After-Images of an Avant-Garde

From Plan Analysis to SuperDutch in Dutch Housing (1980-2003)

Twentieth-century housing and modern mass culture were characterized by standardization, industrialization and repetition. These were not simply the consequences of production logistics, which, influenced by early management concepts such as Fordism and Taylorism, demanded optimized and efficient resource deployment, but also elements in political and aesthetic programmes. The new egalitarian society, whether a socialist model society or one of the many versions of the welfare state, sought to redistribute property and income, particularly through housing. Modern architecture drew up an aesthetic programme that manifested this society through the large-scale use of new organizational models and industrial building techniques. Le Corbusier’s Ville Contemporaine and Ville Radieuse are still some of the most radical expressions of this programme, together with a number of other plans such as those proposed by the Russian constructivists or Hilberseimer’s Hochhausstadt and his later regional urbanization models for the USA. In all these schemes uniformity and unity in typology and architectural expression are the logical consequences of incorporating both new production methods and a range of politico-ideological requirements…