The Knight's Move: Rowan Moore

'Eternity is overrated'

Thursday 12 December 2013, 20:00 hrs
Location: Hogewal 1-9, The Hague
Entrance fee: € 5,-
Language: English
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"Architecture is a very powerful, but very clumsy, form of communication between people who mostly don't know each other... There is always mistranslation. It is impossible to foresee everything, and sinister to try. But architects have to do something - they change things whether they want to or not. They can't pretend to be neutral. Stewart Brand said that all buildings are predictions of the future, and that predictions of the future are always wrong. I would put it differently. All buildings are propositions of what the future could be, which users can then modify and reinterpret. Good architects understand this."
- Interview with Rowan Moore on The Pop-Up City

What is the relationship between architecture and eroticism, power and finance? What if architecture was founded on the humanist "incidents and accidents" of lives and places rather than on marketing scripts and architectural heroism? This is exactly what English architecture critic Rowan Moore explores in his recent book Why We Build and in his forthcoming talk. For those of you who have been taught that the best architecture is 'timeless', prepare yourself for a lecture in which Moore argues that 'eternity is overrated'.

Rowan Moore trained as an architect at Cambridge, but, having gone into practice, turned to journalism. He has been editor of the architecture journal Blueprint, and has written for the Evening Standard (London) and The Guardian. In 2002 he succeeded Lucy Musgrave as director of the Architecture Foundation, leaving to concentrate on journalism full time in 2008.

The Guardian - click here to read the whole article
"Why are architects so mercurial? Why is architect-speak so impenetrable? Rowan Moore, the Observer's architecture critic, answers question one and could not be accused of accusation number two. One of the UK's most accomplished writers on the profession, he critiques the most important buildings and the people who masterminded them with a style that is both entertaining and cuts through the crap. Why We Build, his new book, does not disappoint. It does not set out to be a definitive study, more a set of musings. As he tours the world, Moore dips into themes. He guides us through the relationship between architecture and eroticism, power and finance in a journey from São Paulo to New York, Beijing and beyond."

The Knight's Move
Survey lectures seasonn 2013-2014
The Knight's Move is a series of lectures by eminent international speakers who stand out by their unusual, enlightening and inspirational visions concerning the city, urbanity, the public domain, and community. Just as the knight moves in an atypical and unusual way across the chessboard, Stroom Den Haag likewise wants to cut across all disciplines and thus stimulate rethinking the city.

Media partner of The Knight's Move 2013-2014 is The Pop-Up City.

The Knight's Move lectures are made possible in part by the Creative Industries Fund NL and the Haagse Bluf Fonds.

Archive The Knight's Move lectures 2009-present

PRESS
ArchiNed, 17 January 2014 (in Dutch)
The Pop-Up City, 4 December 2013

      Thursday 12 Dec '13 20 hrs
      Hogewal 1-9, The Hague
      Entrance: € 5,-