Category: Amsterdam

#enter09@Amsterdam Mini Bloggers Meetup

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I’m back from the Enter09@Amsterdam conference.

Before posting anything, I had to address a technical problem here, as the electrically opening gate to our backyard doesn’t function anymore. Some of you know that I sometimes describe my job here at Haagsche Suites as a “Jack of all trades and Master of none”.
It appeared that a deliverer of glass to my neighbor (a tenant of mine) has driven against the safety provisions of the gate this afternoon. Nice having a security cam available to prove who did it. The only problem is it takes considerable time to sift through lengthy footage of stills. But I have pinpointed the trespasser. I find it so funny to see my neighbor standing there in person and looking when it is happening and simply not having the decency to warn me what happened. Now I’m really looking forward to a whole weekend without a functioning gate. – It turned out later he had tried to give me notice by telephone on the answering machine -.

Back to Enter09. The Blogger meetup yesterday afternoon turned out to be a Mini Blogging Meetup. Luckily with some beer, chips and a friendly chat.

Now I can prove you beyond doubt with the above photo that Kevin Can Smile. Hurray! (see my 10 Questions (15) For: Kevin May of Travolution)….even when he had just decided to remove Virgin screen grabs from his site (see his Tweet and these posts of: Travolution and of Alex)

The photo shows further Stephen Joyce and Jens Traenhart (he is the one with the really huge smile).

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This photo shows Dimitrios Buhalis, left, who was also conference chair and a young man of the Austrian Tirol Tourist board whom I hope will give us his name when he reads this. Added: I found him out before he me. It’s Hannes Egger, one of the authors of Blog Tirol. Oops I should have known: I’m on their Blogrol…Thanks Hannes and do come to ITB Berlin!

That made up a meet up of 7 6 Bloggers while William got lost in Amsterdam.

Later Stephen offered me dinner that I chose for him to be real Dutch “Suddervlees” (also known as “Draadjesvlees”) at Moeders a decent restaurant in Amsterdam that serves traditional Dutch Food and the name of which means Mothers (or Moms or Mamas) it is fested with photos of moms.

Thanks Stephen and we will meet again in Berlin where I owe you one.

From the conference itself I don’t have much to report to you, as I had a lot of other things to do, so I could not attend, but my own presentation and two sessions. I had especially to finalize my own first ppt presentation. When I have translated it in English (it was for the Dutch Day of Enter09 in the Dutch language), I’ll put it up here.

I posted some more photos at my Flickr set Enter09@Amsterdam

It was mentioned that Jens has new plans wit Tips from the T-List, but I didn’t attend that session. Maybe more somewhere else.

L8ter

Added: Kevin used one of my Flickr set’s Enter09@Amsterdam photos for a Caption Contest

Affordable Art Fair – Amsterdam – Contemporary Art Fair

After eight successful years in London, New York, Sydney and Melbourne the Affordable Art Fair has been launched in Amsterdam in November 2007. After this first edition the Affordable Art Fair Amsterdam will grow in 2008: circa 80 galleries from the Netherlands and abroad will be seen at the Westergasfabriek terrain from 29 October to 2 November. The fair is fun, relaxed and with everything from €100 to €5,000, it is an art-buying opportunity that can not be missed.

The fair’s friendly environment invites first time buyers to browse amongst the thousands of paintings, original prints, photography and sculpture, whilst seasoned collectors can seek out hot new artists. In short, AAF Amsterdam is a fair where you can look at contemporary art, love it and leave with your own piece.

This funky fair’s stunning location is the 19th century gasworks, an impressive industrial monument on the Westergasfabriek terrain, close to Amsterdam Central station and easy to reach by bike, tram, car or foot from the town center.
Affordable Art Fair – Amsterdam – Contemporary Art Fair

Dutch Design (31): Design.nl

Design.nl is a blog about Dutch Design. Currently In Amsterdam we have the Inside Design Amsterdam event where the Lloyd Hotel is one of the primary locations. This is not about design of a hotel, but a hotel in design. Therefore an extensive quote.

Out of the sixteen rooms redesigned for Inside Design Amsterdam’s Lloyd Hotel metamorphosis project, Maaike Roozenburg and Scholten & Baijings are rumoured to be amongst those selected to stay.

There was a suggestion that they would like to keep my design permanent, says Maaike Roozenburg whose design stood out for its minimal intrigue.

The conceptual and clever element of contemporary Dutch design is high on humour, but can lack the sort of warmth and aesthetic beauty that make sleep environments comfortable.

For this project, however, Roozenburg fused a familiar no-nonsense Dutchness with a refined elegance that had the crowds at Wednesday night’s opening gasping.

For years Roozenburg has been collecting freight containers used to transport fruit and vegetables; the blue and brown boxes piled outside green grocer stores every morning. The boxes are made from plastic, which is patterned with industrial grids to maximize their stength. I like them because they are designed to be tough, not aesthetic, she says. “But somehow they are still very beautiful.

Inside the crates Roozenburg placed light bulbs and around them she wrapped a layer of filmoplast, a material that can best be described as half way between fabric and paper. “I found it at a needlework store for old ladies, she says. It is usually used in libraries to preserve manuscripts, but they use it to make their threads stronger.

In the center of the room Roozenburg constructed a simple, wooden four-poster bed with a flat ceiling that the lit boxes sit on. Draped haphazardly from the boxes are Italian-made ironing wires which power the globes.

The combined effect is of a fragile, almost Japanese, ambient light. Simple yet striking. I didn’t want it to be fussy, Roosenburg says. “There are no surprises. It just is what it is.

The room designed by Scholten & Baijings is another stand out and one that the Lloyd Hotel is likely to keep.

Carole Baijings together with partner Stefan Scholten transformed a drab basement room into a style room. It’s like in the old days, she says. “A room where everything is in the same style.

And their style is colour. Colour as object, texture and textile. Colour manipulated and contrasted with light and transparency.

The room is divided into three zones: a plush carpeted entrance with a white wall engraved in the pair’s new, signature grid-like pattern. When seen from a distance the wall has a tiled effect. The same grid was used to texture the small tabletops.

The second zone is a fully-opened dressing room with two massive cupboard doors that can be swung open at either end to create an entirely closed and private bathroom space.

The largest back section is the sleep zone where transparent and hand-dyed textiles literally dance with the natural light. A mirror covers the ceiling, but is tilted so cleverly avoids personal reflection while creating a sense of space.

The carpets and bed throws are made from 100% merino wool, hand dyed into shades of pink and green more vivid than natural fiber normally allows. It’s taken a lot of trial and discovery to make this possible, says Baijings. Draped around the four walls is a new fabric patterned in shades of pink that is sheer and looks fragile but feels tough.

We have created a sense of luxury using very subtle detailing and colour, says Baijings. And that’s really all this room needs because the details work as objects and decoration.

Inside Design Amsterdam at the Lloyd Hotel runs until 14th September

Design.nl

2008 Cinedans Amsterdam

I have been invited to have a look at the Cinedans premiere in Amsterdam tonight. Cinedans is an International Dance Filmfestival, dedicated solely to films that have a connection with Dance and held simultaneously in three Dutch cities: Amsterdam, Den Haag and Utrecht.

Find more videos like this on Cinedans

Dance for All

The opening film is quite interesting. It is a film about the South African Dance for All project started 17 years ago to bring dance to Cape Town Townships. An amazing tale of white dancers from the Capetown Ballet Company who started this project long before Apartheid was abolished.

Philip Boyd, a former principal dancer with CAPAB (now Cape Town City Ballet), founded Dance for All in 1991 as Ballet for All. This was to build on the legacy of Cape Town ballet chief David Poole, who started teaching ballet in the townships of Cape Town in the mid-80s. Ballet for All began its life in a classroom in Gugulethu with 34 children participating. These numbers quickly multiplied and with the recruitment of more dance teachers, Boyd expanded the programme to include a diverse range of dance forms and in 1995, Ballet for All became Dance for All.

Today DFA runs an Outreach Programme of daily dance classes in ballet, African, contemporary, musical theatre and Spanish dance for over 700 children and youth in the historically disadvantaged communities of Gugulethu, Nyanga, Khayelitsha, Samora, Athlone and the rural areas of Barrydale and Montagu. Beyond teaching dance, these classes promote the personal development of the children by encouraging their creativity, self-discipline and confidence. DFA’s students receive first-class training from a talented and diverse teaching team.

The film showed lessons by Philip and Phyllis Spira and their students and how the students gradually grew to professionally trained dancers culminating in the formation of DFA’s own profesional youth dance company, creating full-time employment for six of the previous year`s Senior Training Programme graduates in November 2005, that has toured several countries already.

Unfortunately Phyllis Spira died a few months ago. We were happy to learn at the after party that one of their senior students who had left DFA to take dance lessons in Switserland and had been offered a second year of now sponsored training in Switserland had decided to return to DFA to take over Phyliss’ position as a teacher.

About Phyllis Spira:

Phyllis was accepted into London’s Royal School of Ballet when she was just 16. Within months she was a soloist with the Royal Ballet Touring Company. She returned to South Africa in 1964, having turned down an invitation to dance with the legendary Rudolph Nureyev and, a year later, joined Capab (later the Cape Town City Ballet), where she remained for 28 years.

After retiring from performance, Phyllis devoted her time and energy to Dance for All, which was founded by her husband Philip Boyd. Her understanding of young people, her sense of values and her wisdom made her contribution immeasurable. A pragmatist and a realist, she was often both a voice of reason and a pillar of strength. A remarkably humble and caring woman, Phyllis was a wonderful role model and inspiration to so many of the children whose lives she touched. Dance for All will strive in its daily work to live up to her extraordinary legacy.

Phyllis received South Africa’s highest civilian award for excellence, the Order of Meritorius Service Gold (1991). She twice received the Nederburg Award for Ballet, while she also won the Lilian Solomon Award and the Bellarte Woman of the Year Award for the Cape (1979) and was named a member of the Order of Disa (2003) for her contribution to ballet and its development.

Why I was invited? Not as Happy Hotelier. It was closer to home: as proud and happy father of DanceGirl who helps with organizing Cinedans.

CitizenM Hotel Amsterdam Airport Schiphol Opening (2): The Room (Dutch Design 27)

The CitizenM Room has various neat design features:

Its 2 m long and 2 m wide Bed under the window with, on the west side of the hotel, nice views on one of the landing strips of Schiphol Airport:

Under the bed, like in yachts, there is a huge trunk size drawer where you can stash your luggage away. Next to the entrance there are 5 coat and dress hangers over a small locker that can hold a small laptop without loading facility for its batteries.

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How do they manage to care for those beds? Very simple: They developed a system whereby the whole mattress can be pulled up to the front of the bed vertically. The used sheets fall of and the clean sheets can be hung up on the two upper corners in stead of crawling around the bed which would be impossible. They applied for a patent for the system.

The view gets nicer when the sun sets:

Citizen-M-Hotel-Amsterdam-Schiphol-Airport Window with Setting Sun

The shower and the Throne have each their own cylindric glass separation. The throne’s glass is etched. Between the shower and the bed there is a room wide curtain to separate the bath”room” part from the Sleeping part of the room. In the Throne’s cylinder an extra air suction facility prevents odors.

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Here you see the two cylinders closed. Left is The Hotel Throne. Even I with my considerable belly can easily pass between the two cylinders. In the middle you see the sink. Under the sink is a small cupboard that holds the waste basket. No tiles behind the sink. The floor of the room is quite slippery when wet.

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In this photo of Citizen M taken from the bed, you can see the mood lighting and, on the left,the separation curtain (they took care of the Yotel guest reviews that were complaining about the visibility of the Yotel Throne) and the rain shower. There are two tables in front of the bed and there is one chair available: The Vitra re issued C1 chair designed by Verner Panton.

Between the sink and the throne there is a turnable frame with on the one side a man high mirror and on the other side some small shelfs to store stuff and a shaving mirror and some international shaving wall sockets.

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This photo I took in the big mirror.

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This photo I took in the shaving mirror.

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Detail of the sink with huge soap block

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Two types of shampoo and a water bottle which is the only drink available in the room. Other drinks you have to fetch in the lobby cum canteen M…however I noticed they closed the lot during the night at around 2 AM while Rattan claimed during his introduction that it would be open all night!

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I don’t know what to think of this feature: The Citizen M Doll. If you think it is a gift you are wrong: They charge a hefty Euro 20 for it!

Conclusions

Room rates vary according to demand and start with Euro 69 per night up to Euro 139 per night.

The bed sleeps fine.

All in all I am really impressed by the care for detail in this concept. Especially the lack of outside noise is amazing with all the planes flying around at Schiphol Airport.

Good value for money if you are looking for a bed to crash in.