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Research installation

Habitat: Expanding Architecture

Jaap Bakema (left), Peter Smithson and Jacqueline Tyrwhitt discuss the MARS Group contribution during the CIAM conference in Dubrovnik, 1956. Photographer unknown. Collection Het Nieuwe Instituut, TTEN f5
Jaap Bakema (left), Peter Smithson and Jacqueline Tyrwhitt discuss the MARS Group contribution during the CIAM conference in Dubrovnik, 1956. Photographer unknown. Collection Het Nieuwe Instituut, TTEN f5

Habitat: Expanding Architecture is a research installation which captures a key moment in the history of architecture and urban planning: the tenth CIAM conference at Dubrovnik in 1956. Here the concept 'habitat' was a central theme: a broader understanding of architecture through a new ecological approach viewing architecture less as an autonomous discipline than as part of larger, dynamic whole. Habitat shows work from the archives of Aldo van Eyck, Jaap Bakema and Alison & Peter Smithson, together with more recent work by Pjotr Gonggrijp and Frits Palmboom. The installation serves as a platform for further study and conversation about the meaning of ‘habitat’ then and now.

habitat is part of total space
date
19/10/2018
through
10/03/2019
 
 
location

Het Nieuwe Instituut
Museumpark 25
3015 CB Rotterdam

 

CIAM

In 1956, a visionary group of architects gathered in Dubrovnik under the name CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne) in search of ways to radically innovate urban planning and architecture and to realise new, better living conditions. Instead of considering cities as disparate collections of buildings, they viewed them as coherent systems and ecological networks. Vigorous discussion about habitat culminated in the end of CIAM and the establishment of a new avant-garde group: Team 10, which made their mark with their 'Statement on Habitat'. Habitat: Expanding Architecture examines what this meant for architecture then and now.

Ecological approach

The exhibition presents a reconstruction of the material CIAM delegates showed at Dubrovnik in 1956. In addition to work by major postwar Team 10 architects such as Jaap Bakema, Aldo van Eyck and Alison & Peter Smithson, exhibits include work by James Stirling, Piero Bottoni, Arne Korsmo, Geir Grung, the Finnish group PTAH and the Portuguese CIAM Porto group. Alongside this historical archive material selections from the Nieuwe Instituut collection and private collections are included to further illustrate how ecological and systems theory approaches to architecture have been interpreted in different ways since then: phenomenal studies on the connection between settlement and landscape formation by Pjotr Gonggrijp, transformative interpretation of the Dutch delta landscape by Frits Palmboom, ecological interventions by planner and activist Joost Váhl, and discussions about Delft’s Tanthof district designed by Van den Broek and Bakema together with the Tanthof workgroup. Various 1980s projects are also showcased, including the Nederland Nu Als Ontwerp project and the Tapijtmetropool study by Willem Jan Neutelings

Pjotr Gonggrijp. Various types of landscape in the Netherlands delta region, 1969. Scale 1:100.000. Situation c.1550 and later. Lowest sheet shows landscape; top sheet shows settlement pattern and changed landscape (dune formation). Collection Het Nieuwe Instituut, GONG 3

Seminars and debates

Habitat: Expanding Architecture combines archive research with public presentations. It incorporates an intensive programme of seminars and conversations with international guests, students, historians, architects and planners. The installation is arranged as a platform to examine numerous questions relating to 'habitat': what is the significance of habitat as a new ecological paradigm for architecture and planning – whether in a historical or a contemporary context? What is the significance of no longer thinking in terms of objects, form and construction, but rather in terms of processes, systems and networks?

Lectures

Habitat: Expanding Architecture. Photo Johannes Schwartz.

Aldo & Hannie van Eyck Conference

During Habitat the fifth annual Jaap Bakema Study Centre conference will take place dedicated in 2018 to the work of Aldo & Hannie van Eyck. The conference, entitled The Irritant Principle of Renewal, will run from 28-30 November 2018.

Total Space

Habitat is the first in a series of Total Space programme installations following the Structuralism exhibition of 2014. Total Space delves into the State Archive for Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning to reflect on today’s questions, in particular the interdisciplinary traffic between architecture, planning, anthropology and system theory that marked the 1950s and 60s. The first publication and two international workshops were realised in 2015-2016.
all activities