This pier was at one time straight, but the persistent sea slowly bowed it into submission.
In Saint-Malo there is a small castle, connected to the mainland by a narrow spit of rocks. Inside this castle there is a turret where they keep all of the writers bound in goose twine and silk.
Books seen at the Festival Étonnants Voyageurs in Saint-Malo, France. I love publishers that use a consistent design template for their covers, as if they are slowly cataloging all of human existence. This trends seems to be much more popular in Europe, a gesture back to the Penguin covers of old.
The Atlas of the United States Printed for the Use of the Blind was published in 1837 for children at the New England Institute for the Education of the Blind in Boston. Without a drop of ink in the book, the text and maps in this extraordinary atlas were embossed heavy paper with letters, lines, and symbols.
(via cartophile)
Words without paper by Annie Vought.
Under the subheading of UNUSUAL DUTCH PASTIMES THAT INVOLVE WATER AND/OR MUD, I offer to you wadlopen, the ancient practice of walking out onto the vast mudflats of the Waddensea, off the coast of Friesland, to ponder that potent mixture of land, water, and sky. The point is not to arrive somewhere but to negotiate the tides and navigate that liminal space where the Netherlands end and the North Sea begins (and in the process get wickedass muddy). We had the pleasure of wadlopen this past Saturday somewhere around here. It is an activity that must be experienced to be understood, like sextime or waffles.
Physics student Andrew Oriani diagrams patron movement at the Cleveland Museum of Art to better understand how visitors walk through a museum.
In a bonus entry of our penta-biannual feature GREAT DUTCH LIBRARIES OF THE NETHERLANDS comes Bibliotheek Rotterdam, completed in 1983 and the last project of Jaap Bakema. Bakema’s great theoretical contribution to his field was the very Dutch notion of “Total Space” in which architecture forms a seamless extension of “human habitat.”
Jaap Bakema Transitional Elements, sketch 1961
The canary yellow and navy blue cascade of piping flowing from the bibliotheek’s roof enacts a somewhat overstated echo of the Centre Pompidou’s own playful deconstructionism. On the building’s facade, you will find a quote (spelled out in neon) from Erasmus, Rotterdam’s spiritual and philosophical father: “Heel de wereld is mijn vaderland” <”All the world is my country”>, which is technically not true.
Interior lampshades now seem like IKEA overload:
As perhaps the greatest sign of respect to the building (and hard evidence that it has entered the essential cannon of Netherlands architecture), you can find a miniature replica of the bibliotheek at Madorudam, that existential park of the small where all Dutch people come to ogle their world from above:
In this week’s episode of STRANGE DUTCH SPORTS comes paalzitten or “pole-sitting,” a pastime that is widely practiced across Friesland, the inevitable home to all STRANGE DUTCH SPORTS. Pole-sitters are allowed bathroom breaks, but must otherwise sit continuously on top of a pole until they fall off (often into a body of water so they don’t kill themselves) or surrender. The recent 2011 Friesland paalzitten kampioen lasted 54 hours and 5 minutes. Traditionally, the winner usually wins a kitchen, but successful pole-sitters acquired too many kitchens and were forced to buy vast tracts of land to house their kitchens, and so prizes are now given in the form of money or harems. As always, Frisians claim they invented the sport when in fact evidence points to much earlier origins: Saint Simeon Stylites the Elder, founder of the ascetic discipline of Stylism, supposedly spent 37 years on top of a pillar in Syria in the 4th century.
In this week’s installment of our tetra-annual feature GREAT DUTCH LIBRARIES OF THE NETHERLANDS (redundancy is purposeful) comes Utrecht University’s Uithof Library, completed in 2004 and designed by Wiel Arets Architects. The library’s facade is composed of a mixture of glass windows and black concrete panels, the glass marked by a repeating jungle pattern and the concrete marked by the same pattern in relief.
The building—with its open-air lobby and soaring commons spaces, allowing for multiple vertical and horizontal sight lines—is a feat of contemporary design if not quite successful as a space of literary reflection. The usual dark floor/light wall motif is contradicted here with black concrete walls and white floors, a chromatic flip that comes off as a little too dramatic to my eyes, accentuating the blacks and playing too dark for the kind of curious contemplation and deep research that takes place at such an institution. Wandering the library’s staircases, I felt myself already beginning to fall into an undergraduate malaise. I was also unable to shake this vague feeling of dystopic totalitarianism, as if at any moment an elite swat team might swoop in and throw a bag over a dissident student’s head to little protest from his peers.
It’s interesting to contrast this library with the all-white complex that is the Amsterdam Public Library (and subject of our next installment), which feels very open, airy, and is heavily trafficked by a grateful, flea-bitten public. Not that the solution is to paint every surface white, but black is always a difficult palette to work with as the dominant color scheme in a structure supposed to allow for multiple kinds of working environments with multiple types of academic engagement, particularly in a space so clearly affected by the by the weather and light spilling in from the outside. In short, this building succeeds more as an idea of a 21st century library than a library itself. Though I would love to see the Borgesian sci-fi thriller starring Uma Thurman that should be filmed in here.
(Images by Jan Bitter)
This is the Dom Tower of Utrecht. Originally attached to the adjacent cathedral, a 1674 storm collapsed the unfinished nave and ever since the tower has stood on its own. The Dom Tower is now manned by a civilian wachter (“watch person”) everyday, 365 days a year. The job of the wachter is to scan the horizon for signs of inclement weather, and presumably, to keep watch for de fatale storm. At first necessary in the 17th and 18th century, the position is now largely symbolic (though compulsory) for every Utrecht citizen. At the beginning of each year Utrechters will get notice of the time and date for their were plicht (“weather duty”), when they must trudge up the 465 stairs to man their post. Despite existing largely as a custom and providing little practical meteorlogical use, the were plicht is notoriously hard to get out of—to exempt oneself, one must supply the town with two(!) doctors certificates and/or a notice of a death in the family and a receipt from the funeral home.
“NATO Storage Annex, Coevorden”
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Artist Mishka Henner explores Dutch polygonal censorship in Google Earth. This is the next iteration of the Dutch manipulating their landscape to suit their needs.
(via Architizer)
Last night I dreamed I was trapped in an amusement park designed by Mondrian.
Seagull Ferry, Rotterdam
Austerity was not without its consequences.
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