Date published: 2008/02/12
The Cambridge University Arcsoc society is running a series of lectures by Dutch architects this term, with sponsorship by the Dutch Embassy. The first lecture was by Francine Houben of Mecanoo Architecten. After a suitably sexist introduction by the head of department (about how it was good to have a woman speaker because it was supposed to be inspirational to women students), Houben spent over an hour going through some of the recent projects of the firm.
The title of her talk, "Dutch Mountains", refers to buildings, since these are the tallest features in the heart of Holland. Not surprisingly, much of Mecanoo's work is in Holland itself. She mentioned a library, an open air museum, a historic museum, a stadium extension, a new city hall and train station, and a tower called Fiftytwodegrees in Nijmegen (because that is the latitude of the city). And the work abroad included a theatre and a court in Spain, a folly in Japan, and a performing arts centre in Taiwan. And last, and perhaps least (she was not even going to mention it but was asked to), a housing development, Fox Hill, at the edge of a town near Sheffield.
They all look ok (well, many are not built yet so this is in virtual reality) but of course unless you are a user of a building, you cannot really tell whether any of it works. She mentioned a few times that her budgets were not great (and apparently on this score you always have to mention Norman Foster in comparison). At the end someone asked about the budget for the performing arts centre and she did not provide a figure.
English architects (and urban planners) always seem to drool at Dutch architecture and architects. Probably because Dutch architects seem to have a much bigger role to play in housing than English architects in England. And Houben was happy to play along (she admitted to being a Dutch nationalist) and said that she found housing in England (and Spain) to be pretty dreadfully uniform.
But almost the most interesting part of her talk was about "Mobility". Apparently she has a big thing about mobility, although she did not really clarify this very well. But she did mention that she looked at the highways between Amsterdam and Rotterdam and Utrecht, and as part of some Rotterdam Architecture Biennale that she organised, she got ten other cities around the world to look at similar highways. She had one odd view of Dutch highways, namely that apparently it was important to see "traditional" Dutch scenery from the highways, so ribbon development should not be allowed. But one of the points of transport links is that it is totally natural (and stupid not to allow) development alongside. This is not to say that there should not be thought about the development. But do people really need to see Dutch windmills as they drive along? If that is so important then get off the highway and travel the back roads.
Houben happens to live in Rotterdam and work in Delft, and she said her family was spread around Holland so she drove around a lot to visit them. So she can see the benefit of cars, and indeed the general benefit of mobility. At the end someone pointed out that this was completely the opposite approach to most English architects and urban planners, where hatred of the car is always the first, and practically the only, item on the agenda. Houben dismissed this by saying that Holland had gone down this approach in the seventies, where everyone was supposed to be forced to take public transport, and it was a failure. As she said, "you cannot say that 90% of the people are wrong". Unfortunately, in England, the ruling elite perpetually do say that 90% (well, more like 75%) of the people are wrong.
_________________________________________________________
All material not included from other sources is copyright cambridge2000.com.
For further information or questions email: info [at] cambridge2000 [dot] com
(replace "[at]" with "@" and "[dot]" with ".").