The churches are almost empty, but religion is undergoing a comeback in the city. One example is Kleiklooster, a modern-day ‘monastery’ in the 60’s apartment block Kleiburg in the Bijlmer. I met with one of the founders, Johannes van der Akker, who will also be a guest in my live talkshow Stadsleven on Sept. 27th. And… they also brew beer!
Cities all over the world are trying to take back public space from cars and give it back to people. Barcelona has thought up – and implemented – a new urban strategy, as radical as it is simple: the superblock, or in Catalan superilla. “Every city should try something like this”, says Sílvia Casorran, mobility expert and a resident of Poble Nou, the posterchild of Barcelona’s riposte to the car – and to the city’s excessive air pollution. Bordered by the sea and mountains, Barcelona is Europe’s third densest city, after Paris and Athens.
All over the world, cities are trying to take back public space from the car. Barcelona has invented the ‘superblock’, where through traffic is banned to make space for playgrounds and gardens. I went to see the superblock in the neighborhood Poble Nou. Where four lanes of through traffic used to drive, there are now gardens, benches and playgrounds. “All cities should try this”, says neighborhood resident Silvia Casorran.
Het Stadsarchief in Amsterdam heeft een tentoonstelling samengesteld uit het oeuvre van fotograaf Dolf Toussaint. Hij woonde zijn hele leven in de Jordaan, maar was ook een vertrouwde verschijning in de gangen van het Binnenhof. De tentoonstelling raakt mij persoonlijk, om twee redenen. Omdat ik moest denken aan mijn (enige) ontmoeting met hem, én omdat ik verrassend veel raakvlakken ontdekte tussen zijn werk en mijn eigen leven in Nederland.
De tentoonstelling – t/m 4 nov. te zien – is liefdevol en zorgvuldig naar thema ingericht – ook al weet je dat er voor elke foto honderd andere konden hangen, de man heeft een lange carrière gehad en was waanzinnig productief.
Dutch designer Joris Laarman has gained international fame with his designs in which he uses innovative technology to create objects of great beauty: functional esthetics. His newest project is a 3D printed bridge of steel, a technique he invented himself, for one of Amsterdam’s medieval canals. I went to talk to him and see the bridge under construction in his workplace at the former NDSM-shipyard in the north of the city.