_____Tim.de.Boer.org

Wives of employees of the gaming company Rockstar (famous for Grand Theft Auto) are protesting against the long hours that their husbands have to work. See Gamasutra.com. The Spouses wrote a letter to the managment of the company to complain about the twelve hour workdays, the regular overtime on saturday and the 70 hour workweek that is quite common at Rockstar nowadays. They even say the pressure to work even more is growing.

The workhours sound sooo familiar to an architect. Working into the night, no overtime payments, coming in on weekends to work on competitions and 70 hour workweeks are even quite common at some architectural firms. Yet i have never heard of protest of the spouses against these conditions. Why? Is it because architects have no spouse? Is it because they are architects themselves? Is it because architects do not complain, because they like architecture to much? or are the spouses just happy that there husbands are never home?

In any case according to the sources on the internet it is not the first time this happened in the gaming industry. In 2004 employees were awarded millions when a similar case against EA was brought into court.

This article is only available in Dutch.

“We rule this city” is a publication made by Stroom Den Haag. I had the honour to contribute part of the research i am conducting on the role of artist impressions in the public debat about proposed projects. In the publication a slection of projects is shown from conception, rendering till the built form.

The publication is only available in dutch.

It all started with the stairs. There’s something uncomfortable about them, the steps are too high. Could that be because the Wall House was built on a larger scale than originally conceived and drawn? And I also had my doubts about the finish. There was something about it. It would have been better to have concealed the mullions behind the columns and the ‘wall’, too, would have gained power if the materialization had been pushed through. Also surely Hejduk never intended the Wall House to be covered in all that pigeon shit. But do these defects detract from the design? Or do they only serve to make it more ‘real’?

Then there are the wider questions. The Wall House is actually on the wrong continent (originally designed for North America), and in a VINEX site on a recreation area and not in the middle of a wood as intended. And its orientation towards the sun will certainly not be as originally conceived. Suddenly you start to have doubts about all the views which initially made such a strong impression and seemed so beautifully framed. Actually how can they be so beautiful? And was it all conceived by Hejduk himself? Or is it just the work of the Dutch project architect?

To be able to give a meaningful answer to these questions we must first establish whether the Wall House # 2 was actually intended to be built. For what is the value of a built theoretical model? Should we perhaps regard the Wall House as a scale model 1,2:1? Or as an object disconnected from the theoretical model, a logical sequel to it?

If we disregard these rational questions for a moment, the unique characteristics of the Wall House emerge. The highly feminine curves in the living-room facade juxtaposed with a narrow horizontal window. The freestanding columns as supporting structure that you can just walk behind. The strangely bent and wavy fenestration in the bedroom and the view out over the water from the kitchen on the first floor. And the (probably unintentional) thermal layering in the Wall House. The bedroom, on the ground floor, cool and distant. The kitchen and dinning room, hidden and pleasant. The living room right at the top, swelteringly hot as soon as the sun shines, even in winter. And as a highlight: the twenty-metre corridor. What’s more, going down the corridor to the front door there’s that same thermal layering whereby you slowly move from room temperature to outside temperature. Is that a coincidence?

Architecture is a curious kind of art in the sense that it’s not the architect himself who makes the actual piece of work but an army of specialists. In most cases it’s not even the architect who makes the final drawings. The design is perhaps visualised as a maquette (or nowadays a 3D model), but that’s about as close as the architect himself will get to the reality. This means that the design must be translated several times before a building is realized.

The design of the Wall House must also have undergone a number of translations. Hejduk’s models and sketches must have been translated to create a design that conformed to Dutch legislation. To comply, the Wall House had in the end to be scaled-up by 20 per cent. In addition, of course, drawings had to be produced. All these decisions were beset with a further problem in that it was not possible to ask Hejduk how he himself would have solved things. At that point he was already dead.

The upshot is a Wall House that is in fact not really Wall House number #2. More number #2.1; an interpretation of the Wall House #2. But does this mean that the building loses its architectonic value? Absolutely not. Staying in the Wall House remains a powerful, at times oppressive, but nonetheless wonderful experience. And that’s precisely what the built Wall House has to offer over and above the drawings or models. The experience from the inside out. The feel of sunlight through the windows; the heat at the top the living room. Adjusting the speed with which you walk down the corridor so as to arrive at the top of the stairs at the same time as your visitor. The sensation of descending the stairs towards the exit. All these experiences are not possible in a 3D model, a drawing or a maquette. And that’s what makes a stay in the Wall House unique.

UPDATE: The new videoclip of the dutch artist Meindert Talma is partly shot at the Wallhouse. see:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0mzmTvEB00

Amsterdam Bijlmer Station

After ten years building and 150 million euros Amsterdam finally has a new and imposing station in Zuidoost, the southeast of the city. The first of a new generation of stations that are to be built in the Netherlands in the coming years.

Amsterdam Zuidoost is to be developed as a new centre for Amsterdam. Major recreational programmes that are not suitable for the inner city, such as the ArenA Stadium, the Heineken Music Hall and a furniture mall, are to be concentrated in this part of the city. With its narrow underground passage and two small platforms, the old 1976 Bijlmerstation does not fit into this vision. In 1998 the doubling of the railway track (between Utrecht and Amsterdam) and the construction of the Utrechtboog flyover railway line were the springboard for realizing a new and striking station. A station that can cope with the extra passengers.

The design by Grimshaw Architects (architect Neven Sidor) and ARCADIS Architecten (architect Jan van Belkum) is easy to describe. The station is made up of several freestanding components which, although clearly recognizable as such, together form a single design entity. The old underground passage, a continuation of the ArenA boulevard connecting the centre of Bijlmer and Amsterdam Zuidoost, was widened and made higher (now 70 metres wide and 7 metres high). As many openings as possible were left between the railway viaducts to allow light in and provide visual connectivity. The underground passage now has a very friendly resonance and much care has been taken over the lighting. The roof enclosure of the station is structurally entirely independent of the tracks. The roof has an unusual vaulting spanning the entire length and only interrupted where it is staggered where it intersects the path of the boulevard. Although the majority of passengers would not notice this, it makes the roof just that bit more exciting than if there were a continuous span. Indeed if you are standing on the Utrecht side you do not see the interruption and the vaulting lacks interest. The roof construction is remarkable for its detail. Rather than the box-beams so popular in the eighties, use has been made of massive steel, dark-grey girders. The roof itself is made up of ribbons of glazing and a ceiling of timber strips. The timber creates a contrast with the dark-grey steel girders and is beautifully lit at night. In addition to the use of timber, the ceiling is finished with metal slats. These metal slats return in the roof where, along the open spine of the roof (above the tracks), they have been installed upright making the exterior look like a prehistoric creature with armour-plating on its back.

As soon as you leave the station you notice how much the building has been designed from the inside out. On either side of the underground passage are extensions that are not in spirit with the rest of the station design. It seems as though the architect has literally run up against the site boundary. It is also not clear why the access stairs between the station platforms are suspended from the viaduct, while the stairs accessing the platforms at each end of the station are somewhat clumsily placed on concrete columns. The station platforms span the underground passage; the metro platform, which is situated in between the platforms, is shorter creating a double-height space in the middle of the station. On leaving the metro platform you immediately have a good overview of the station concourse below. But it is not a traditional station hall, the space is not clearly enclosed. However, to create a certain sense of a proper station concourse a piece of ground level has been encased under the viaducts by a glass wall, reminding me for all the world of a 7-metre high fence. To reinforce the detached nature, this wall (or rather fence) stops just short of the railway viaduct.

de 'omheining' van de stationshal

Speaking on the local Amsterdam television station AT5, the architect from Grimshaw Architects explained that the station will bring life to the area, promote social interaction and serve as a meeting place. To me that seems a somewhat optimistic prediction. The choice of materials and layout suggest that it is intended primarily as a vandalism, hooliganism and graffiti-proof building. In the places where people could come into contact with the material no risks have been taken in their use, instead easy to maintain materials such as glass, steel or ceramic tiles have been applied. And the security measures too suggest a high-risks soccer match rather than a relaxed encounter. Above all the access stairs security cameras are mounted ensuring that both arriving and departing passengers are under constant surveillance. The colours of the cameras show that the CCTV is neatly divided between the public transport company GVB (white) and the Dutch Railways (yellow). According to a spokesman for Prorail, the Amsterdam Bijlmer ArenA Station is the first of a new generation of stations. Food for thought! It is in fact a bleak station hardly offering any social space. Such social space as there is, is managed by commercial enterprises like Douwe Egberts and Albert Heijn. The station itself only bids one to leave the building as quickly as possible. It is no more than an interchange facility with a beautiful roof.

Post Scriptum:

In 2008 the station was awarded with a collection of prizes. The involved juries were probably taken aback by the beautiful roof and forgot to realize what a train station can be.

Published on 23/6/2009

Construction on the new Rotterdam central station was officially launched last week with the closure of the old station. But is demolishing the old and building a new one a reason for shedding a tear? Not according to Tim de Boer, who thoroughly enjoys the temporary station ‘Rotterdam Decentral’.

The blue block-like boxes immediately highlight what an unusual work this is. Indeed it’s so radical that no architect could possibly have conceived it. The different amenities that normally go to make up a station have been dispersed and spread out over the entire station area. Most of the amenities are situated on the forecourt. There’s a music-block, a Burger King block and, next to the interconnecting tunnel, there’s the large four-storey main block of the Dutch Railways itself. There’s also a blue block on the north-side of the tunnel: the kiosk. And what with the RET ticket-hall block (grey) and the metro entrance covering (yellow), the traveller lacks none of the usual conveniences.

The decentralized layout pays off in user-friendliness. Where before passengers had to fight their way through a hall crammed with shops and advertisements, now they find themselves outside immediately on emerging from the tunnel. At least that’s the impression because the glazed covering lets in so much light. The ambiance of the tunnel itself is sober, factual. The starkness of the design is striking, they even seem to have economized on advertising. The only visible advertisement flickers at the end of the tunnel – it’s the illuminated news trailer of a supermarket that’s been opposite the tunnel for years. As a designer you could hardly wish for a more apt contrast. The stairs leading up to the platforms are also conceived with the utmost simplicity, using standard components and materials. And particularly striking is the nonchalance with which details that were previously hidden (underground) are now revealed. Could this be a kind of demolition exhibitionism? An old-age-pensioner having a last flash?

Day by day you can see how the work is progressing. A drama of demolish-and-rebuild. Then there are the almost-daily changing routes, the removal of excavated soil taken by conveyor belt over the passengers’ heads, and a service road that intersects the stream of passengers, occasionally bringing them to a complete halt to allow a lorry through. All this turns the new Rotterdam Central into a great adventure, highlighting the difference of outlook between Rotterdam and Amsterdam, with its secretive closed-off construction site under Amsterdam Central. Yet in Rotterdam, strangely enough, the planning process and the design were veiled in the greatest secrecy. All the more ironic then that in Rotterdam the design for the new station is now revealed to the public, step by step, as the building progresses.

With this temporary station, the municipal authorities and the Dutch Railways have produced a showcase of innovative architecture, which is going to be very difficult for them to surpass with the new station. Fortunately it was announced this week that completion has already been delayed by one year. So, whatever, we can enjoy this piece of architecture (and drama) until at least 2011.

Tim de Boer | The Hague| 13/9/2007 |published on  Archined, translated by Nicolien Gatehouse

Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both. – Benjamin Franklin

Technology is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other. – C.P. Snow

Do we opt for the tough concrete barrier, the cast-iron baroque bench that can withstand the impact of a lorry, or do we engage a trendy office to design a stylized fence? Actually, it does not matter, it is just a question of style. As a direct consequence of the events of 9/11, high-risk buildings are being turned into fortresses. Walls, fences, posts and cordons sanitaires seal such buildings off from the surrounding area. In the process, valuable public space is lost. The concrete barriers are the most frequently mentioned examples of this fortification offensive. Still, the effects of these highly visible security measures are confined to the immediate vicinity; the interventions do not change society substantially and besides, they are reversible.
Anti-terrorism measures with no obvious visible consequences have a much greater impact on society. Such interventions are ubiquitous and of a permanent nature. Their purpose is to detect terrorists early on and to prevent attacks from taking place. They are coupled with increased powers for the state, allowing it to monitor people even before they have committed an indictable offence and to deny citizens the use of public space. These legal amendments are accompanied by the deployment of new technologies to detect, monitor and intervene. The role of public space shifts and its users are relegated to the status of consumers. This article describes these changes and argues in favour of finding solutions that strengthen the city.

Flashback
To put the current situation in perspective it is necessary to look at the relation between the city and the safety of its inhabitants. The city was originally invented in order to provide protection. The archetype is the walled city. The encircling walls made it almost impossible to capture the city, but there were other advantages, too, since walls work in two directions, shutting out but also shutting in. From a vantage point on top of the walls it was possible to keep watch on the surrounding area but also on the city’s own inhabitants.
As weapon range increased, defence lines moved further and further away from the city core and walls ceased to be an adequate defensive response. The relation between the city and its defences grew progressively weaker as a result. After the invention of the atom bomb, the city once again became a prime target, now that a single attack could wipe out an entire city. The only solution in this situation was Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) – if both parties had the capacity to destroy an enemy city in the event of an attack on one of their own cities, the chances of either party making a first strike were negligible. Since the weapons of retaliation had to be stationed as far from the city as possible in order to avoid destruction in a first strike, there was no longer any direct relationship between the city and its defences.
Today, more sophisticated weaponry and communications mean that a large army is no longer an advantage when waging war. Future warfare will not involve large pitched battles, but street fighting and terrorist-like incidents inside the city. The threat comes from individuals or loosely organized groups operating on one’s own territory. If it is to protect its citizens, the state must once again direct its gaze inwards – at its own citizens, in other words.

Surveillance, Care or Control?
Surveillance is not new. In fact, it is as old as human society. Surveillance has two objectives: care and control. Every form of surveillance consists of elements that cater to both objectives. Initially, people trusted the gods to keep watch over them and to punish those who misbehaved. But gods were not always very reliable. Therefore, people took the protection of their property, themselves and the weaker members of society into their own hands. In present-day society we are always looking for ways of increasing the efficiency of our surveillance. Permanent electronic surveillance, in a variety of forms, has been steadily increasing since the 1980s. These technical devices are deployed to detect crimes while they are being carried out so that the forces of law and order can respond immediately. Surveillance also provides information that makes it easier to pursue and prosecute offenders and to trace accomplices after the event. Indeed, in the aftermath of the attacks in New York on 11 September 2001 and in London on 7 July 2005, intelligence services already succeeded in piecing together the final days of the perpetrators from financial records and security camera footage.
Until now, electronic surveillance has focused mainly on care. The new anti-terror measures are changing that. Surveillance is seen as a panacea for preventing new attacks. The hope is that by linking information from a lot of different sources it will be possible to identify terrorists before they strike, based on what is regarded as suspect or deviant behaviour. In order to facilitate this use of surveillance, carefully defined limits concerning privacy and civil liberties have been jettisoned. Everybody is in principle suspect and will be monitored. Once again we have put our trust in a higher power that promises to offer us protection. Not in the form of gods this time, but in the form of our own inventions: computers, algorithms and cameras. We have become a society of control.

Spatial consequences
Surveillance is being embedded in daily life. It is no longer possible to escape the watching eye without placing yourself outside modern society. Anonymity has ceased to exist in the modern city. How do these developments relate to the built environment?
The installation of surveillance devices in public spaces is barely noticeable. The additions are small and have no effect on our physical experience of the space. Research has shown that they don’t have much impact on people’s behaviour, either. So what does change? Small, unobtrusive things to start with. Gatherings are broken up, vagrants are quietly moved on and youths who hang around are politely requested to go and hang around somewhere else. It gradually becomes clear who the new boss is in the public space. You won’t notice any of this as long as you behave yourself, but as soon as you display behaviour that is judged to be outside the norm, you will be monitored and perhaps even questioned about it.
Unfettered use of public space can no longer be taken for granted. In several European countries, including the United Kingdom and before long the Netherlands, this is even being formalized. In such countries it is now possible, without judicial intervention, to forbid citizens to be in certain areas or to behave in certain ways. These exclusion orders (Anti Social Behaviour Orders in the UK) are enforced with the help of surveillance technology.
The design of public space is gradually adjusting to these new realities. Small changes are made in order to discourage undesirable activities: benches are given extra armrests so that it is no longer possible to sleep on them; any obstructions to constant surveillance are removed; handrails are made skateboard-proof and low walls are topped with metal spikes so that no-one can sit on them.
At first such spatial changes seem to be fairly small and innocuous. In fact, they testify to a major change in thinking about public space. Public space is the scene of a constant tug-of-war between the state and its citizens. There is a delicate balance between what the citizen is able to do in this space and how much the state knows about these activities and what it will allow. Each introduction of new technology or new rules upsets this balance.
Round-the-clock electronic surveillance gives the state a huge advantage in this struggle. At present the state is not making full use of this advantage. But the information gathered by these means could also be used crack down on minor infringements and on what the state sees as socially undesirable activities.
The role of public space as part of the public domain is under threat. It is essential to this role that citizens are able to use public space anonymously. That it is a neutral place where everyone is welcome; where you can linger without having to justify yourself; where everyone is free to express their opinions without risk of possible prosecution. Public space that has been permeated by surveillance technology can no longer fulfil this role. Rem Koolhaas argued in ‘The Generic City’ (1994), that the public space of the future would be the atrium; a privately owned or policed space. Constant electronic surveillance is changing existing public space into something very like an atrium. Only the roof and the airconditioning are missing. In other words, public space that is under constant surveillance displays all the characteristics of an interior.
The dominance of security in architecture and public space is a recent development. Public buildings used to be designed as a part of the city. The extension of the Dutch parliament (Pi de Bruijn, 1981-1991) included a public passage where citizens could rub shoulders with politicians, but shortly after the extension was opened, this passage -designed as an atrium- was deemed too dangerous and was closed off.
Recent examples merely strengthen this impression: the Freedom Tower in New York (Daniel Libeskind and David Childs, 2006) is supposed to be a symbol of freedom and democracy. Yet, with an eye to the prospects of leasing out the building, the choice fell on a design in which security is the number one priority. The first sixty metres of the building above the lobby are reserved for technical installations and – at the developer’s request – entirely of concrete. There are no windows lower than sixty metres. For the European Central Bank in Frankfurt (Coop Himmelb(l)au, 2004), a different strategy was applied: the ‘matryoshka’ approach, whereby the most vulnerable and vital section is surrounded by less important components, giving rise to a series of shells of diminishing security importance as one moves away from the core.
In both New York and Frankfurt, the strategies deployed mean that the buildings no longer have any direct contact with their surroundings. The lobby and car park are closed off, the facade is one continuous surface, there are no corners, no places to sit and certainly no parking spaces adjacent to the building. They are autonomous objects that turn away from the city. At most they form a backdrop for public space.
As these examples show, security is one of the most important themes in new design commissions. Architects engaged in designing new buildings and public spaces are reverting to concepts from the 1970s, like Oscar Newman’s ‘defensible space’. A design methodology is emerging based on the belief that smart design can deter criminality (and now also terrorism). Most importantly it concerns the clear demarcation of specific functions so that there are no longer any grey areas where there is uncertainty as to what is permitted there and who owns or manages them. There is no overlap between what is part of the building and what belongs to the city. Friction-free design, in short.
In De capsulaire beschaving (The Capsular Civilization) Lieven de Cauter describes such inner-directed spaces as capsules. Sometimes they take the form of controlled public space (with virtual walls, as it were), but they can also be inside buildings. Airports, gated communities and shopping malls are the precursors of these new developments. The emphasis on security leads to the radical encapsulation of society. Inside the capsules, the owner ( commercial entities or the state) assume responsibility for our security. They equate security with predictability and so the unexpected and the abnormal are banished. This is increasingly done by electronic surveillance technology. The city is starting to look like a collection of mini theme parks; a collection of Disneylands where you, the user, are not allowed to decide how you want to use that space, and where the punishment for breaking the rules is exclusion. From a user and co-decider, you are reduced to a consumer and an object of surveillance. As citizens we have become the prisoners of our own desire for maximum security.

No reason to worry or hope for the best, just to look for new weapons – Gilles Deleuze
These developments have been made possible in part by the accelerated introduction of new technologies in the field of surveillance. They have skewed the relation between state, commerce and citizen. How can we restore this balance? How can we turn the city once more into a place that is more than the sum of individual capsules, buildings and users?
The city is more than that. The city is superior to other forms of human society precisely by virtue of that unpredictability, those unexpected possibilities. It is in such a place that new ideas develop.

… the informal steps in easily, a sudden twist or turn, a branching, and the unexpected happens – the edge of chance shows its face. Delight, surprise, ambiguity are typical responses; ideas clash in the informal and strange juxtapositions take place. Overlaps occur. Instead of regular, formally controlled measures, there are varying rhythms and wayward impulses. – Cecil Balmond, Informal, 2003

Could we perhaps use the new technologies to generate a similar situation in a society that is predicated on control? It is quite common for inventions that are initially available only to the state, to become available for commercial and civilian use. The Internet was invented to enable the army to maintain contact in the event of a nuclear war. The GPS system, too, had its origins in the military sphere; its purpose was to guide rockets to their targets. The Internet and the GPS system continue to fulfil their original military functions but at the same time they can be used by civilians for precisely the same purposes: communication and positioning.
The new technologies are barely present in a physical sense. They are extremely tiny, often invisible and sometimes even completely virtual. So how can they acquire a place in architecture? To answer this, we need to turn the question around. How can architecture play a role in surveillance? Surveillance is not just a matter of gathering information. The information flows have to be constantly monitored, processed, analysed and stored. This is architecture. They are all different programmes, each with their own requirements and thus with their own typologies. If we were to redefine these typologies, to recombine them and question their location and position in the city, they could come to occupy an important place in our society. A society in which technology is not just used to monitor spaces. Rather, a society in which it is also used to radically increase the possibilities the city has to offer. We have to stop staring at the concrete barriers, the bigger questions regarding security lie elsewhere.

Tim de Boer gave a lecture on this subject in the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam on 15 November 2007. For more information: www.maximumsecuritycity.org

Tim de Boer | Den Haag | 10/02/2007 | published in the A10 and the Bulletin

One hundred modernistic structures in the Netherlands were designated as monuments last year. But what should we do with this modern heritage? On December 15, 2007, the symposium Forward! On the Revitalisation of Modern Architecture took place at the SMART Project Space in Amsterdam. Major differences of opinion emerged between architects, theorists and artists on the significance and value of modernism. Artists in particular offered interesting suggestions for revitalising modernist heritage.

It became clear during the symposium that each speaker not only interpreted modernism differently but also approached the revitalisation of heritage in a different way. For one speaker modernism was a movement linked the major socialist ideals, for another it symbolised the ‘third way’ according to Tito, while others were of the view that modernism had above all produced beautiful and radical architecture. And how do occupants experience modernist architecture? A screening of the documentary Magic Moments made clear that the views of occupants have changed over time. In the film, a selection of old English film footage edited by Jord den Hollander, we see the first residents of Amsterdam West. At the time of their completion, today’s problem districts stood for progress, as we saw in the film.

Michelle Provoost told how she and Crimson are working on a study and inventory of all New Towns around the world (of which Amsterdam West is just one). New Towns were laid out according to the same principles everywhere and therefore never connected up with local cultures. Demolition and reconstruction is too often opted for in restructuring these districts. The result is that possibilities for creating an informal economy disappear and social networks in the neighbourhood are disrupted. Crimson is trying to chart the use and new functions that have been devised by residents and to translate them into realistic solutions. She showed how this is possible with the well-known WiMBY project in Hoogvliet. Very precise acupuncture (or ‘archipuncture’) is deployed to tackle problems and strengthen social cohesion in the neighbourhood.

English architect Keyvan Lankarani of Avanti Architects presented two different restoration projects in London. Both projects were examples of a careful reconstruction based on extensive research and involved preserving as many original details and materials as possible. At the same time, a section of the interior was sacrificed to meet the needs of today. He added a very practical question to the discussion. How far back in time do you go when revitalising? And how can you renovate something to make it viable without diverging too much from the original design?

Wessel de Jonge is an architect and co-founder of DOCOMOMO, the international organisation that promotes the preservation of modernist heritage. In his presentation he acknowledged that the rationale for each renovation project should be carefully considered. He presented three projects that he has worked on: the Zonnestraal sanatorium, the Van Nelle factory and the Philips pavilion. A comparison between Zonnestraal and Van Nelle made clear that Zonnestraal, a textbook example of functionalism, was a much more difficult structure to preserve. The location and the design made an economically feasible solution almost impossible. The possible reconstruction of the Philips pavilion (by Le Corbusier) was the most interesting case. Why would one want to rebuild that? And in what way? The pavilion was designed to stay standing for just three months and was certainly not designed for winter conditions or to comply with today’s building regulations. Wessel de Jonge explained that rebuilding is being studied very carefully and that the findings of that study have yet to be finalised. Nonetheless, during the lecture I got the feeling that, as soon as funding is available, the pavilion will simply be rebuilt (in Eindhoven of course).

Owen Hatherley (English philosopher) spoke about the fundaments of modernism. He approached the problem of preservation and the revitalisation of modernist buildings from a modernist perspective. According to him, the modernists were not interested in continuity or eternity. Buildings had to address specific functions, and if the buildings were no longer suitable or the function had ceased, then the buildings could be demolished. He also argued that modernism was essentially a project driven by socialist ideals. That’s why he had such a big problem with the sale of London council flats to private developers. These flats are being renovated and sold as apartments for high prices. They are much bigger than many new flats in London. This sell-out, continued Owen, amounted to a renouncement of the socialist fundaments. He advocated a third option: the ruin. Why couldn’t you leave a building alone? Why are these buildings defended so frenetically when the original designers didn’t advocate their preservation? Do we need to preserve buildings? Art is relatively easy to preserve, but what do you do with architecture? Can you distinguish a building from its function? Can the building be separated from the ideals that lie at its core? Does that result in anything other than an empty shell?

Together with Simon and Tom Bloor, Gavin Wade initiated the SMART Project Space symposium. For they are responsible for the Kiosk 7(&8) project, which was on show there at the time. Their kiosk projects are based on a kiosk designed by Berthold Lubetkin for Dudley Zoo in Birmingham. After completing a one-off project in and around the original zoo kiosk, the artists saw the structure as a motor that could be deployed at other locations. A whole series of kiosks followed all around the world, such as Kiosk 7&8 (entitled ‘To tame Oud West with a kiosk and not with a fist’). Wade offered the public a fresh possibility: a literal clone (or physical collage) to revitalise a forgotten and abandoned architectural highlight (without any need for the owner’s co-operation). Lubetkin’s kiosk is eminently suited for this. In actual fact, the kiosk contains no programme of its own, and Lubetkin was a strong supporter of mobile architecture. It is astonishing, for that matter, that Dudley Zoo doesn’t look after the many masterpieces left by Lubetkin in a better way and use them to draw in more public. Apparently they have yet to see the market potential of modernist architecture.

Marko Lulic held a lecture about the role of modernist architecture in Serbia and Croatia. In a tragicomic relay he took us on a journey through the history of Yugoslavia. Modernism symbolised Tito’s ‘third way’. After Yugoslavia fell apart, public anger focused all too often on this symbol. As a result, many buildings were badly damaged during the Balkan Wars.

Modernism plays a prominent role in Lulic’s own work. The possible reconstruction of a Berlin monument from 1926, designed by Mies van der Rohe, was the subject of one of his projects. All that remained after demolition by the Nazis was a photo of the front of the monument. Nothing is known about the other sides. Lulic’s biggest objection to reconstruction is that it amounts to rewriting history. The story of its demolition by the Nazis, and the reasons why, will slowly be forgotten. Lulic has built replicas of this monument at different scales in candy-coloured acrylic. In doing so he was not only raising the issue of its reconstruction but also drawing attention to the monument again.

Lulic was on similar territory to Gavin Wade with this approach: copying and rebuilding in another context, in other materials or in another scale in order to convey ideas rather than just form. An idea or building is not necessarily erased from our collective consciousness once it’s demolished.

After a long day it was decided to have a drink straight away rather than hold a closing discussion. That was a pity, because a remarkable difference in opinions had emerged over the course of the day between the architects, artists and theorists. The architects cited examples from art to preserve buildings (the books by Kafka would never have been published if his testament had been implemented) and therefore ignored not only the wishes of the designer but also the ideals that lie at the heart of those buildings. The artists, on the other hand, advocated not losing sight of these thoughts and ideals. Architects would therefore seem to stare blindly at design, at the visual impact of modernism, and at the value of the original (the unique prototype). Of course there are buildings that justify this perspective, but the majority of buildings do not. By approaching buildings as unique works of art, we unnecessarily limit the possibilities for revitalisation. The options that the artists deploy in their work – copying, transforming and the dislocation of both parts and the whole – are to me just as powerful as careful reconstruction. But we should also not dismiss the ‘ruin’ option. After all, don’t you have to admit that Zonnestraal made a stunning ruin hidden in the woods?

Tim de Boer | Den Haag | 10/02/2007 | verschenen op Archined

The website of Tim de Boer is changing. Please check back soon.

old website is available on www.timdeboer.org/old

If you’d like to contact me : postbus@timdeboer.org