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Malmhattanism
The following is a short intro to my book Malmhattanism, published by Nordic Academic Press in 2021 and currently only available in Swedish. Some of the content has appeared in English previously (here & here). I plan to translate some passages from the book and post them here in the future. Malmö is Sweden’s third…
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Waua on substack
You will find recent posts on substack before they appear here. See waua.substack.com . New posts include: Architecture vs. Planning 2022 A Reflection on Medieval Clocks & Digital Twins
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Architecture vs. Capitalism 2021
How does one act ethically within a fundamentally unethical system? Should or could architects challenge the conditions of production within the economy, or should they rather simply work within the framework that has been prescribed by the powers that be? Resources in one form or another are a non-negotiable prerequisite for construction. Primarily, these resources…
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WAUA returns
After a brief hiatus (9 ½ years), I have decided to resuscitate this blog. The world has changed since the last time I blogged, as has the small and idiosyncratic world of architectural blogging. Clicking through my ‘blogroll’ from last time around, one might think that some unknown cataclysmic event put all architecture blogs into…
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BMW-Welt by Coop Himmelb(l)au
This is another excursion into recent history. It is part of an exploration of the buildings produced during the last economic boom, which focuses on buildings that in one way or another epitomise the culture of the era. Naturally, this gets easier once the buildings have had a few years to age – in the…
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MAXXI by Zaha Hadid Architects
How does an art institution come to be? Historically, private collections were made public – the Soane Museum for example, or the Louvre, where the king’s private collection was opened to the public after the revolution. In most cases, though, a building was constructed for or around a collection in one way or another. MAXXI…
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Tax-optimised Architecture
image copyright Rossanna Bartoli The relationship between architecture and property taxation is a territory that is largely unexplored as far as I know. A few attempts are made to create tax incentives, primarily to create walkable neighbourhoods or to promote renewable energy and energy efficiency. There is, however, an entirely different side of architecture influenced…
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Berlin- matter of memory
There was a short review of Berlin-matter of memory in the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet by Aron Aspenström today. The review is however not available online.
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Book excerpt III- The Berg of Tempelhof
image from http://www.the-berg.de The following is an excerpt from the book Berlin-matter of memory Once in a while, the vision for a structure becomes so engrained in the collective mind that its virtual existence can almost be mistaken for concrete. This is the case of the Tempelhof Berg; the image has become a virtual relic,…
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Don Juan in the suburbs
The Vietnamese constitute a large minority group in Berlin, presumably the largest after the Turkish. This year marks twenty years since the reunification of Germany, but it also marks twenty years since the another reunification, the almost forgotten and very strange reunification between the North and South Vietnamese in Berlin. The Vietnam War between the…