On Monday 15th the Architecture Centre Network  was hosting a one day seminar with the subject: "Ways Into Architecture Learning". MIMOA was invited to present the website as a showcase to the audience at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

The Architecture Centre Network is the UK development and advocacy organisation for the 23 independent Architecture Centres in the country. They work together to promote engagement with architecture and the built environment. This Monday several members of architecture centres across Europe were present to exchange information and learn from each other.

Starting with a plenary presentation in the morning, MIMOA was part of the the technology panel to discuss the use and benefit of technology (and new media) in built environment education. In the afternoon there was the opportunity for us to have a workshop session in the Sackler Centre Digital Lounge (a room set up as an interactive classroom with a computer for each ’student’) to showcase MIMOA in more detail.

After a short introduction on the features and functionality of the MIMOA website, we shared our experience on how new media can attract the attention of the general public and involve them into the world of architecture. As we see many chances to improve the services of Local Architecture Centers, we want to discuss several potential areas for collaboration. We showed some of our plans in the development of mobile products (the ultimate travel-mate!), and new ways of sharing content with third parties. From our list of tools, the Centers can use several functionalities and improve their own services.

For us it was a good occassion to address the whole community of Architecture Centres all at once, instead of one-by-one. As discussed with the audience this Monday, we have lot’s of ideas for cooperation between MIMOA and the Centres, and a round-table-discussion was the perfect setting. 

Here is the MIMOA workshop presentation of the afternoon.
Shortly a written summary of what has been discussed will be published too. We’ll add the recordings to our blog when they become available. In the mean time; if you have any additinal questions, remarks or want more information, we are happy to meet you, and discuss our ideas. Please do get in contact, or write your comments underneath. We’d love to hear from you.

top photo: inside the Sackler Centre for arts education at the V&A

Content selection and quality.

Selection starts at the door
The interactive on-line upload form is really easy to use, but the amount of fields may intimidate the first time contributor. This is a good thing. If contributing were easy, editing would be hard.

User generated content
Of course there are a lot of remarks to be made about the quality of the content of user-generated websites. Today’s fierce discussions on the reliability of information of these “open” platforms provoke reactions that go from legitimate scepticism to labelling them “dangerous places” that are best to be avoided. The fact is that today’s user-generated content has great utility.
“The tools of production, from blogging to video sharing, are fully democratized, and the engine for growth is the spare cycles, talent, and capacity of regular folks, who are, in aggregate, creating a distributed labor force of unprecedented scale. It’s providing the energy that drives a new sort of company, one that understands that talent exists outside Hollywood, that credentials matter less than passion, and that each of us has knowledge that’s valuable to someone, somewhere”. Text from “People Power”, article published in Wired July 2006, Author: Chris Anderson.

Without the input of its users, it would have been very hard, if not impossible for MIMOA to be able to compile and collect the information, necessary for building such a database.

Photo of the Philoogy Library in Berlin, by Christian Beirle Gonzalez, Munich.

To see all posts in this series on ‘how we did it’, type ‘MIMOA: the story’ into the search bar on top, or click on this category.

Evening view over the estuary, from roof top terrace at Bar Entretanto, just above Lisboa Regency Chiado Hotel.

Last week Mieke and I spend a long weekend in Lisbon, Portugal. While escaping the Dutch temperatures, in Lisbon we smelled the first signs of spring! Still, even though the weather was changeable, the food was not. We had some great dinners, and I might even say even better lunches. One of which was on invitation by the young local architecture office Ateliermob. We probably won’t be able to find the location again, of the restaurant Andreia and Tiago took us to (any Lisbon resident who recognizes the photo?). But the kindness of the people we will surely remember. Thank you, for your time!

On Saturday, after a 40 minutes sea-view-train-ride to Cascais, we visited one the latest masterpieces by Eduardo Souto de Moura, the Casa das Historias Paula Rego, and the Santa Marta Lighthouse, renovated and extended by Aires Mateus.

Sunday morning we reserved to go see the new Music School, at the Politecnic Institut, north of the city centre, by architect João Luís Carrilho da Graça. After a hilarious taxi drive (which would have fit perfectly in a Louis de Funès film) we arrived, only to be send away by the weekend guard. "No photos" is a pretty international order, so we have no real content to upload yet. I only managed to get one photo, see bottom. Anyone who has been there recently is welcome to publish the project on MIMOA!

Here’s a small impression of our days in Lisbon before spring.

MIMOA meets Ateliermob for lunch

Enjoying the delicious food.

Where to find the right shoeshop… (ok we admit, besides architecture and food, we love shopping)

Casa das Historias Paula Rego, by Eduardo Souto de Moura

Santa Marta Lighthouse, renovated and extended by Aires Mateus

Who recognizes this great project? It looks like a multipurpose space/pavilion (and parking?) as part of the Marina of Cascais.
Please let us know if you know the details.

The only photo we managed to take of the Music School by João Luís Carrilho da Graça. Do you have more (and better!) pictures? Please email them to us.

China’s Emerging Metropolises
Amsterdam, De Balie, Thursday February 11th, 20.30

In the next ten years, more than 350 million Chinese people will move from the countryside to the city. Most Europeans have never heard of Chongqing, Kunming or Shijiazhuang. Yet these cities in Central and Western China are rapidly turning into the big brothers of metropolises like Chicago, Madrid or Rio.

China correspondent Michiel Hulshof and architect Daan Roggeveen are the founders of the Go West Project, a research project that studies the development of these emerging metropolises. On Thursday, February 11 they give a lecture at De Balie in Amsterdam. How do these cities develop? Does China build a new type of city? What does the growth of these cities mean for China and the rest of the world? The lecture will end with a panel discussion about these topics. The panel consists of several China watchers, amongst whom Annette Nijs, director Global Initiative of the China Europe International Business School and author of the book ‘China with New Eyes’ and Michelle Provoost, director of the International New Town Institute.

Also on February 11, De Balie will open a photo exhibition about the performance of the Go West Project at the Shenzhen / Hong Kong Architecture Biennale in December, where they asked 6 taxi drivers from 6 different Chinese cities to drive across the country to Shenzhen.

Time : February 11, 2010 at 20.30 pm
Location : De Balie
Address: Kleine Gartmanplantsoen 10, Amsterdam (near Leidseplein)
Admission : Free
More info on the Go West Project:

MIMOA is following Go West Project and promotes their work as part of a mediapartnership. Do you also want MIMOA as a media partner for your event? Contact us, and hear all about our reach.

casa mercedes, in A Coruña, Spain

Content management.

Choose your medium, set your content
Just like the amount of photos is set to a maximum, we also have a limit on text. It forces you to write down only the essentials. In 1000 characters, including spaces, every one can convey a message, and if not, you can link the publication to any other web page leading to more information. Providing architectural content on a medium such as ours, forced us to rethink the character and size (or length for that matter) of information. We want to see large size real-life photos we’re not writing books on-line. Also, drawings are pretty difficult to publish. How many times do you run into an architects’ website and find scaled, low resolution, blurred illustrations with indefinable details – probably texts? Apart from the visual restrictions, drawings are juridical gremlins. We’re not including these into our website, but will always link a project to the architects’ site, where you can probably find them. “The first is that the Web is not a medium of data, information, knowledge, wisdom, or content – it is a medium for linking data, information, knowledge, wisdom, and content. Just as writing a newspaper column isn’t like writing a novel”. From “Lessons Learned: We Still Don’t Get the Web” article published in Wired 04.29.1997, Author: Michael Schrage.

Take your content with you
“I envisioned myself wandering around a city with a hand-held device such as a pda or an iPhone viewing a map that tells me where I am, and what beautiful architecture exists around the corner”. Quoted from an email send to MIMOA by Ryan Taube.

One major advantage of having only digital content is its mobility. The use of wireless Internet will only continue to grow and we see a great opportunity for visitors to be able to reach MIMOA with their mobile phones, or other mobile devices (tomtom?). Travelling is becoming easier, cheaper and the number of city trips (in Europe) is growing. There will be a major change in the use of travel-guides and other city sources. Travellers don’t want to spend hours searching for information, buying heavy travel books, nor do they want to walk around conscious with their small guide book in their hands. As a global traveller you want inside niche information on the spot.

To see all posts in this series on ‘how we did it’, type ‘MIMOA: the story’ into the search bar on top, or click on this category.

Works carried out by students usually disappear into drawers after presentation to a relatively small college audience. There the work remains invisible. : output wants to change that. : output is the biggest international competition for students in design and architecture. You can now submit your work to the : output award.

Deadline: February 15, 2010
: output Grand Prix: 3.000 Euro
Publication of the best projects in the yearbook : ouptut

Publication, Grand Prix and scholarship
The works selected by an international jury will be published in the yearbook : output. The best work of all submissions will be honoured with the : output Grand Prix which includes a scholarship of 3.000 Euro (currently about 4.500 US$). With this scholarship we want to foster talented young blood designers and also present the high quality of the work which is done at design colleges and art schools to a broader public.

open-output.org
On the new platform open-output.org we will present all projects which have been submitted to the : output award*. The : output Grand Prix and the projects which have received a distinction will also be featured in the „: output hall of fame“ on the platform.

The Jury
All works to be included in the yearbook : output and the winner of the : output Grand Prix are selected by an international jury of renowned designers and educators.

> Kate Moross (graphic design | UK)
> Elio Caccavale (product design | I/UK)
> N.N. (architecture)
> Juliette Bellocq (graphic design | USA)
> Florian Pfeffer (: output | NL/GER)

The : output foundation
: output is a non-profit organisation in Amsterdam and international platform for colleges and students in design and architecture. They organize the largest competition for design and architecture students worldwide, foster young talents and initiate innovation projects in order to connect companies, cultural and political instutions with young designers.

Contact and further inquiries:
Friederike Lambers
: output
Keizersgracht 8  | 1015 CN Amsterdam | Netherlands

T 0031-20-4279020
F 0031-20-6274477
www.open-output.org

: output student award is promoted by MIMOA – the online architecture guide. Do you also want MIMOA as a media partner for your event? Contact us, and hear all about our reach.

Today we’ve reached another mighty milestone: 3.000 projects live on MIMOA! And the honour of achieving this amazing number of 3.000 is due to: Andrea Tognon Architecture with their publication of House O in Teolo, Italy.

Three days ago we announced getting close to this big moment and called up our community to start a competition: who would upload the 3.000st project? It apparently motivated a lot of you to share your work and favorite architecture, but only one could be the winner and that is: House O by Andrea Tognon Architecture.
But ofcourse this is just one of the many beautiful architecture projects featured on MIMOA. We’d like to thank all of our contributors, who have helped MIMOA to become the valuable worldwide architecture guide that it is right now. It can only improve and grow even more. We’re looking forward to all the projects we will receive and publish in the future.

As we’re a great fan of statistics, here are some facts & figures:

An Overview
3.000 projects: designed by 1928 architects; in cooperation with 1274 project teams; uploaded by 584 contributors and recorded by 1306 photographers.

By Project Type
Architecture (2746)
Infrastructure (104)
Interior (318)
Landscape (90)
Public space (247)
Urbanism (84)

By Completion date
Before 1950 (134)
1950-1970 (142)
1970-1980 (57)
1980-1990 (84)
1990-2000 (414)
2000-2003 (389)
Later than 2003 (1777)

By Location
All projects are situated in 72 different countries. But where is most architecture to be found on MIMOA?
This is the top 10:
1- Netherlands (581)
2- Spain (352)
3- Germany (273)
4- United States (233
5- United Kingdom (202)
6- Italy (190)
7- Switzerland (145)
8- France (141)
9- Portugal (136)
10- Denmark (73)
High time to beat the Dutch I would say….

By Designer
Which architect has most projects online on MIMOA? Either uploaded by themselves or published by fans.
This is the top 10 and also all architects with more than 20 projects:
1- Foster & Partners (37)
2- Herzog and De Meuron (32)
3- Alvaro Siza Vieira (29)
4- Gehry Partners (27)
5- Santiago Calatrava (25)
6- MVRDV (24)
7- AH Asociados (22)
8- Jean Nouvel (22)
9- RAU (21)
10- Renzo Piano (21)
Also: over 40 architects are represented with over 10 publications of their work.

By popularity
We invite everyone to share your opinion on architecture. You can do that by leaving a comment and rate a project.
Ratings are counted, averaged per project and listed here. For a very long time Therme Vals, by all-time favourite Peter Zumthor was steady placed at number one. Until last summer, when the Munich Olypmic Stadium by Behnisch Architekten climed in the charts.
Looking at best scoring architecture firms in the current top 20, we see that a lot changed since our blogpost on December 31. Just a few architects have more than 1 project in the Top Rated Top 20:
1- Peter Zumthor (3 projects)
2- Valerio Olgiati (2 projects)
2- Le Corbusier (2 projects)
2- Mansilla + Tuñón (2 projects)

Also want to share your opinion and/or rate a project?
Up until now you’ve written 869 comments on projects that are published on MIMOA. One project caps everything and may be considered questionable honour for collecting no less than 63 comments: Justice and Detention Centre in Leoben, Austria. You’re welcome to share your thoughts on any project. Just leave a message underneath a project and let everyone know how many stars a project deserves according to you.
Please mind: rating is only possible after login!
You don’t have a account yet? Register here.

Enough statistics for now. We’re off to 4.000!

In September 2007 we launched MIMOA. Now, two years after these first steps, this young community of architecture lovers is growing fast.
Thank you! For sharing thousands travel experiences, photos, stories and details of the architecture you’ ve visited, designed and built. Together.
(Hence this image).

In the spirit of the new year and the usual annual reporting we’ve made a retrospect of 2009 with a selection of happenings and a list of things we want to do this new year. 2010 Starts off with a whole set of plans to make MIMOA even better, quicker, easier and above all more fun.

We’re interested to get your response. Do you also have ideas, suggestions, criticism, a wish-list, a no-list (to vote against something), visions, ambitions to share with us? Write a comment underneath this post. 

We wish you all the best for the exiting year 2010, with new opportunities and new plans. Thank you all for contributing, your feedback and support.

Main photo by Wojtek Gurak, created with Mosaickr, out of over 500 different photos tagged with ‘architecture’ on Flickr, see credits list.
Click this thumb to see the project, and original photo.

Nordic Countries Pavilion for the Venice Biennale, photo by seier + seier

Content management.

Editing before publishing
The basic project entries are reviewed before publishing, checked on required minimal information and checked for errors. As soon as a new project is submitted, MIMOA reviews and (sometimes) edits the data, adds information where possible, and puts it on-line. We keep the right to change the texts a bit, but will always respect the personal contributions. We also check copyrights of all data that others contribute. You might think that this is quite a lot of work, why not use a more wiki-like system? Many “wiki-like” sites have major problems on keeping the information consistent, correct and complete. That is why we need an “editing panel”, a gentle expert guidance to maintain order. And it pays off: Eventually it’s only once a year that we’re really surprised to see what people try to upload.

Copyrights on content
We respect the intellectual property of others, and we expect our users to do the same. MIMOA does not claim copyright on the photos or texts, which always remains with the author. If we believe that someone is publishing content without the rights to distribute it, we simply don’t publish it. We ask the contributor if he or she has a photo that they’ve taken themselves. Members are very understanding about this. The photos do not have to be of a professional standard, the object just needs to be recognizable. People need to register before contributing content, thus we can always get in touch with them if we, or any external party have any questions, or image requests.

To see all posts in this series on ‘how we did it’, type ‘MIMOA: the story’ into the search bar on top, or click on this category.

Photo: ‘the light from the distant future’
by Christian Beirle Gonzalez

Happy New Year to you all!
We wish you all the best for the exiting year 2010, with new opportunities and new plans. After finishing the long list of achievements and developements in 2009, we’ve summarised a list of things we want to do this year.

MIMOA Mobile. The Layar launch has showed us the user-interest and possibilities. This is only a kick-start into any mobile product. MIMOA in your pocket: take your content with you! In this range of opportunities the iPhone App is definitely next on our list. Still looking for a sponsor; someone to believe in us and wants to cooperate to conceive this wonderful mobile product. No time to waste.

Widgets to share our content easier. Almost ready to be embedded on your website. Please let us know if you’re interested to add your favourite projects, your contributed projects, your visited projects, your photographed projects, your guide or just the latest additions to your website – and we’ll start working on your personal widget.

City Pages already half way: the pages are there, now the content, editing, and styling. On these pages you will get some more architecture related- information on a certain city. Hope to show you a finished page soon.

The Mi guide is a great success, one of the best used features of MIMOA. And we hope to give it a layout-make-over and a map (yeah!), more custom-possibilities and maybe even tours. That’s what you said you want (some time ago already).

More cooperation with local architecture information centers, architecture events, city marketeers, travel organisations, magazines, student assemblies, design competitions, guides, and well, architecture lovers in general.

More trips, and that’s not just travelling more, but maybe even start organising MIMOA-trips ourselves! Yes, we know, quite a vague ‘wish’ on this list, but this ‘idea’ is all there is right now. 

To finish it up, we’re thinking of organising MIMOA Event ‘10 for all MIMOA members. Barcelona? Porto? New York? When? No definite plans yet. Any suggestions?

And well, here are two determined intentions:

• Making MIMOA self-supporting and turn this personal passion (and shared with thousands, read our story on the tiny slice or ‘niche market’) into a truly sustainable initiative.
• Travelling more, visiting old cities, new countries and meeting more lovely people. Can’t wait to get there.