essays hidden within flaps. Good buy. I will have fun reading it. Having been to Rojak’s and having been very impressed with jing’s photograph’s and boo jun feng’s the changi murals, i must say pecha kucha rotterdam came across as quite a disappointment. The evening had a foreboding start, and went on with a sequence of designers/artists who were either not able or not keen to share their work in a passionate and meaningful way. Some designers were downright bad. The selection of presenters could have been more stringent. All was not gloom and doom however. The evening had its nice bits that overall, made the night worth it. The casual dutch atmosphere (as you can see in the photo) was one thing I thoroughly enjoyed. You can’t find a more “bo chap” attitude in Singapore. The Rojak session that I attended was super-charged in quite a heady manner, what with the hosts making innuendos throughout the session; Pecha Kucha Rotterdam on the other hand felt like a really casual gathering of people with two less-than-competent-but-still-heartwarming hosts speaking in their second language, English. The saving grace of the night was-besides my good friend Ren Horng Yee’s presentation of his final project, and no this is not just a disclaimer- the works of a two-person design firm Lesley Moore. It puzzled me for some time where the name came from, since their names were not Lesley and Moore. The name of the firm is actually a pun on the phrase “Less is More”! They told me that Goethe was the one who first said it, so let’s remember that, and not attribute it solely to Mies. I was already immediately impressed by the fact that they do the layout of Mark magazine. They spoke about a series of really respectable works- a font inspired by escher’s multidimensional staircase, a huge digital clock that was lit up in an analog fashion by friends turning the fluorescent lights on and off, a stencil typography that was formed by two basic shapes. A fantastic piece of work was a short clip they did for Dave Clark called White Noise. The concept is white powder exploding and arranging to form text, the white substance being an allusion to the white noise we see on screen. Conceptually very fierce! Had a discussion with Ilmar during the break. I asked him what makes Dutch design Dutch. He observed that Dutch design has 3 characteristics: 1. Couldn’t-care-less attitude I find these points really befitting Dutch designers. The day ended with a nice chat with Karin and Alex from Lesley Moore. Netherlands 1.06pm, signing out!
Dean and team during this morning’s briefing
Dean and team seem unfazed by the incident, giving pragmatic steps on how to go on running the faculty. TU DELFT ARCHITECTURE FACULTY DESTROYED BY FIRE / BRAND BIJ BOUWKUNDE TU DELFT
Janita Han on Wed, May 14, 2008
SANFORD KWINTER @ BERLAGE for FAR FROM EQUILIBRIUM BOOK LAUNCH
Janita Han on Sat, May 10, 2008
left to right: Salomon Frausto, Sanford Kwinter, Peter Trummer
my signed copy of Far from EquilibriumPECHA KUCHA IN ROTTERDAM
Janita Han on Sun, April 27, 2008
Friend Ren Horng Yee, who presented at Pecha Kucha, with me and Ilmar Hurkxkens
View from the front row
Lesley Moore
Pecha Kucha in Rotterdam! There I was, yesterday night. (Yoda like…)
2. You have to make a joke out of everything
3. There has to be some subliminal message in the design
4. No sense of aesthetics (my addition)
see you
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