I had a really great day today, providing a workshop for the BNA at the NAi in Rotterdam, on a special day they organized for young architects. Don’t let the young part fool you. Young in architecture means 40- while I we first thinking about 20+. So, I’m young too at least the next seven years in this definition of young.

The day theme was the virtual, so opened with some interesting lectures. Like on the relation of locative/social/mobile media, mobile devices and their potential influence on architecture by The Mobile City. Should an urban designer ignore this, integrate this in his architecture or have a critical attitude towards this, since these media change unpredictably fast? We only have GSM since 15 years and we now can’t live without, it’s a commodity, a part of life. I experienced that this kind of thinking is still only for a small elite within the group. Only half of the people there thought using the knowledge gathered by these media should be a part of the design process. Which for me was quite unexpected in this group of young architects that have to build for future generations.

Also enjoyed the talk by Ton Venhoeven of VenhoevenCS. I met him in Hong Kong last year. I remember a talk we had when walking from the hotel to the Exhibition Center. He told about his fascination for those tunnels you have to walk through in Hong Kong to go from A to B. That the outer skin of a building actually didn’t matter when you as a pedestrian moved yourself through buildings, moving from the one building to another. His talk was a lot about that. Building cities with no horizon, built for pedestrians. Impressive.