Uri Ben-Ari is an independent architect and researcher living in Eindhoven since 2007. His work currently tackles urban research methods, from mapping and evaluating patterns of growth, through analyzing existing planning policies, and offering site-specific, pragmatic courses of action. He considers himself a mediator, linking visions with real-time requirements and behavior.
Ben-Ari is the initiator and co-curator of Instatements, a physical and virtual platform that seeks to redefine adaptive reuse and redevelopment, based on ex-industrial buildings, their historic versus contemporary prototypes and their significance with regard to the city centre.

18.7.10

Instatements, Eindhoven 2010

Exhibition, Day of Architecture 26/6/ – 27/6/10

with Clare Butcher/Your-space and Freek Lomme/Onomatopee
participants Plan V (Toos Nijssen & Ron Eijkman), Jan Schevers & TU/e School of Architecture, Remote Material of Implication, Marjan Wester, Jozua Zaagman

Instatements will facilitate an ongoing series of mappings, discussions and actions to create a new set of relationships between the historical and the post-industrial fabric in the city of Eindhoven. The value of temporary status as a relevant solution to urban stagnation and zoning must be acknowledged. By deconstructing the hitherto acceptable forms of herbestemming, or adaptive reuse, this project seeks to map out the potential of the city's industrial environment and create an inclusive platform from which to redefine adaptive reuse, through a variety of disciplines.

Over the last months I have collaborated with Your-space and Onomatopee on Instatements, a project seeking to consider new and contemporary ways of defining adaptive reuse under the influence of perspectives from the creative, designed and built environment. The project opened with an exhibition during the Day of Architecture, and invited a group composed of three artists, eight designers, one public-space designer and four students from the department of architecture in the Technical University to start this process. Most of the participants have at one time or other practiced the art of re-inhabiting and reusing in the city of Eindhoven. This inevitably includes its industrial history, a great part of which took place along the 'Eindhovensch Kanaal', the city's former industrial artery. Though the historical evidence has all but disappeared, the industrial allocation has not. It is this setting that has influenced the exhibition and our train of thought.

plan of Eindhoven with industrial zone along the canal

The ongoing research in the geographical context of the canal has three aims: first, to provide new sustainable forms and methods of adaptive reuse that address the real needs of residents and interest groups, avoiding the cliches of industrial heritage projects; second, to reinstate the area into the city centre as a potential living and working neighborhood, while supporting local creative participants; third, to rely on mix-use as a crucial determining factor, to be addressed in a greater urban plan for the future.

For more information on Instatements, Click here

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ten questions

architecture, so they tell us, is actually more about asking questions than providing answers. Here's ten of them:

Where does the built environment overlap with the un-built, the public spaces, the leftovers, the in-between?
Can the architectural discourse be influenced by non-architects, and if so, how?
What are the key factors in erecting a new building - or reusing an existing one?
In what way does architecture portray the identity of place?
Who are the forces behind today's monumental architecture? What is the extent of architectural research in any design process?
What are the up-and-coming tools of the trade, what do they express and which of them has effectively upgraded conventional, 'old-school' methods?
How is 'green' influencing today's buildings and cities?
To what limits, or on what scale should sustainable, eco-friendly elements be implemented as architectural requirements?
Will the sustainable issue stay on as a permanent factor in the future?