We tend to think of ideas and discourses as disembodied entities, but they are shaped by our continuous interaction with the environment and they get incorporated into the places in which we dwell, especially our own homes. -is short 1lm explores how Aldo and Hannie van Eyck’s ideas on architecture and exhibition design are corporally present, materialised in their own house in Loenen van de Vecht, in the building itself, in their art collection’s cross cultural nature, in the vibration of the exhibited objects, in the non-pedigree selection and compositional strategies. -e Van Eycks, by dwelling in this house and performing actions within it, both constructed the interior as a sum of their experiences, but also were shaped by the interior itself, which determined the values and expectations that accumulated on, in, and through their bodies, in2icting their embodied identities. How to approach this house today? How to capture its temporal density and unpack the inscribed architectural ideas? -is short 1lm presents the house as a gathering body of experiences, brought together through audiovisual means. Di3erent times collide and intersect: Aldo van Eyck in the 80s, Tess van Eyck in early 2000s, and myself in 2018, re-enacting their movements through the interior. Time is thus conceived as a dense, layered accumulation of entanglements that re-appear only through the use of our own bodies. […] ... Read more

In two successive editions (Spring 2022 and Spring 2023), 81 students from TU Delft’s Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment participated in the Architectural Ethnography course. They conducted micro-ethnographic studies in collaboration with Leiden University Medical Centre students, under the supervision of a team from TU Delft, LUMC, Hogeschool Leiden and the Thesis Hub the Hague Southwest. The students thoroughly examined residential areas in three districts: Bouwlust en Vrederust, Moerwijk, and Ypenburg. Their data collection methods included informal conversations, sketches, photographic surveys, observations, video diaries, and mental mapping. The focus was on understanding how urban and housing design influences interactions among humans, non-humans, and the diverse environmental elements. The exhibition “At Home in The Hague” showcases diverse research outputs, such as analytic posters, graphic novels, collages, and stop motion movies, among others. These are complemented by a short documentary compiling excerpts from video diaries recorded by the residents. This collaborative exhibition involves educators, researchers, students, and residents of the case study areas. Its varied materials pay homage to the multitude of personal and group narratives in the city, going beyond stereotypical portrayals of urban life in the vibrant communities of Ypenburg and The Hague Southwest. ... Read more

This paper describes and discusses architect Mary Medd’s input into school development within the Ministry of Education, responsible for England and Wales, during the post-war era, highlighting her agency and capacity to provide significant change in the discipline of architecture. Mary Medd’s contributions were outcast on two fronts: first, by an institutional framework that prioritised anonymous civil service expertise, thereby suppressing individual attribution, and second, as one half of a prosperous partnership, both professional and personal, with David Medd. Although the collective processes that inexorably characterise the work dynamics within public institutions normally imply that any attribution to a single person is ambiguous, this paper suggests that the institutional framework should not be interpreted as a hindrance to the recognition of Mary Medd’s authorship. Through archival work, and focusing on her design proposals, the Ministry of Education is interpreted as the very place where she decided to develop her agency as a woman, deeply engaged in education and architecture, to pursue the complete reconfiguration of school design in a national level. The ministry offered a place for the development of a different kind of architectural practice where her individual agency could be exercised both as a designer of spatial layouts and as the main catalyst of a holistic interdisciplinary collaboration. The paper embarks on a mission to reevaluate and celebrate Mary Medd’s crucial role in the evolution of education architecture through an analysis of her diaries, notebooks, and drawings. In addition to repositioning Mary Medd within the annals of architectural history, this research aims to contribute to the ongoing historiography of feminist research methods and ideologies within the field. By shedding light on the gendered disparities in architectural history and emphasising the importance of acknowledging women’s contributions, this study adds to the broader conversation on gender equity in design and education, ultimately enriching our understanding of the multifaceted history of architectural practice. ... Read more

'Built Homecoming' presents the house of Aldo and Hannie van Eyck through a series of vitrines. These eight display cases capture special corners of the house, including the objects that populate these places. Through an arrangement of selected films, interior images, archival material, and artefacts from their home archive, the exhibition invites visitors to rediscover their work and ideas, while engaging with the complexities and implications of their approach to architecture and culture, particularly in relation to notions of Westernness and Eurocentricity. The choice of vitrines is crucial in this respect. Vitrines are a classic means of display, but they are also highly ambiguous: paradoxically, they are instruments of isolation and objectification, even as they provide protection and a temporary home for the selected materials. They regulate access and visibility, control the visitor’s gaze and frame the interpretation of the objects, ultimately shaping the narratives that surround them. The exhibition aims to critically rethink this framing, in order to reverse the objectifying gaze and allow for the relativity and reciprocity advocated by the Van Eycks. ... Read more

É sabido que tanto Aldo van Eyck quanto Lina Bo Bardi colecionavam arte e artefatos de origem não europeia, estudavam etnografia e antropologia e viajavam incessantemente pelo mundo. Não resta dúvida de que a atividade que praticavam como colecionadores, fotógrafos, viajantes e pesquisadores influenciou profundamente a forma como pensavam a arquitetura, e é por isso que a análise da contribuição de um e de outro para a área depende inteiramente de um olhar atento e crítico sobre outras culturas, diferentes daquelas às quais pertenciam. Ao referir-se ao expressivo desenvolvimento da arquitetura moderna após a Segunda Guerra Mundial, o teórico Georges Teyssot traça um paralelo entre essas interações e o que ele chama de “virada etnográfica” dos anos 1960, também investigada por Avermaete, Sabatino, entre outros. A virada etnográfica pode ser entendida como uma tentativa de trazer novos ares ao discurso modernista eurocêntrico, supostamente “internacional”, que, na visão da nova geração de arquitetos do pós-guerra, havia levado ao anonimato urbano, à alienação e à falta de coesão social. Arquitetos do pós-guerra como Van Eyck e Bo Bardi defendiam a reavaliação do cânone ocidental, recorrendo a referências não europeias, tanto de edifícios quanto de obras de arte, para realizar seus projetos. Essas referências serviam como inspiração estética, mas também como inspiração poética e filosófica. Com isso, eles buscavam “características humanas elementares”, atributos e valores humanos universais e sua forma de expressão nas diferentes culturas, novos caminhos para o desenvolvimento de um melhor funcionalismo, de uma arquitetura moderna mais rica e inclusiva, que Van Eyck chamou de “Architecture Mondiale” [arquitetura mundial]. […] ... Read more

City is House’ was the motto that identified our design proposal for an international competition launched in 2018 for remodeling the urban fabric around the emblematic building known as ‘Mercat Central’ in the city centre of Valencia, Spain. By examining the impact of food markets on social interactions, economic vitality, and cultural identity, the competition asked how their strategic integration could contribute to the overall health and liveliness of the city of Valencia. Our proposal envisioned a put care at the centre of the urban renewal strategy, envisioning a re-distributed constellation of places that acted as a catalyst for social well-being, inclusivity, and a sense of belonging for urban dwellers: a city transformed into a house. On the one hand, a gendered approach to urbanism, drawing upon critical theories, let us address the unique needs and experiences of different groups and communities, supported by a participatory process where all stakeholders expressed their needs and concerns. On the other hand, spaces were claimed for neglected user groups, such as children, supporting Aldo van Eyck’s assertion that a city designed with children in mind is one that benefits everyone. As part of the design and competition process, the paper will showcase the different strategies that helped us respond to the needs of the place and its dwellers. Performative travels where visual ethnography served as evidence of accumulated experiences, highlighting the impact of public spaces on individuals and communities. Hand-drawings and models that were crucial for the understanding of the place and its tacit qualities. Public presentations, exhibitions and Internet forum conversations that were crucial for the participatory process. Through the exploration of these themes and tools, the paper aims to shed light on the transformative potential of architecture and urban regeneration in fostering places of care within our cities. ... Read more

Grounded in an experiential understanding of architecture, this research explores ways in which architectural history can help bring works or ideas more vividly to the present. We propose here an embodied visit to Aldo and Hannie van Eyck’s house in Loenen aan de Vecht. In the house, layers of temporality, materiality, everyday living, and lived experience mingle with design solutions and worldviews affecting them. By immersing into the materiality of the Van Eycks’ home, the paper offers a lively, intensive, and qualitative understanding of the design and its connections with the architect’s contributions to post-war architectural discourses. The experiential account uses a mix of archival, ethnographic, and performative techniques, a proposed method that adds a necessary degree of complexity to architectural history. The method enacts a new form of knowledge where our bodies inform the findings, from materiality to meaning, and connects to new architectural history approaches, namely Architectural Anthropology and Performative Design Research. With all these elements, we are proposing a rich, empirical account of the project by means of three re-enactments of the Van Eycks’ homelife: a visit to the attic, table talk under the skylight, and a lively lunch in the garden. The account offers deep insights into how architectural ideas take material form, showing that specific ways of understanding history, time, or space, are indeed embodied within our built environment and that they can only be disentangled, with the help of our bodies, by performing actions within, in and around buildings. ... Read more

The Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck wrote the Tree-Leaf Statement in 1961, as a visiting professor at Washington University. Contrary to what it may seem, the words were in fact a declaration against the direct analogy of tree-city, since Van Eyck rejected the use of tree hierarchies within the urbanism of his time. "The tree analogy fails altogether [...] direct analogy leads nowhere, neither to the idea of the tree nor of the city". Instead, Van Eyck proposed a kaleidoscopic poetic image that succeeded in capturing the deep meaning of his own urban thinking, which he called the configurative discipline. However, the tree-leaf metaphor also resulted in a strong dispute within Team 10 that caused an important shift in Van Eyck’s career, who subsequently limited himself to exploring the intrinsic quality of architectural space and abandoned large scale projects. We propose in this article that this event demonstrates the power and danger of metaphors as poetic images that grow in-between fields, and that can yield incredible transformative powers. ... Read more

While Aldo and Hannie van Eyck (1919-1999/2018) have been mostly credited for their building designs, they also designed many exhibitions throughout their lives. Nonetheless, little is known that the Van Eycks inhabited an exhibition themselves, a concealed house in the Netherlands, where the Van Eycks played the role of the designer, the curator, the director, the visitor; inhabiting the space together with their artworks. This presentation uses this interior as a key to unpack the ways domesticity, exhibition design, global travels and art collecting are intersecting fields (intersecting "at home"), and how they sustained the Van Eycks' profound revision of Modern Architecture. ... Read more

Introduction to book ... Read more

Although we normally think about ideas and discourses as disembodied entities, the truth is that tacit architectural concepts, specific ways of understanding history, time, and space, are inscribed into our built environments, and they can only be disentangled with the help of our own bodies, by performing actions within, in, and around buildings. This paper explores the use of re-enactments as a method for architectural historians, using Aldo and Hannie van Eyck’s own house as a case study. The researcher’s body informs the reflections and findings, from materiality to meaning, through the continuous and embedded experience of the space, a seventeenth century building were the Van Eycks lived from 1965, which was diligently remodelled by themselves into their treasured family home. Almost hidden from the street hustle, yet open to the outside, the place lights up as soon as the threshold is crossed. Both literally and metaphorically, the changes and additions to the building reveal their architectural thinking and ways of inhabiting. In the house, layers of temporality, materiality, everyday living and lived experience mingle with design solutions and worldviews affecting them. However, while re-enactments allow for an embodied understanding of how architectural ideas take material form, they also hold the potential to show the situatedness, partiality and contingency of the re-enacted practices, questioning the same values that they unearth. keywords. ... Read more

Architectuurstudenten hebben gekeken naar de gedragsen bewegingspatronen van bewoners in de gebouwde omgeving in Bouwlust en Vrederust. De tentoonstelling presenteert op meerdere manieren de diverse ervaringen van haar bewoners in relatie tot de straat, de huizen en het dagelijks leven. Tentoonstelling in Bibliotheek Bouwlust, Den Haag, 28 september - 10 november 2022. ... Read more

The imaginary encounter above recalls how Aldo van Eyck (1919-1999) explained his de- sign for the Sonsbeek Pavilion (1965-66), which possessed something of the closeness, density and intricacy of things urban, in the sense that people and things met, converged and clashed there. The idea was synthesised in a famous drawing, where Van Eyck care- fully placed each and every art piece creating an animistic network of things or “Thous”, in Martin Buber’s words, that activated space and enabled a situationist dérive. Et Voilà, labyrinthian clarity, the sculpturesbecame alive. However, little is known that the Van Eycks themselves inhabited not a dissimilar place, a concealed house in the Netherlands that is full of African masks, Aboriginal spears, Pre-Columbian bowls, Avant-Garde paintings and sculptures, drawings, models, and modern poetry books (Fig.). Rumour is that Van Eyck had conversations with these things (“good morning, sculpture”), that he arranged and re-arranged them obsessively, in search of a perfect balance, what he called harmony in motion. He hummed in-between them, a mental exercise to assist his design process, as if he was playing, making up imaginary encounters and discussions. But, what if he was right? What if things have lives of their own? After years of look- ing at the things, trying to understand why Van Eyck brought them here, I decided to perform a Latourian turn. Objects are as important in creating social situations as humans, and, with narrative techniques, it is possible to tell the story from the objects’ perspectives (Fictocriticism, Frichot-Stead); “Where was I crafted? By who? How did I came here? Who is this man (Van Eyck) who looks at me so deeply? What am I doing for him?” These questions enable a different discourse where objects are not a question of aesthetic inspiration only. They are now actors in a long process of extraction, alterity, exotization, renovation of the unfinished project of modernity... Art dealing enters the scene, together with the travel industry, the discussions around universalism and cultural relativity. As it tuned out, the thing’s tales were a key to unpack the ways do- mesticity, global travels and art collecting can be seen as intersecting fields (intersecting “at home”), and how they sustained Van Eyck’s thinking (and his contemporaries’), from which modern architecture was profoundly re-conceptualised. ... Read more

What do they have in common the Red House by Baillie Scott and Finmere Primary school, designed and built between 1958-59 by the Ministry of Education? How did the bay windows or dinning recesses, from the Arts and Crafts’ houses by Scott, Shaw or Pugin, come to Post-war British school design to create homely environments? How do these foster an intimate and safe atmosphere that assists belongingness? This research tries to answer these questions by focusing on the schools developed by (specially) Mary and David Medd within the Ministry of Education in Great Britain, 1949-1976. As we will demonstrate, their main contribution to the field of Educational Architecture was the definition of a design strategy known as Built-in variety, where the self-contained classrooms (empty-box-school) disappeared in favour of a variety of dissimilar places. Indeed, the Medds sustained a very innovative view from which primary educational architecture was profoundly reconceptualized, getting closer to a home than to an institution. Actually, we argue that it was precisely that driving principle—school as a home—what was responsible for the dismantlement of the traditional school types. By following Michael Baxandall’s inferential criticism, the writing proposes a close look into the design process as an object of study in its own right, in search for the underlying ((un) conscious) principles. The acknowledgement of some features of the English house has been a good means for comin to understand the Medds’ strategy and its domestic aura, for the schools’ spatial hierarchy recalls the internal spatial structure of Arts and Crafts houses of the late 19th century. This research, focusing on the domestic aspect of Educational Architecture, could constitute a key to reformulate school desing principles, particularly under current circumstances, promoting the definition of small specific and safe areas, adapted to particular educational needs. ... Read more

Online Lecture Series
“History of Postwar Architecture”, lecture series at Universidad Finis Terrae, Chile.  ... Read more

This article focuses on the schools developed by Mary and David Medd within the Ministry of Education in Great Britain, 1949–1976. Their main contribution to the field of Educational Architecture was the definition of a design strategy known as Built-in variety, where the self-contained classrooms (empty-box-school) disappeared in favour of a variety of dissimilar places. Indeed, the Medds sustained a very innovative view from which primary educational architecture was profoundly reconceptualised, getting closer to a home than to an institution. Actually, the paper argues that it was precisely this driving principle – school as a home – that was responsible for the dismantlement of the traditional school types. This article proposes a close look into the design process as an object of study in its own right, in search for the underlying principles of the Medds' primary school designs. The acknowledgement of some features of the English house has been a good means of coming to understand the Medds’ strategy and its domestic aura, for the schools’ spatial hierarchy recalls the internal spatial structure of Arts and Crafts houses of the late nineteenth century. ... Read more

The innovative school design strategies of Mary and David Medd, broke away from the idea of classrooms and incorporated the concept of Centres in architectural discourse. ... Read more

Are house and architecture the same? Adolf Loos states two possible architectures: one with a practical, material purpose, which we name House; another with an artistic, selfless purpose, which we call Architecture. The home would be made against the architect, because the house does have a purpose (to inhabit), and will only be possible when someone decides everything for himself. This paper explores the possibility that the house is not more than the result of wear and tear by a family: accumulation of objects and memories. But we need to learn to inhabit. That is why Bernard Rudofsky distinguishes between apparatus and instrument. Apparatus, which works automatically, against instrument, which requires a non-automated individual to produce its own sound. His two houses in Procida and Malaga can help to clarify what is exactly the "art of living". For Rudofsky, the most wonderful house in the world would not mean anything if we don’t know how to inhabit. ... Read more