Netherlands - Rotterdam's Delftse Poort II building

Delftse Poort is a building complex right across the street from the Millenium Tower. It is the tallest building of Rotterdam. This is the lower part of it, called Delftse Poort II. It has 25 floors and is 93m high. The tallest one is Delftse Poort I, standing at 151m high with 41 floors. It was completed in 1992 and houses the head office of a famous Dutch company. It is the highest office building of The Netherlands. The name originated from the old name the railway station used to have. It was build by Bonnema Architects.

Netherlands - Rotterdam's Millenium Tower

Probably my favorite skyscraper of Rotterdam, this is the 2nd tallest building of the city! It houses a hotel (first 15 floors) and offices. It is 149m tall (with the spire, 132 without it), has 34 floors and was completed in 2000 (of course!). It is situated opposite the Rotterdam Central Station and , seeing this right after getting out of the ugly station building (currently re-newed), I was floored. It was designed by Canadian architects Webb Zerafa Menkes Housden.

Netherlands - Den Haag skyline

Den Haag is a bit different than the rest of the cities in Holland, probably due to the presence of so many international organisations there, and of course, the royal family of Holland.
The buildings you can see here (their tops actually) are nicknamed by the locals tits & penis - go figure!

Netherlands - Van Gogh Museum - staircase

This is another interesting part of the Exhibition Wing of the Van Gogh Museum. Kurokawa’s wing has three levels, which are all used as exhibition space. The lowest is below ground, at the level of the enclosed pond. A slightly curved, suspended staircase leads up to the other floors. The lighting in the stairwell was designed by Georges Berne, who was also responsible for the lighting in the rest of the museum. This is a photo of the 2nd level.

Netherlands - Van Gogh Museum - Van Gogh & The Expressionist Exhibition Entrance

In the photo above you can see the entrance to the Van Gogh & The Expressionists exhibition. The use of the space, the materials (that orange background is actually carpet!) and lighting all combined, give an amazing welcome to the exhibition that unfolds after it. This exhibition, as all temporary ones, is housed in the Exhibition wing of the museum.
The Van Gogh Museum consists of two buildings: the main structure designed by Gerrit Rietveld and opened in 1973, and the Exhibition Wing by Kisho Kurokawa completed in 1999. Apart from these two architects, several others (like Martien Van Goor) have contributed to finishing, rebuilding or remodelling parts of both buildings.
The Exhibition Wing was designed by Kisho Kurokawa, a Japanese architect best known for his original designs for several Japanese museums and for Kuala Lumpur airport. His work is characterised by geometrical forms, such as cones, ellipses and squares, and a symbiosis between Eastern and Western principles in philosophy and architecture. His sober design fits perfectly with the existing building. Western geometry forms a symbiosis with Eastern asymmetry.

Netherlands - City Optiek shop window

Great shop design here. I love the look of both the shop window and the interior. Pity I did not have the time to go browse inside the shop. They use the design also for their website. Worth checking out!

Netherlands - Pathé de Munt cinema

The newest multiplex in Amsterdam, it has a very interesting facade, with the use of perspective and the brick cladding. And somehow, it did not look out of place near the flowermarket, although the best looking cinema in the city is the famous Tuschinski.

Netherlands - Amsterdam Historical Museum

The Amsterdam Historical Museum moved into the buildings of the former civil orphanage in 1975. The facades, the gates, the governors room and the boys and girls courtyards recall the days when this was a children's home. The first inner courtyard seen here had an amazing display made to look like windows looking out the courtyard, which gave a very unique look to it.

Netherlands - Interesting shop window

Starting here, I will be posting photos from my recent trips to The Netherlands and Belgium. I will post photos of things that are of interest to me in arts/design/architecture. Later I might also post other photos from the trips.

This is a shop window I first saw in Utrecht (photo is from Utrecht too) and later also in Amsterdam. I loved the use of the price labels as decoration and the overall styling and lighting is very theatrical. I do not know if they sell the actual outfits!!!

A favor to Neil Gaiman

This is for Neil, because he asked for it!

Penn Jilette

Great way to start a new year

I was in the Netherlands for 10 days, supervising the set up of the Greek stand at the Vakantiebeurs exhibition in Utrecht. The show was a success and so was the stand - many people, professionals and visitors alike, commented that it was the most beautiful of the whole show. You could see many people getting photographed within the stand's premises, especially under the main attraction, the hanging "postcards"! You can see below many photos of the stand, including a detail of the "rainfall" of postcards, which I made one by one, taking me slightly more than a whole evening, and then one great guy from our crew hang them from the false ceiling, again painstakingly one by one, working almost at a 5 meter height. Their movement from the air drafts, combined with that of the floss curtains, made for an exciting vision in the middle of the stand!
Kudos to all of my crew and the collaborating crews (electricians and graphics crew) for setting this up in time despite many problems, all the people from the show that helped us enormously and the GNTO people from the Amsterdam offices for their support.
In a next post, I will comment on the rest of the Netherlands trip, architecture etc. Happy new year to all of you.

Season's greetings

Apple has many nice cards to choose from, and here's one for you all:

Photos for the October 3rd post

Here are some pics from the stand I mentioned at my October 3rd post. Enjoy!

Photo of stand, Philoxenia 2006

Just received the photo of the stand described in the previous post, you can now see the differences between the 3d rendering and the real thing!

Special Organizer Award!

The stand I designed for the Region of Eastern Macedonia- Thrace got a Special Organizer Award from Helexpo at the Philoxenia Fair, the Greek International Tourism Fair, held each November in Thessaloniki. See the colored drawings below. The interesting thing about the stand was the decoration with dried leaves and various nuts in the glass inlay floors.

The Thrill And The Hurting

Once, a year or so ago, Kyla, a nice young lady I met on a Kate Bush forum, Homeground, had an idea about making a nice collection of art inspired by Kate Bush, made by her fans, and handed over to her. Now it has become a lovely little book which has thrilled all of us that contributed to it and finds lots of admirers even outside the Kate Bush fandom. The book is called The Thrill And The Hurting, from a lyric of Kate. You can order it from Amazon.co. uk by clicking on the title of this post. You can see the cover here and my two contributions: two oil & pastel paintings of Kate Bush from the Running Up That Hill video clip. Enjoy.

The cover:


The first painting - actually the small one but it takes up a whole page in the book:


The second painting which is larger but takes up two thirds of a page in the book, ending up looking smaller than the previous one:

Inspiration

The RED initiative that Bono started is a great cause, check their website. They also have a blog which is

http://joinred.blogspot.com

Christy Turlington Burns is in the GAP campaign photographed by Annie Leibovitz along with other famous people. Her photos are incredible. Here is one of them:

Award again!

Today I learned that one of the stands I designed for the Infosystem fair (PC trade fair in Thessaloniki) won an award for best designed stand. The company I work for had 5 stands at the show and 4 of them got an award. Of course it was relatively easy, considering that the fair was small and most of the companies participating as exhibitors did not have big budgeted stands at the show. You can see a couple of 3d renderings of the stand below, photos to follow when available.

The 80s had their moments too....

Here are some looks picked randomly from my Christy Turlington archive that show how the 80s had good moments as well as bad - it was not all bad design and bad clothing! This comes after my favorite fashion blogger, The Sartorialist, posted photos from London girls doing the 80s revival. Most of the negative comments condemned the whole decade as bad for fashion, but with the photos here, I beg to differ.

1986:




1987:





1988:





1989:

Stand photos

I finally got the photos from the official photographer, not very good but they are the only ones so far. Looks good, doesn΄t it? We had a bit of a problem with the water wall - it was splashing water further than expected, hence the Plexiglas panels around the pebble tank.