OmBouwen/ReStructure
about Superuse Building Lightness and Cradle to Cradle
September 23 thru November 11, 2007
Stroom Den Haag
Hogewal 1-9
2514 HA The Hague
The Netherlands
T +31-70 3658985
info@stroom.nl
Wednesday thru Sunday 12-5 pm
www.stroom.nl
The exhibition ‘OmBouwen/ReStructure’ at Stroom Den Haag features three approaches to building intelligently: ‘Superuse’, ‘Building Lightness‘ and ‘Cradle to Cradle’. Building intelligently is a combination of technological development, integration of functions, ethics and a radically new approach to design. The focus is on sustainability and reuse, innovation and creativity. Everything can be organized in a more clever way. Why not cut waste flows short? Use whatever materials are available around building sites. Make buildings much lighter than they are today. This saves a lot of energy and building material. Incorporate the dismantling of a building or product into the design. Many people are of the opinion that building intelligently will become the revolution of the 21st century.
Social housing block the Black Madonna recycled!
The exhibition ‘OmBouwen/ReStructure’ shows that the three approaches to building intelligently, i.e. reuse (Superuse), lightweight constructions (Building Lightness) and Cradle to Cradle, are different but complimentary. Superuse looks back. Reuse everything available. In the exhibition the window frames salvaged from the Black Madonna, the well-known social housing block by architect Carl Weeber, will be used again. Cradle to Cradle looks to the future with designs guaranteeing reuse of high quality, and looks at nature, with value increase at every stage of the cycle: ‘upcycling’. Building Lightness adds to this the minimalism of effort and energy through the design of smart structures.
Superuse (010 Publishers), the recent publication about building and reuse, formed the occasion for Stroom to invite the Rotterdam-based initiators 2012Architecten to design the exhibition. In order to optimize the Superuse design method, 2012Architecten created the foundation Recyclicity. Their basic point of departure is to turn waste into building material, with minimal use of energy for transport and processing.
Building Lightness, an initiative of Lightness Studios, founded by Ed van Hinte (publicist in the field of design and technique), stimulates the development and implementation of lightweight structures and minimization of transported mass. Lightness saves energy and material, increases productivity, accelerates and creates more flexibility. In short lightness is more efficient.
The central idea behind the Cradle to Cradle philosophy of the American architect William McDonough and the German chemist Michael Braungart is to transform industry through an ecologically intelligent design. Waste is a design mistake. Everything should be fully recyclable. Products should be ‘designed for disassembly’, so that the materials can be reused as food in nature, the ‘biosphere’, or can be used in a next design, in the ‘technosphere’.
The exhibition is made possible in part by: Mondriaan Foundation, the Netherlands Architecture Fund
Stroom Den Haag focuses on the urban environment from the viewpoint of visual arts, architecture, urban development and design.
