lntimate Metropolis

Urban Subjects in the

Modern City

Edited by
Vittoria Di Palma, Diana Periton
and Marina Lathouri

E)
$\

Routledqe
raytorarranciftroup

LONDON AND NEWYORK

Contents

Notes on Contributors

vil

Acknowledgements
lntimate Metropolis:

lntroduction

Vittoria Di Palma, Diana Periton and Marina Lathouri

Urban

Life

Diana Periton

Heads: Philip-Lorca diCorcia and the Paradox of

Urban

Portraiture

41

Hugh Campbell

A Space for the lmagination: Depicting Women Readers

in the Nineteenth-Century City

58

Kathryn Brown

'So the flilneur goes for a walk in his room': lnterior,

Arcade, Cinema, Metropolis

72

Charles Rice

Exhibitionism: John Soane's'Model

House'

90

Helene Furjdn

Private House, Public House: Victor Horta's Ubiquitous

Domesticity

'l

Amy Catania Kulper

Drawing and Dispute: The Strategies of the Berlin

Block

132

Katharina Borsi

'The necessity of the plan': Visions of lndividuality and

Collective

Intimacies

153

Marina Lathouri

City ls House and House ls City: Aldo van Eyck, Piet Blom
and the Architecture of Homecoming
Karin Jaschke

175

Chapter 9

City ls House and

House ls City
Aldo van Eyck, Piet Blom
and the Architecture of
Homecoming
Karin Jaschke

At the heart of modern architecture lies a concern with the relationship

between interior and exterior space. The 'bourgeois interior' that Walter
Benjamin described so succinctly as a claustrophobic retreat from the dynamic,

modernizing city became one of the negative references against which

concepts of modern living space were developed in the early twentieth
century.1 Architects set out to design a new type of domestic interior, filled
with 'light, air, and sun', open and in touch with the outside world. However,
this outside world was not the city. Rather, it was 'nature' in various guises,
ranging from the wilderness outside Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie Houses, to
the fields of Ebenezer Howard's Garden CitY, to the lawns stretching beneath
Le Corbusier's Ville Contemporaine. By and large, modernist architects and
planners bypassed the issue of the individual dwelling's relation to public space
as a place of civic encounter, exchange and spectacle.2

The failure of early modern architecture to address the 'domestic'

in relation to the 'metropolitan' is connected to the disciplinary and, to some
extent, professional separation of urban and architectural planning. Although
in practice this split was never absolute, and despite the fact that the meetings

Karin Jaschke

of lhe Congrds lnternationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM, 1928-59)

addressed urban scales from the domestic to the regional, the establishment
of urban planning as a distinct discipline, parallel to architectural design, was
significant. ln the 1950s the group of young architects emerging from CIAM
as Team 10 began to question this split, asking for the'architect-urbanist'to
embrace the built environment as one indivisible whole. Not only did they
question the disciplinary separation, they also asked that the relation between
interior and exterior space be examined anew. They focused on what they
perceived to be a double misunderstanding: it was not 'nature' but the urban
realm that they considered the proper counterpart to private, domestic, interior
space, and the way in which interior and exterior should connect was not
through spatial continuity or visual transparency but through meaningful,
psychologically eff ective transitions.
The notion of 'threshold' was used by Dutch architect and Team 10

member Aldo van Eyck to signify the relationship of different spatial and
psychological registers and scales in the city. Van Eyck conceived of the
relation of interior and exterior spaces not in terms of functionality or aesthetics,
nor as a metaphor for an open society, but in analogy to human mental disposi-

tions and psychic processes. Reframing the issue of the relationship between
interior and exterior spaces as an existentialist and psychological question, and,
at the same time, an urban problem, van Eyck wrote in 1956:
We are not only breathing in, nor are we exclusively breathing out.
This is why it would be so beneficial if the relation of interior space
and exterior space, between individual and common space inside
and outside, between the open and the closed (directed towards

the inside and outside) could be the built mirror of human nature,
so that man can identify with it. These are formal realities because
they are mental realities. Moreover they are not polar but ambivalent
realities.
The dwelling and its extension into the exterior, the city and its

extension into the interior, that's what we have to achieve13

Van Eyck emerged as an important figure in Dutch architecture in
the 1950s. ln 1959, he became editor of the Dutch magazine Forum,which
he turned into a platform for his ideas. He also taught in a number of schools

of architecture. lt is in this context of teaching, writing and practice that van

Eyck developed what he called the 'configurative discipline'. ln a bid to create
meaningful environments with which users could identify, this design method
aimed to integrate hugely different registers and dimensions of the built
environment into coherent 'configurations': at one end of the spectrum, smallscale orders associated traditionally with the domestic realm and private space,
176

City ls House and House ls City

and at the other, the vast dimensions of the modern city and mass-society or

'the greater number'. ln contrast to earlier attempts to articulate different scales

of operation in functionalist or expressionistic ways, 'configurative design'was
predicated on the idea that such articulation and integration could only be
achieved by structural and formal means. lt was in this sense that van Eyck
stated that 'a house must be like a small city if it's to be a real house; a city
like a large house if it's to be real city', a suggestive and conceptually powerful
image that became a paradigmatic figure of thought for his followers.a

A host of ambitious projects, now generally gathered under the label

of Dutch structuralism, resulted from these explorations in the 1960s

and

1970s, including schemes by Piet Blom, Joop van Stigt, Frans van Klingeren,
Onno Greiner, Jan Verhoeven, and, most well known, Herman Hertzberger.s
While some of these were successful in their attempt to relate and to render
intelligible different urban registers, many schemes were negatively received
and failed to operate as intended within the socioeconomic and urban contexts

in which they were built.6 This could be one reason for the relative
of Dutch postwar architecture has
This
follows
the
early
stages
of 'configurative design' by
seen.
chapter
historiographic neglect that this strand

exam,ining van Eyck's theoretical ideas in relation to the work of his student
and prot6g6 Piet Blom. lt will highlight the rationale behind Dutch structuralist

architecture and its protagonists' attempts to find novel ways of negotiating

the relationship between the domestic unit and the urban plan in a

new,

multiscalar urban spatiality.

Aldo van Eyck taught Piet Blom during his first year of study at the

Amsterdam Academy of Architecture in 1956-57. When van Eyck became

editor of the.journal Forum lwith Herman Hertzberger and others), he published

in the very first issue in 1959 a student proiect by Blom, entitled'The Cities
will be lnhabited like Villages' (Figures 9.1 and 9.2).7 The scheme, designed in
Blom's second year, was for a new residential quarter for 800 inhabitants on
the outskirts of Amsterdam. Based on a building block, a bouwsteen, with 24
dwellings of different sizes, layouts, and types of access, the project was in

stark contrast to the slab blocks of uniformly stacked flats that dominated
contemporary residential developments.s These living modules were conceived so that they could be grouped into clusters and rows, forming series
of courtyards and interstitial spaces, and eventually adding up to an entire
neighbourhood or quarter.e
Blom described his 'Cities like Villages' scheme as 'a plan that forces

people to live together'. lt was born out of the desire to

create a communal dwelling in which the dividing walls could be

torn down so that men would be more complete in number and

association. Forcibly, in order to bring home the fact that there is no

Karin Jaschke

dualism between individual and collective existence. lt means

striving towards giving life a greater chance to express itself fully.10
This was a direct reaction both to his childhood experience of the rich community life in Amsterdam's old quarters, and the bland new housing estates
of the postwar years that he knew as a building worker and young draftsman.ll

Blom saw contemporary residential planning in the new towns and

quarters as utterly misguided. A year after his 'Cities like Villages' project he
worked on a 'practical planning exercise' (Praktische oefening stedebouwl'.

91
Piet Blom,'The
Cities will be
Inhabited like
Villages', Study
Project 1958.
Published in Forum,
vol. 14, no.'7.

178

ffi#EEffimdrtr
iL
T-r
L
If;..E1]-.l
2=* p

rl
*.-:.{-1
q"-'-1_
II
I

-J_l-\_I

nt

ril
M.t

HKF<

_lr
ftl

vilr srfteden

* eBntdcn

dri eere.der

+lx1lTI

i
J-t

be*06n&

15.snBdEn

tddal S e$k.n
eibor*ini

;5 i t woainlei v6o. s0d.6

35 won;nssn

E
m
ET

I
--.'t

E
I

Yo.r oud..r m..

S a 3 wrrinp, Ysr ardert

3,r3w6iryaryao.
35r?mn;ngevo6r
Si!w6nin$nvmr
3r,2{dnirsen*or
m6! a tirdcres
"!dsr
X ,nidgan vlrr 6rde*
Se.sqimls n g6e!e

ruiee voaftdo!.t
ie!H, nossriid .l s.hsol
prhiieke

s2

list Blom, "The

Glies will be
H|abited like
Ytrages', Study

toiect

1958.

fublished in Forum,

'td.14, no.7

b"5r.nJdle

lar--.
I I
rr*EfL
r=c
II Ir--_lTr-Hl

,-X
1-(L
l-I
r r.m t r-4
Itrn
I
t

rrmtm

+*,rt.

m
I

!sa

'e,,

?q.{v a

E;*n
r---H"

l,I

ll

rt

k'
1

rTl
"*'tr

Karin Jaschke

this time the plan was for 500 residential units In a development covering a
large area, adjacent to sta-ndard rows of flats and houses arranged around
extensive open courtyards (Figures 9.3, 9.4 and 9.5). ln contrast to these,
Blom,s scheme proposed modular units of interlocking flats and single-family

houses that would form small, enclosed courtyards, with two multi-storey
blocks of flats marking out each court on diagonal corners. Again, these
arrangements could be chained together, forming semi-open courtyards at their
points of juncture. Once more, Blom's student work was published in Forum.
ln the accompanying text, Blom stated: 'l seriously have no idea what "real
urban planning" is about'. Taking his cue from a reality in which 'man is ugly
beautiful (dressed-up workers, people who have no desires beyond getting time

off work) and poor rich', his was an attempt at 'unreal urban planning'' Blom
imagined a wholly different type of inhabitant. 'what would a plan for splendid
ugly people who are rich poor look likeT'he asked, then immediately dismissed
his own efforts, demanding that we

lflorget this plan, because it is asking for another one. For different
people for whom I could feel love. People from an age where,
perhaps at the expense of our Welfare State, there would be welfare
between you-me and the things around us. This is not going against

architecture and urban planning approaches. This is going against

those of us who are still representing and defending them.12
Blom's dismissal of the architectural establishment and the state of
Dutch society at large was in tune with the criticism of postwar developments
in the Netherlands expressed by Forum's editors. Van Eyck had repeatedly
stated that the Netherlands were becoming 'uninhabitable', because of the

soulless character of large-scale planning as well as the bureaucratic and

impersonal nature of the welfare society of the postwar years.13 Herman
Hertzberger, too, was disaffected with the state of affairs, a sentiment that
he expressed in an article entitled 'Three better possibilities', published in
the same issue of Forum as Blom's second proiect. Hertzberger criticized the
reductivist categories, based on psychological and sociological studies, used
by planners to assess and group the population.la For him, it was essential that

architecture account for the complexity of social groupings; beyond that,

Hertzberger believed in architecture's capacity and duty to take on a formative
role itself, to generate community and new social forms. The general thrust of
these ideas was in tune with the high-modernist idea that architecture could
be the catalyst of a new and better society, but the concerns of Blom and
Hertzberger were two steps removed from this modernist legacy. After the
Second World War, early modernist visions of a brand new world gave way to

the more modest aims of the generation of architects represented by Team

180

City ls House and House ls City

10, who sought to respond to society rather than to reinvent it. By the late
1950s, Blom, Hertzberger and other younger architects inspired by van Eyck
nnade it their task to restore those social forms which, in their view, were being

eroded by modernist planning approaches, as well as by broader societal forces.

ln particular, the thriving urban community was felt to be on the verge of

extinction, much like an endangered species (Figure 9.6).15
But by what means did projects such as 'Cities like Villages' intend
to bring about a more self-determined, community-oriented way of life? ln a
straightforward way, the 'Cities like Villages' plan, and indeed the 'practical urban
planning project', sought to encourage encounter and communication. Architectural features including semi-open courtyards, open stairways, large entrance

areas, carefully conceived networks of paths, and the plastic articulation of

to produce rich visual and spatial

connections between adjacent houses and flats, and provide protected areas
that invited inhabitants to make fuller use of exterior spaces. Although related
building volumes and fagades were

to Scandinavian and English New Empiricist efforts to provide more small-scale

and usable environments, and to the attempts of a number of ltalian architects

to develop contemporary housing typologies based on vernacular

urban

patterns, Blom's schemes differed from these in their structural character,

relative independence from context, and lack of stylistic references to vernacular
architecture. ln addition to providing differentiated and more intimate spaces,

the .juxtaposition and concatenation of Blom's units was intended to blur the
boundaries between public and private, inside and outside in novel ways.
Referring to his 'Cities like Villages' project, Blom commented later, 'l hate the
word dwelling, because it is directly associated with the idea of a roof over your
head. Dwelling is also the neighbourhood, the street, the communal facilities
lvorzieningen), the atmosphere of a quarter'.16

ln a similar spirit, in 1962 Blom chose to call his winning entry to

lhe Prix de Rome - a scheme for a children's village - 'A Village like a House',
stating that 'the village hall must be more like an open square than a building,
and, inversely, the village square must be less a square than a building'.17 His
plans were based on an understanding that urban living and urban space are
inherently complex and ambiguous, and his proiect title echoed directly Aldo
van Eyck's phrase that 'a house must be like a small city, a city like a large
house'.18 Ther,e is a suggestion here that urban space should be conceived in

terms of domestic space, or even that the urban should be thought of

as

externalized domesticity and the domestic as internalized urbanity. Blom's aim

was to break away from dualistic concepts of public and private and the
simplistic correlation of inside with the domestic and outside with the urban
realm. ln Blom's projects, this was to be achieved primarily through intricate
layouts, in which each flat, house and courtyard was involved in a range of
different spatial and social orders. ln such a way, it was hoped, inhabitants
r81

9.3

Piet Blom,
'Practical
Exercise', Stud;

,#
t7

\\

il{/

l(

*.7"'
#\i

\\
)\\

if;l

I/
,,,,
.,

|E:

'E{[
t{tlE

l,t

l;

i
l

ffi

ffi
rffinr

isEH

./i
,1

@i;

:L{if
-m

,'\.Gw

---*m

I
iHEk",
1
\tr Ir-xECH
Jlffilltlil

ffi

ffi

7=-*\
*=.-J

,-*l

ii\J, .ffin*
i_iil
'''\

\
\{\

'\
,,\

(-t,
ll
lr\
li
\
\

9.4

Piet Blom,
'Practical Planning
Exercise', Study
Proiect 1959.
Published tn Forum,

vol. 15, no.5.

r&

c
!l
s

*
I

3
..e

r
N

s
L

0l

E
ro

66n gezi"eLuie*n

'|

*'*

rg'

"r$6, Fo

"

75{

79*

t5a

"

r&
,!9C.

'5.

. *c

"s

Karin Jaschl(e

would identify with their environment. They would do so because one order
of the city (public space) would perform somewhat analogously to another
(domestic space), with familiar characteristics, such as the intimacy of domestic
spaces, to be found in public spaces. ln a less direct way, they would do so

because, as van Eyck put it, the spatial 'ambivalence' created would reflect

'mental realities'.
The built environment, in the view of Blom and van Eyck, had to
match the human mind's complex and fundamentally non-dualistic structure.
Where such a structural homology existed in consciously or sub-consciously
perceptible ways, inhabitants would feel 'at home' in their environment, an

effect van Eyck accordingly called 'built homecoming'. For him, the structural
relation between different orders of the city and relative rather than absolute
sets of qualities constituted the ambivalent and dynamic nature of urban
184

9.5

Piet Blom,
'Practical Planning
Exercise', Study
Project 1959.
Published in Forum.

vol.15, no.5.

City ls House and House ls City

9.6

'Ou'il nous est difficile', bad versus good

urban space as seen by the new editors
of Forum in 1959.
Published in Forum, vol. '14, no. 7).

(J
(.)

H-r
*r

{-,
a
(J

t7

-{

c)
space. Van Eyck characteristically used the terms 'duo-phenomena' and, later,

'twin-phenomena'to describe the reciprocal nature of house and city, and 'form'
and 'counterform' to describe the correspondence of mental and social dispositions and spatial structures. ln contrast to van Eyck's thoroughly intellectual
approach, Blom had Iittle interest in grounding his work in theoretical terms,

but both architects shared an intense interest in the structural nature of the
urban problem. While Blom's exploration of structure, inspired by an interest
in J.S. Bach's fugal compositions, took place primarily in his design work, van
Eyck drew on a wide range of academic and literary sources to inform his
thinking on structure. lt is worth tracing, if briefly, some of van Eyck's sources.
Van Eyck's ideas about structural ordering principles were indebted

to contemporary philosophical and anthropological writings, in particular Martin

Buber's theory of the 'in-between' and studies in anthropology that conceived
of society and culture as structural entities, or systems of psycho-social and
material relations.le Through his interest in traditional, non-Western cultures,
van Eyck was familiar with anthropological research, most importantly Ruth

Benedict's seminal study f rom 1934, Patterns of Culture.ln this work, Benedict

described cultures as patterned configurations.2o According

to her theory

although there are recurrent patterns and parameters in cultures across the
world, as well as a shared mental and physical disposition in all men, each
culture develops and is in turn defined by its very own structural configuration.
This idea entailed a rejection of contemporary deterministic explanations of a
functional, environmental, or biological nature as well as generalizing and

Karin Jaschke

universalizing notions of 'culture'. Although these studies anticipated aspects

of structural anthropology later developed by Claude L6vi-Strauss, in Benedict's
perspective, a culture derived its character from a specific structural configuration rather than from universal structural principles. Culture was the result
of a particular and creative process and could therefore be described in terms
borrowed from the arts, as Gesfalt-figure, a formal phenomenon, or figure

on the ground. A culture was seen as a delineated entity, its outline and
constitutive elements determined by its structural order, a structural order
that might be more, or less, cohesive.
ln 1960 van Eyck encountered what he deemed the perfect
illustration of Benedict's theory when he visited the Dogon, a people in presentday Mali. Van Eyck had been reading aboutthe Dogon since the late 1930s. ln

a long article he elaborated on what he saw as the correspondence of 'form'

and 'counterform' in their culture.2l He noted in a lecture that what was of
particular interest to him was the 'unrivalled virtuosity' with which 'the archaic

tribal artists, . . . always drawn as they are to both centrality and numerical
sequence, have managed to set the former free, allowing it to breathe and
become spatial and impart rhythm and variety to the latter'.22 Van Eyck saw
this spatial dynamic as a dialectic reflection of the structured social patterns
of tribal society as a whole: the man-made environment and material culture
provided the 'counterform' of the social or'existential' reality of the individual
and the group, the 'form'. Speaking of tribal artists' ability to manipulate
rhythmic and geometric patterns, van Eyck said:
it was never a question of allowing myself to be directly influenced
by what I see when faced with their artefacts, or of applying their

method directly. lmportant to me has been . . . that it is possible

that this kind of language actually exists with proper scope. lf it can
be done in their world in their way it can be done in ours, our way.23
That which the linguist and anthropologist Benjamin Whorf

another important reference for van Eyck

- whose work was

discovered about the structural

nature and consciousness-forming role of language, van Eyck sought in material

culture, in the built environment.2a Van Eyck believed that valuable work for 'our
had been done concerning pattern, structure and number

world'- the West -

in a modern context by avant-garde artists such as Paul Klee, Piet Mondrian and

the Swiss painter Richard Lohse. However, he was worried that not only was
modern Western society as yet unable to give material shape to socialform and

psychological make-up, but, worse than that, it had little pattern or 'form' to
which architecture could respond.25 ln spite of this, van Eyck firmly believed
that it was architecture's task to provide

fertile setting in which modern society

could begin to develop its own contemporary'form'.

186

City Is House and House ls Gity

As a result of such considerations, structural aspects of the built

environment were singled out as the key to an architecture-led restoration of
social form, not on a small scale, but catering to the 'greater number', to mass
society

something with which architects had so far utterly failed to come to

terms, according to van Eyck. Van Eyck sought a dynamic, complex, structural
order, which he called variously'harmony in motion', the 'aesthetics of number',
or the 'casbah organis6'. Although this latter term, like the title of Blom's 'Cities

like Villages' project, suggested a move towards smaller-scale environments,

what was most promising about the concept of 'casbah organis6' to van Eyck
and his followers was precisely its potential to cater to mass society. 'lt is of
primary importance', wrote Hertzberger, discussing Blom's 'practical urban
planning prolecf , 'that this plan has the latent possibility of expansion'. This expan-

sion would not be additive in nature, but 'configurative' or structural, so that

every counterform becomes principal form at the same time

covering the complete surface like the structural formula of a cyclical

combination. Because dwelling-cells that are placed side by side

belong alternatively to the 'next' unit while remaining links of one
and the same chain, a mingling - plastically anyvvay - results, in
which the timidity of each court opens up towards a greater whole,

while keeping its identity.26

ln 1962, following the success of his recently finished orphanage

building in Amsterdam, and in the light of ongoing debates about projects by
Blom and other young architects,2T van Eyck published an article in Forum
entitled 'Steps Towards a Configurative Discipline', which appeared together

with a report on the culture and architecture of Pueblo lndians in the southwest of the United States.28 Here van Eyck made a case for'structural design'
and for'architecture as configurative discipline', allowing for the development
of new patterns of association, and, eventually, the reconstitution of modern
society's 'form'. These ideas led to years of intense experimentation at the
Architecture Academy in Amsterdam and to a number of residential and
communal prolects built across the Netherlands.2e

'Configurative design' worked on the basis of the systematic

multiplication of a basic figure into self-similar Gestalf-forms at different scales
(Figure 9.7). Relationships between different scales and spatial orders were to

be established through either formal (iconic) or morphological (structural)

similarity. Van Eyck's notion of 'homecoming' was translated into a design
system where different'levels of association', comparable to Alison and Peter
Smithson's orders of 'house, street, district, city',3o would be organized with

the help of a recurrent formal motif - a motif that embodied a theme, or

smallest common denominator, of a given instance of human association.

Karin Jaschke

The themes that were developed generally addressed relational situations,

of open/closed, serviced/serving, centrifugal/centripetal, private/public, and

so on. Each motif or theme was distilled by the architect, to be applied at

different scales or levels of social and spatial association, thus ensuring their
integration. ln recognizing the overall ordel inhabitants would be able to make
sense of their environment and identify with it, both in its constituent parts
and as a whole.3r

Despite the original intentions, many of the experimental configurative design schemes were like mega-structures in their approach, producing little
more than a symbol or cipher of a model of culture and society as patterned

rrri'll::,,.,lrlai:ii,,,r':::,i:l*iii],:.

:k-,1

"ffi:;

,J
l:arltisl:i%
:rlirirut::t:

re:X::

26l:
%
!B
9t,,,s,,lll!

ilt:i1ll9

ffi

"S&
::,:;a:l-l::: :,::

1:aa..t1::::':'

9.7

Gisteren, Morgen
(Yesterday,
.:.j:

Today),

configurative
pattern with
superimposed grid

structure,
probably by Piet
Blom.
Published in Forum

vol.

'15, no. 5.

City ls House and House ls City

Gestatt, which was then proiected onto the urban plan. There was also a clear
link to postwar cybernetic paradigms, albeit unexpressed, and a fascination with

self-governing systems that ran counter to the humanist premises of the work
of Blom and van Eyck. Van Eyck, who foresaw these dangers, had already raised

the issue of how configurative design might operate at urban and regional
scales.32 Echoing

the ideas of the Smithsons, as well as those of Kenzo Tange

and Louis Kahn, van Eyck proposed the introduction of infrastructural elements,
such as road networks, as part of the scheme. ln addition to these, he suggested

that a system of 'large elements with a wide, specifically civic meaning or city
forming potential', might help in shaping 'the urban image - awareness of the
total urban cluster" and therefore increase the sense of urban identity.33 These
elements included traditional iconic figures such as churches, squares and
theatres, and also rivers and other natural landmarks.
These attempts to think through the design of the built environment in ways that would overcome the alienating effects of particular
aspects of modernist planning were, of course, part of a wider concern with
meaning and signification in the postwar period. Through the different proiects

and writings of configurative design, a number of different approaches to

the issues in question were proposed. As we have seen, the structural
or morphological layout of the city, as opposed to its functional and formal
order, was thought to lead to 'awareness of total urban cluster', evidently
relying on cognitive mapping mechanisms as the main source of orientation, identification and, hence, meaning in the urban realm. This was a
relatively abstract approach compared to van Eyck's demand for iconic elements
in the city, where meaning would be derived from specific and visually distinct

urban .features, set against

the backdrop of the city in a figure-ground

relationship, and suggesting

conceptual link to Gestalt-theory. on yet another

level, Blom's student work and many of the buildings of van Eyck and
Hertzberger encouraged the inhabitant's immediate physical engagement
with the environment, implying a phenomenological understanding of the
constitution of meaning.3a
At the intersection of these different ways of conceiving of meaning

and orientation in the urban realm, a number of tactics within the broader
strategic aims of the configurative approach can be identified. Three examples
of such tactics, or implicit understandings, are, first, the idea that meaning can
arise through (rather than from) form; second, the articulation of individual
dwellings as elements constitutive of rather than subsidiary to the public
urban realm; and third, the use of spatial archetypes to encourage the creative
appropriation of domestic and urban spaces. Let us sketch these in turn'
Underlying both Blom's design work and the theoretical approaches
of van Eyck and Hertzberger, there is a belief that the urban environment should
be able somehow to absorb socio-cultural meaning, or should be so disposed

Karin Jaschke

as to allow the individual and the collectivity to project experiences onto it

to map semantic content onto the syntactic configuration. Understood in this

way, the built environment is meaningful not only through its own inherent
properties (be they functional, aesthetic or symbolic), but also in its role as an
agent and receptacle, ready to galvanize new meaning and to take it on, thus
promoting the creation of social 'form'. 'Configured' urban form may, in this
sense, be said to accommodate the constitution of meaning in the built
environment. This, of course, raises the question of how such forms might be
determined. Van Eyck's enquiry into patterns and structures in vernacular
material culture and avant-garde art, as well as his efforts to understand the
psychological processes involved in the making of cultural identity and meaning,

were aimed at answering precisely this question.

Formal plasticity in the configurative design projects discussed here

was also, at least in part, the result of a desire to articulate the individual
dwelling as part of the public realm. ln these schemes, individual dwellings are
not hidden behind a fagade or inserted into the interstices between public
spaces. lnstead, they literally stand out; through the way that they are physically
shaped, they determine common spaces and shared territories. As Hertzberger

boldly stated, the 'dwelling-unit' is the 'primary entity', the 'smallest complete
building unit and basis of a configurative design process'.35 Public or communal
space is effectively shaped by private or individual space.36 This was not a
sentimental striving for a notion of pre-modern collectivism: the intention was
to foreground the individual as the dialectic 'other' of the collective.

Finally, instead of using iconography or typology to generate

meaning, the constitutive motifs in schemes by Blom, van Eyck, Hertzberger
and others consisted in what they described as 'archetypes': spatial elements
and situations that they understood as elementary units of physical and sociopsychic inhabitation.3T These included, for instance, outlooks, such as podiums,

terraces and balconies; connections, such as steps and staircases, passages

and paths; shelters, including roofs, niches and corners; barriers; and spaces
intended to organize of themselves social relations. ln his children's village,
Blom had created'theatrical spaces' in the patios between the residential units
(Figure 9.8); he wrote about them as follows:
main point: what if no performance is being given? The 'theatre' can

be played in every day, it is an extra large landing and can be used

for everyday traffic. ln this inhabited theatre it must be possible to
practice 'acting' every day, in many places and in different situations.
Therefore, there is not a central theatre, as might be expected, but
one normal theatre and three times an imaginary theatre and, in
addition to that, still many more places in which, by just behaving
normally, you seem to be acting.38

Gity ls House and House ls City

ln a housing scheme of Blom's in Helmond, a real theatre became

the focal point for the community. The theatre was not separate, but embedded
within the housing, identifiable but not'other'. ln these projects, public space

was deemed highly significant, but it relied only marginally on traditional,

symbolic indicators of civic meaning. Instead, smaller, less determined
elements

primary units, or spalial Urforms of living

fulfilled their role at

different levels or scales. Examples of these were regularly illustrated in Forum

magazine, in photographs of terraces, steps and thresholds from both modern
and traditional contexts.3e

ln conclusion, configurative design as conceived by van

exemplified in Blom's schemes, and explored and realized by a generation of

Dutch students and architects in the 1960s and 1970s, might not have lived

:.8
Piet Blom,
'Children's
Mllage', winning
scheme Prix de

up to the major task that it set for itself, namely to restore 'form' and social

integrity to modern society. In many cases, projects failed due to their

schematic nature, and to a kind of architectural hubris very close to that which
hhe Forum editors had criticized in earlier modernist approaches. But both in

Rome 1962

:Jblished in Forum,
,

Eyck,

its theoretical considerations, and in moments of its realization, configurative

:1. '17, no. 3

:::..,aaaaat.,..::g:,:,

-:aaaa.:...:::y:::.

,:)ililii'r:l:,r,r ii:::irii:::rr,,,.

:aaaat::aL.....1::.;:

r'::"irrr'iiri::rlV

':'..ffi

.SE :i:i:*il9ll:rgtiiiiil

;'-

lell:ii6lIZlLi

A\:

^-.tnl;],

Karin Jaschke

design did manage to question earlier ways of conceiving urban space,

particularly modernism's negation of the'city through its redefinition of 'the
outside world'. Categorically opposed to a mechanistic or rationalistic
understanding of the city, van Eyck and his colleagues developed a range of
formal and conceptual tactics to rethink the city's spatiality, from the domestic
scale to that of the region, to see it as the key to a holistic, modern and
collective existence. On the small scale, configurative pro.jects contain elements

that are intriguingly subversive and restorative at the same time, while on the
large scale a new kind of structural coherence and formal experimentation
become possible. To conceive these different scales always in conjunction with
one another remains a challenge and an opportunity for architecture, one for

which the ingenuity and breadth of investigation that drove configurative

design may well be an inspiration.a0

Notes

Walter Benjamin, 'Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century', in Beflectlons (New York: Schocken
Books, 1989), pp. '146-62.

The Constructivist concept of the Social Condenser, other schemes in the early Soviet Union,
and Le Corbusiers large-scale projects from the 1930s and, later, the Unit6s d'Habitation are
perhaps exceptions to this. lf in the Communist context the aim of integrating private and public
(or political) realms by architectural means tended to eclipse the former and glorify the latter.

Le Corbusier s projects absorbed and, to some extent, dissolved public into private spaces.

Aldo van Eyck, 'Over Binnen- En Buitenruimte', Forum 11, no. 5 (1956), 133. Author's
translation.

Van Eyck repeated this idea in many places and in varying formulations. See, for instance, Aido

van Eyck, 'ls Architecture Going to Reconcile Basic Values?'. in Oscar Newman \ed.l CIAM '59

,, Otterlo (Stuttgart: Kremer Verlag,

See Arnulf LLlchinget 'Strukturalismus

961 ), pp.

26-35.

-Architektur

+ Wohnen 29, no. 5 (1974), 209-1 2; 'Strukturalismus

(Special lssue)', Bauen

als Symbol der Demokratisierung' , Bauen

Eine neue Str6mung in der Architektur

+ Wohnen31, no. 'l (1976); Structuralism in Architecture and Urban

P/ann,ng (Stuttgart: Karl Krdmer Verlag, 1981). For a more recent survey see Wim van Heuvel,
Structuralism in Dutch Architecture (Rotterdam: Uitgeverij 010, 1992).

Herman Hertzberger's headquarters for the Dutch insurance company Centraal Beheer is,
arguably, the most successful example of this movement or school. Centraal Beheer's open
plan offices were designed around small courtyards and doubled up as circulation, galleries
and balconies. The building sought to emulate the crty in its complex but structured circulation

patterns and spatial structure. By contrast, the labyrinthine and cavernous character of Piet
Blom's aptly titled Bastille building (a student centre at the University of Twente), in spite of
being conceived in a similar spirit to Centraal Beheer, illustrates the fallacies of the 'house as

city' concept. See Herman Hertzberger, Lessons for Students in Architecture (Rotterdam:
Uitgeverij 010, 1998) and Universiteit fwente, Vormgeven aan de Campus/Designing the
Campus University of Twente (Twente: University of Twente Press, 1997).

7'Project P Blom;

Opgave VB.O.-Amsterdam', Forum 14, no. 7 (1959)., 244-7.

Blom s bouwsteen was not dissimilar to the stempelor stamp approach of Jakob Bakema and

Lotte Stam-Beese who, in the early 1950s, planned new quarters on the basis of set
of buildings around courtyards rather than single slab-blocks. Both were
reactions to the sterile spatial layout of CIAM Zeilenbau, but Blom's approach was of much
greater spatial complexity than the still formulaic pattern of the siempel Blom s unconventional

configurations

student project was published to follow directly after illustrations of Bakema's large-scale and
192

CitY ls House and House ls CitY

prestlgious Pendrecht and Alexanderpolder projects, concluding the first issue of Forurn by its
new editors on a distinctly provocative note.
Van Eyck included this project in his presentation at the last clAlvl congress in otterlo, where

a preprint of the first issue of Forum was distributed to the delegates. such a prominent
exposure of a student project to the entire community of CIAM was unusual, and indicative
of van Eyck's esteem for Blom's work. For an account of van Eyck's presentation at Otterlo,
see Francis strauven, Aldo van Eyck: The shape of Relativify (Amsterdam: Architectura and
Natura, 1998), pp.346-54. Another project of Blom's, the Noah's Ark scheme, would later
become the object of a serious dispute between van Eyck and other Team 10 members, in
particular Alison and Peter smithson, at their meeting in Royaumont in 1962. See Alison
Smithson (ed.l, Team 10 Meetings (Delft: University of Delft, 1991), pp. 7&-9.
10
11

I (1959), 322-3. Author's translation.

seerp
Hiddema, Piet Blom En De Kunst Van Het
Blom,
see
on
information
For biographical
Bouwen (Groningen: Academy Minerva Press, 1984). Blom',s categorical rejection of the
modernist legacy is in opposition to the older generation's more ambiguous relationship with
Piet Blom, 'Project P. Blom', Forum 14, no.

12

early and high modernist approaches, such as Aldo van Eyck's.

'l
Piet Blom, 'Toelichting Van P Blom', Forum 15, no. 5 (1 961 ), 85.

'14

See for instance Forum, vol. 14, no. 7 (September'1959), 199.

Herman Hertzberger, 'Three Better Possibilities' , Forum 15, no 5 (1961),

15

5H0,

93'

The sense that the urban community was becoming extinct, and that its dissolution should be
actively prevented. was given more explicit expression in Blom's active membership of the
Dutch Provo group, a politicized urban youth movement with anarchic tendencies with which

both Hertzberger and van Eyck openly sympathized.

tb piet Blom, quoted in Hiddema. Piet Btom En De Kunst Van Het Bouwen, 13. Author's
translation.

no l

(1963),

17

Piet Blom,'Proefkamp En EindkampVoor De Prix De Rome 1962', Forum 17,

18

2F48. English translation in appendix, no page numbers.

Herman Hertzberger discussed Blom's project in conjunction with Michiel Brinkman's 1921
residential scheme in Spangen, Rotterdam, which he described as a singular but significant
early instance of organizing private dwellings, semi-public, and public areas in a differentiated

manner. See Hertzberger, 'Three Better Possibilities'.

see, for instance. Martin Buber, Between Man and Man, trans. R. G. Smith (London: Kegan
Paul,1947).

20
21

Ruth Benedict. Pitterns of Culture (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1989 t19341)'
AldovanEyck,'Dogon: Mand-Huis-Dorp-Wereld', Forum17,no.4(1963,published1967),
29-50. Edited English versions appeared under the title 'A miracle of moderation'; it can be
found in George Baird and Charles Jencks ledsl Meaning in Architecture (London: Barrie &

Rockliff; 1969), pp. 170-230.

22

Aldo van Eyck,

'1e Klad, Tribal Art'. private archive of Hannie van Eyck, c.1976. original

in

English.

23

lbid.

24

SeeBenjaminLeewhorf, Language,Thought,andReality(cambridge,MA:

MlTPress, 1956).

The idea that the built environment can act as a 'breeding ground'for community life or social

structures more generally might be related to the 'whorf-sapir' thesis on the formative
influence of language on cognitive processes.

25

26
27

VanEyckasked,'lfsocietyhasnoform.canthearchitectsbuildthecounterform?'-seeAldo
van Eyck. 'De Verkapte Opdrachtgever En Het Grote Woord "Neen"' ('The Fake Client and
the Great Word "No" '1. Forum 16, no. 3 (1962), 79-80.
Hertzberget 'Three Better Possibilities'. Note that form and counterform are used here in the
sense of complementary physical Structures rather than in van Eyck's more abstract Sense of
corresponding social and built structures.
See,for instance, Forum 15, no. 2 (July 1960) and no. 8 (August 1961)'

r93

Karin Jaschke

28

Aldo van Eyck, 'De Straling Van Het Configuratieve', 'Steps Towards a Configurative Discipline'.
Forum 16, no. 3 (1 962), 81 -94. Note that the Dutch and English texts do not correspond entirely.
See also, in the same issue, van Eyck, 'De Verkapte Opdrachtgever En Het Grote Woord

"Neen"'.
?o

See Forum 16, no.5 (October-November'1962), and in particular Forum17, no.3 (1963) for
case studies and explanations of configuratrve design. Hertzberger and another Forum editor,
Dick Apon, were teaching at the Architecture Academy where van Eyck had previously been
a tutor, and it was their students who played a major role in developing and testing the
configurative method. For a wide-ranging account of the period in question, see Dirk van den
Heuvel, J. van Triest and M. Steigenga, Lessons: Tupker/Brsse/ada (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij SUN,
2003). Hans Tupker's student projects were featured repeatedly in Forum. For an overview of
built projects. see Wim J. van Heuvel, Structuralism in Dutch Architecture.

30

Peter and Alison Smithson presented these 'levels of association' at the gth CIAM meeting in

in 1953. See Dirk van den Heuvel and Max Risselada (edsl, Team
195}1981: ln Search of Utopia lRotterdam: NAI Publishers, 2005), pp. 30-3.

Aix-en-Provence
3'1

10

HermanHertzberger,'EenStudieinConfiguratie', Forum17, no.4('1963,published1967l,5-12,

appendix 2-3. Projects presented and discussed in this issue were by R. Blom van Asseldelft,

32

J. Stroeve, J. Koning and Hans Tupker.

See van Eyck, 'De Straling Van Het Configuratieve'

34

A comparative study of configurative design and other work of the 1960s, including, for

lbid., 85.
instance, that of Robert Venturi and Kevin Lynch, would show impofiant parallels between
these different yet related approaches. Equally, a consideration of configurative design in
relation to Gestalt- and phenomenological theory would be revealing of the underlying

assumptions of configurative ideas.

35

Hertzberger, 'Een Studie in Configuratie', 2.

.tb

Joop van Stigt. winner of the second prize in the Prix de Bome competition in 1962, explained

the logic of his design for a children's village in a way that was similar to Blom's description.
He stated that '[t]he heart of the village is meant to be the big room which is designed in the
centre of the village hall. lts shape is developed by making use of the structural form of the
surrounding rooms and by the projecting rafters thus formed, to be used as combined beams'.
Joop van Stigt, 'Eindkamp Voor De Prix De Rome 1962' , Forum 17 , no. 1

(1

963). 4 and appendix.

This interest in 'archetypes' could usefully be compared to Aldo Rossi's exploration of

historically constituted signifiers and the subconscious appreciation of residual typological
meaning. See Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the Clty (Cambridge, MA: Graham Foundation,
1

38

982).

Blom, 'Proefkamp En Eindkamp Voor De Prix De Rome 1962', 31 and appendix. For Blom's
project in Helmond, see Hiddema, Piet Blom En De KunstVan Het Bouwen.

39

For examples of the engagement with such 'archetypal' spaces and formal elements, see
Forum vol. 14, no. 8, and vol. 1 5, no. 3; Joop Hardy, B. Majorick and D. van Sliedregt, [4/onen:

gisteren, vandaag (Amslerdam: Uitgeversmaatschappij Holland, 1957); Herman Hertzbergel

Lessons for Students in Architecture. Note that Hertzberger uses the notion of the 'archetypical'
in a different sense, relating it to the generative processes of configurative design

Hertzberger, 'Naaschrift 1 967' ('Postcript 1967'1, Forum 17, no. 4

(1

- see Herman

967). Note too the striking

parallels between some aspects of Blom's work and ideas in Christopher Alexander's A Pattern
Language: Towns, Buildings, Constructions (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,
1977). Alexander works in a kind of reverse order to Blom and the precepts of configurative
design, from the abstract and systemic to more localized and specific ideas.
40

194

would like to thank Francis Strauven for his comments and advice on this chapter.