The 86ste edition of the journal for architecture OASE is completely dedicated to baroque. On the relation between a small Czech pilgrimage church, the Berlin Philharmonic and a National parc Centre in the Swiss Zernez.

Read more at Archined

Christophe Van Gerrewey is scientific researcher (FWO) at the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, Ghent University. He is preparing a PhD on post-war architecture criticism. He is the editor of Rooted in the Real. Writings on Architecture by Geert Bekaert (2011) and publishes on architecture and the arts. In 2012 appeared his first novel Op de hoogte, De Bezige Bij Antwerpen.  

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In OASE 86, the architecture of the baroque is revisited and assessed with specific regards to its relevance for modern and contemporary architecture. On the basis of several historical studies, this issue examines how the complex geometric compositions, surface treatments and semantic operations of the baroque might be connected to contemporary design practice. To that end, the authors turn their attention to relatively underexposed practices, such as the Bohemian baroque of Santini Aichel and the work of Nicholas Hawksmoor, and examine the reception of the baroque by modern architects such as Hans Scharoun and Luigi Moretti. The way in which the baroque figures as a fertile medium for recent architectural practice in Europe is investigated in interviews with Hermann Czech and Christ & Gantenbein, and assessed in studies of the work of Robbrecht & Daem and Valerio Olgiati.

Editors of this issue: David de Bruijn, Maarten Delbeke, Job Floris, Christoph Grafe, Ruben Molendijk, Tom Vandeputte

With contributions by: Andrew Leach, Dirk De Meyer, Christian Kieckens, Luigi Moretti, Hans Scharoun, Martijn van Beek, Irina Davidovici

Europe is a continent of small and medium sized cities. This could be a geographical statement, but is perhaps a more pertinent observation on the dominant collective imagination regarding the city. If the metropolis is the place of the modern urban experience, then the small and medium sized city is the context in which modernity is being absorbed and gains its familiar and honorable face. It is the natural habitat of a reformist type of urbanism and architecture that embrace modernity without choosing for the uncompromising idiom of modernism but chooses to package the new within a project that chooses for identity and legibility.

Once the center of its own territory, the mid-size-city is more than ever the part and parcel of a horizontal network within which the opportunities and problems of the contemporary urban condition manifest themselves. The big assignments, demography, migration, mobility, ecology, are just as well the challenges of the large, mid-sized or small cities. From this perspective, the mid-size city has become today again the place in which the images and imaginaries surrounding the European city are being tuned and readjusted . This is both manifest not only in the return of traditional images and urbanisms that take the small town as the reference point for a narrative on sustainable development (e.g. transition towns), but also in the rediscovery of the mediating role of the mid-size-city and its capacity to generate new imaginaries (e.g. the project ‘Mid-Size-Utopia’, Zandbelt&vandenBerg). The mid-size-city, it turns out, is well equipped to accommodate the changing roles and positions within the networked landscape of cities. We are being witness to the reinvention of a historical cities’ network, in which no longer the central position of the different cities with respect to their hinterland is leading, but rather their respective interaction and relative position within an open network.

For a new issue of the journal OASE dedicated to this theme we are in search of contributions on projects and design research specifically concerned with the Mid-Size-City as the place where the quite transformation of the European contingent takes on concrete spatial form and becomes the object of architectural and urbanistic intervention. Authors who approach the issue of the mid-size city from a perspective other than the project or design research are advised to respond to the Call For Papers of the Ghent Urban Studies Team for the colloquium ‘Mid-Size City. The dual nature of urban imagery in Europe during the long 20th century’ (Ghent, 19-21 April 2012). Authors can respond to both Call for Papers as well.

Abstracts of max. 500 words are due before 31 January 2011, e-mail to bruno.notteboom@ugent.be

OASE 89 will be released in the Fall of 2012; selected authors will be expected to deliver their full papers by the end of March 2012.

What possible relations can the exhibition assume in relation to architectural practice? How does its dual character, appearing both as a spatial situation in its own right and as a vehicle for making unrealised proposals known to a public, provide an opportunity to produce new discourses, experimentally stage architectural practice, or reconsider disciplinary limits? 

OASE 88 examines the role of the architectural exhibition as site of production, rather than a strictly representative device. Bridging theory and practice, and relating historical examples to contemporary concerns, it considers the exhibition as a medium for architectural experimentation, providing an alternative to the built project as a bearer of architectural practice.

OASE invites architects, historians and theorists to contribute to the upcoming issue. We specifically welcome case studies of historical exhibitions related to the above-mentioned questions.

Abstracts of max. 500 words are due before 15 December 2011, e-mail to vpatteeuw@gmail.com and t.g.e.vandeputte@gmail.com

OASE 88 will be released in the course of 2012; selected authors will be expected to deliver their full papers by spring 2012.

The work of Karel Martens has taken an important place in the European art and design landscape. During his 50-year-long career, Martens has designed books and magazines, facades, signs and stamps. Since 1990, he is the designer of all OASE issues.

Martens will be featured in television programme 'De Canvasconnectie', 13 november 2011, on CANVAS (BE) at 20.15.

Trailer

Following the publication of OASE 84 'Models', editor Anne Holtrop organises in collaboration with KAdE a symposium on models on 17 November 2011 in the Kunsthal in Amersfoort.

The evening programme:

19:00 Doors open and possibility to visit the exhibition MärklinWorld.
19:30 Start of the symposium.

Introduction by Anne Holtrop (moderator for the evening). Speakers: Christophe van Gerrewey (on the model as autonomous architectural work) and Krijn de Koning (on imagination).

The symposium will be held in Dutch and will end at 22:00.

See the website of Kunsthal KAdE for more information.

On Saturday 5 November, OASE editors Veronique Patteeuw and Tom Vandeputte will chair a discussion at the Architectural Association, London on new modes of criticism in recent publishing practices. Participants in the discussion will include Tina di Carlo (Log), Matteo Ghidoni (San Rocco), Benedikt Boucsein (Camenzind), Ian Pollard (matzine), Tiago Casanova (scopio) en Sebastian Craig (Touching on Architecture).

The event takes place between 4pm and 5pm in the New Soft Room, Architectural Association, 36 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3ES.

More information

OASE will take part in the exhibition ARCHIZINES at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London. ARCHIZINES celebrates the recent resurgence of alternative architectural publishing with 60 new fanzines, magazines and journals from around the world. The exhibition, curated by Elias Redstone, is open to the public from 5 November to 14 December 2011. The private view takes place on Friday 4 November, followed by two chaired discussions in the Architectural Association on Saturday 5 November.

AA Website

Indeterminacy in spatial design, planning and management.

Recent times have demonstrated how swiftly the social, political, cultural and economic circumstances can change. The disciplines of landscape design, urban planning and architecture find themselves facing the consequences. OASE 85 investigates how the indeterminacy and instability of contemporary programmes, contexts and ambitions can be regarded as a potentially productive factor in spatial design and day-to-day management.

Editors of this issue: Klaske Havik, Véronique Patteeuw, Hans Teerds

With contributions by: Michiel Dehaene, Els Vervloessem, John Habraken, Thierry Lagrange, Yeoryia Manoulopoulou, Dimitri Messu (Exyzt), Erik Rietveld, Ronald Rietveld, Iris Schutten, Hannes Schwertfeger (Baubotanik), Tom Vandeputte

The International Committee of Architectural Critics (CICA) has announced that the CICA Pierre Vago Journalism Award 2011 is awarded to OASE 81 'Constructing Criticism'.

The complete list of winners was announced at the CICA Symposium held within the UIA World Congress Tokyo 2011 on September 28th in the Tokyo International Forum. The international jury consisted of: Joseph Rykwert (USA/UK), Manuel Cuadra (Germany), Sengül Gür (Turkey), Louise Noelle (Mexico) and Jennifer Taylor (Australia).

List of winners (PDF)

OASE’s editor and publisher are very interested in the opinion and appreciation of it’s readers. That’s why we invite all our readers to participate in OASE’s Readers survey.

In OASE 84 the architectural model takes centre stage. Models are such a self-evident aspect of the architectural métier that barely any thought has been given to the specific contribution that these physical models make to the discipline. In an era when computer visualizations dominate architectural (re) presentation, the demise of the model seems to be looming on the horizon. While in architecture the role of the model remains underexposed and is even being called into question, in the visual arts the spatial capability of the model is currently being discovered. The models made by artists are revealing the power and quality of architectural models anew, and these special attributes are the subject of investigation in OASE 84.

Launch of OASE issue 84 on Wednesday July 6th, 2011 at Gemeentemuseum Den Haag

Launch of issue OASE 84 on Wednesday July 6th, 2011 at Gemeentemuseum Den Haag with a lecture by Stefaan Vervoort on models in the artistic domain and by Christophe Van Gerrewey on models in the architectural realm.

This exhibition, held in Gallery The Narrows in Melbourne, focuses on Martens’ contribution to the graphic style of OASE. From 1990 (Issue 28) Martens took over the art direction of the journal, often working with students from the Werkplaats Typografie, an experimental typography school he founded in 1998 with Wigger Bierma. What began as a student magazine, evolved into an international professional journal in which a reflective and critical approach to architecture, urban design and landscape architecture is the mainstay. Recently celebrating its 75th issue, the success of OASE is, in part, due to Martens’ refined graphic statement, often absorbing his experiments in print and typography, while upholding the dialogue between graphic design and architecture. The exhibition features all 56 issues of OASE designed by Martens along with printed matter from his experimental studio practice.