Gold Coast Cultural Precinct Competition, Australia

Gold Coast Cultural Precinct Competition: the names of the architectural studios that took part in the competition are now public: among the other OMA, Norman Foster, MVRDV, Zaha Hadid, Dominique Perrault...
You can see all the entries - including the RADAR project - here: www.goldcoastculturalprecinct.info/submissions

Live streaming from the POP-UP event 'don't make me angry'

Live broadcast by Ustream

Don't make me angry!

Friday July 5 and Saturday July 6, 2013 from 13:00 to 20:00 Radar gallery Amsterdam will host the POP-UP event "don't make me angry”. During the event three selected artists will be working live on the realisation of three different artworks.

The traditional process of creation-exhibition of works of art almost always foresees a specific itinerary, where the work is presented as a "finished product" and therefore directly "consumable". While acknowledging the creation as an intimate act, Radar Gallery wants to reverse the institutional trend for once, hosting three artists which will create work live, using their own techniques and ways of working.

The POP-UP event "don't make me angry" should be seen as an attempt and a possibility to make the public participate in an activity often seen as 'secret' and to allow them for once to have a look behind the mask that the artist wears when presenting a finished work.

Everybody present will be free to interact with the artists through questions and comments or may simply observe the creation of a work of art. In this way Radar wants to establish a link between the artists and the audience and create an unique work in progress event.

The three artists invited to the POP-UP event are:
Immo Jalass: digital art, galeriejalass.tripod.com
Nisja: urban paintings, nisja.carbonmade.com
Marcel Ozymantra: post-expressionistic storyteller and painter, ozymantra.nl

Photos from the opening of the show 'the flexible and the furious!' 30.6.2012

Live streaming from the opening of the show 'the flexible and the furious!'

Live broadcast by Ustream

Radar is back with a new architecture exhibition: the flexible and the furious

On Saturday the 30th of June 2012 Radar Architecture & Art will start the exhibition entitled ''the flexible and the furious!'', showing seven projects of the group Radar Architecture in various places in the world. The central theme of the exhibition is the flexibility and adaptability of architecture to different situations imposed by a furious society in constant acceleration. We cordially invite you to the opening of the show at 18:00 in the Eerste Rozendwarsstraat 17hs. The opening hours of the exhibition are Friday and Saturday from 13:00 to 18:00 and on appointment.

An ever-changing world

In the last three and a half years, Radar Group has been participating in international architecture competitions parallel to organizing art exhibitions. Radar found itself thus directly involved in issues such as 'reuse' 'sustainability' 'flexibility' or 'adaptability', which in the last years have become part of everyday vocabulary. The unstable socio-economic conditions that characterize the current decade force people more and more to an adaptability to situations of daily life and work. The same adaptability is therefore required from structures that accommodate the events of the social and private life of people. The main engine of these changes is likely to be found in the dizzying increase of the exchange of information, in which Internet has played and plays a key role. Art and Architecture have been affected by these developments, especially in recent years characterized by a global economic crisis.

A flexible architecture

After a series of projects Radar Group has decided to present the results of that work taking the opportunity to do an analysis of the main guidelines underlying the projects. This study revealed some points in common, like an invisible wire stretched between the conscious and unconscious that binds all projects. The most important aspects that unite the seven projects are in fact flexibility and adaptability. By flexibility is meant the ability of architecture to meet different requirements of users that in the present day change with a remarkable rapidity. By adaptability is meant a kind of 'external flexibility' that allows a concept or architectural strategy to be applied with minor changes to different places or urbanistic contexts. The exhibition 'the flexible and the furious!' shows projects in several places (from Warsaw to Venice, from Amsterdam to Austin, from Rome to Oslo) and of different typologies (from a SPA in a skyscraper to temporary pavilions for art exhibitions, from an adventure playground to a family house) and analyses how and to what extent the key concepts of flexibility and adaptability are present in them.

Press release by Marco Radar

Exhibition "Now We Are Gone" by Chidi Onwuka

On Saturday September 10th at 16:00 the gallery RADAR Architecture & Art will start the exhibition 'Now We Are Gone showing works by the English photographer Chidi Onwuka. We cordially invite you to the opening of the show in the Rozengracht 77A.

Theme

The series of photos exhibited shows the interiors of two buildings in Amsterdam, that were about to be demolished: the former Post CS Gebouw and the Wibauthuis building on Wibautstraat. In this superb series, the photographer concentrates his attention on the remains of the buildings; capturing what the current conformity tends to forget or hide.

Unconventionality often leads to surprising results: in 1632 Rembrandt portrayed in his painting "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp" in a completely new way until then, a professor who dissected a corpse in front of his students. Similarly Chidi Onwuka, referring to the buildings in question, speaks of a "wounded animal" that is about to die, and it is this particular “wound” that fascinates him.

The city as a whole is composed of a variety of buildings where the human activities take place. They are put onto a scale of importance where at the top we find the monument, par excellence untouchable and beautifully displayed, and at the bottom the buildings to be demolished, hidden behind anonymous scaffolding. And it is exactly on the latter subject that Chidi Onwuka wants to point his finger: on what is hidden and considered embarrassing by the common sense, trying to find the beauty that lies in the unusual.

The artist

Chidi Onwuka is an English born Nigerian, brought up in Oxford. He graduated in Architecture and studied Film Theory & Criticism. In 1989 he moved to Amsterdam were he now works and lives. The photographer has worked as an architect in Dutch studios (OMA, Neutelings Riedijk, West 8) and then as an interactive designer, art director and programmer.

Ocassionally he writes about architecture and urbanism. His true love in life though is to observe the world around him and in photography he has found the perfect outlet in which to express himself.