Domus 1040 is entitled “It’s up to you”. In his last editorial, Winy Maas touches climate issues and how we could face them reminding that a better future is possible “only if everybody take responsibility for it”.
The final issue of Domus guest-directed by Winy Maas shows some visions of the future, including the revalutation of food and closer ties between city and countryside: our bodies, homes, cities and landscapes are all shaped by food, and only learning to value it and harnessing its power, we can create a fair, healthy and resilient society.
Domus 1040 on newsstands: “It’s up to you”
A sneak peek at Domus November issue, the last one under the guest direction of Winy Maas.
Javier Arpa
Testi Amale Andraos, Matthias Böttger, Benjamin H. Bratton, Albert Burgers-Ruiz, Beatriz Colomina, Olafur Eliasson, Luis Fernández-Galiano, Hedwig Fijen, Beatrice Galilee, Toni Garcia Ramon, Rosalie Genevro, Vivian Mitsogianni, Luca Molinari, Jelmer Mommers, Michelle Provoost, Daan Roosegaarde, Ilka Ruby, Mathew Vola and Strelka
Text and projects Norman Foster. © Foster + Partners
Text Aksel Ersoy. Photos Felix Grünschloss. © ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe
Text Nina Rappaport. Images Interboro Partners. © Interboro Partners
Text Carolyn Steel. Images Yaqun Cai
Text Christopher Marcinkoski. Images Shuhan Liu. © Shuhan Liu
Artist Klaus Littmann. Landscape architecture Enea Gmbh – Enzo Enea. Location Klagenfurt,Austria. Photos Gerhard Maurer, Unimo. www.forforest.net
Text Eduardo Wiegand, Cristián Simonetti. Projects DLR Group, Perkins&Will, Demogo, Penda, Studio Precht, Sumitomo Forestry e Nikken Sekkei. Photo © Studio Precht
Text Barry Bergdoll. Images (ab)Normal. © (ab)Norma
Project So Teruuchi, SO&CO. Design team Masafumi Koyama, Kohshi Higaki. Structural engineering Frameworks. Photos Takumi Ota. www.so-co.org
Text Winy Maas. Images Doepel Strijkers. © Doepel Strijkers
Text Inmaculada Maluenda, Enrique Encabo. Images Superstudio
Text Winy Maas. Research and infographics Adrien Ravon, Lex te Loo
Presented by Raffaele Vertaldi. Photo © Noelle Mason
Tribes by Universal Everything. Study of human behaviour on a mass scale. Independently produced.
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- La redazione di Domus
- 05 November 2019
“Wood is coming” introduces the development of timber structures for tall buildings as a measure to reduce the environmental impact of the construction industry. In fact, 36% of global energy consumption is attributed to construction and building use in 2017. The building industry is responsible for over a third of the total carbon emissions in the developed countries of the EU and the United States, and produces a third of the waste worldwide.
In his article – accompanied by illustrations by (ab)Normal studio – Barry Bergdoll, professor of art history in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University, talks about the need for architectural research, expertise and design imagination considering the crisis situation we are living today.
Winy Maas interviews Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb of Rotterdam, thinking about how the city can be made denser and friendlier. The mayor says that the diversity and many nationalities of the city are a “capital” and a “wealth”. Among the topics, the population growth in Rotterdam and thousands of housing units to be added to improve the city.
With the magazine, the supplement Contract. The Production scene, “outlines the limits and ambits of a word – contract – that is losing its clarity and focus”, as editorial director Walter Mariotti explains in his editorial. The issue explores what it is like to work in the field of contract supplies today, including an analysis of five sectors – furniture, offices, lighting, textiles and bathrooms – made by five companies: Artemide, Cappellini, Duravit, Kvadrat and UniFor.
To conclude Winy Maas’s year at Domus, we invited a number of authors we consider essential to write a short reflection about the future of urbanism, architecture, art and design; about the future of humanity; about the future of spaceship Earth... We also asked them to provide us with an image of their choice to illustrate their words. All the authors we contacted responded with enormous generosity to our call. In a context of climate crisis, of the threat of (yet) another global recession, and of profound scepticism about the future, one tries to find optimism between the lines written by each contributor. One understands that, even if there is no crystal ball that can tell what will become of us, there is a lot in the past to learn from – that crisis can be an opportunity to make us better, and that humanity has overcome previous calamities by giving imagination a chance. Let’s bring out the best in ourselves and design a future full of imagination.
Javier Arpa
The science fiction of my youth is the reality of today: the science fiction of today will be reality for the next generation. The pioneering cities of the future are set to similarly amaze us all.
Big data comes with the promise of new sustainability and mobility standards in the urban sphere but there is a risk of it deploying subtle persuasion and governance technologies.
The industrial spatial systems within the factory and in the city at large are becoming increasingly sustainable, agile and hybrid, supporting a democratic work culture and creating an urban biome that closely mimics the bio-diverse natural world.
We live in a sitopia (from Greek sitos, food + topos, place). Sitopia isn’t utopia, yet by learning to value food and harnessing its power, we can come close to the utopian dream of creating a fair, healthy, resilient society.
In order to generate completely new ideas about the future city, concepts of financial and design speculation must be integrated with a third variable: landscape.
Artist Klaus Littmann has installed a forest in a stadium to highlight the fragility of our natural world. The entire playing surface of the facility (unused for much of the year) has been covered by landscape architect Enzo Enea with a forest of trees typical of central Europe, some of which weigh up to six tons. The trees will be replanted nearby after the exhibition closes. The artist was inspired by a 1971 dystopian painting which depicts a stadium crowd looking at an artificial forest in a world without any nature. Klaus Littmann’s message is crystal clear: in the future will forests exist only as exhibition objects? The answer to this question depend on us.
The development of timber structures for tall buildings is a strategic measure to reduce the environmental impact of the construction industry, in view of a demand for housing that is expected to surge by 2030.
In today’s crisis situation, there has never been a greater need for architectural research, expertise and design imagination.
Building for small businesses, Ginza, Tokyo, Japan.
The architect Winy Maas and Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb of Rotterdam have a deep think about how the city can be made denser and friendlier at the same time. Interview with Ahmed Aboutaleb, mayor of Rotterdam.
To deal with the looming crisis and relative lack of resources, architecture has to be far more sensitive to context and capable of satisfying human needs.
A quantitative and thematic analysis of 10 issues of Domus.
Inspired - also in the name - by the famous historic Ballarò market in Palermo, the Bahlara collection of office furniture launched by Faram 1957 identifies discontinuity as new semantic content applied to the world of the office.
Noelle Mason, Backscatter Blueprint (La Maleta), cyanotype, from the series X-Ray Vision vs. Invisibility, 2018–2109. The work will be exhibited from 7 to 24.11.2019 at the Design Canberra Festival in the group exhibition “Now You See Me: Visualizing the Surveillance State“.
The cover of Domus issue 1040. Editorial director Walter Mariotti.
Tribes by Universal Everything. Study of human behaviour on a mass scale. Independently produced.