Winka's World
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BY ELLEN BERKOVITCH WINKA’S WORLD The Dutch Architect Who Has Taken Manhattan and iz s Remaking Bogotá 102 Fall 2013–Spring 2014 TREND Fall 2013–Spring 2014 TREND 103 as a leader in international architecture, Hers is a continual interplay between pivoting between private patronage and human-centered design and technolo- innovative approaches to funding urban gies changing architecture, from artificial revitalizations. intelligence to building systems that can Born and raised in Holland, Dub- effectively “think” on their own. Whereas beldam trained first in Rotterdam, then the architectural icon of the 20th century took her second Masters in Architecture was Howard Roark, the hero of Ayn Rand’s at Columbia University in 1991. Formed novel The Fountainhead, the new architect three years later, her practice sends her that Dubbeldam embodies is nimble, not globe-hopping, with recent work in static. Architecture, she contends, is “not Berlin, Bogotá, Shanghai, Tel Aviv, and form, but performative. Not aesthetics, but Santa Fe. She’s also a full professor, who intelligence.” directs the post-professional program A through-line threads through her work, inka Dubbeldam arrives at PennDesign, training post-graduate an ethic that Dubbeldam refers to as “bot- right on time for our architects who take a one-year Master’s tom-up.” Bottom-up in Winka’s world goes Skype meeting from her in Architecture. to the essence of the architectural task—to laptop in Berlin. A dash- Dubbeldam defines architecture as the be inquisitive, to be able to shape complex DOWNTOWN BOGOTA | MY IDEAL CITY Client: Prodigy Networks, BD Promotores ing brunette wearing an design of space. Theory underpins her arguments. Also, she says, “to use the com- Project: Bottom-up Urbanism to Design Wopen smile and carmine red lipstick, she approach. Just as in mathematics, where puter as an intelligent tool, to learn to think the City of the Future signals thumbs up to the sequence of objects can “hover,” as she puts it, between with things rather than against things. The Location: Bogota, Colombia “Can you hear me now?”s. fixed points, Dubbeldam’s architecture also idea is that you cannot grow something As principal of the New York firm is a shape-shifter—humanistic, to live in; bottom-up if you plan it top-down.” Archi-Tectonics, Dubbeldam, 47, works futuristic, to encounter on the city street. Teaching bottom-up design might start Dubbeldam is adamant that intelligent architecture demands sustainable choices in heating, ventilating, cooling, and lighting. “It’s so basic it shouldn’t even be discussed at this point.” She can’t understand why, for instance, every New York apartment can’t have thermostats and every stairwell, dimmers—low-cost technology that affords short- and long-term benefits. with her asking PennDesign students six years. Yet, despite being snarked in the to consider the building an intelligent blogosphere as often as she is flattered in structure. the architectural press, Dubbeldam is not a Bottom-up site planning involves engag- big fan of what she calls “the pop star idea ing the public in an active inquiry about in architecture.” She adds, “I’d rather do what’s intrinsic to that place. good work and focus on that.” When it succeeds, bottom-up architec- Among her good works have been several ture catalyzes effects in cities in which pro bono projects: designing an orphanage/ “what you create starts to activate other school in Monrovia, Liberia, and serving actions and other spaces.” (To begin with, as one of 20 architects who customized people move back in. Then, ideally, the city the iconic “Jalk” chair—named after late regrows integrally.) Indeed, consider Dub- Danish furniture designer Grete Jalk— beldam a kind of architectural weathervane. for a breast cancer benefit auction. While She reads contemporary culture to see Dubbeldam wears Belgian fashion and what’s coming and to shape possibilities. groovy haircuts, she drove an AMC Pacer At any given moment her firm is likely to for nine years—picture Winka, the social z have luxury Manhattan apartment build- democrat, in the driver’s seat—and the car ings on its boards. Completed ones include is still one of her 12 favorite objects, she the Brewster Carriage House in Little Italy, told Elle Decor in a March 2011 interview. 33 Vestry Street, and 497 Greenwich in For Dubbeldam, architecture in the art Tribeca. The real estate blog Curbed NY realm started in 2002, when art dealer Max has featured her personal and professional Protetch asked her to participate in the FLOTO + WARNER PHOTOGRAPHY (2) real estate transactions eighteen times in exhibition New World Trade Center: Design trendmagazineglobal.com Fall 2013–Spring 2014 TREND 105 PETER SCHEIN Musician John Legend and photographer Ellen von Client: Peter Schein Project: Residential Loft Unwerth live in Winka-designed buildings with Location: West Soho, NYC Winka-designed interiors. (As the blog Curbed NY Area: 3200 sf would say, “Dubbel Trouble!”) Winka Dubbeldam at PennDesign Proposals at his eponymous New York gallery. The project asked 60 architects to reenvision downtown New York in the wake of 9/11. Protetch, who now lives part-time in Santa Fe, first began exhib- iting architecture as art at his original gallery in Washington, D.C., in 1978. Speaking about the 9/11 project 11 years later, he and Dubbeldam independently agree that launching an art show to pro- pose new designs so soon after the attacks came with huge responsibility. New York- ers were still raw with fear. However, the show became a gathering place for its residents to embrace optimism by deeply engaging with materializations of what could be created anew. The gallery was jammed from the moment it opened to its inquiring of the collective to inform and a crowdfunding project to revive urban “What I’m thinking is not very normal,” closing, Protetch recalls. shape new architecture. She didn’t see Bogotá, Colombia. The work derives from she allows. “You have to imagine down- Dubbeldam, then in her 30s, contrib- this as inconsistent with making daring a Colombian developer’s recent success in town Bogotá as a version of downtown uted to the exhibit a smart video game, spaces that employ green design. sourcing $200 million from 3200 donors Los Angeles before SCI-Arc [the South- in which players chose elements of a new Protetch kept track of the young archi- for a new downtown high-rise. The money ern California Institute of Architecture] downtown. A newly imagined lower Man- tect and today lauds her sublimity. He raised would seem to reflect residents’ moved in, but worse.” There are 33 col- hattan then shaped up, visibly, onscreen. particularly praises one of her houses, furious appetite to play a part as citizens leges or universities in Bogotá, so the Remembers Protetch, “What I was hop- located near New York State’s Croton in reshaping their city. student population is expected to be at the ing to get out of the World Trade Center reservoir. The dwelling sits on plinths To begin work, Dubbeldam drew in front line of its downtown renewal, much show would be something like a peak constructed in place over the landscape’s the New York media consultancy and in the way that SCI-Arc students helped experience. I would identify the most natural boulders, evoking a musical inter- “bespoke event” marketing firm PSFK revitalize their Los Angeles neighborhood. brilliant new project that would stand out play between raw nature outside, and the (pronounced “piece of K”). The firm asked Some 1.7 million Colombians commute like a gleaming beacon. I didn’t get that. stylized interiors. Bogotá residents to answer 3000 questions downtown on weekdays, but only 250,000 I got a younger person’s newer approach “She’s a great architect,” Protetch says, about their preferences on the website live there. In Latin America, the architect to dealing with the project, rather than “a good example of the intellectual bent in miciudadideal.com/en. As of August 2013, stresses, unstable currencies have engen- making an iconic structure.” architecture and art.” nearly 3500 suggestions had already been dered stable real estate markets, unlike Dubbeldam’s perspective emerged submitted. in the United States, where so many bad from her own trauma, in having wit- A Future Bogotá After speaking about My Ideal City at mortgages burst the housing bubble. nessed the planes hitting the buildings Contemplating Dubbeldam’s work, one TEDGlobal on June 10 in Edinburgh, “Traditionally, the West thought it would from her weekly Tuesday 8:00 a.m. meet- is reminded of the line by Archimedes, Scotland, Dubbeldam traveled to Berlin save the Third World, but Latin America is ing at the 497 Greenwich construction “Give me a lever long enough . and I to mount representations of the project at fast growing a middle class that is educated site. The experience vulcanized her belief shall move the world.” She knows she the Architecture Forum Aedes. Conceptu- and ready to build cities,” Dubbeldam says. that new architecture must leave the hero Client: Aida Salon won’t do it alone, however. ally, the project circles around certain “Attractors” are spark plugs for change that Project: Hair salon, facade, and garden design epoch behind. Instead, she stressed that Location: Upper East Side, NYC For a project called Downtown Bogo- “attractors” designed to make Bogotá a reveal the intrinsic site qualities that, if being in harmony with the emotional Area: 2000 sf tá: My Ideal City, she has been tapped more livable city, which for Dubbeldam remediated or built upon, are generative— Completed: 2000 TOP LEFT: B. DOHERTY/UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA SCHOOL OF DESIGN; BACKGROUND AND RIGHT: FLOTO + WARNER PHOTOGRAPHY (3) situation of New York post-9/11 meant FLOTO + WARNER PHOTOGRAPHY (2) as lead architect and team-builder on again returns to “bottom-up.” i.e., cause spin-off reactions.