Ole Bouman

Ole Bouman is editor-in-chief of Archis (magazine for architecture, city and visual culture), and the author of several books including The Invisible in Architecture (Academy Editions, 1994), a grand manifesto and interdisciplinary study of the social circumstances of contemporary architecture; And Justice for All, a collection of essays on politics and visual culture (1994), two major city scenarios for the Rotterdam 2045 project (1995), and Architecture on the edge of two millennia (010, 1998). He has taught architectural history and theory for some years, lectures internationally on architectural issues, and has curated many exhibitions including RealSpace in QuickTimes, the Dutch entry to the XIX Milan Triennale (1996, with an accompanying book+CD ROM published by NAi), on architecture and digitization, and Egotecture, on the historical relationship between personal identity and architectural space, for the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam (1997). He also designed the show Freeze, an exhibition for Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam, in January 2000, and co-curated Manifesta, European art biennale in Ljubljana, Slovenia, summer 2000. He is participant of the Institute of Time Based Architecture for interactive architecture.

Ana Paula Baltazar

Ana Baltazar is an architect trained at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil, where she also completed her Masters in Architecture in 1998. CAPES currently sponsors her for her PhD at the Bartlett School of Architecture at the University College London, investigating the possibilities of virtualisation of architecture. Since 1993 she has been researching at LAGEAR (computer laboratory at the School of Architecture at the Federal University of Minas Gerais) topics related to architecture and Information Technology. In 1997 she founded together with a group of architects the IBPA (Brazilian Institute of PerformanceArchitecture) and she is concerned with the potential of performance as a strategy in architectural design process. Since 1999 she is a member of the London Virtual Reality Group. She has presented and published many articles in Brazil and abroad, and her most recent article entitled Architecture as Interface: forming and informing spaces and subjects was published in Koivunen, Anu and Paasonen, Susanna (editors). Conference Proceedings for Affective Encounters: Rethinking Embodiment in Feminist Media Studies, University of Turku, School of Art, Literature and Music Series A, nº 49, Media Studies, Turku, Finland, 2001. http://www.utu.fi/hum/mediatutkimus/affective/baltazar.pdf

Archis

Archis is a Dutch magazine currently published in two separate versions: English and Dutch.  In the beginning of 2001 Archis changed publisher, from NAi (the National Institute of Architects in The Netherlands) to Artimo.  This interview regards the reasons why Archis changed publisher and its relevance to architecture and architectural debate.

Entrevista

The idea for this interview came about in the London launch of the English version of Archis in the spring 2001. The event was organised by Lucy Bullivant and Ole Bouman took part in a round table at the RIBA discussing questions related to architectural journalism focusing on the role of Archis in the visual culture scene. At that time, the new version of the magazine was in its second issue, and as I was an Archis reader for a long time and considered it the best architectural periodical I had contact with, it seemed to me interesting and stimulating to understand the behind the stage of the change of publisher and its consequences in the magazine itself (form and content). At a first sight Archis apparently lost its formal impact (the old format was differentiated from the other publications by its size and external design), and gained a more serialised design. However, the publication started to work with design from an interactive point of view, going beyond the visual towards the experiential (participative). Besides this first impact of Archis' appearance, the change of publisher has a deeper impact in the magazine, which is the independence from the Dutch nationalist scene and its affirmation as a polemic, investigative and experimental publication. I started then the contact with Ole Bouman by email and we decided that the best way to bring these issues to Vitruvius would be by defining three or four questions and Ole Bouman would comment on them. Thus, the first two questions are commented together and the third and fourth are answered in separate.

Website

More informations about Ole Bouman and Archis:

www.archis.orgwww.virtualmanifesta.comwww.trans_ports.comwww.nai.nl/www_riq

Proposta para ponte, Barcelona. Benthem & Crouwel. Archis Novembro 2000