Light, Air & Space. Light, Air & Space. Research Report 09‐02‐2016 Maarten Kist 1543032 Tutors: L. Spoormans W. Quist Preface Not that long ago I wasn’t interested in post‐war architecture that much. I thought the architecture wasn’t that great and the post‐war neighbourhoods boring. The last couple of years this is changing little by little. The horrible living standards the people had not even 100 years ago. The and history behind the CIAM, Modern Movement, het Nieuwe Bouwen, and the story of those who wanted to improve life for others by breaking with the traditional ways of building a city, it interests me more and more. This is also the reason why I chose this studio for my graduation project. This was a perfect choice for me because I now can combine my three passions into one project: Architecture, urbanism, and history. I enjoyed doing research on the topic of Light, Air and Space very much. This research report attempts to give you, and myself of course, a lot of knowledge about the ideas behind Light, Air and Space in Modernistic urbanism. With this knowledge I want to make a new design for the Airey‐strip blocks on the Burgemeester van der Vlugtlaan in the fromer Western Garden Cities of Amsterdam, no a day’s known as Nieuw‐West. 1 Table of contents Introduction P.3. Chapter 1. Light. P. 5. Introduction. P. 5. Better standard of living. P. 6. Standardisation of the housing project P. 6. Wisselbeuk P. 7. The Airey‐strip blocks P. 9. The system P. 10 The architecture P. 13 The dwellings P. 15 Goed Wonen P. 17. The Airey blocks and the green P. 18. Cultural value P. 19. Chapter 2. Fresh Air. P. 20. Landscape design as a craft P. 20. The design of a courtyard P. 21. Radial city P. 24. The green structure of the Western Garden cities P. 25. Amsterdam Nieuw‐West’s landscape P. 27. The green corridor/park strips P. 28. City parks P. 29. Neighbourhood parks P. 30. Recreation P. 31. Cultural value P. 32. Chapter 3. Open Space. P. 33. Controlling the growth of a city. P. 33. Designing from scratch P. 35. The Framework of the Western Garden Cities. P. 36. The original design of the public space. P. 37. Dividing the borough into districts and neighbourhoods P. 38 Development of the open building block P. 39. The parcelling boom! P. 45. Present day typology in Nieuw‐West P. 47. Present day typology in Slotermeer P. 48. Functions P. 49. The architecture P. 50. High‐rise low‐rise P. 51. Rhythm P. 52. Building heights in Slotermeer P. 53. • Cultural Value. P. 54. Chapter 4. Conclusions P. 55. Reverences. 2 Introduction. The ideals of the Modern Movement. The Western Garden cities were designed in a time of great uncertainties, a time of the Great Wars, the Great Depression and the great scarcity of about anything. The city of Amsterdam had grown enormously during the end of the 19th century as a result of the industrial revolution. The people of Amsterdam were living in a city which looked more like a slum than the UNESCO World Heritage side it is today. One thing was for sure, Amsterdam needed to have a new extension plan of an enormous scale. The enormous scale caused things, that always had been done a certain way, had to go differently. There was a need for more light, more fresh air, and more space. All rooms in the modern home should have a large entry of light, the network of parks and other public spaces should provide enough fresh air and the positioning of the housing blocks formed one big continuous open space. The neighbourhood should not be a stone desert, the greenery of the surrounding polder landscape should be led to the immediate vicinity of the house, and an opportunity should be there for active outdoor recreation, both for young and elderly people. School children required safe routes that didn’t cross busy roads, childcare should be present in residential neighbourhood. These programmatic requirements should lead to a systematic construction of open building blocks, arranged in different compositions, where the insolation of the buildings was central. The neighbourhood was a composition which is built up of a group of housing units which consist of a series of row houses positioned in the same direction. The series of row houses are interspersed with green areas where recreation facilities and public buildings are positioned carefully. Cornelis van Eesteren started to design the extension plan in the 1920’s and it was finished in the end of the 1930’s. The plan was based on the ideals of Light, Air and Space of the Modern Movement, and has become one of the key examples on Modernist Ubanism in the world. The plan was more a kind of structure plan than an urban design but it set the rules for other urbanist ideals up to today. The rules applied for a levels of scale, from the level of the dwelling up until the level of the urban region. Everything was a linked and connected together in a network of private and public spaces, of streets, parks and waterways. Research Question. Now a days the cityscape of the borough Nieuw‐West is being threatened. There have been a lot of changes over time in the neighbourhood, especially in the last two decades. Since 2001, the borough has been subject to extensive urban renewal projects. Under the Richting Parkstad 2015 plan, 4.000 existing homes were demolished and replaced by 8.500 new developments. The municipality is planning to build another 13.500 new homes in the area and demolish 8.000 more houses by the year 2030 (Demografische en ruimtelijke analyse Nieuw West, 2012). With the renewal projects, the original garden city ideas have partially been abandoned. The structure of green parks and open spaces are under an increasing high pressure. The parcelling principles of the Modern Movement which gives the borough its character can already in some areas, especially in the district of Slotervaart, not be found anymore. The district of Slotermeer is the most authentic neighbourhood in the borough of Nieuw West. Here there have been hardly no buildings demolished or built since the construction neighbourhood was completed in 1954. It therefore is awarded to be protected city scape by the municipality of Amsterdam which makes it even harder to make some changes in the neigourhood. In order to preserve this and still allow changes in the borough as the municipality of Amsterdam wants we need to understand the unique values of the borough very well. 3 The unique relationship between the housing blocks and its surrounding greenery, summarized as the Light, Air and Space ideals, is under pressure from densification and redesign of the public space. This leads me to the following research question: “How to densify Nieuw‐West and stay within the ideals of the Modern Movement: light, air and space?” The structure of the report. First we need to ask ourselves, what are the light, air and space ideals and what is the special relationship between dwelling, housing block and the surrounding green elements? I tried to find this out in this report. The report, containing the literature research and analysis, is built up in four parts. The first part focusses on the dwellings of the Airey‐strip. I first start with a short history on the development of the standardized floorplan and then continue with the floorplans of the Airey‐blocks. I then continue the research to the green space around the Airey‐ blocks. The second part I zoom out on the green structure of the borough of Nieuw‐West. First by researching the history and design of the courtyard made by Mien Ruys. And second by researching the greater green structure of Amsterdam’s Western Garden Cities. The third part consists out of the research on open space structure of the Western Garden Cities. I will elaborate on the different road networks, parcelling structures, functions in the neighbourhoods and the architecture in the borough. In this report I’ll constantly make use of the different levels of scale, Dwelling, Courtyard, Neighbourhood and District, to explain the ideas behind Light, Air and Space. And finally the fourth part consists out of the conclusion and the future design and research proposals. Im.1 Different levels of scale (own image) 4 Chapter 1. Light. Introduction. Since the 1920’s urban planning is becoming more important at the expense of the architecture. The Amsterdamse School is the last architectural movement that wants to express itself in architecture. The Plan South of Berlage is the last major project which is designed with the Amsterdamse School. Fellow urbanist of H.P. Berlage criticize the monotone blocks of Plan Zuid and call them ‘a string of street walls’. The criticizers of the Modern Movement become noisier and noisier until 1928, when the Department of Public Works had founded a new department called ‘Stadsontwikkeling’ or city development (Woud, van der, A., 1983). By that time, in 1928, the research had started on a new expansion plan, the General Expansion Plan of Amsterdam (AUP). One of the researches was Cornelis van Eesteren, a profound member of the Modern Movement. In an early stage of the research, it became clear that the plan needed a revolutionary large amount of new dwellings in order to meet the huge demand that arose in the years before. The city of Amsterdam had grown from around 250.000 inhabitants in 1865 to staggering amount of 750.000 people in 1920.