Domesticity in Netherlands: from the Modern Movement to the Present is a researching project that analyzes the evolution of housing through a method named Intersections Field. By the description of genealogical trees, it is shown an evolution of the strategies used on the projects, focusing on their social, economic and cultural origins, as well as the architectural decisions to achieve their targets. Domesticity in Netherlands: from the Modern Movement to the Present is a researching project that analyzes the evolution of housing through a method named Intersections Field. By the description of genealogical trees, it is shown an evolution of the strategies used on the projects, focusing on their social, economic and cultural origins, as well as the architectural decisions to achieve their targets.
Chapter 1: Public Space – Between Het Schip and Rotterdam Market Hall is an analysis about the evolution of the public space and the relation with housing. This process started with the School of Amsterdam and Michel De Klerk at the beginning of the last century, it continued with the Playgrounds of Aldo Van Eyck and it is finishing with the hybrid architecture of MVRDV. During this time, it appeared an evolution about the social approach of the proposals. Whereas the architecture of the beginning of the XX Century attempts to improve the social status of their citizens (the working class), Dutch contemporary projects are focused dealing with regulation and client requests. However, there is an aesthetic idea that remains during the whole century. All the architects exposed below rejected the classic functionalism of the International Style and the projects were based in the expressionism of the function, using different architectural languages.
- 1916-1930. THE SCHOOL OF AMSTERDAM
The School of Amsterdam was formed in 1916, when their main members took over from the Amsterdam society of architects Architectura et Amicitia. The most important architects of the movement were Michel de Klerk (1884-1923), with the design of the projects Het Scheep and Het Scheepvaarthuis and Piet Kramer (1881-1961) with the De Dageraad, De Bijenkorf and Het Scheepvaarthuis.
The main goal of the movement was the social progress of the working class and better living conditions. Until that moment, the workers had to live in a situation of unhealthiness and poorness. Through a national plan of public housing, architects started to study new housing typologies. There were two main innovations: first, they increased the size of the houses and focused the family life in the living room. Besides, they attempted to improve the status of the working class through the beautification of their architecture. There was an important attention to the treatment of the facades and the materials in order to show the enhancement of the social status of the working class. Architects followed the socialist ideology of the beginning of XX Century with the design the facades, streets and squares where the workers were the centre of attention. Finally, they designed several public spaces where people could meet and use as a leisure place. The most important one was the Post office designed inside the Het Scheep (1919, Michel de Klerk). The post office was designed as a public room where the workers could send mails, but also use the telephone or open a bank account. These acts were considered as exclusive activities at that time so the use by the working class was something completely novel.
The decadency of the School of Amsterdam started in1923 with the death of Michel de Klerk and the cost overruns in many of their projects. In the 30’s the housing projects started to be commissioned to engineers, whereas the architects could just design the exterior facades. There was a rationalization in the design until its disappearance.
- 1947- 1978. ALDO VAN EYCK AND THE PLAYGROUNDS
After the II World War, the first theories of the Modern Movement about the city and housing were demonstrated as obsolete in the contemporary city. A group of young architects formed the Team X and challenged the city proposed in the Charte d’Athènes (Athens Charter). They advanced a new urbanism connected with scale of the actual city and the direct relation of the users with the neighbourhood. This group was formed by Peter and Alison Smithson, Jaap Bakema, George Candilis, Giancarlo de Carlo, Shadrac Woods and Aldo Van Eyck. The ideas were exposed in the Doorn Manifesto (Netherlands, 1954). The main concept of the manifesto is that the house can just be considered as a part of a community owing to the interaction of these on each other.
The Dutch architect Aldo Van Eyck (1918-1999) designed between 1947 and 1978 a series of urban plazas in Amsterdam which were named playgrounds. He attempted to regenerate the deteriorated public space of Amsterdam after the Second World War and most of these playgrounds were placed in sites destroyed during the war. Over these three decades, Aldo Van Eyck designed more than 700 plazas, creating an urban grid of playgrounds within the city. Their formal language was mainly influenced by modern art movements such as cubism or abstract paintings. Van Eyck's aesthetic was based on a superposition of simple geometries - shapes formed a hierarchy within the site and the articulation of the plaza with urbanism of the city. These geometries were created through different pavements’ colours and materials, dividing walls and furniture’s position within the playground. It is worth emphasising the sandpit since it is the formal compositions' heaviest and most important visual part. The rest of the furniture was made of metal light structure, contrasting with the elements of the playground.
There was an evolution between the idealist projects of the School of Amsterdam and the pragmatic point of view of Aldo Van Eyck. His approach connects his ideas about the city with contemporary thought where the projects cannot be just considered as objects but as strategies to solve social, economic and political problems.
After the 70s, the urban development of the playgrounds was stopped and most of the plazas started to be abandoned, transformed or destroyed. Nowadays, barely any of the 700 playgrounds maintains its original design.
- 2004-2014. MVRDV Y THE ROTTERDAM MARKET HALL
The architecture of MVRDV has experienced an evolution from the last 20 years. The first projects were based in the mixture of programmes, strengthening the internal circulations. The final volumetry had an undefined component and it was the result of the architectural process. However, their latest projects have undergone a simplification of the concept as well as a more perceptible shape. On the contrary, there has been a deeper development between the public and the productive spaces, fostering the meeting points. These changes have not just been caused by an evolution in the internal approach of the office, but also by external issues. The economic forces as well as the political decisions and the strict regulations have provoked that the architecture of MVRDV has generated prototypes with a very high productive value and visually more simple.
Rotterdam Mark Hall is a hybrid building with housing, a market, leisure and parking. The starting point of the project becomes with the Dutch regulation that requires covered areas for traditional food markets due to new hygienic constraints. The solution proposed by MVRDV is covering the market space with a horseshoe shape housing building. The central void is the main public space and it has been covered with a mural printed on perforated aluminium panels that improve the internal acoustic. The result is a market with the following dimensions: 114 meters long, 70 meters width and 40 meters high. The decision of covering the market with apartments produces several consequences: First, there is a densification in the city centre due to the incorporation of new programmes in the building; second, MVRDV proposes a hyper-productive building to overlap a commercial programme with a housing typology. Finally, the most impressive space is the public market where it also becomes a commercial area. The building solves a regulation problem by an architectural solution and creates a higher profit for the investor.
This project finalizes the evolution from the School of Amsterdam to the present and from a socialist model to a productive one. The generation of Michel de Klerk proposed using the ornament in the public areas and the facades to raise the status of the working classes. Aldo Van Eyck made a transition from the idealist models to the productive ones, using the sites destroyed during the war as an opportunity to create an urban grid of playgrounds. Finally, MVRDV is based in external factors to transform the public space into a productive element. This process is the gradual change from the socialist ideas commonly used by the First Modern Movement at the beginning of last century to the economic pragmatism belonging to the Postmodernism Era, and applied by many contemporary architects.
NOTES.-
- Museum Het Schip Workers Palace: The ship by Michel de Klerk, Museum, Het Schip. Amsterdam 2012.
- Museum Het Schip [website] > http://www.hetschip.nl/en/
- TU Delft. Team 10 Meetings [website] > http://www.team10online.org/index.html
- Diaz Bringas T. Manuel Borja-Villel, T. Playgrounds. Reinventar la Plaza, Siruela. Madrid 2014.
- De Roode I. Lefaivre L. Aldo Van Eyck: Playgrounds. Nai Publishers. Rotterdam 2012.
- MVRDV. MVRDV 2003-2014. El Croquis, núm. 117. Madrid 2014.
- MVRDV. [Website] > http://www.mvrdv.nl/projects/markethall/#
