(Google)Street Photography.

Robert Doisneau's Le Baiser de l’Hôtel de Ville from 1950

Street photography is a genre of photography which deals with capturing people and daily life, usually at public places, streets, shops, coffees, etc. It is mostly a “snapshot photography” studying a certain milieu of city dweller. Street photography is spontaneous and is, consequently, often the product of coincidences.

image by Michael Wolf

The height of street photography begun in the thirties with the rise of small 35mm cameras.

With the aid of Google Street View, the photographer Michael Wolf renews the art of street photography. Instead of spotting people on street, he shoots the computer screen by cropping out parts of images on Google Street View: “photos of photos”. A contemporary way of “reading” the city.

Michael Wolf exhibition in Amsterdam

Color. Le Corbusier - Polychromie Architecturale.

Twentieth century's modernist architecture is mostly white - but not for Le Corbusier - where hardly any design comes without color. He used accent colors, picked from his "Polychromie architecturale", in contrast to the usually white or raw concrete surfaces. The palette includes 68 shades and 16 white tones, white each color containing only organic pigment. It results in greater harmony between those colors. Over the years Corbusier has shifted the palette from lighter shades to a more saturated version in his late work (50s).

The Claude & Duval factory (built in 1051) is an example of Corbusier colour experiments: walls, ceilings and even pipes are painted and contrast to the raw wall surfaces.

Claude and Duval Factory by Le Corbusier (image from Wallpaper)

Green Art.

Lois Weinberger Mobile Landscape
The need for environmental-friendly and sustainable buildings more and more creates a desire for greenery in urban areas. In cities with few parks and green space citizen increasingly try to "renaturalize" the public space - often by unconventional means. The possibilities reach e.g. from "urban agriculture" to "guerilla gardening" - whereas latter can be regarded as a protest against desolated urban quarters and their municipality.

The exhibition (re)designing nature at the Künstlerhaus Vienna presents next to well known landscape architects like West 8 also art work at the intersection of gardening and street art. Contemporary artists, architects and landscape designers present alternative uses of urban wastelands and former industrial areas, and design parasite gardens in the middle of cities.


Tomas Saraceno, Seasonable Urbansim

Reiner Maria Matysik, Brache 2010

N55, City Farming Plant Modules

Future for Architects.

What can be the role of architects in the next decade? Should architects insist on being the master-builder, designing, documenting and constructing buildings (=spaces), or shift towards new services like the emerging industry of design consultancy where creativity (e.g. design thinking) is more valued than the delivery of blueprints? Architects regard themselves often as underrated among other stakeholders in the planning process: both in power and compensation. In spite of the sudden rise of the star-architects, our role gets less significant.

Strangely, in maybe no other field exits so different interpretations of one profession. Are we artists? Engineers? Researcher? Sociologist? Marketeers? Writers? Designers? Or is the ‘professional generalist’ - as we like to see our-self (like the renaissance man) just wishful thinking, when many of us work on door schedules or construction documents?

Today, there are many new opportunities available to emerging architects, as Rory Hyde writes in his article Potential Futures for Design Practice - “overturning the inherited assumptions of the design professions”: new roles like being a “Community Enabler”, a “Unsolicited Architect”, a “Practicing Researcher” and more. Join the discussion on Potential Futures for Design Practice at Rory Hyde Projects / Blog.