This chapter addresses architecture as a cultural and visual medium, in which the design process is typically hidden in office archives and the multiple media of design genesis. In modernist architecture, the architect was seen as a visionary genius and a semblance of “purity” was integral to understanding a building’s design. This stands in contrast to how buildings have historically come to be: it neglects the many actors and elements that “construct” the final project, from materials available to local building habits and from contractors to codes and regulations. Revisiting the design process from the perspective of genetic criticism allows a review of the multiple paths that are brought together in a final, working drawing from which the contractor can begin to build. This chapter addresses the pre-construction design phase from initial sketch to final plans in order to reveal how different media intervene in the thought process, and how building cultures express themselves in the result.

The chapters in this book developed out of an online symposium called The Practice of Architectural Research (8–10 October 2020), which examined a research field that operates between design practice and the formation of theory and history. As a consequence, it also explored – though largely implicitly – the character and legitimacy of the linking figure: the hybrid practitioner, who combines one or more academic or creative roles and activities. The special condition of hybridity as it came to the fore in the symposium dialogues is addressed in this text. While the many abstract submissions demonstrated a general interest in the theme, the symposium itself revealed a diversity in types of researchers. Even though most of the participants shared an education in an architecture school, individual career paths had subsequently diverged sig¬nificantly. These range from academics with full time university careers, and architects writing and teaching while running an architectural office, to the majority operating somewhere in between. Together their variegated papers and presentations constituted a rich and divergent range of stances within, and reflections on, the field of “the hybrid practice.”

In 1857, the architect Henri Labrouste set himself to the task of designing the new Bibliothèque Impériale (later Nationale) in Paris. Already at the very start of the project, Labrouste had decided on an iron construction for its interior. That in itself was not an extraordinary choice, since from the mid-nineteenth century, iron had rapidly become widespread in the French construction industry, promoted for its affordability and incombustibility. His decision to keep the material visible and let the properties of iron guide his design does point to a specific awareness of the material. At the time, exposed iron constructions were restricted to infrastructural works and commercial buildings, and never visibly used in representational buildings for the state or cultural institutions. The material of choice for these projects had thus far been stone, whose properties had determined the architectural language for monumental buildings. Although classically trained at the Beaux-Arts and a state architect, Labrouste was somehow able to work his way past these conventions, letting iron determine the interior of an important national institute. This essay explores in more detail the interaction between architect and material, using the case study of Labrouste to get a better understanding of the idea of material knowledge and its role in the design process.

In architecture, thinking and making are in a continuous dialogue, particularly in situations where designers are confronted with material innovations. Whereas historical research of iconic buildings typically documents the work of the architect, this chapter proposes an alternative reading by emphasizing the role of the material. Otto Wagner’s Postal Savings Bank in Vienna (1906) offers an insight into how material innovations in iron are entangled with the genesis of the project. A detailed archival study on the iron column in the central banking hall traces its conversion from material to architectural element. Ideas on ‘Construction’ and ‘Composition’, which Wagner had developed as separate chapters in his book ‘Moderne Architektur’, are merged into the design. The properties of iron, its production process and assembly, enabled Wagner to reconsider the relations between object, ornament and space, resulting in an innovative, abstract and modern style.

What do collective dwellings contribute – or could they contribute – to the city? To answer this question we will start with the 2006 publication The intermediate size: a handbook for collective dwellings, and compare the assumptions in this study and that of the Hooidrift construction project in Rotterdam, which was completed in 2017. The subject in each case was the fine grain in the city, with an ‘intermediate size’ in between those of the individual house and the urban block. At first sight the two projects do not seem to have much in common. From the theoretical angle of The intermediate size, collective dwellings are described as a typology that mediates between architecture and urban planning, whereas Hooidrift, a project commissioned by a collective, consists of a terrace of houses – so typologically these are not collective dwellings. Yet it is worthwhile comparing the two projects and asking how a collective agenda can be translated into architecture, and how this relates to the city. Which architectural resources are used, and what is the architect’s role?

Al in de zeventiende eeuw beschouwden Hollandse steden de ontwikkeling van woon-werkblokken als een manier om nieuwe bedrijvigheid te lokken. Deze eerste experimenten hebben een verrassende actualiteitswaarde.

As early as the seventeenth century, Dutch cities regarded the development of workhome blocks as a way of attracting new business activity. These earliest experiments are surprisingly topical.

The publication 'The New Craft School' investigates the architecture of the vocational school and its role in society. It does so by situating the school within larger cultures of craft and specific networks of people, places and knowledge, in which education forms a crucial link. Based on the notion of architecture as an environment in which social relations are negotiated, it emphasises the importance of the building to create, foster and transmit these cultures.

De Nieuwe Ambachtsschool is the result of the research project 'De Ambachtsschool Revisited' into the architecture of vocational schools and was initiated by Susanne Pietsch, Eireen Schreurs, Sereh Mandias and Dolf Broekhuizen. It was funded by the Creative Industries Fund over a period of two years. The research and this publication are now further developed into a book, to be published in 2018.