Designblog

(I did some research )?

After seeing wonderful sketches of the famous design for the Rijksmuseum by Dutch architect Pierre Cuypers’, I made a pop-up of the building as a form of a pop-up. click on the image to view the result!

In 1875 architect Petrus Josephus Hubertus Pierre Cuypers won the design-contest for the Rijksmuseum. Before this time he designed little more than a hundred churches, for witch about seventy got realized. Besides that me made designs for monasteries, chapels and did renovations of old churches.

Cuypers was the first Dutch architect who, in his time, used Gothic construction-techniques and put them into practice. Before he made use of the Gothic shapes in a decorative way, until he completely switched to a Neo-Gothic style.

The Gothic revival was a reaction on the cold and strict forms of the Classicism. This came from a nostalgic, romantic interest for the Middle Ages.

Cuypers’ design for the Rijksmuseum featured Renaissance-style arches, neo-Gothic windows and Medieval towers. The function of the building is not clear. From the outside you would not guess it is a museum. However, Cuypers build an ode to Dutch history by combining styles and thereby gives an public lesson in Dutch history.

The design got a lot of critique from the public, the Protestant majority could not cope with the ‘to Catholic’ result. They considered it also to be ‘to Medieval’.

I think it’s a remarkable building, build with a great eye for detail.

During my research I found out that the recent construction work, which started in 2003, is not only focused on modernizing the facilities but as well to bring long gone elements of Cuypers original design back into the building. Like for instance, in the front-hall they remade the mosaics on the floor. The Rijksmuseum hired a specialized Italian company to get the job done. The mosaics are series about the cycle of life, cycle of the year and the cycle of seasons. I’m looking forward to see the work in its final state.

HUDSON MUSEUM is part of the April 1st BasicYear Design Trip
more on the Hudson Museum

Using my last tags, I found a really interesting book from an artist I already knew before. Because I found something with the words architecture and library, which were the most important tags of my last post, I was surprised, to find a book which is so nice even when I had to search quite specific.

Andreas Gursky makes pictures that are famous over the whole world. In my first post I told something about a book which is totally focussed on libraries. But this book shows not only libraries, but it shows a whole content of buildings photographed on a way only Andreas Gursky is able to. He makes pictures that show a new view on a building. Most of them are enormously big, or extremely complicated. They show an index of these buildings.

It is related to my second book because Andreas Gursky also photographed some interesting libraries and museums. And that is also the reason it is related to my first book. The difference between the books, is that this book is all about photography of the buildings. That’s why the images in the book are so interesting. In this book, the main subjects are the photographs of Andreas Gursky, in my other books it was about the building itself.

I think it is really interesting I found this book. Andreas Gurksy is one of my favorite photographers, and combined with the subject of this book and my earlier books, it is a nice collection if you want to know more about the architecture of the library, and specially when you want to see some brilliant pictures. It all fits together, but I think it also fits really well in the project we worked on.

Public Library Amsterdam: 761.2

The second book I choose is about the architecture from library’s and museums. Because my tags were “library” “arranging” “industrial” it isn’t a really big surprise that the book I find now is quite similar to the other one. But the most important difference is the fact that this book is about the architecture of the buildings.

It is a really interesting book because you will find out more from well known buildings and also discover some new. Off course the architecture is really important for the atmosphere in library’s and museums.

The reason that makes this book interesting for me is that they show every detail of the buildings. I like the fact that you can find maps, models, etc. In some way it almost looks like a hobby book, for self-made architecture. But to make one of the buildings myself, is not gonna work I guess…

Publik Library Amsterdam: 718.4
Bauten der Kultur: “Museen und Bibliotheken”

Amsterdam based Visual artist and archivist Tjebbe van Tijen (1944) works since 1988 under the name Imaginary Museum Projects consisting of regular lectures, performances and publications on subjects like social memory, psycho-geography, media history, mapping of human violence and visual language. Especially interesting in this project are the “Museums in our Minds Scrolls” that he is making. To view the strips of images, he build a special wooden viewing device with handles that one had to turn to scroll through the strips, a manual scroll-bar really.
link to the Imaginary Museum Homepage, or read the interview that Geert Lovink had with him in 2004
In his celebrated book “Le Musée Imaginaire”, Andre Malraux (1901) developped the idea that the world of reproductions forms a “museum without walls“ a museum in your head. A virtual museum read more:

Continuous Drawing by Tjebbe van Tijen. Photographs with permission of Pieter Boersma. Coll. H. Groenendijk

One of Tjebbe van Tijen first “actions” was “the continuous drawing” organized by him and students of the London ‘Sigma Centre’ in 1967. The “continuous drawing” came out of a Londen sewer and travelled to The Netherlands. Two parallel lines, continuously branching and looping creating organic forms. True streets, onto cabs,in the airplane and thrue Schiphol Airport, over the streets, into the Stedelijkmuseum where it continuous on the stairs, to the terras, covering visitors and statues until it ends as a projection in a smoke filled dome, as if desolving in smoke. This project was initiated by the City of Amsterdam Municipality, Tourist Promotion and various Art Foundations in A’dam and R’dam. Other participants were a.o. Willem Breuker (musician), Theo Botschuijver (industrial designer), Graham Stevens (architect), Pieter Boersma (photographer). His took the initiative for a documentation center on art, technology and society at the Sigma Center and Stedelijk Museum (1967-1969) and was later founder and curator of the Documentation Center of Modern Social Movements at the University Library and International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam

sources: “Actie, werkelijkheid en fictie in de kunst van de jaren ’60 in Nederland” (Action, Reality and Fiction in the art of the sixties)©’79, Mediametic, Gandalf #19 ©’79. imaginary Museum