aug 27th, 2011 | Uncategorized
An earthquake and a huge hurricane in one week: the east coast of the US is having a hard time. Buzzfeed.com posted 20 ‘photos’ of what New York City will look like tomorrow when hurricane Irene gets there. Water cascading down the subway steps, waves crashing into the Statue of Liberty at waist height, fleets of yellow cabs in the streets up to their gills in water. I’ll be interested to compare them to what really happens tomorrow. Especially since in my new book Sweet&Salt: Water and the Dutch I’ll be discussing New York’s forward-looking attempts to prepare for climate change and rising waters. Read the article…
aug 19th, 2011 | Uncategorized
Niels van Eijk and Mirjam van der Lubbe were invited to do a complete makeover of Eindhoven’s concert hall. No stone went unturned, from the lobby with its touchy-feely ambient light wall to the uniforms, the carpet and that one brave yellow chair in the big auditorium. Graphics by Gerard Hadders. Read my article in the July issue of Metropolis here in Publications. Read the article…
aug 3rd, 2011 | Uncategorized
BMW and the Guggenheim have started a six-year collaboration: the BMW Guggenheim Lab. Three different pavilions will travel to nine different world cities in order to help find solution to urban problems through lectures, workshops and interaction. The first pavilion opened yesterday on New York’s Lower East Side. The idea came from the young curators David van der Leer (31) and Maria Nicanor (30); the Dutch architects Kristian Koreman and Elma van Boxel of ZUS are part of the international ‘lab team’. Courageous of megabrand BMW to invest an undoubtedly mega sum in a project with such an undefined and unpredictable outcome. Read the article…
jul 11th, 2011 | Uncategorized
Designers Mirjam van der Lubbe and Niels van Eijk were invited to redesign Eindhoven’s concert hall. The result is a Gesamtkunstwerk: they redid everything, from the carpet to the seating to the uniforms, even down to the cups and saucers. Read the article…
apr 4th, 2011 | Uncategorized
I arrived in Boston just in time to tag along with my friends Matthew Kiefer and Nan Porter to a high-style opening for sponsors of the exhibition Dale Chihuly: Through the Looking Glass at the Museum of Fine Arts (http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/chihuly), of which they are patrons. The whole event had a slightly surreal tinge to it. No doubt in part because I was jetlagged, but also because of the nature of Chihuly’s work, with its orgiastic colors and woozy swirling underwater shapes. Read the article…
