Metropolis - May 2011

REFERENCE

WRIT TEN BY

Claire Levenson

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32 Buoyant Market The Dutch architect Koen Olthuis ( www.waterstudio.nl) is bringing floating houses to a place even lower-lying than his homeland: the Maldives. In 2009, the island country’s president became famous for holding an underwater cabinet meeting to draw attention to global warming and rising sea levels. A year later, the government signed a contract with Dutch Docklands to develop artificial floating islands in collaboration with Olthuis. If the natural islands sink, locals will take refuge on the Dutch-made islands, where beaches are built on foam-and-concrete platforms. The design will include hotels, golf courses, and a convention center: www.inhabitat.com/maldives-to-fight-rising-sea-levels-with-floating-islands/ koen-olthuis-maldives-island5/.

Circle 116

48

Total Designer

In Dutch Type, a book about font design in the Netherlands, we learn a few things about the legendary graphic designer famous for his grids and fonts. “I have such a compulsion to create a certain order in everything,” Wim Crouwel confesses. Indeed, colleagues have caught him cutting slices of cheese into exact squares to make perfect sandwiches. But he also loves Expressionist art, British sports cars, and tailor-made suits. Though he is now 82, his work remains highly influential, especially in his home country. Here’s what the young designers from Experimental Jet Set ( www.experimentaljetset.nl) say: “Two of us were born in Rotterdam, a city whose logo was designed by Crouwel. As a consequence, we feel as if the graphic language of Wim Crouwel is our mother tongue, our natural language.”

58

Anatomy of a Takedown

New York’s transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, the city’s leading bike-lane advocate, is under attack these days. At a recent fund-raiser for a pilot bike-sharing program, she compared her fate to that of John Randel Jr., an engineer in charge of implementing the Manhattan grid of 1811. As Randel cut down trees through properties to apply the street grid, landowners threw artichokes and cabbages, or unleashed their guard dogs ( www.nytimes.com/2011/03/21/ nyregion/ 21randel.html). Two centuries later, bike lanes are just as divisive. But instead of vegetables and angry canines, there are lawsuits and op-eds in the Ne w York Post.