Last Saturday, the Archis/Volume team visited two neo-traditional neighborhoods in the South of the Netherlands. Holland’s first neo-traditional neighborhoods are largely completed, and during this excursion led by Volume’s Editor-in-Chief Arjen Oosterman we had the opportunity to visit the most famous one of them, Brandevoort. The popularization of neo-traditional neighborhoods and vintage urbanism has led to intense debates in professional circles. Is this a good thing because people like it? Or is it fake because we are rebuilding the past without any historic anchor points?

Our first stop was Haverleij near the city of Den Bosch. This district by Sjoerd Soeters comprises approximately ten ‘castles’ situated in a natural and green setting. All castles, which are designed by different architects ranging from Soeters himself to Michael Graves, have a residential function and feel like gated communities, although there are hardly any fences. Many of the buildings have typical medieval elements, such as bridges and castle-like walls and towers. At the same time, the neighborhood hardly feels ‘fake’ due to the great variation in architecture and building materials. Nevertheless, one thing is clear: Haverleij and its residential concept makes a statement against the crumbling of social cohesion in the modern world. All castles breath social control, unity and safety.

The same goes for Brandevoort, our second stop. Brandevoort part of the latest generation of Dutch suburbs, the so-called Vinex neighborhoods. The state-led Vinex program regards nation-wide production of new large suburbs near almost all medium-sized cities in the Netherlands. Many Vinex projects have resulted in landscapes of monotonious houses in semi-modern building styles. But Brandevoort is a remarkable exception. This new neighborhood by Rob Krier, built close to the city of Helmond, looks and feels like a traditional medieval town. Brandevoort tends to breath history, although Krier’s plan has been existing for only eight years.

Most people would compare Brandevoort to ‘real’ fortress towns and medieval city centers and conclude that the streets are quiet and boring. But shouldn’t we compare the atmosphere to other Vinex-neighborhoods designed and built in the same period under the same conditions? In that case, Brandevoort is pretty lively and livable. People seem to be happy. After 40 years everybody could have been forgotten that this historical town is completely fake…

Click here for a Flickr set with more photos of the trip!
Photos by Valerie Blom

Josef Kellndorfer and Wayne Walker of the Woods Hole Research Center recently worked with the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Geological Survey to create an extremely detailed map of all the trees in the United States. It took the team six years to collect the data for the map with help from a space-based radar, satellite sensors, computer models and a massive amount of ground-based data. They managed to visualize the American forests with an accuracy of 30 meters. Click here for the full map.

Remember our December Special? New subscribers to Volume magazine were in the running to win a unique Worldmoon jewel designed by DUS Architects. Watch the official lottery drawing by our Editor-in-Chief Arjen Oosterman and find out who’s the lucky winner!

International conference and workshop, 14-17 February, 2012, Westergasfabriek, Amsterdam. Visit socialcitiesoftomorrow.nl for more information.

Our everyday lives are increasingly shaped by digital media technologies, from smart cards and intelligent GPS systems to social media and smartphones. How can we use digital media technologies to make our cities more social, rather than just more hi-tech?

This international conference brings together key thinkers and doers working in the fields of new media and urbanism. Keynote speakers such as Usman Haque, Natalie Jeremijenko and Dan Hill will speak about the promises and challenges in this newly emerging and highly interdisciplinary field of urban design. The keynotes will be accompanied by presentations of ‘showcases’ from various disciplines, such as architecture, art, design, and policy.

Social Cities of Tomorrow explores how urban designers, interface developers, app builders, policy makers, housing coorations, artists, scientists and others can use digital technologies to organise citizen engagement, and to contribute to our social cities of tomorrow.

Mapping the Earth is a classic problem. There’s no right way to do this perfectly in a way that depicts the shape and size of the surface in a proper way, argues Jack van Wijk, Full Professor Visualization at the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science of Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). To explore new ways of unfolding the Earth Van Wijk developed a series of myriahedral projections.

“Why not just take a map of a small part of the earth, which is almost perfect, glue neighboring maps to it, and repeat this until the whole earth is shown? Of course you get interrupts, but does this matter? What does such a map look like?”

Click here for the full series.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has witnessed a big break-through in 2011. With our wonderful Volume #28: Internet of Things, we have done our part of the job to understand the impact of this new technological frontier for urban life. Therefore it is interesting to start this year with a retrospective to the projects that shaped the development of the Internet of Things in 2011. IoT website Postscapes presents the Internet of Things Awards 2011, let’s say the Oscars for geeks. Over 100 projects have been sent in and over 16,000 people have voted for their favorite projects in different categories such as ‘consumer products’, ‘design fiction’, ‘DIY projects’, and ‘environmental implementation’.

The list is absolutely worth scrolling down, as the projects give a good glimpse of what the IoT could mean to our future lives. From earthquake alarm systems to a talking tree. And from wireless winegard monitoring systems to Rymble, an object that brings your social network to the real world, and won the award of best consumer product.

What’s your knowledge about famous architecture? In the Covers/Versiones project by artist Luis Urculo, famous architectural sculptures are rebuilt by daily familiar objects like, books, cups, knives and matchboxes. Although the project is pretty much of an artwork, it works like a guessing game. Can you recognize the building before that name is displayed? It is certainly not a cinch, but therefore more fun if you guess the right one. To warm you up a little here is a present to clarify the idea.

Number 10: WoZoCo by MVRDV in Amsterdam

Join Volume, Mark Wigley, Jeffrey Inaba, C-LAB, and guests at Project No. 8 (Ace Hotel location, 22 W. 29th Street, New York, NY) from 7-9 pm on Tuesday, 13 December 2011 for holiday cheer and urban conspiracy… i.e. the launch of Volume #29. Copies will be for sale, but drinks and music are complimentary. Click here for more information.

December is the month to guarantee yourself or a loved one a yearlong source of inspiration. Buy a subscription to Volume now and you will get a unique limited edition Volume bag for free and be in the running for the Worldmoon jewel. Click here to subscribe!

Commissioned by Alicia Framis for the Moon Life project, Amsterdam-based DUS Architects have designed a masterplan for the moon captured in the form of a jewel at a scale of 1:140,000,000. The jewel can be worn as a brooch or a necklace.

(This offer is valid from Dec 1st – 31st, 2011. A winner will be selected at random from all the new subscribers from that period. The winner will be announced in the second week of January 2012 and will receive the jewel in a special gift box, free of charge.)

Click here to subscribe to Volume.

Join Printed Matter, Jeffrey Inaba and guests to celebrate the launch of Volume #29: The Urban Conspiracy! Friday 2 December, 2011, 5-7 pm, at Art Basel Miami Beach, Miami Beach Covention Center. Sponsored by Printed Matter.