rotterdam architecture biennale | ceuta

My favourite project from the Kunsthal's Visionary Power show is a concrete square in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, in Morocco. It's been called a city of refugees in the no-man’s-land between two worlds.

Office Kersten Geers David Van Severen from Brussels designed the border crossing as a neutral zone with the centre as a sort of market space where anything can happen. The Samaritans, brothels and cafes line the corridors within the border of the square.

The simplicity of the idea is striking.


from www.dysturb.net

It's a plan to replace the current barrier, the EU-financed triple-layered €30 million razor wire barrier between Morocco and Ceuta, the first European wall since Berlin, which is beautiful despite itself:





From Moritz Siebert's images:

"This is the official border checkpoint from the Spanish side.
as the Moroccan border inhabitants are allowed to freely cross the border to Ceuta, the checkpoint usually is very busy. people buy cheap goods ranging from chocolate to electronic devices and sell them on in an improvised market on the Moroccan side."

Attempting to pass through to the Spanish side involves confounding this:


The BBC reported the trials of crossing the border in 2004. The comments section is interesting, says a lot about the perception of immigration in general.

al-manakhed.

1. A look inside Shoreditch's media member's club

2. DESIGN FOR LONDON has a VISION. With Richard Rogers. Website launched yesterday, prepare for *lash.

3. MVRDV's Parkrand with tri-slides. Yum.

4. Mathematicians solve 75 year old mobius strip mystery.

5. Tiengementen is the last surviving island in the South West of the Netherlands, and it has just become a nature reserve.

6. I want this book about Cedric Price.

7. A study on terrorist organisation logos.

8. iMomus on London. Offering the metaphor: London as vagina.

9. EUtube. For that film on European cinema that got the Polish angry.

from design to cats

That way the months will pass more slowly, and I won't have to flip over so many calendar pages in one go (if you had a "Men of CCTV" calender you would use paper too.)

guy archard | photography

Guy finally has a website!

This is what Guy looks like when he takes a photo:


And this is what the photo looks like:

Paris stair, 2006


Him and Ed and Alex used to live together, and had this picture on their wall. I think it was my favourite. It's nice to know that I can look at it whenever I like now:

Moonlit, 2005

on ornament

Herzog and de Meuron's National Stadium in Beijing.

I see architectural ornament in the 21st century as an integral part of the building fabric itself, where subjectivity is replaced by a necessity – the patterning on a bee’s wing is highly ornamental, but at the same time has evolved as a ruthlessly efficient and complex structure to enable flight.

Patrick Usborne in the current AArchitecture article "Everything you've ever wanted to know about ornament* *but were too afraid to ask!"

AArchitecture is ace. It also smells good. Made by Zak group the typography is swoonsome. And there are cute little satellite magazines in the centrefold:



(by the way, that image behind the satellite image there is an article called "Dr. Charles Jencks on sex")


And now I'll finish with a poster Zak made for a symposium on porn in culture.
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