August 23, 2017

Game of Thrones finale in cinemas for free

Filed under: Film,General by Orangemaster @ 12:04 pm

Good news for all the Game of Thrones fans in the Netherlands and a great idea for anybody who can set this up elsewhere: watching the season 7 finale of Game of Thrones on the big screen for free on Monday 28 August at 7pm CET.

Pathé theatres in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Groningen, Maastricht, Tilburg and Utrecht will have a glorious 81-minute viewing of the popular show. You’ll need to reserve seats, something that’s normal here for film tickets, knowing that other countries only sell tickets at the box office.

And it was some blogger’s idea, not Pathé, which needed to be said. No spoilers on Sunday night please!

Read more: Dutch drone used in Game of Thrones and The Dutch connection in Game of Thrones.

(Link: metronieuws.nl, Photo: Photo of an Efteling dragon by Jeroen Kransen, some rights reserved)

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August 9, 2017

Interactive shawls feature Tourette’s swearing

Filed under: Design,Fashion by Orangemaster @ 12:47 pm

Shawl

For her graduation project at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, Corlieske Visser has made shawls with interactive prints featuring audio patterns of her father’s bouts of swearing caused by his Tourette’s.

To create the shawls, Visser sat down with her father in a recording studio for two and a half hours. The sound waves of the recordings were transformed into images and eventually abstract prints (Dutch), which were then linked to the Dutch augmented reality app Layar. You can scan the prints using Layar and hear what Visser’s father had to say. The shawls are for sale, and 15% of the profits go to the Dutch Gilles de la Tourette Foundation.

Names after French physician Gilles de la Tourette who coined the syndrome, Tourette’s is often made fun of and not taken seriously. Part of Visser’s goal with her shawls is to draw attention to some of the positive aspects of Tourette’s. Visser explains that swearing puts people off and because of this, people with Tourette’s like her father are seen as crazy or anti-social. However, Visser’s father is also very good at imitating sounds, which shows a positive side of the syndrome.

(Link: creators.vice.com, Image: corlieske.nl)

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July 3, 2017

Renzo Piano’s KPN Tower in Rotterdam gets expansion

Filed under: Architecture by Orangemaster @ 10:42 pm

The leaning tower designed by Renzo Piano at the foot of Rotterdam’s Erasmus bridge overlooking the Maas River was completed in 2000, and is now set to undergo extensive renovation and expansion as part of the company’s relocation from The Hague to Rotterdam. The renovations will be led by Rotterdam firm V8 Architects, which has involved Piano in the decision-making process.

With a new 20 year lease agreement for the building, KPN have the opportunity to add further enhancements to what is already a distinctive building. The intention is to achieve this in a sustainable manner, creating viable future workplaces from existing offices in the country. The core of the project seeks to maintain the identity and integrity of the existing tower with interventions.

With construction underway, work on the KPN Tower’s renovations is set to be completed by the end of 2017 when we can do a before and after kind of thing. The other notable Piano building in the Netherlands is the Nemo Science Centre in Amsterdam, built in 1997, which is also on the water.

(Link: archdaily.com, Photo of Rotterdam, KPN building by Roel Wijnants, some rights reserved)

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February 1, 2017

More dead animals with a story in Rotterdam

Filed under: Animals by Orangemaster @ 11:19 am

The Natural History Museum in Rotterdam has an ongoing exhibition entitled ‘Dead Animals with a Story’ (use the Google translate function at your own risk) and has just announced a new addition, the small beech marten that died taking down the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland in May 2016.

Some well-known exhibits include the Dutch ‘domino sparrow’ that was killed indoors to avoid a disaster at the Dutch annual Domino Day where records attempts are made, as well as the ‘McFlurry hedgehog’ that suffocated on a discarded junk food container.

(Link: nos.nl, Photo of Dead cat by ndanger, some rights reserved)

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November 27, 2016

Saint Pancake, a very real tradition that started in a comic

Filed under: Comics,Food & Drink by Branko Collin @ 5:04 pm

saint-pancake-nos_nl

On 29 November the country celebrates Sint Pannekoek (Saint Pancake), notably the people of Rotterdam.

These people will take photos of each other wearing pancakes on their heads, and of course they will eat pancakes. In 2014 (NOS.nl reported back then) hundreds of people took to social media to share the photographic evidence of their pancake wearing ways, and the Koninskerk in Rotterdam organised a pancake feast, the proceeds of which went to charity.

Interestingly, there is no actual Saint Pancake. He and his tradition were made up whole cloth by Jan Kruis for his comic Jan, Jans en de Kinderen (John, Joanie and the Kids) and in turn by his character, grandfather Gerrit, who wanted to get out of having to eat boring beans.

In the strip, grandfather tells the children a strong tale about a cherished childhood tradition: “Mother bakes a huge stack of pancakes and then when the man of the house comes home, everybody puts a pancake on their head and shouts: ‘Dear father, we wish you a happy and blessed Saint Pancake.'” Joanie replies: “I love old traditions!” and changes the dinner she had planned.

Author Jan Kruis, whose comic has been published for decades in leading women’s magazine Libelle, hopes that one day he can get the royal family to wear pancakes on 29 November. “That is my ultimate hope for this tradition”, Kruis told RTV Drenthe two weeks ago.

(Illustration: crop of the comic that started it all by NOS.nl / Jan Kruis)

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September 16, 2016

In Rotterdam parking spots turn into parks for a day

Filed under: Automobiles,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 2:13 pm

Today Rotterdam is celebrating Park(ing) Day, which sounds like a lot of pun fun. The city of Rotterdam is letting people take over a parking spot for free and camp out on it, as if it were a park. And to sweeten the deal, the rules of a park apply to the parking spot.

Park(ing)Day is part of Happy Streets, yet another let’s-use-English-rather-than-Dutch named event (where ‘happy’ often sounds like ‘hippie’ when some Dutch people pronounce it) lasting the entire weekend in order to promote ‘sustainable mobility and a better use of public spaces’.

The city will also feature yet another let’s-give-it-an-English-name-to sound-cool event called Walk’in Rotterdam, where people can take a stroll along various uncommon parts of the city with a knowledgeable guide who I bet will tell their stories in the country’s main language.

And Sunday is another why-use-Dutch-go-for-English event called Open Streets when streets will be car-free and feature other merriment.

Yes, this is a picture of Amsterdam.

(Link: www.ad.nl)

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August 25, 2016

Belgian scores De Kooning painting at flea market

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 7:32 pm

800px-Willem_de_Kooning_in_his_studio

A Belgian man from Turnhout, Jan Starckx, bought a portrait of a young girl in a red dress for 450 euro, which has turned out to be an original Willem de Kooning (shown here), a Dutch-American painter originally from Rotterdam.

Authenticated by experts on the BBC television show ‘Fake or Fortune’, the painting has been valued at between 55,000 and 100,000 euro. Starckx intends to exhibit the work first in Turnhout and then in Sint-Jans-Molenbeek in Brussels where it was painted. In April the work will be brought together with a similar work, ‘Portrait of Renée’ at the Winterthur Museum in Delaware, USA.

“I thought it was a great painting and I was intrigued by the signature that misses the final ‘g’: ‘Wim Koonin’ it says”, explained Starckx.

(Link: deredactie.be, Photo of Willem de Kooning by Smithsonian Institution Archives, some rights reserved)

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July 1, 2016

Rotterdam gets piano stairs in metro station

Filed under: Architecture,Music by Orangemaster @ 6:57 am

Piano stairs

First Rotterdam Central Station had the giant staircase built by architectural firm MVRDV that goes from the station’s plaza all the way to the top of Rotterdam’s ‘Wholesale trade building’ (‘Groothandelsgebouw’), and now the entrance to Rotterdam’s Central Station’s metro has piano stairs as well.

The whole piano stairs affair started in Stockholm, and now there are quite a few of them around the world. Apparently, more people will take the stairs instead of the escalator or lift if they can make music, 66% more as was the case in Stockholm.

Rotterdam’s piano stairs, which will remain for one year, are pre-programmed with Ludwig van Beethoven’s ‘Für Elise’, although you can compose your own number. Rotterdam alderman Hugo de Jonge would have rather had ‘You’ll never walk alone’, but then said the programming sounded a lot more difficult that you’d think. “The idea is to get people to smile when they use the stairs”.

(Link and photo: www.rijnmond.nl)

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May 22, 2016

Demolition space for men opens in Rotterdam

Filed under: Weird by Orangemaster @ 5:16 pm

A bunch of students from the Willem de Kooning Academie in Rotterdam have decided to open up what they claim to be the country’s first ‘demolition space’ called Bij de Buurman (‘At the Neighbour’s). And everything you’ll read about it is for men, men and men, although I can’t imagine they would ban women, but it is ‘where men can be men’.

Besides wrecking all kinds of things with a baseball bat or a hammer, patrons can come there to have a drink and chill, presumably after they’ve trashed something. Bij de Buurman says their demolition palace is for “frustrated men between the ages of 25 and 50 who need to work out job and relationship stress”, according to two of the six students, men, who themselves don’t have any of these issues because they go out and drink instead, possibly with your money. Cashing in on your fellow ‘man’ is fine, but insulting them in the process is an added bonus.

The demolition space is in a container in Rotterdam-Noord and will be open is from 26 to 29 May and from June 2 to 5 June where a demolition sessions of 5 minutes will cost the men 20 euro. Women of Rotterdam between the ages of 25 and 50, if you have job and relationship stress and need to trash something, well too bad. Or maybe you’ll be joined by men under 25 and over 50 who feel left out, and the world will be round again

(Link: www.ad.nl, Photo of locked door by boetter, some rights reserved)

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May 18, 2016

Rotterdam’s stairway with a view of the city

Filed under: Architecture by Orangemaster @ 7:12 pm

MVRDV-the-stairs-rotterdam-giant-staircase-installation-designboom-03

Right outside Rotterdam Central Station, architectural firm MVRDV has built a giant staircase that goes from the station’s plaza all the way to the top of Rotterdam’s ‘Wholesale trade building’ (‘Groothandelsgebouw’), a monumental building right next to the station.

The structure pays tribute to Rotterdam’s rebuilding efforts during WWII and will remain open to the public until June 12, 2016 between 10am and 10pm. Winy Maas, co-founder of MVRDV explains that “this installation shows what this city could look like if we do that in many places, engaging a series of our existing buildings and giving access to their roofs, to create a new, much more interactive, three dimensional and denser urban topography for the next city generation.”

The staircase has 180 stairs and is 29 metres in height once you’re on the roof where there’s a temporary observation deck overlooking Rotterdam, a city that actually has skyscrapers. There’s also a rooftop cinema open especially for the event that offers a wide variety of films, debates and performances.

(Link and photo: www.designboom.com)

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