DOCSLIB.ORG

New Metropolitan Living and the Skycraper in a European City 1. Book Chapter/Part Chapter Ctbuh.Org/Papers

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
New Metropolitan Living and the Skycraper in a European City 1. Book Chapter/Part Chapter Ctbuh.Org/Papers ctbuh.org/papers Title: New Metropolitan Living and the Skycraper in a European City Author: Jan Klerks, Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat Subject: Urban Design Keyword: Urban Design Publication Date: 2005 Original Publication: CTBUH 2005 7th World Congress, New York Paper Type: 1. Book chapter/Part chapter 2. Journal paper 3. Conference proceeding 4. Unpublished conference paper 5. Magazine article 6. Unpublished © Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat / Jan Klerks Jan Klerks Dutch Council on Tall Buildings Jan Klerks, originally from Rotterdam in The Netherlands, is the executive secretary of the Dutch Council on Tall Buildings. This foundation aims to create network and knowledge among professionals involved in high-rise development and construction in The Netherlands by organizing conferences and study trips and publishing a high-rise-centered newsletter. In this position, Mr. Klerks has represented the foundation and its goals on numer- ous occasions by giving lectures and interviews and writing articles and columns in a variety of magazines. His personal focus is on high-rise living. Mr. Klerks is also chairman of the Rotterdam Skyscraper Foundation which tries to create and embody local enthusiasm for the skyscraper by publishing books and representing skyscraper development on a local level. Recently plans for a Rotterdam Skyscraper Festival have been initiated, and the event is planned for 2007. He also created and administers the SkyscraperCity.com Web site, the world’s largest Internet community about skyscrapers, cities, architecture, and other urban-related issues. ○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○ New Metropolitan Living and the Skycraper in a European City A relatively small but definite percentage of the city population prefers a high-metropolitan life style, some- thing being expressed by modern skyscraper living. It’s only until recently that this niche market has started to take shape in Europe, but merely on an incidental basis and only in a few cities. The typical European urban context can only partly be used as an argument to explain that theories of urban density and the classical promise of the skyscraper do not seem to apply to the modern residential skyscraper in Europe. This presentation will look at the historic and current European residential skyscraper developments as the embodiment of new metropolitan living. It will address related issues dealing with high-rise zoning, laws and regulation, the definition of urbanity, population typologies based on residential preferences, past and present inner city development, and especially the marketing and branding of metropolitan living, all within a European context. The main goal is to create awareness of the potential of modern metropolitan living in European cities. Findings will be accompanied by examples and case studies in Frankfurt, Germany; London; and the Dutch cities of Rotterdam and Amsterdam. New Metropolitan Living and the Skyscraper in a European City Jan Klerks Stichting Hoogbouw / Dutch Council on Tall Buildings Postbus 51102 3007 CG Rotterdam, The Netherlands 010 484 1119 [email protected] member CTBUH Abstract Particularly in Europe, the skyscraper is not a typical shape in which metropolitan living comes. Even in cities with no characteristic historical background, skyscrapers are incidents. Rotterdam is an example of a city in which skyscraper living has been embraced as a modern way of shaping new housing markets and creating a modern image. As such, a skyscraper isn’t the result of existing urbanity, but it tries to appeal to the image of modern urbanity and as such, trying to recreate a modern version of it. This paper wants to show that there is a modest but certain market for skyscraper living in Europe and that with proper guidance and ambition, this market could be successfully developed into a new way of creating modern metropolitan living and shaping cityscape ambition in Europe. keywords: high-rise living, high-rise policy, urbanity, city branding 1 NEW METROPOLITAN LIVING IN EUROPE The Dutch word for skyscraper is ‘wolkenkrabber’. Sadly it is hardly being used. I don’t think anyone has ever actually said it out loud that he or she ‘lives in a skyscraper’, or that someone is ‘fond of skyscrapers’. Some would say that’s because The Netherlands wouldn’t have them. At times the unofficial but magic looking number of 500 feet is being used as a threshold value weather a tall building is a skyscraper or not, and the current tallest just happens to be 498 feet. Off course height isn’t everything. Slenderness, architectural appearance, ambition, location, use and urban mass don’t seem to count when it comes to naming the different sizes and shapes in which high-rise comes. Looking at the numbers one can say that Europe never has developed a taste for skyscraper living, and it’s only as of late that in some European cities, residential skyscrapers start to appear. At the moment Moscow leads the race with the 264 meter tall Triumph-Palace, followed by the Vorobiovy Gory Tower II (188 meter), Edelweiss (176 meter) and Aliye Parusa 2 (176 meter) all in the current top 100 of tallest residentials in the world. Other tall ones are not located in cities where you might expect them, such as the capital cities of London, Paris, Madrid and Berlin. The Swedish province town of Malmö, home of Santiago Calatrava’s 190 meter tall Turning Torso or Twistscraper, is quite an unlikely place for one of Europe’s tallest. Neguri Gane (145 meter) in Benidorm, Spain and Westpoint (142 meters) in Tilburg, The Netherlands are other such examples that rank high up there. One European city that actually seems to enjoy skyscrapers is Rotterdam, The Netherlands. (city population: 600,000, metro: 1.2 million). Rotterdam, above all known for its harbour, is one of the few European cities that have embraced the skyscraper as the building type to shape the city center. Finishing off the 152 meter tall Montevideo residential tower, a new highlight is being added to the expanding ‘American’ skyline. At this moment, Rotterdam has eight projects under development reaching 500 feet and up. Out of these, five are residential skyscrapers. Local government has zoning plans in which it’s stated that skyscrapers are wanted. The start of construction of skyscrapers is being celebrated in the yearly Construction Site Festival, finished towers will be cheered during the first Skyscraper Festival in 2006. Books about skyscrapers generally make it to the overall number one spot in local bookstores. The city is home of the Dutch Council on Tall Buildings. Thanks to high-rise, the city has obtained an established image of modernity and energy. But Rotterdam also accepted high-rise with open arms as a characteristic element of its appearance as a city of architecture. 2 Even though the development of residential skyscrapers is a recent one, the local high-rise history is quite interesting. Apart from the churches, bell towers and other tall structures not nor primarily used for housing purposes, it all started in 1898 when the 43 meter tall ‘Witte Huis’ was built, at the time the tallest office building in Europe. Based on the experience of the first high-rise apartment project in The Netherlands, the Nirwana Flat in The Hague, architect Jan Duiker was the first who published a study on high-rise in 1930 in which he reasoned that by going up, space, fresh air and sunlight would be available to all. Compared to the often cramped and dirty 19th century cities, that was a promising statement. He also argued that high-rise could lead to economies of scale, offering luxuries such as a launderette and a childcare, although he also concluded that high-rise living probably wouldn’t be suitable for families with children. The first theory based experiments took shape in four flat buildings for working-class tenants that were built in the 1930’s by architect Willem van Tijen, of which the Bergpolderlflat got the credit of being the first flat apartment building in the world. The obvious sounding reason to explain skyscrapers in the Rotterdam is the devastation of the city center in the beginning of World War II and the decision to reshape the whole city center structure according to modern principles of urban planning. As such, it is lacking an often cherished historical frame of reference by which new developments are bounded. In the early reconstruction years, a lot of attention was being given to the economical function of the city center, pretty much ignoring the residential function. Starting in the 1960’s, high-rise was massively being used to shape political ideals about social housing. It took shape in the form of flats, usually four to ten stories high, at quite a distance from the city center. The Germans have a word that grasps this truly European housing type; plattenbau. In the generation after the Second World War, countries throughout Europe built high-rise housing in the public sector as the 3 modern response to deal with housing shortage. As such, high-rise was an expression of the new Europe and especially in some Eastern European countries, that dream was kept alive a bit longer by the powers to be. Because of that, this building type is also referred to on popular web forums as ‘commieblocks’. In the mid 1970’s, people seemed to be fed up with this uniform and ‘unurban’ way of living. It wasn’t until the 1980’s when the department of urban planning started to think about how high-rise could be used to revitalise the city center. At that time, high-rise had a bad reputation. It was believed it would lead to lower property values, created traffic congestion and parking problems, was associated to high crime rates, was generally considered being unattractive and meant for lower-income households.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Stag Bijvoet in Paris
    BIJVOET IN FRANCE 1925–1945 Sanatorium Zonnestraal, under construction, Hilversum B. Bijvoet, J. Duiker, 1927–1931 picture by J.D. Honings introduction ‘From 1926 until after the war Bijvoet, who for years now has lived and worked in Haarlem, spent most of his time in France, although he still got commissions from the Netherlands (one was for the Gooiland Hotel in Hilversum). In Paris it was interior design that received his care and attention. During those years he designed, in collaboration with Pierre Chareau, numerous costly conversions and interiors of prominent Paris apartments.’1 contacts There is no way of finding out whom Bijvoet consorted with in Paris, as there are virtually no sources to draw on. We do know that he worked with Chareau and Beaudouin & Lods, that he lived for several of the war years in the Dordogne with Marcel Lods, András Szivessy (André Sive) and Vladimir Bodiansky and that he was in touch with Le Corbusier (according to a letter to the Andriessens). He must have been influenced by each of them. From this you might contend that the curved wall of the golf club house in Beauvallon, which Bijvoet designed early on in his association with Chareau, derives from the one in the salon of Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret’s Maison La Roche (1923–1925). Maybe the round columns do too. A new departure for Bijvoet at the time, from then on he would scarcely use anything else. It also makes sense to compare their Villa Vent d’Aval, located near the golf club and completed by André Barbier-Bouvet after the war, with Le Corbusier’s Maison Cook (1926).
    [Show full text]
  • Perceived Technologies in the Modern Movement 1918 - 1975
    International working party for documentation and conservation of buildings, sites and neihgbourhoods of the modern movement Perceived Technologies in the Modern Movement 1918 - 1975 preservation technology dossier 13 2014 International working party for documentation and conservation of buildings, sites and neihgbourhoods of the modern movement Perceived Technologies in the Modern Movement 1918 - 1975 preservation technology dossier 13 2014 do co mo mo 1 Perceived Technologies in the Modern Movement Photos: Bernd Seeland do co mo mo 2 Perceived Technologies in the Modern Movement New Movement and Technology in the Netherland Jan Molema Subject Is it wise to treat a broad subject as New Movement and Technology in the Netherlands in a short period of less than an hour?1 Even if I restrict myself to what happened in the Netherlands in architecture between 1922 and 1936?2 These were my inmediate questions, when I received the invitation to speak at the forum in Karlsruhe. My answer: I prefer to come with two questionable aspects of construction by two befriended architects in two of their famous build- ings, two real icons of modernity (Fig. 1, 2).3 Introduction From their toddler years around 1930 till well after World War II there was almost no interest in two of Fig. 1: Maison de Verre at night (Photo source unknown) today highly esteemed architectural monuments greater difference does not seem possible, yet the house in a Paris backyard and a brand new complex two became closely related through their authors: on a Dutch heath. Far apart from each other, the two Bernard Bijvoet, maker of the plans for the ‘Maison were realized by two befriended engineer-architects: worked with his companion on the preliminary designs the other outside Dutch radio city Hilversum.
    [Show full text]
  • SIGNIFICANCE and RESTORATION of HET SCHIP, AMSTERDAM Design Movement Known Today As the an ICON of SOCIAL HOUSING and ARCHITECTURE, 1919-1921 Amsterdam School
    Het Schip A WORK OF ART IN BRICK Amsterdam 1919-1921 Up-and-coming architect Michel de Klerk designed an urban block of 102 apartments and one post office, envel- A WORK OF oping an existing primary school. The patron of this prominent project was the visionary housing society, Eigen Haard. This “workers’ palace” is now ART IN BRICK the acknowledged culmination of the SIGNIFICANCE AND RESTORATION OF HET SCHIP, AMSTERDAM design movement known today as the AN ICON OF SOCIAL HOUSING AND ARCHITECTURE, 1919-1921 Amsterdam School. One hundred years later, the restoration of this complex has again come to the fore. The histories and controversies con- cerning the Amsterdam School are PETRA VAN DIEMEN uncovered and reinterpreted, and the TON HEIJDRA genesis and life cycle of the building are NIKO KOERS brought into focus. The book describes CISCA VAN DER LEEDEN the choices that were made for mate- RAMON PATER rials and working methods during the RICHELLE WANSING restoration of 2015-2018. Recipes used are described in meticulous detail, from brick to leaded glass and from “lion head” to “cigar”. Few compromises have been made in restoring the integrity of the original image of this complete work of art, an icon of social housing and architecture. This book is abun- dantly illustrated and written by the very specialists who were leading in this restoration. Oostzaanstraat 45 MUSEUM 1013 WG Amsterdam HET SCHIP www.hetschip.nl A WORK OF ART IN BRICK SIGNIFICANCE AND RESTORATION OF HET SCHIP, AMSTERDAM AN ICON OF SOCIAL HOUSING AND ARCHITECTURE, 1919-1921 PETRA VAN DIEMEN TON HEIJDRA NIKO KOERS CISCA VAN DER LEEDEN RAMON PATER RICHELLE WANSING WEBSITE VERSION This PDF is the website version of the book A WORK OF ART IN BRICK.
    [Show full text]
  • Leven En Werk Van Stedenbouwkundig Architecte Lotte Stam-Beese
    'Want de grond behoort ons allen toe' : leven en werk van stedenbouwkundig architecte Lotte Stam-Beese Citation for published version (APA): Oosterhof, J. (2018). 'Want de grond behoort ons allen toe' : leven en werk van stedenbouwkundig architecte Lotte Stam-Beese. Technische Universiteit Eindhoven. Document status and date: Gepubliceerd: 06/11/2018 Document Version: Uitgevers PDF, ook bekend als Version of Record Please check the document version of this publication: • A submitted manuscript is the version of the article upon submission and before peer-review. There can be important differences between the submitted version and the official published version of record. People interested in the research are advised to contact the author for the final version of the publication, or visit the DOI to the publisher's website. • The final author version and the galley proof are versions of the publication after peer review. • The final published version features the final layout of the paper including the volume, issue and page numbers. Link to publication General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal.
    [Show full text]
  • 01 JAN MOLEMA.Indd
    N10_ GRAN ESCALA PROYECTO, PROGRESO, ARQUITECTURA 16 17 JAN DUIKER: A RIVER SIDE HOTEL IN DOLNÍ ZÁLEZLY NAD 1.Planometric drawing for the competition as published in: ir. J.B. van Loghem, bouwen bauen LABEM, CZECH REPUBLIC 1929-1930 bâtir building, Amsterdam 1932. Unfortunately we JAN DUIKER: UN HOTEL JUNTO AL RÍO EN DOLNÍ ZÁLEZLY NAD LABEM, REPÚBLICA are unable to define the applied colours. The text CHECA 1929-1930 in old German gothic letters says: Salesel a(n) d(er) Jan Molema Elbe. 2. Situation and floor plans as published by Van Loghem op. cit.; the situation drawing was printed very small (from pier tot street side 2,8 cm). No indication of scale was given. NB the two fat lines indicate the row of (linden?) trees on either side of the plot. 1 2 “By no means everything in Duiker is sound in the sence of the mathematical technique, and often not from the viewpoint of centuries long utility. But precisely this makes that his work contains the freshness of the continuously renewing nature”. J.B. van Loghem in De Hollandsche revue, jrg 41, 1936, no 8. SUMMARY After the early death of Jan Duiker, his compatriot Han van Loghem wrote: “By no means everything in Duiker is sound in the sense of the mathematical technique, and often not from the viewpoint of centuries long utility. But precisely this makes that INTRODUCTION but from a post–war generation, added in 1972 three his work contains the freshness of the continuously renewing nature.” (De Hollandsche revue, jrg 41, 1936, no 8, p.
    [Show full text]
  • Arch 5124 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 2 Part 2B
    arch 5124 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 2 Part 2B 30 April 2015 15.3 Mb, 13,751 words 22 Early 20th Century. Modernism 23 Frank Lloyd Wright. Mies van der Rohe 24 Le Corbusier JUGENDSTIL, RIGA, LATVIA Built from 1899. In Riga, two main styles, decorative and romantic-nationalistic. Riga is one of the largest centres of Art Nouveau, with more than a third of the buildings of its Central District;. The main street for Riga's Art Nouveau district is Elizabetes, which crosses Brivibas Boulevard, also Alberta and Strelnieku Streets. There are 800 Jugendstil buildings in Riga. Most were designed and built by Latvian architects. The Latvian Ethnographic Exhibition in 1896 and the Industrial and Handicrafts Exhibition in 1901, which commemorated the city's 700th anniversary were dominated by pavilions designed in the new style. Within three years, Art Nouveau would become the only design style used in construction, adopted in the main by the new generation of architects who graduated from the Riga Polytechnic Institute. Buildings built at the beginning of the century in the city's medieval centre and on Alberta iela, most of which were designed by the Russian architect Eisenstein and the German architects Scheffel and Scheel. The floral, geometric and sculptural motifs decorating these buildings create rhythms that are typical of eclectic architecture. Refer: Latvian Museum of Architecture located in one of the Three Brothers, Old Town. Mikhail Eisenstein, architect In the decorative Jugendstil style, father of director Sergei Eisenstein. Elizabetes 10a and 10b, and Alberta 2, 2a, 4 and 8. Alberta 13 From 1904, now the Riga Graduate School of Law, fully restored and publicly accessible.
    [Show full text]
  • The Technology of Change: the Van Nelle Factories in Transition
    The Technology of Change: The Van Nelle Factories in Transition Text previously published as a chapter in 'Back from Utopia', edited by H.A.J. Henket and H. Heijnen, Uitgeverij 010, Rotterdam 2002, pp. 44, 59. ‘We want artists in industrial relationship. We want masters in industrial method – both from a standpoint of the producer and the product. We want those who can mould the political, social, industrial and moral mass into a sound and shapely whole. We have limited the creative faculty too much and have used it for too trivial ends. We want men who can create the working design for all that is right and good and desirable in our life.’ Henry Ford1 The notion of technology in the modern sense of the word is rooted in the Enlightenment. By exploring nature and natural science a new kind of logic was created that shed new light on the relationship between material, which was used to create artefacts such as buildings, and the form to which these artefacts were shaped. The more man mastered material the more he was able to develop the products he desired, to an ever greater extent and in ever larger quantities. Understanding this relationship lies at the core of the concept of the industrial society and the role of technology therein. Technology, therefore, represents the balance between man and matter.2 In turn, industry generated evolution, pushing material properties to their limits and requiring new materials, composites and eventually synthetics to be developed. Industry spawned its own version of nature which was surveyed and calculated by engineers, and later, as far as the building industry was concerned, by architects.
    [Show full text]
  • EAHN Book of Abstracts
    The Tools of the Architect The Tools of the Architect EAHN Conference, TU DELFT and HNI EAHN European Architectural History Network www.eahn.org Delft University of Technology Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment Julianalaan 134 2017 EAHN Conference 2628 BL Delft The Netherlands www.bk.tudelft.nl/en Het Nieuwe Instituut Museumpark 25 3015 CB Rotterdam The Netherlands 22–24 November 2017 hetnieuweinstituut.nl The Tools of the Architect This Book of Abstracts was created for the EAHN Conference “The Tools of the Architect” by the Chair of Methods and Analysis at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment of the Technical University in Delft, in collaboration with Het Nieuwe Instituut. The abstracts are property of the authors and may not be published without their written authorization. Contents 15 | Programme 16 | The Tools of the Architect Tom Avermaete, Merlijn Hurx Wednesday 22 November 2017 14:00–16:00 19 | Papers and Models 26 | Mathematics Location: Room K Location: Room E Session Chair: Jeroen Goudeau Session Chair: Jorge Mejia Hernandez Radboud University Delft University of Technology How to Draw the World: From the Architectural Pier Luigi Nervi’s Designing Tools: Geometry Plan to an Architectural Storytelling and Calculation in Structural Analysis Sophia Banou Micaela Antonucci, Sofia Nannini The University of Edinburgh Politecnico Milano Copies, Traces and Transparent Paper in the Graphic Methods for the Design of Complex Workshop of an 18th-Century Swedish Architect Curved Surfaces in 20th Century Architecture
    [Show full text]
  • LA DIMENSIÓN HUMANA DE LA ARQUITECTURA DE ALDO VAN EYCK Escrita Y Construida: Reconocimiento De Sus Ideas Y Estudio De Su Iglesia En La Haya
    TESIS DOCTORAL CON MENCIÓN INTERNACIONAL LA DIMENSIÓN HUMANA DE LA ARQUITECTURA DE ALDO VAN EYCK Escrita y Construida: Reconocimiento de sus ideas y Estudio de su iglesia en La Haya DOCTORAL THESIS WITH INTERNATIONAL MENTION ALDO VAN EYCK’S HUMAN DIMENSION OF ARCHITECTURE Written and Built: Recognition of his ideas and Study of his church in The Hague D. Jose Fernández-Llebrez Muñoz, doctorando D. Eduardo de Miguel Arbonés, director D. Jose María Fran Bretones, director UNIVERSIDAD POLITÉCNICA DE VALENCIA ESCUELA TÉCNICA SUPERIOR DE ARQUITECTURA DEPARTAMENTO DE CONSTRUCCIONES ARQUITECTÓNICAS Valencia, febrero de 2013 Tribunal nombrado por el Mgfco. y Excmo. Sr. Rector de la Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, el día ................................................................ Presidente D. ......................................................................................... Vocal Dª. ......................................................................................... Vocal D. ......................................................................................... Vocal D. ......................................................................................... Secretario D. ......................................................................................... Realizado el acto de defensa y lectura de Tesis el día ......................................................................................... en la Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Valencia Calificación ........................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • And Jan Duiker
    THE TEMPLE OF DREAMS AND THE INFORMATION MACHINE THE ANTITHETICAL MOVIE THEATRES OF H.L. DE JONG AND JAN DUIKER DAVID RIVERA Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid [email protected] Accepted: October 23th 2018 ABSTRACT The Tuschinski and Cineac movie theatres in Amsterdam look at each other across the middle of the tiny Regulierbreestraat. Both venues are modern, both are characteristic of their respective eras, and both propose through the metaphor of cinema a radical and committed vision of what the modern world should be. Individually, they express respectively the rapture and vision of imagination and the cold calculation of the machine era. Together, as they can be seen from the street, they manage to figure an oxymoron which itself is a paradigmatic representation of Modernity. This paper examines the language, context and configuration of both buildings and explores the consequences of their programmatic opposition for the tenets of architectural historiography. Keywords: Expressionist Architecture, Suggestion, Empathy, Machine Age, Modernism. "Hollywood is the origin of all the shadows of the world," wrote Joseph Roth in The Antichrist, "a Hades that not only casts its shadows on the outside world, but also makes the living from the outside world who do not sell their shadows, doubles for the shadows of Hades" (Roth 2013: 128). For the great Austrian writer, who at this point in his life was exiled, drunk and desperate about the advance of Nazism, the seventh art was part of the devil's arsenal of tricks. Thanks to it, the Antichrist had managed to completely confuse humans by creating a theatre of fascinating, moving shadows capable of supplanting the real world and depriving people of their souls.
    [Show full text]
  • Heritage-Based Design
    Designing from Heritage – Strategies for Conservation and Conversion Marieke Kuipers Wessel de Jonge Designing from Heritage This publication was made possible thanks to the support of the Rondeltappe Bernoster Kemmers Foundation. Cover image: Architectural paint research in professional practice – uncovering the successive layers on a wall, Open Air School, Amsterdam / Marieke Kuipers ISBN 978-94-6186-802-2 © 2017 TU Delft - Heritage & Architecture No part of these pages, either text or image, may be used for any purpose other than research, academic or non-commercial use. The publisher has done its utmost to trace those who hold the rights to the grafic material used. Designing from Heritage – Strategies for Conservation and Conversion Marieke Kuipers Wessel de Jonge Preface New cubicles inserted as part of the adaptive conversion of the Van Nelle Factory, Rotterdam by Wessel de Jonge Architects / Marieke Kuipers Preface The writing of handbooks for architects knows a long tradition. To my mind, Designing from Heritage does exactly what a We are all familiar with that ‘primordial tome’ of the Roman handbook should do in our current context: stimulating careful Vitruvius, which from the early Renaissance served as base for observation and critical positioning by focussing the attention hundreds of so-called treatises. A building tradition developed on that which is required to achieve architecture of value, or to from the idea that good architecture could be described sustain it. It poses as central question how current generations in the form of rules. can engage design energy with the precision required to deal with the built heritage of previous generations: a forward- When classicism ceased to be the leading principle, the looking process of transformation as a method that leads to a treatise lost its authority as well: when in the nineteenth respectful engagement with heritage.
    [Show full text]
  • Romantic Modernism
    romantic modernism Is it possible for conservationists to approve of the recon- struction of old façades when virtually everything behind them is modern? Should they continue to protect the front façade, when the rest of the historic building has vanished? Is it socially responsible to spend government money on reconstructing a historic building that has been completely destroyed? Can one do such a thing fifty years on? According to reigning ideas in the world of conservation, the answer to all these questions is ‘no’. It is felt that build- Romantic ing a stage set is dishonest, and rebuilding something that no longer exists is labelled a lie against history. Where does this predilection for honesty originate? And why do people prefer modern architecture to the reconstruction of what Modernism has been lost? Perhaps we are witnessing the legacy of Func- tionalism here, a movement that denounced the building of pseudo-architecture. Functionalism originated in Romanti- cism, when architects turned their backs on academic for- Nostalgia in the World malism and strove to invent a new, rational form of building. This romantic hunger for honesty was adopted by the con- wim denslagen of Conservation servationists, giving rise to a new respect for the authentic art work and a rejection of historicist restorations. Among conservationists too, distaste arose for the cultivation of a wim denslagen harmonious urban image, because an urban image that is maintained artificially ‘old’ was seen as a form of fraud. Wim Denslagen (1946) is architectural historian and pro- fessor in the history and theory of conservation at Utrecht University.
    [Show full text]