Old Amsterdam – Café Scheltema

The way things used to be? Talking heritage with Rob van der Laase [Link] – the way the past is cleaned up, filtered, extraneous matter removed – that we might more appreciate a clear narrative – that this did indeed happen here. Here – a remarkable untouched remnant of a meeting place, famously associated with…

heritage/design – theatre/archaeology

I am in Amsterdam delivering the Reinwardt Memorial Lecture at the Reinwardt Academy for Cultural Heritage in the Amsterdam School of the Arts [Link] [Link] This annual event commemorates the birthday of Caspar Georg Carl Reinwardt (3 June 1773 – 6 March 1854), after whom the Reinwardt Academy is named. The Academy is the foremost…

Forensic Architecture

“At a scene of crime anything might be relevant” – a catch phrase from our work in theatre/archaeology, explored in Experiencing the Past (1992) and featuring now in my new book “The Archaeological Imagination”, out this coming week – [Link] In this light, Ewa (Domanska) has referred me to a fascinating, an intriguing new project…

d.school studio-based learning – feedback

It’s the end of our class in the d.school – Transformative Design. We held the presentations on Monday. Today we shared feedback – it amounts to a great concise commentary on the strengths of the d.school process and design thinking, and more generally on studio-based/project-based interdisciplinary learning. What we like: listening to others, leaving oneself…