Miraculous Transformations
Academy of Architecture 2009-2010

The Academy of Architecture couples its AIR programme with existing modules, such as the lecture series Capita Selecta and the Winter Term, which sees a two-week period of collaborative work between three design disciplines: architecture, urban planning and landscape architecture.
The primary focus is on interdisciplinary cooperation and confrontation with other art practices. The Academy chooses explicitly for AIRs with a challenging personality who are capable of creating a positive ‘disruption’ to the educational enterprise.

Together with his collaborator Roé Cerpac, Jeroen Kooijmans and his students embark on a research lab project, seeking out miraculous transformations in biology, physics, alchemy and film and other arts. All forms of transformation are considered: from a cocoon changing into a butterfly, a squid taking on the appearance of a rock and the transitions of Hulk and Superman to the attack on the Twin Towers and the first bite from the forbidden apple. Every day, each student is expected to present ten examples of transformations and then make quick sketches of buildings for which there was no need to take account of limiting parameters such as gravity. In a tightly organised and intensive two-week period, the students are made cognizant of their own personal fascinations and the extent to which the they could demand space for them in their own designs. The results of ‘Transformation: a search for possibilities to create an unexpected moment of change’ served as a resource for various design projects and form studies, and as the basis of six Capita Selecta lectures with international guests from the abovementioned disciplines.

About Jeroen Kooijmans
Jeroen Kooijmans produces highly immediate work using a strong visual language in which reality, fantasy and poetry go hand in hand. The subjects of his works are time, circulation, utopia, religion and fairy tales in reality. Kooijmans’ work is characterized by the use of audiovisual media, the influence of painting, his archive of collections, humour, optimism, connection with architecture, interaction with the audience, being Dutch and travel. His work has shown internationally in Tate Modern (London), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), Museum of Fine Arts (Buenos Aires) and Lalit Kala Akademi Gallery (New Delhi). In 1998 he won the Dutch NPS Culture Award. In 2001/2002 Kooijmans participated in the International Studio Program at P.S.1/MoMA (New York). His most recent work appeared around the turn of 2010 at the Beyond the Dust exhibition in Middelburg, Paris and Milan.

Jeroen Kooijmans and Roé Cerpac previously collaborated on architecture-related pieces such as Hanging Houses and several projects with Rotterdam-based architecture practice MVRDV. MVRDV also commissioned Kooijmans to make a film for the 2000 Architecture Biennale about optimism and beauty in overpopulation. The result was The City of 12 Million Sun, about Tokyo. Check his website.

Folding Houses (Jeroen Kooijmans' work and inspirations) in ON AIR #2, 2011

Jeroen Kooijmans' has collected the results of his research in a digital archive
Capita Selecta: Transformations
http://www.jeroenkooijmans.com