In 1966, after having taken various courses at UCLA in California and Amherst College in Massachusetts, doing a few years of service at an American army base in Germany and studying for several years at the ETH in Zurich, Steve Baer returned to the USA. He was fascinated by polyhedral forms, with which he had […]
Located in Wermatswil near Zurich is a round Solarhaus, the residence of architect Otto Kolb (1921-1996). This home, the last project he realized, reflects his radical ideas about housing and living in absolute harmony with nature. In a manuscript Kolb wrote about the house, he quotes the psychoanalyst Carl Jung: ‘The house of man should […]
When 2012Architecten received the commission to design a villa in the Roombeek district in Enschede in 2005, the firm had for years already been designing and realizing smaller projects in which they applied reused materials. The architects conceived the term ‘superuse’ for this system of reuse and published a book on the subject in 2007. […]
What are the reasons for architects in different times, regions and circumstances harking back to images, forms or construction methods from the past? And what means do architects employ in order to achieve the intended effect? These are the pivotal questions in this sixth issue of DASH. Reverting to the architectural past is hardly a new phenomenon. Old forms have served as inspiration at many junctures in the history of architecture: as a protest against dominant views, as a means to bring about renewal or purely because of nostalgia for times past. Rarely has this reversion remained undisputed. In particular, attempts to bring back old forms in modern-day materials have often roused the derision of the profession, whether these involved the early nineteenth-century Gothic Revival, or the work of the twentieth-century Delft School or ‘new traditionalism’.
In the opening article Dick van Gameren traces the parallels between several historical approaches from the previous century, which are also explored in the project documentation. This is followed by a number of essays that take a closer look at various periods from that architectural past. Wolfgang Voigt, for example, describes the work of the ‘traditional modernist’ Paul Schmitthenner in pre-WWII Germany, while Cor Wagenaar argues that both the traditionalists of the Delft School and the early modernists saw themselves as an inevitable product of history. In a comparative study of Italian Neo-Realism and the working methods of Alvaro Siza, Nelson Mota examines the relevance of critical re(gion)alism in this era. An interview with two generations of Bedaux architects and a critical analysis by Dirk Baalman of the nineteenthcentury concept of ‘character’ in architecture mark the transition to the plan documentation, featuring work by
architects as Baillie Scott, Schmitthenner, Ridolfi, Spoerry, Mecanoo, Krier, Bedaux De Brouwer and West8/AWG.
The lion’s share of both social and commercial housing is produced without the ambition to be innovative. This is nothing new, but as more and more commissioning is done by market parties and nearly everyone is paying lip service to the ‘articulate consumer’, attempts to reflect what is deemed to be familiar and recognizable, be […]
Large-scale urban renewal is often associated with the radical visions of the avant-garde in the first half of the twentieth century. This association often carries a negative connotation. The wanton demolition involved in projects such as Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin and Hilbersheimer’s Hochhausstadt is a source of criticism. These proposals were propelled by an optimistic […]
The Floor Plan between Standard and Ideal The design of models for large-scale housing developments has been the greatest architectural challenge of the past 100 years. The search for a high-quality, affordable home has resulted in an almost infinite series of studies, designs and realized projects. For DASH 04 we have selected a series of projects […]
Standardization Due to the immense housing shortage in Germany in the mid-1920s, architects faced the challenge of designing residential neighbourhoods with Kleinwohnungen für grosse Familien (small dwellings for large families). While doing this they explored new forms of accommodation and rationalized the -construction process. Standard modules were developed while floor plans were minimized and reconceptualized […]
The Ideal Standard After the bombing of Rotterdam in May 1940 Willem van Tijen was commissioned to design one of five planned high-rises on the Zuidplein (Extension Plan Zuid, 1938). The first design phase coincided with the work on the Studie Woonmogelijkheden in het nieuwe Rotterdam (Study on housing options in the new Rotterdam), a […]
Plattenbau The Silesian city of Katowice boasts a few distinctive groups of residential tower blocks. They were designed in the 1970s by Henryk Buszko and Aleksander Franta who, from 1956, were in charge of the Polish state-owned office PPBO. Large-scale industrial housing developments, which dominate virtually all Russian and Eastern European cities, are usually labelled […]
Beyond the Standard Hofblok ‘Hoogwerf’ is one of the two housing blocks by Diener & Diener that marked the conclusion of the redevelopment of the Java and KNSM islands in Amsterdam’s Eastern Docklands in 2001. The buildings are situated at the entrance to the -elongated double island. The Hofblok is an almost square volume around […]
Date: 12th of February 2015 | Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam | 20.00-22.00
Entrance: € 7,50 (students: € 3,75)
Language: English