VISION AND VISIONARIES: Kees Christiaanse
Open City
06. April 2011
Lecture at DAZ Taut Saal, 7.00 pm
Entrance free. Please register at mail@daz.
The Dutch urban planner and architect Kees Christiaanse, who taught at the TU Berlin from 1996 until 2003, and is professor at the ETH in Zurich (CH) since 2003, is engaged in the research of contemporary urban phenomena and the development of instruments for sustainable and integral planning. Christiaanse, born 1953 in Amsterdam, studied architecture and urban planning at the TU Delft. From 1980 until 1989 he worked for the Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in Rotterdam, becoming a partner in 1983. In 1989 Kees Christiaanse founded his own office ir. Kees Christiaanse Architects & Planners in Rotterdam, KCAP since 2002. Next to his work as an architect, Kees Christiaanse focuses on urban assignments in complex situations and on guiding of urban processes. He is a consultant to several airports and an expert in the development of university campuses as well as in the revitalization of former industrial, railway and harbour areas, which is illustrated by KCAP’s work in the docklands of Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Hamburg and London.
In 2009 Kees Christiaanse was curator of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) with the title “Open City. Designing Coexistence”. The term “Open City” can be viewed as a spatial translation of an open society, characterized by openness, transparency and tolerance. It describes not a city but rather a condition of a district. Christiaanse defines “Open City” as a place where co-existence between different social groups, cultural diversity, visible differences in scale exist and where urban innovation processes and perhaps economic development take place. An accumulation of all these factors can have a positive effect; at that moment we can speak of an “Open City”.
DAZ Lecture Series VISION AND VISIONARIES
In looking at current developments around the world and within our civil societies, we are provoked to ask the complex question: “How do we want to live in the future?”. It is increasingly clear that, in order to meet the demands for a livable future environment, we will need visionary, interdisciplinary approaches to possible solutions. The DAZ is therefore initiating a lecture series in which protagonists that are outstanding and visionary in their respective discipline will reveal their projects, perspectives and strategies, thereby offering inspiration for the further development of a sustainable architecture and urban planning.
Upcoming Lectures:
04.05.2011, 7.00 pm
FERDINAND LUDWIG / HANNES SCHWERTFEGER
Baubotanik: Constructed trees – grown constructions + A fragile architecture
01.06.2011, 7.00 pm
Nick Sweet BARTON WILLMORE (London)
Photo: © IABR / George Brugmans
