Learning is working best when kids are into subjects of study that match their interests. It also works well when projects are realistic.
Also there has to be place for the making. It should be possible to make prototypes, do experiments, program shows and produce goods to express yourself.
This Is No School is the world on a stamp. A meeting square, workshops, labs, a theater, a fram, sporting facilities, restaurants, shops and a hotel.
For my Youtube channel 2kB of Fun, I made several T-shirts based on logo graphics from 80's video games and electronic gadgets.
Fourth incarnation of the Retro Space arcade cabinet in aluminium
2017
Pixel art illustration for the book 2kB of Fun
2017
The incredible world of handheld video games from ‘76-’85
2013
Een plat pakket doe-het-zelf versie van Retro Space
2013
Photo report of the STRP Festival 2011 by Mick Visser
2011
Tool to convert Rōmaji, Katakana and ASCII/UTF-8
2011
Photo report of the STRP Festival 2010 by Mick Visser
2010
Colaboration with bureau ZZEF
For more information check out:
Redesign of the classic office desk calculator within 1 hour
2010
Interior photographs of creative companies in a former Philips factory
2010
26 arcade cabinets for Dutch Game Garden
2010
A new and usable subway map for the biggest city on earth: Tokyo
2009
A new factory for Kingspan insulation panels at Medel near Tiel
2009
A man is a real man, if welding is what he can!
2009
A new catholic community centre for Heteren
2009
One of the most popular IKEA products is the LACK coffee table. It is so cheap, it must be hollow.
I opened the tables, I built in a retro TV computer game by Jakks and added real arcade controls to this game. This way the TV game has a longer life and the Ikea LACK is no longer the boring classic every household owns.
Thanks to Lara Verlaat for Playin Pac-Man.
Photos of 2 projects by Johan van den Berkmortel
2008
When I started working at "bouwkundig ontwerp- en adviesburo Van Zeist" the preliminary design for these 8 apartments had been made already. I drew up the technical detailing.
One of the challenges was to draw the brickwork in monk bond, just like the classic houses in the same street.
To show the appartments are built in 2008, many details are modernized. The balconies for example look like old wooden porches, but in fact they are made of brown concrete and steel.
A new business building for 2 entrepreneurs in Kesteren
2008
When the design of Retro Space was finished, we needed a matching website.
Because of the presumption that Retro Space could become a hit on the internet, we tried to make the website as small as possible. We did not want the website to crash on bandwidth problems.
Matching the style of the retro games, the website is designed in pixel art. All elements except some product shots are GIF images in 4 colours. It's just like the early years of internet when bandwidth was scarce.
Modern arcade cabinet for home use
2008
Entry Europan 9 Martijn Koch and Wendy van Rosmalen
2007
An abandoned commercial plot in the centre of Heteren had to be filled with 19 apartments. Contractor Kuijpers had moved to the city limits and the housing corporation "Woningstichting Heteren" had 4 outdated senior-citizen houses on the adjacent plot at the Rozenpad street. The combined plot connects a traditional village street with a seventies extension to Heteren. The housing coorporation asked me to design the modernist block fitting the seventies area.
I designed this appartment block as employer of Bouwkundig ontwerp- en adviesburo van Zeist BV
A design for a new metro map for Copenhagen
2006
Veranda extension to house in Beek en Donk
2006
Concept for a modern picture story based on Cinderella
2005
A digital magazine on sustainability, photography, cityscape and opinion
2005
For most tourists the city of Faro in southern Portugal is nothing more than an entrance by plane to the Algarve. Which is a pity. The biggest city of southern Portugal is probably the only one giving room to creativity. You will not see kitsch appartment blocks for Dutch and Germans, but subtile shaped private houses for the Portugese themselves. You will see images that remind of modernists like Gerrit Rietveld, Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier. You will wonder wheter MVRDV got inspiration here, or if Portugese architects checked out work of the Durch architecture firm.
Photographs of Detroit
2005
The lamp is a joke. I had no space to place the Big Shadow Lamp by Marcel Wanders. I also liked the idea of the Fake Lamp by Sophie Krier, but not its shape. I mixed them and created the Fake Wanders. Definitely not for sale.
Tower blocks in Hong Kong
2004
Brandevoort is one of the big suburban extensions according to the governmental document Vinex. Under supervision of Rob Krier, the city of Helmond tried to mimic the classic Dutch canal city for its big extension. Modern legislation on parking and the fact that a family in a suburban plan like this needs 2 cars to reach all daily facilities, resulted in weird interiors for the urban blocks. The gardens are petite, and most space is used for the cars.
Office building for the Dutch Tax Administration
2003