The cover of this issue of DASH shows a home interior that was exhibited in Berlin in 1952, at the exhibition ‘Wir bauen ein besseres Leben’ / ‘We’re Building a Better Life’. In this model interior, which was designed like a brilliant white laboratory, American actors showed the audience that had flocked to Berlin how […]
In 1925, the year in which Le Corbusier exhibited his Pavillon de L’Esprit Nouveau at the ‘Exposition des Arts Décoratifs’ in Paris, the ‘Jahresschau Deutscher Arbeit’ was held for the fourth time at Dresden’s downtown exhibition area, this time under the leadership of city architect Paul Wolf. Whereas previous exhibitions had themes such as ‘porcelain, […]
Housing exhibitions present experimental answers to urgent social and economic issues that are related to housing, especially in times of crisis. This makes exhibitions an important link between theory and practice. The ‘growing home’ is an experimental idea that was developed in the 1930s, but it might also be suitable for the current crisis.
In the MoMA tradition of showing full-scale model homes, in 2008 Barry Bergdoll organized an exhibition called ‘Home Delivery’. In the interview, the then-curator Bergdoll talks about this tradition, and about the need to show the public what the importance of architectural thinking is.
The plan documentation for this ninth issue of DASH contains ten exhibition projects that give an overview of the different approaches to, and motivations behind, housing exhibitions during the past 100 years. All of the documented examples featured homes exhibited on a 1:1 scale. With the exception of the exhibition ‘Die Wohnung unserer Zeit’, which […]
In 1899, Ernst Ludwig von Hessen, the Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt and the grandson of Queen Victoria, founded the Darmstädter Künstlerkolonie (Darmstadt Artists’ Colony). In the previous year, the Darmstadt art publisher Alexander Koch had made it clear in a treatise to the Grand Duke that the intertwining of art and craft was of great […]
The Wiener Werkbundsiedlung was created as the last in a group of example neighbourhoods that were built in Central Europe between 1927 and 1932 as part of a series of architecture exhibitions. They were an initiative of the various Werkbund organizations in Europe, and were intended as showcases for the ideas of modern architecture, and […]
In 1937, a major exhibition was organized in Düsseldorf, at the site where the Nordpark is currently located. The event took place four years after the National Socialists had seized power in Germany, and coincided with the World’s Fair (Exposition Universelle) in Paris. The initiator of the exhibition was the Deutsche Werkbund (the German Association […]
The creation of this international showcase of ‘domestic culture’ dates back to 1960, when the Bouwfonds Nederlandse Gemeenten (a former semi-public company that focused on homes and mortgages) put up a piece of land for sale in the Dutch village of Doorwerth, earmarked to be used for ‘normal development’. But the Bouwfonds’s director at the […]
In early 2012, two buildings that at first sight look like individual houses were realized on Elandsstraat in Amster-dam. Behind the façades, there is a collective project in which six families combined forces to realize their individual housing requirements. One of the initiators is Bastiaan Jongerius. Together with neighbours from a previous collective project (a […]
DASH goes in search of the ideal eco house: from solar houses to Superuse, from Cradle-to-Cradle to support-infill systems and precise prefab-technology. This issue of DASH examines the history and the future of the sustainable home. This includes attention to families of typologies (passive solar energy, semi-climate and ventilation) and material-use concepts. Essays by Daniel A. Barber, Machiel van Dorst, Jacques Vink, and Piet Vollaard provide not only a critical analysis of the current state of affairs, but also an inspirational exploration of possibilities for the future. Drop City pioneer Steve Baer looks back on the construction of his Zome House and Jean-Philippe Vassal talks about his vision on architecture and sustainability. With extensive documentation of trendsetting homes by such architects as Frank Lloyd Wright, Ralph Erskine, Frei Otto, Lacaton & Vassal, Carlos Weeber, DAAD Architecten and 2012Architecten.
The plan documentation for the seventh issue of DASH presents a series of exemplary ecological houses. The majority of them are detached or situated in rural areas or suburbs; two are townhouses, one of which is even an example of stacked individual dwellings. Together they demonstrate how architectural design can contribute to solving the problem […]