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In 1960 Oskar Hansen sent this piece of writing to Jaap Bakema and the Post Box for the Development of the Habitat, which today is held in the collection of Het Nieuwe Instituut. It includes his criticism of and wishes for the right kind of exchange of ideas for a new architecture, that would engage with 'concrete people' allowing them to develop their living environment according to their own needs, to organically arrive at a new balance between the individual and the collective, despite industrialisation, and despite the post-war society dominated by issues of quantity rather than quality. Open Form was his key concept for the new architecture, a processual understanding of design and construction. Because he was never a party member Hansen would be marginalised in Communist Poland, and he would develop his ideas into a practice of radical pedagogy at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. The MACBA in Barcelona has devoted a retrospective to Hansen's work, see for more information here: http://www.macba.cat/en/exhibition-oskar-hansen

'Open Structures' was the result of a Master Class held at The Berlage together with Herman Hertzberger, Tom Avermaete and Dirk van den Heuvel. Students had to reconfigure the Ministry of Social Affairs in The Hague, designed by Herman Hertzberger in the 1980s and now abandoned by the government due to administrative reorganization. Key questions concerned the value of the ideas of Hertzberger and so-called Dutch Structuralism, the dynamic relations between use and spatial configuration, the possible interrelationships between government, welfare state institutions and the agency of architecture. The publication was the outcome of a collaboration between The Berlage, TU Delft, Het Nieuwe Instituut and Volume. It contains interviews, statements and design proposals, both historical and contemporary ones.

The first impression when you to go to India is that everything is more messy, more crowded, more polluted, faster. This is because your plane is probably landing in New Delhi or Mumbai. Fortunately India doesn't show always this face, we realized this once arrived in Ahmedabad for the Habitat design studio 2014. Although it's house to more than 6 million people, Ahmedabad has another feeling, another flow, even more in its suburbs such as Gota, our project site for affordable housing.

The Afrikaanderwijk Cooperative is a strong and flexible Dutch cooperative association that is set up to improve the social and economical situation of the inhabitants of the Rotterdam Afrikaanderwijk (in the south of the city). The organization was set up as a durational follow-up of the successful Freehouse art project. Economic sustainability is aimed through co-operative cultural production. An inclusive urban development is achieved through stimulating community participation and self-organization.