“De Coopvaert”, a residential/ office tower in the centre of Rotterdam, photo: Bas Princen, ©Bas Princen Beatriz Ramo and Bernd Upmeyer spoke on behalf of MONU with Andre Kempe. Andre is one of the principals of the Rotterdam-based architecure office Atelier Kempe Thill. Bernd Upmeyer: How can we understand the process of how a plot […]
“Call for Submissions”- Poster for MONU #12, March 2009 Real Urbanism By Bernd Upmeyer The term real usually refers to reality, the state of things as they actually exist. But in law, the word real means relating to a thing as distinguished from a person. The new topic of MONU magazine on urbanism will deal […]
Buckminster Fuller’s Dome Over Manhattan Island Bernd Upmeyer spoke with Gerd Hauser, who is the head of the Institute of Building Physics at the Technical University of Munch in Germany that acts as a research institute for national and international standardization committees and advises Germany’s Federal Ministry of Transportation, Building, and Urban Development. Prof. Dr.-Ing. […]
The “Paid Urbanism Project” was created to inject artificially life into dead urban areas, ©BOARD Luca Vandini from the University of Ferrara, Italy interviewed Bernd Upmeyer about MONU Magazine. Luca Vandini: When was MONU born, how and why did you decide to give life to this kind of experimental magazine? Bernd Upmeyer: The idea came […]
“Call for Submissions”- Poster for MONU #11, March 2009 Clean Urbanism By Bernd Upmeyer When it comes to Clean Urbanism – i.e. an urbanism that is dedicated to minimizing both the required inputs for a city of energy, water, and food as well as its waste output of heat, air pollution as CO2, methan, and […]
“Call for Submissions”- Poster for MONU #10, September 2008 Holy Urbanism By Bernd Upmeyer The one thing that all religions on our planet have in common is their distinction between the holy and the profane. All religions appear to be organized as systems of beliefs with distinctive practices and all have built structures in relation […]
Dubai satellite image, ©OMA Beatriz Ramo and Bernd Upmeyer spoke with Reinier de Graaf, who is one of the partners of Rotterdam-based OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture). He joined OMA in 1996 and in 2002 became the director for AMO, the think tank of OMA. In that capacity he was responsible for the production of […]
“Call for Submissions”- Poster for MONU #9, February 2008 Exotic Urbanism By Bernd Upmeyer Ever since our cities became areas of continuous interaction and ever-expanding exchange the term “exotic” – understood as counterpart to the “local”, the “native” or even the “authentic” – has become a rather vague term. Who – in actual fact – […]
Female Slave University, 2006, ©Atelier Van Lieshout (AVL) Bernd Upmeyer spoke on behalf of MONU with the Rotterdam-based artist Joep van Lieshout. Van Lieshout is the founder of Atelier Van Lieshout (AVL), a multidisciplinary art practice encompassing installation, design, furniture and architecture. Recurring themes in the work of AVL are autarky, power, politics and sex. […]
Dancing women in Teplice, 2003, photo: Sonja Zekri, ©dpa Bernd Upmeyer spoke on behalf of MONU with Jaroslav Kubera, the mayor of the city of Teplice. Teplice is a mid-sized town with a population of around 50.000 inhabitants in Northern – Bohemia, and is located only 15km from the German border. Since 1989 Teplice has […]
“Call for Submissions”- Poster for MONU #8, September 2007 Border Urbanism By Bernd Upmeyer One of the most grotesque effects of globalisation is that a process which is supposed to unify the world and bind people and the biosphere more tightly together into one global system, ended up increasing the amount of individual countries worldwide. […]
Aerial view of Almere, ©OMA Beatriz Ramo and Bernd Upmeyer spoke on behalf of MONU with Floris Alkemade. Floris Alkemade is one of the partners of Rotterdam based OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture). He joined OMA in 1989 and has worked there as a project director for architecture and urban planning since 1996. As project […]
“Call for Submissions”- Poster for MONU #7, February 2007 2nd Rate Urbanism By Bernd Upmeyer and Thomas Söhl London, Tokyo, New York, Berlin, Moscow, Bejing, Johannesburg Rio or New Delhi… we all know the names on the A-list of cities and love to study and compare them. They are big, beautiful, dynamic, full of extremes […]
Van Nelle Factory in Rotterdam Work, not Love By Bernd Upmeyer What draws people into cities? Is it love or is it work? Some say that there is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than there is for bread. But cities are growing and shrinking simply depending on whether there is work, […]
“Call for Submissions”- Poster for MONU #6, September 2006 Beautiful Urbanism By Bernd Upmeyer and Thomas Söhl The one movement in urban design that included the name beauty in its name, the City Beautiful movement in the 1890’s and 1900’s, had a vision of beauty that was limited to the reproduction of planning and design […]
5000 Years of Brutal Urbanism, p. 38-39 Bernd Upmeyer spoke on behalf of MONU with Jürgen Mathies, the Director of the Security Task Force for the 2006 Soccer World Cup in Germany. Mathies is the Executive police director and operating commissioner for the secretary of the interior in the federal state of North-Rhine Westphalia. He […]
“Call for Submissions”- Poster for MONU #5, January 2006 Brutal Urbanism By Bernd Upmeyer and Thomas Söhl Baron Haussmann in Paris in the 1860’s, Robert Moses in New York in the 1930’s to 50’s, uncountable urban renewal programs across the US and Europe in the 1960’s and 70’s, rampant development and speculation in China since […]
“Call for Submissions”- Poster for MONU #4, July 2005 Denied Urbanism By Bernd Upmeyer and Thomas Söhl Whenever a city’s elite dreams up an image or a vision for the city, alarm bells should ring. All too commonly those images – the supposed character of urban life are so narrowly conceived by that they don’t […]
Hoyerswerda-Neustadt in decay, photo by Bernd Upmeyer, 2005 Bernd Upmeyer spoke on behalf of MONU with with Margitta Fassl, the managing director of the ‘Wohnungsgesellschaft Hoyerswerda’. The reunification of Germany and the transformation of the former GDR from a socialist plan-economy into a market economy almost over night radically changed the economic and political realities […]
“Call for Submissions”- Poster for MONU #3, July 2005 Political Urbanism By Bernd Upmeyer and Thomas Söhl Scale 1:1,000,000 The red state – blue state phenomenon became commonplace even in Europe in the last years: Democrats have the upper hand in the coastal states and republicans in the rest of the country. But not only […]
Single-family detached homes in Switzerland Bernd Upmeyer spoke on behalf of MONU with the architect and urban planner Thomas Sieverts. His publications include ‘Zwischenstadt’ in English under the title ‘Cities without Cities’ and numerous articles and essays. He taught at the HdK in Berlin, at Harvard University and the TU in Darmstadt. From 1989 to […]
“Call for Submissions”- Poster for MONU #2, December 2004 Middle Class Urbanism By Bernd Upmeyer and Thomas Söhl The vanishing of the middle class is a well-documented phenomenon. Across Europe and North America, as income distribution becomes increasingly lop-sided and greater extremes of poverty and wealth are created, the notion of what was once considered […]
With the help of the “Paid Urbanism Project” cities can determine the amount of people, the locations and the time of urban activities The Paid Urbanism Project A Strategy Outline By Bernd Upmeyer and Thomas Söhl There is a growing disappointment with the shape of urban life in many cities. An increasing disparity between our […]
Cover of MONU Magazine’s very first issue published in 2004 Paid Urbanism By Bernd Upmeyer and Thomas Söhl Our urban live today exists as it is, because we have a complex system of subsidies. Taxes, once extracted from the market economy strike back to the masses as paid urbanism. Used wisely or not, spread fair […]