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Articles by René Boer
Trad Day, Part II w/ Michael, Kevin + Joshua
Listen to this episode and subscribe to the FA podcast on , Spotify, Stitcher or Overcast. In this follow-up of Breezeblock #15, FA editors Michael Nicholas, Kevin Rogan, and Joshua McWhirter dive into the weird world of traditional architecture revivalism, or ‘trad arch’ for short.
Paint Your Town Red w/ Rhian E. Jones
Listen to this episode and subscribe to the FA podcast on , Spotify, Stitcher or Overcast. Local government budgets were among the first to be hit by austerity measures imposed by the UK government after the global financial crisis of the late 2000s.
Radio Alhara, Sonic Space, Beyond Palestine w/ Elias & Yousef Anastas
Listen to this episode and subscribe to the FA podcast on , Spotify, Stitcher or Overcast. For Breezeblock #18, FA organiser René Boer talks to the founders of Radio Alhara, architects Elias and Yousef Anastas, on the one year anniversary of their radio project. It was launched in Bethlehem at the start of the global lockdown and by now has become a sonic public space reaching well beyond the confines of Palestine. Saturday 20 March 2021 / Breezeblocks
Swarming the Red Light District w/ Floor, Tools For Action, Juli Salamanca & Papaya Kuir
Listen to this episode and subscribe to the FA podcast on , Spotify, Stitcher or Overcast. This spring, FA initiated ‘Situations’, an event series aiming to take critical reflections on architecture and space from the digital realm to the real world.
The Future of Amsterdam’s Red Light District w/ René + Charlie
Listen to this episode and subscribe to the FA podcast on , Spotify, Stitcher or Overcast. In the 12th Breezeblock episode, FA editors Charlie Clemoes and René Boer discuss the future of De Wallen (aka Amsterdam’s Red Light District), which is under increasing threat from the so-called “smooth city”: the safe, clean, well-functioning and homogenous urban environment that has been taking over cities around the world in the past few decades.
Guest Crit #1 - Failed Architecture
share this article Saturday 1 May 2021 / Uncategorized René Boer (1986) works as a curator, critic and researcher in the fields of architecture, urbanism, heritage and art. He is part of the Amsterdam-based Non-fiction collective, managing editor at Failed Architecture and affiliated with various urban social movements. Over the last few years, he has curated various exhibitions, public programmes and research projects, and has written for among others Volume, Harvard Design Magazine and Studio.
This Very Normal Dutch Architecture Firm Remains Responsible for Designing a Deportation Machine
In the autumn of 2020, the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIANY) called on all its members to stop being involved in the design of criminal justice facilities. Not long before, The Funambulist started a new campaign demanding architectural workers to “pledge to never participate in the design of spaces of detention”.
Appropriating Amsterdam: against the smooth city
Alternative forms of urbanism challenge the hegemony of the smooth city and its surging homogenisation Cities in affluent parts of the world are rapidly being completed, smoothened and polished. Every vacant plot is filled with profitable real-estate developments and every building is renovated to the latest standards. Public space is given expensive upgrades, wired with surveillance systems and kept under a close watch by both the police and the city’s cleaning departments.
More Leadership Reads to Succeed
Growing as a leader never stops. Along with Ratchet+Wrench's article on the automotive industry leader's top picks, John Beebe, owner of Bellingham Automotive, is here to provide more of his favorite leadership reads.
#10 Mecca to the Max: The Holy City Transformed
Mecca is the holiest city in the Islamic religion and the birthplace of the prophet Mohamed. Located just off Saudi Arabia’s western coast, all Muslims are required to visit at least once in their life if they are physically able to. With air travel becoming easier, the number of pilgrims has been rising rapidly over the last few decades, with a record number of 3 million people visiting Mecca simultaneously during the 2012 Hajj.
How to Be a Great Boss
Listen to the Intro Gino Wickman, René Boer Strategies to Help Your Employees Bring Their A-Game to Work Brief summary How to Be a Great Boss offers practical strategies and tools for leaders to manage and inspire their teams effectively. Wickman and Boer emphasize fostering a positive workplace culture and improving accountability for sustained business success. Table of Contents More knowledge in less time Read or listen Get the key ideas from nonfiction bestsellers in minutes, not hours.
Orphan City - Failed Architecture
Like many cities in Europe, Amsterdam experienced dramatic demographic shifts after World War II. In the decades after the war, the city lost almost 20 percent of its prewar population. Many of the remaining families moved away from the crumbling inner city toward the outskirts and new satellite towns. Only in the past few years has the city’s population rebounded to prewar levels. Meanwhile, the social composition of the city has changed radically.
Amsterdam’s Architectures of Hospitality
Global developments have resulted in increasing numbers of people arriving in Amsterdam over the last few years. Conflicts in the Middle East, in particular Syria, and worsening conditions in some African countries have brought about an unprecedented exodus of refugees. In the last three years millions of people have come to Europe risking their lives by braving the Aegean and Mediterranean seas in small boats.
#06 Architects in Calais: On Border Systems and Self-built Cities
The area around Calais, a town in northern France, has for many years been a major transit point for refugees on their way to the United Kingdom. During the recent peak in the number of refugees, the French and British authorities increasingly fortified this border landscape, forcing those on the move to build increasingly permanent shelters for themselves.
Concrete Experience: Bakema’s TrouwAmsterdam
Welcome to Trouw Cross Amsterdam’s inner ring road, which separates the seventeenth century canal district from the rest of the city, and cycle five minutes in an eastward direction to reach TrouwAmsterdam. The club, restaurant, and cultural venue occupy the front part of a vast concrete complex. The building’s long black façade is a visual void and is easily overlooked, so look for the word ‘Trouw’ written in illuminated orange colored letters. Park your bike and cross the square.
Instagramming Architecture
How well can you tell the story of a place through Instagram? We gave it a shot, as part of our role as critics-in-residence at the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2016. It became a week-long takeover of the biennale’s Instagram account, in which we delved into the local context of this year’s IABR venue, right on Rotterdam’s urban frontier.
What If Architects Were to Embrace, Rather Than Ignore, a Building’s Future?
It often seems like all aspects of architectural production, from its conceptualization and design, to its materialization and promotion, converge towards a building’s opening day. The day the ribbons are cut, the architects are praised and the champagne flows in abundance: the official birth of a building. In the lead-up to this day, press releases have been published, containing picture-perfect renderings of the building and a statement loaded with superlatives.
#03 Modernism Distorted: Selling Utopia From Kleiburg to Keeling House
Stereotypes regarding modernist architecture, and in particular the negative discourse on Amsterdam’s Bijlmer estate, have been quite crucial in shaping Failed Architecture’s way of thinking in its early years. Can we really blame the architecture for what went wrong? How can an entire neighbourhood, where thousands of people continue to live their lives on a daily basis, be simply dismissed as a grand failure?
Smooth City is the New Urban
Nowadays, it seems to be everywhere – the urban environment that feels smooth, polished and perfect. All buildings seem either new or renovated, and are generally in an excellent condition. Its public spaces are well-designed, well-maintained, clean and safe, if you conform to the rules. All spaces seem to be scripted according to the dominant norms and the needs of capital, and are populated by a socially, culturally and aesthetically homogenous crowd.
Photo Essay: On the Resilience of Ugliness
Often described as ‘Amsterdam’s ugliest architecture’, the small-scale urban renewal projects from the 70s and the 80s have been accused of ‘having ruined the historic city’. Although this is mostly a matter of taste, the projects’ buildings do indeed contrast starkly with the 17th and 18th century architecture in the historical core and the 19th and early 20th century housing in the surrounding urban belt.
FA at TodaysArt: Seaside Architecture — Failed Architecture
On Wednesday September 24 Failed Architecture organized a discussion on the often criticized urban environs of Scheveningen, a Dutch sea side resort adjacent to the city of The Hague. Together with a range of experts, we explored the defamed seaside architecture and urbanism from a historical and international perspective. Scheveningen’s pier and Kurhaus in the early 1960s Already for decades, Dutch seaside resorts are coping with high vacancy rates and reputation issues.
What If Architects Would Embrace, Rather Than Ignore, a Building’s Future? — Failed Architecture
It often seems like all aspects of architectural production, from its conceptualization and design, to its materialization and promotion, converge towards a building’s opening day. The day the ribbons are cut, the architects are praised and the champagne flows in abundance: the official birth of a building. In the lead-up to this day, press releases have been published, containing picture-perfect renderings of the building and a statement loaded with superlatives.
FA Workshop: Arrivals Absorption on a Booming City’s Fringes
Amsterdam has shown various levels of hospitality towards newcomers over the centuries, but it has always remained a point of arrival for migrants from all over the world. In recent years, the city has experienced a large influx of Syrian and other refugees, received more foreign students than ever before, and has welcomed the first ‘Brexpats’ leaving post-Brexit Britain. While wealthy newcomers can buy their way into the city center, the less affluent are confined to the city’s fringes.
Amsterdam’s Architectures of Hospitality
Global developments have resulted in increasing numbers of people arriving in Amsterdam over the last few years. Conflicts in the Middle East, in particular Syria, and worsening conditions in some African countries have brought about an unprecedented exodus of refugees. In the last three years millions of people have come to Europe risking their lives by braving the Aegean and Mediterranean seas in small boats.
What’s An Architecture Biennale Good For Anyway?
Critically yours While it’s not very common for architecture biennales to organise their own criticism, that’s what this year’s International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) has done. In the early spring we were asked to be this year’s ‘critics-in-residence’ and reflect on the ideas, projects and outcomes of the biennale in a series of essays.
Self-Builds: Between Unruly Real Estate Markets and Failed Housing Policies
One of the more noteworthy concepts that the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2016 communicates was a simple one: prioritise locally added value over value extraction. Of course, you might say, that’s common sense. Or is it? It’s not a new argument to say that cities are increasingly morphing from social configurations to investment vehicles. Today, urban spaces and amenities are only realised, and can only survive, if they have a viable business model that produces a healthy profit.
Slum Porn: Urban Misery as Catchy Imagery
At the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale, Urban Think Tank presented Gran Horizonte, a ‘pop-up restaurant’ mimicking life in the infamous squatted Torre de David-skyscraper in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas. This skyscraper was abandoned halfway through construction and subsequently occupied by thousands of ordinary Venezuelans who transformed it into a ‘vertical barrio’.
The Tyranny of the Filter Bubble and the Future of Public Space
While using online platforms, we are generally served up information suggested by algorithms that is based on traces of our previous searches, conversations, purchases and locations.
What the City of the Future Looks Like in the Next Economy
‘Welcome to the Next Economy. Let us show you a world where regret and frustration are a thing of the past; a world where as a premium member you are assured of a brighter future’, thus begins a narrative voice a tour of the smart, controlled and segregated city featured in the VR installation at the entrance of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2016.
What the City of the Future Looks Like If We Don’t Change Course
It’s early morning. You are in your fancy apartment in a high-rise in some non-descript inner city area. When you enter the study, your Quantified Self Tracking Service holographically projects an array of personal infographics. It quickly suggests a health center visit and schedules a ride in a mobility capsule. The capsule hovers quietly through a smooth urban landscape, until it gets stuck. Immediately, your system suggests a considerably more expensive, direct flight to the health center.
Going Embedded at the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2016: The Next Economy
Architecture and urbanism biennials are often said to set the agenda for spatial practice. A quick look at the focus of some of this year’s larger architecture programmes – the Venice Architecture Biennale and the Shenzhen UABB – is promising. The events are no longer about design for the sake of design. Rather, their aim is to rethink the city, and investigate how we can direct massive urbanisation processes toward more social and environmentally friendly outcomes.
On Zaha Hadid’s Dongdaemun Design Plaza
In February, Failed Architecture conducted a short but intensive research workshop on Seoul’s Dongdaemun Design Plaza, designed by the controversial London-based architect Zaha Hadid. Shortly after the workshop, Zaha Hadid passed away at the age of 65, leaving a remarkable legacy. Her building, and the discussions with the workshop participants, inspired Failed Architecture’s René Boer to write the following reflections on the ‘DDP’.
Orphan City - Failed Architecture
This essay was originally published in Harvard Design Magzine no. 41. The photos, which are an essential element of this essay, were specifically made for this publication by photographer Erwin van Amstel. Like many cities in Europe, Amsterdam experienced dramatic demographic shifts after World War II. In the decades after the war, the city lost almost 20 percent of its prewar population.
8 Reasons You Will Also Like Postmodern Architecture In 2016
If you are reading this, you probably already have a certain interest in architecture, but chances are that you never warmed up to those kinds of buildings from the late 70s, 80s and early 90s, generally classified as ‘Postmodern’. The architecture of these buildings is often based on a loose set of ideas that gained importance when Modernist architecture failed to reinvent itself in the 70s.
FA workshop: Seoul’s Dongdaemun Design Plaza
The Rotterdam-based design summer school Open Set will soon move abroad for the first time, with a series of workshops in the South-Korean capital of Seoul. In the last two weeks of February, designers, artists and researchers from the Netherlands and South Korea, will host one-day workshops, open to (young) professionals working in the creative industries.
Photo Essay: Amman’s Forgotten Cinemas
Still a small village half a century ago, the Jordanian city of Amman was transformed into the country’s sprawling capital in a matter of decades. While not as well-known as its close-by sister capitals Beirut or Cairo, Amman offers a peaceful retreat in a tumultuous region. The Ammanis started to build their new capital’s central district in the 50s and 60s, replete with all the institutions a capital is supposed to have.
Photo Essay: DORP
Douglas Mark Black was working as an architect and photographer in London when he paid regular visits to his small, semi-rural hometown of Adelaide, located in a poor part of South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province. During numerous visits back to South Africa, he was struck by the slow decline of Adelaide and similar such towns. In response to high crime rates and out of pure self-preservation, almost every single building has been progressively (re)designed to minimise vulnerability.
Did Suburbia Fail?
Failed Architecture was asked to guest-edit the 11th issue of 2ha magazine. Below is the editorial introduction from the issue. The full magazine can be ordered online. Introduction As guest editors for this issue of 2ha, we formulated a blunt and naive main question: Did suburbia fail? This is obviously a problematic investigation since suburbia is too big to fail, too ubiquitous and multidimensional to treat as a singular topic, and impossible to define.
Filth: Capturing Concrete Ecologies
The 32km of noise barriers, concrete, and asphalt that make up Amsterdam’s A10 ring road are a often overlooked part of the city’s landscape. Built between 1966 and 1990, and separating the outer suburbs from the city centre, it is mainly by bike that Amsterdam’s inhabitants encounter the ring road, quickly crossing the bare concrete underpasses on their way to and from town. At least one person has deemed these underpasses worthy of further attention.
Erasing the Remnants of a Revolution
Friday, 28 January 2011. Three days after the start of mass demonstrations in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, protesters called for a ‘‘ to invigorate the demands of a nascent revolution. After midday prayers, up to a million people descended on Tahrir square from all corners of the city, resulting in a long day of bloody fighting with the police. As the evening fell, the police seemed to be losing control in most places and started to retreat from the streets.
Photo Essay: On the Resilience of Ugliness
Often described as ‘Amsterdam’s ugliest architecture’, the small-scale urban renewal projects from the 70s and the 80s have been accused of ‘having ruined the historic city’. Although this is mostly a matter of taste, the projects’ buildings do indeed contrast starkly with the 17th and 18th century architecture in the historical core and the 19th and early 20th century housing in the surrounding urban belt.
Ouagadougou’s Innercity Savanna
In 2003, 85 hectare of popular urban villages between Ouagadougou's city center and its airport were razed to make way for a commercial and governmental district. However, the area remains largely undeveloped to date. In 2003 bulldozers started to clear 85 hectare of popular neighbourhoods located between Ouagadougou’s city center and its airport.
Buildings Must Die
Architecture seems increasingly limited to the production of shiny renderings of shiny buildings (replete with the obligatory blue skies and well-to-do passers-by). Filling up your facebook-wall or twitter-feed via Archdaily or Architizer, this reduction of architecture to a seemingly endless stream of sterile imagery is something Failed Architecture has often criticised.
The Copycat Hype: Learning from a Saint Peter Replica
During the papal conclave and subsequent election of Pope Francis I last month the public eye closely followed all the developments around Rome’s famous Saint-Peter basilica. While Bernini’s renowned collonades embraced journalists and excited Catholics alike, it remained rather quiet at the Notre-Dame de la Paix, an almost exact copy of the Saint-Peter, located in Yamoussoukro, the capital of Ivory Coast.
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