1. |
- Van Toorn, Roemer, 1960-
(author)
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City State Dubai, a text-image essay : Society of the And
- 2012
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Other publication (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Society of The And : Text-image photo researchWith the traveloque of images in the photobook the Society of the And the viewer is challenged to carry out a montage. A dialogue full of ambiguities, contradictions and positions should set itself into presence. While the viewer is invited to look to the facts, I hope s/he start to see beyond the stereotypical, beyond the world of stupifying banality, routine and mechanical reproduction. The format of the images is chosen not only that you decode, that you decipher what you "read" (as in the television news), no, you are also invited to see the free play, the unfinished pieces, the juxtapositions, gaps and openings within the Society of the And. The challenge is to extract a genuine image from the Society of the And, free the visual from any prior program, or fixed gaze (theatricality), to release ourselves from the suffocation of the cliché.A new spectre is haunting the world – the spectre of And. It is the spectre of urbanity, the one of the multitude that haunts society. All the cultural, technological, economical and intellectual powers in the world – both on the left and the right – have embraced this spectre. Formerly the dominant forces were separation and specialisation, the struggle for clarity and the reduction of the world to calculable proportions; now we talk about One World based on simultaneity, mobility, migration, fluidity, multiplicity, reflexivity, individualism, risk, urban warfare, uncertainty, chaos theory, hybridization, diaspora, the state of exception, schizophrenia, privitization, heterotopia, immersion, the space of flows, the culture of sprawl, cyborgs and so on. The Either-Or world in which we lived and acted became increasingly an illusion. Our modernity no longer develops mainly in instrumental, rational and linear terms; instead it takes its direction from the rules of side-effects. In a certain sense Modernity might be considered more ideological while the Society of the And (2nd Modernity) is more pragmaticThe above mentioned fieldwork of text-images on Dubai, photographing the current conditions of globalization, is undertaking parallel to an inroductionary article on The Society of the And, funded by the Swedish Research Council Formas, Architecture in Effect.
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2. |
- Dworzak, Hugo
(author)
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if Architecture...
- 2013
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In: If Architecture ... When Architektur .... - Liechtenstein : University liechtenstein.
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Book chapter (pop. science, debate, etc.)abstract
- in 2013 the Institute of Architecture and Planning at the University of Liechtenstein celebrated its 50th birthday. Having started as an evening school in 1963 they have undergone several changes and have reached University status in 2011. Through all these years attitudes like curiosity and endurance, the courage to experiment and constant renewal have nurtured teachers and students.Following the symposium the «If architecture ...» postcards will be auctioned to the highest bidders, with the proceeds going to the project «Community Art Space» in Tanzania for the benefit of the Maasai. Hugo Dworzsak, Head of the Institute of Architecture and Planning, made a special publication out of the more than 300 contributions he received from architects, artits, writers and thinkers who had teached and/or lecturers at the institute.
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3. |
- Jõekalda, Johanna
(author)
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On the ideological structure of a data society : interview with Roemer van Toorn
- 2014
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In: Interspace. - Tallinn : Architecture Centre of Estonia and Lugemik. - 9789949918263 ; , s. 126-145
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Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- "Interspace" investigates the spatial and social consequences of a data-driven society where personalised information flows produce a multitude of personalised readings of the collective sphere and thus, the role of public space is to be questioned. Accompanied by a new understanding about authorship and new techniques of design, this participatory model calls out for new ways of organising spaces. With regard to the changes that the last substantial structural transformation of the public – web 2.0 – has brought along in architecture, "Interspace" analyses what has architecture got to do with big data and what is the architects' role at the time when their expertise is being challenged by digital technologies.Published by Estonian Center of Architecture and Lugemik on the occasion of the Estonian national exhibition "Interspace" at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia (7.06.–23.11.2014)
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4. |
- Miessen, Markus, et al.
(author)
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The problem is not to make political architecture, but to make architecture politically.
- 2013
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In: What is Critical Spatial Practice?. - Berlin : Sternberg Press. - 9783943365276
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Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Nikolaus Hirsch and Markus Miessen invited protagonists from the fields of architecture, art, philosophy, and literature to reflect on the single question of what, today, can be understood as a critical modality of spatial practice. Most of the sixty-four contributions presented in this volume were composed concurrently with the evictions of many of the Occupy movements, sustained turmoil in countries of the Arab Spring, and continued spasms in the global financial system, which, interestingly, all pointed at the question and problematic of whether architecture and our physical environment can still be understood as a res publica. A response by the editors takes the form of a conversation.This book is first in a series on critical spatial practice developed alongside the Städelschule program of the same name. Each edition includes work by invited artists—the first includes newly commissioned work by the photographer Armin Linke, who documented the Occupy camp around the European Central Bank in Frankfurt.Contributions by:
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5. |
- Ozmin, Janek, 1975-, et al.
(author)
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The Extraordinary Life of Elements Review Exhibition, UMA School of Architecture, October November 2014 : UMA Research Group Review of the 2014 Venice Biennale of Architecture: Elements of Architecture.
- 2014
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Other publication (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The Extraordinary Life of Elements Review Exhibition Editor Professor Roemer van Toorn, Professor Jüri Soolep, Sepideh Karami, Katja Hogenboom, Hannes Frykholm and Janek Ozmin, UMA School of Architecture, October 2014 consists of six separate reviews collated into a single exhibition. The content was captured on site at the Biennale including record conversations by the review group, interviews with Biennale exhibition contributors, collected media, photographs, sound recordings and videos by the authors. The collated work formed a pluralist, dialogical platform from which the Biennale Exhibition can be viewed. Alongside the printed review panels and video installations, a round table format was used to present various printed media, Biennale exhibition catalogues, and media from participating country pavilions and maps. This table then formed the basis for a debate on the Venice Biennale Exhibition by participating researchers. The Exhibition was mounted in Umeå School of Architecture and formed part of the Arts Campus Open House Research Days November 2014.
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6. |
- Pedersen, Claus Peder
(author)
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Don't excavate change reality! : the architect as public intellectual
- 2013
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In: When architects and designers write, draw, build?. - Aarhus : Arkitektskolens Forl.. - 9788790979355 ; , s. 118-125
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Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Publication made after the international research symposium at Aarhus university "When Architects and Designers Write, Draw, Build?, a PhD", which was held on 4 - 6 May 2011. Its main keynote speakers were Jonathan Hill, Roemer van Toorn, Fredrik Nilsson, and Adrian Forty.With the title "Don't excavate! Change Reality!" Roemer van Toorn spoke about the research approach of the UMA PHD Research School. With his plea for the architect as public intellectual he looks for an optimistic critique - a new theory - that projects alternatives with a passion for the real.Most research in Architecture, both as written thesis and as research by design tries to uphold eternal standards of truth and justice that are precisely not of today's world. They excavate the world without developing a much-needed position what alternatives could be developed facing the many spatial problems of late-capitalism today. According to UMA, researchers in architecture should act as public intellectuals who on the one hand speak the truth to power because they cannot be mistaken for an anonymous functionary or careful bureaucrat. And on the other hand develop alternatives because we cannot continue the experiences of the last century. Important to understand is that our global condition is in need of new conceptual framework, a new vision, and other organization forms, after the failure of late-capitalism and the celebration of deregulation, privatization and its destruction of nature.
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7. |
- van Toorn, Roemer, 1960-
(author)
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Aesthetics as form of politics : Arets and Koolhaas provide architecture with new impulses
- 2012
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In: Open! key texts 2004/2012. - Rotterdam : Nai010 publishers. - 9789462080034 ; , s. 54-62
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Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Since 2004, magazine/book Open has conducted an interdisciplinary investigation into the changing conditions of public space, fostering new ideas about the public sphere and focusing on the impact of current processes of privatization, mediatization and globalization on society and cultural production. This volume collects key texts from Open, published between 2004 and 2012.
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9. |
- Van Toorn, Roemer, 1960-
(author)
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Globalization : to renew from within
- 2010
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In: Manifold. - Houston : Manifold Publishing Group. ; :4, s. 128-132
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- When I was asked to moderate this forum on globalization—given the context of Lars Lerup’s thinking and research, and what we, as friends here today, seem to share—I thought that we all look for routes to renew architecture (and with it society) from within. But before I ask the forum members for their opinions, and their answers to my question as to which projects, according to them, are moving either in the wrong or right direction, I would like to highlight a few issues. Late capitalism in the twenty‐Oirst century has become Deleuzian. Disorganization, deregulation, privatization (of property and free time), and the free market economy, together with globalization and the end of the nation state, have generated the critical condition we are in today. Neither linear nor dialectical logics structure our society today; rather, rhizomic and bio‐political systems do. The once progressive Deleuzian idea that the “And” (multiplicity) will liberate us from any totalitarianism has generated a whole other idea: the bewildering interdependence of our times. In fact, a new specter is haunting the world - namely, the specter of the And, of additivity, of a world of cohabitation and intermixing, in short, of And, And, And…. It is true we live in a disorderly order, not just a bewildering disorder, but this order is also highly interdependent, full of hidden centralities, a network society intermixed with spontaneity and control as a kind of open source ideology.
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10. |
- Van Toorn, Roemer, 1960-
(author)
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Le Modernisme IKEA : l'éffondrement de la ville
- 2012
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In: Tracés : bulletin technique de la Suisse romande. - : Verlag der Akademischen Technischen Vereine. - 1662-7628. ; :10
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Dans un article de 2006 intitulé Ikea Populism and the Idea of the City, le théoricien d’architecture Roemer van Toorn examine comment différents projets d’architecture forgent la non-cité, contribuant ainsi à l’effondrement de la ville. Nous avons traduit les deux premiers paragraphes de cette critique sans complaisance. L’intégralité de l’article est disponible en anglais sur le site : www.roemervantoorn.nl
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