Hymn of the H

posted by on 16.01.2011, under Creativity, Ideas, Jazz

This song is titled ‘Hymn of the H’. It is written and performed by my disciple Olaf Zwetsloot and dedicated to Hipcescu Tower. I find it very evocative. When I close my eyes and listen to it, I can see the H. Very impressive.

Hymn of the H by Olaf Zwetsloot

Personnel:
Thomas Winther Andersen – double bass
Dirk Balthaus – piano
Victor de Boo – drums
Olaf Zwetsloot – alto saxophone

Le Corbusier – Plan Voisin

posted by on 15.01.2011, under Architecture, Ideas, Politics, Urban planning

Le Corbusier is an architect that has inspired me greatly. If I wouldn’t have dedicated Hipcescu Tower to myself, he would have been a likely candidate. Here is one of my favorite quotes from his book Towards a New Architecture (1924).

“We must create a mass-production state of mind:
A state of mind for building mass-production housing.
A state of mind for living in mass-production housing.
A state of mind for conceiving mass-production housing.”

Le Corbusier didn’t just talk the talk, he was ready to walk the walk. And so, in 1925, he presented his Plan Voisin.

It entailed bulldozing most of central Paris north of the Seine, and replacing it with sixty-story cruciform towers, the shape of which derived from radiator elements. In the end, the plan was never carried out.

“We must find and apply new methods, clear methods allowing us to work out useful plans for the home, lending themselves naturally to standardization, industrialization, Taylorization”, he wrote. “The plan must rule. . . . The street must disappear.” Clearly, this is highly efficient thinking.

In this video, we see the master explaining his Plan Voisin.

At one point in the video, Le Corbusier’s envisioned towers are inserted into contemporary Paris. And then you realize just how beautiful it could have been…

Astana, glorious capital of Kazakhstan

posted by on 09.01.2011, under Architecture, Ideas, Politics, Urban planning

Nursultan A. Nazarbayev is the Supremo of Kazakhstan and an esteemed colleague. He was elected president of the glorious Kazakh nation on 1 December 1991. Under the auspice of this great man, who firmly guides his country towards a brighter future, the capital was transferred from Almaty to Astana in 1997, a city constructed from scratch in the midst of Kazakhstan’s windy steppes. Winter temperatures in Astana can drop to -40 Celsius. No place for pussies and all the more so a cradle of panoramic ideological vistas and Great Deeds. During one of my low-profile visits to Astana I was impressed by the beautiful, modern architecture and the powerful melange of capitalism and state-guided enterprise. Astana is not some pitiful provincial backwater. On the contrary, it is a thriving 21st century Metropolis, where my good friend, the world-renowned architect Sir Norman Foster, has planted a marvel of modern engineering, the epic Khan Shatyr Entertainment Center.

Make no mistake, Astana is a place for happy, hard-working people. This video slideshow, adorned with stunning visual effects and a spirited folkloric sound-track, will give you a good impression of Astana, where cleanliness and visionary urban planning go hand in hand.

Killing hippos

posted by on 22.12.2010, under Hippopotamus, Hunting, Ideas, Philosophy

For me, the hippopotamus, or river horse, is one of the most fascinating animals in the world. I am fortunate to own many hippos and I love watching them while they frolic in H-shaped ponds. Honestly, I love my hippos more than my wife. The hippo is an amphibious creature, agile, both on land and in the water. Given its formidable strength and size, it has few serious enemies. Its nemesis, however, is a phenomenon called man. On YouTube I stumbled upon some vivid illustrations of this.

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Here we see three guys, 2 South African guides, and a trigger-happy American shooting a hippo bull from a distance. What strikes me is the raucous, mindless fun they have while doing it. Afterwards the American gives us a proud lecture about how unlucky this majestic beast was to cross his path. There are more videos like this on Youtube and most of the killers happen to be trigger-happy Americans. They go out of their way for a good kill. For them, killing hippos is a commodity – payment made to the hunting company made by creditcard.

Remember the wikileak video of the Americans soldiers shooting people from an Apache helicopter? Those guys were having serious fun. It’s the same kind of fun these hippo killers are having.

But no illusions, one of the consequences of Nature is cruelty. It is not the prerogative of man. There are, however, different modes of killing. In a beautiful old French documentary by l’Institut Francais D’Afrique Noir called The Hippo Hunt (1951), a tribe in Niger sets out on a hunt for hippo.

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But before doing so, the river god is invoked and asked for permission to take hippo life. After intense nocturnal seances, permission to kill three hippos is granted. What a contrast with our raucous American friend! Yet, the hippo that dies at the hand of the American dies a swift death by bullet. The other hippo is less fortunate, he dies a slow death – spears poking into his head, stirring up the infernal soup of pain. For a hippo lover like me, this makes nasty viewing.


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