From Architect to Paperboy - Robert Winkel and Mei

The architectural office of Robert Winkel, Mei architects & city planners Rotterdam released the first edition of the "Mei Krant" last month. I had to smirk about the lucid wordplays with the word Mei throughout the publication that has the format of a polemical imitation of commuter newspapers. Obviously the Meikrant-team must have had a great time editing the variety of articles, especially the riddle and gossip section. But Winkel does make a fruitful contribution to the debate on copyright and originality in architecture. Titled "Copyright is for loosers ©®" his essay dismisses the hopless 19th century idea of explicit authorship in architecture and pledges for an affiliation to the cut and paste culture that emerged in new media and Hip-Hop culture. He argues for the emergence of a regulated creative commons system for architecture opposed to the deperate attempt of architects to control every detail of the buildings appearance including the prohibition of changes a posteriori of which the most prominent example might be Richard Meyers The Hague City Hall. Instead Winkel accepts and embraces changes made by inhabitants as part of a normal cycle in a buildings evolution.

Winkel is also a practicing example of "open source architecture", drawing only principle schemes and rough details of certain façade parts in a big scale project Schiecentrale, deliberately leaving room for cheap and practical ad-hoc and on site solutions. This might be a more successful strategy than the desperate attempt to control every corner with a swiss precision. I think here in particular of Anette Gigons complaints about the sloppy nature of execution on big scale construction sites in the Netherlands related to their Housing project in Almere. Wikel and his team probably have a less stressful life and more leasure time - or time to produce entertaining publications.

Issues can be ordered on www.meikrant.nl
Office website: www.mei-arch.nl

Google and the Architecture of Knowledge Part One

{should have been posted on Wednesday, May 20}

Two months after the launch of Google Streetview in the UK and the Netherlands I got photographed in the streets of Delft by a google Streetcar while on my forthdaily run today. I saluded the the car with an expressive jump and a grimace and got reminded by a bunch of giggling schoolgirls shouting from their bikes that I will be made inrecognizable.

I wonder if a expressively jumping guy with an orange basketball pant is inrecognizable. Indeed Google has run into problems with privacy advocates and authorities around the world, pictures had to be blurred, removed or retaken. The hunt for the top ten strangest Street View pictures and speculations about the stories behind them has long started.

If we understand mapping as an abstract representation of reality then we might question if Street View - understood as geotagged, systematically shot panoramic images - technically still counts as such or if new definitions of mapping are needed. Google does not only blur faces and carplates, they also blur the border between three dimensional representation, and momentary snapshots of reality. Street View is just another step in the company's successful conquest of a seamless inclusion of preferably all information types of varying privacy into one enormous interactive database.

One recalls Deborah Hauptman's remark in David Harvey's book "Condition of Postmodernity" that local information and means no longer are necessary to map a region and that mapping is related to power aspiration. Spatial information is now gathered by satelites and a technologically equipped car, exceeding the precision of a local geometrician. A private company measures the entire world much more efficient than any public institution has ever been cabable of.

Instead of continuing on a path of criticism it is more interesting to observe the development of seamless integration. Still, the 3D city model and the 360 views are two mutually integrated but separate representations, interconnected with a cinematographically dramatized fly-in/out camera shot. Will the barrier between the two representations eventually fall? Is the panoramic image with integrated hyperlinks just another small step towards an ever higher resolution of the mediatized world?