Sanne van Manen
Francisco da Fonseca
On May 13th the faculty of Architecture in Delft (1970) burnt down. The loss of the Van den Broek architecture faculty shocked everybody. As expected with disasters like these, the fire commonly increased the appreciation of the building. Nonetheless, it ís the building where the major part of the current generation Dutch architects have learned their profession. But above all, it is the building where the designing of buildings itself is being taught. Does this incline a stronger relationship between education and the building than in other educational buildings? If so, in what way was the design of Van den Broek connected to the architectural education? And what about a new building? Does it need to be designed from a vision on the architectural education? Do we maybe even need to reconsider the architectural education and therefore not only design a new building but also a new School of Architecture?
Trying to find the answers to these questions we asked some architects who were educated and/or have taught in the Van den Broek architecture faculty about their opinion on the relationship between the architectural education and the building. Besides their experiences of the old building we have also questioned them on the new building. For this purpose we interviewed Wiek Röling, Winy Maas, Michiel Riedijk, Herman Hertzberger and Wytze Patijn. Röling was a student-assistant of Van den Broek during the competition of the building (1956) and in 1988 he came back to the faculty to teach until 2001. Maas and Riedijk were both educated on the faculty and since a year they are professors. Herman Hertzberger graduated in the older building but in 1970 he came to the new building and stayed there for 29 years as a professor. Wytze Patijn was also partly educated in the older building, but came back later to teach in the Van den Broek building and currently he is the dean of the faculty.
In our first conversation, Röling tells us about the time when van den Broek was working on the design of the building.
According to Röling, Van den Broek was as a professor always on the side of the students. Whenever the students got into a conflict with the board of the faculty Van den Broek would help them, where necessary. Of course this was also part of the spirit of the sixties where at a certain point the students were even allowed to choose the new professors. Nevertheless, this attitude is also shown in the way he designed the new architecture building. The entire design of the building is based on Van den Broek’s vision on how students need to learn about architecture.
Röling explains how Van den Broek started by making a very simple basic layout; a high-rise part holding five double height floors (the atelier-floors used to be doubled height), one for every year of study and a low-rise part containing a street, the so-called ‘bouwkundestreet’ with all the main additional facilities necessary for the students to learn about making architecture.
Van den Broek often talked to Röling and the other student-assistants about the new building. In one of these conversations the students expressed their wish for having a tool to get a grip on the measurements of the spaces they were designing. As an answer to this Van den Broek designed a measurement system in the Vormstudiehal in the height, length and width of the space. While making models the students were able to literally read the sizes. Another student-assistant of Van den Broek whished to build his models on a 1 to 1 scale. For that Van den Broek designed the Blokkenhal (hall of blocks) where the students can make 1 to 1 models with blocks.
To Van den Broek proportion, size and scale were the most important things to be educated. He had put this through the building as a kind of hidden agenda, as Röling likes to call it. Not only the Vormstudiehal and the Blokkenhal were to serve this purpose, also the double height Atelier spaces, the large street and the patios between the different low-rise parts. These patios were also meant to take your models outside and see the sunlight in the models.
Another important issue to Van den Broek was to design a democratic building. He not only stood up for his students, but he also wanted to decrease the distance between staff and students in the new building. So he designed a building where every part of the building was open to both students and staff. Van den Broek did not design separated staff floors as in many other school buildings. At every floor the students occupied one side of the corridor facing the staff rooms on the other side of the corridor. This made it very easy for staff members and teachers to interfere with the student’s work and on the other hand it encouraged the students to contact professors. In this way the knowledge of the professors and teachers was more accessible to the students.
Röling appreciates these ‘hidden’ tools all through the building. However he admits that the building after it was built could not work the way it was supposed to work. Soon the double-height atelier spaces turned into normal height atelier floors and the number of students increased rapidly. Just before the fire the building, once designed for 750 students, was occupied by 3000 students.
Both Herman Hertzberger and Winy Maas are very positive on the Bouwkunde-street, but have mixed feelings about the high-rise part. Hertzberger regrets the lack of openness between the different floors of the high rise. ‘The stacking of floors makes the distance between people very large. When I was a professor I did not know the person who had an office just below me for years. The high quality of the openness of the street was totally lacking in the atelier spaces.’ According to Winy Maas the only places to meet people in the high-rise part were the elevators, but those were always unpleasant non-exiting encounters, closed and cold in contradiction to the encounters on the first floor. ‘The collective street spaces would provoke the students to discuss and exhibit architecture, which is really important in the process of learning to design buildings.’ Wytze Patijn, the dean of the faculty, also praises this quality of the street. ‘The building learned me about social interaction, which was very present in the street. Even in the atelier spaces there was a very strong dynamic, which had disappeared when I came back to teach at the faculty.’
When discussing the identity of an architecture school Riedijk is very strong on the point that there ís in fact a difference between an architecture school and the other technical studies at the TU Delft.
‘The difference between architecture and the hard technological sciences is that architecture, although it is partly a science, also relates to culture and art. We ought to have a cultural consciousness. Architecture is produced through the drawing. It is even possible to claim, like John Hejduk did, that architecture only exists in the drawing and that the making of the building as done by contractors and never by architects, is in a way not part of the architectural process.’
Riedijk thinks that there is a possibility that the new faculty will be a building just like other faculty buildings. ‘Indeed nowadays due to the computer the difference between architecture and chemistry or civil engineering exists only in the different computer programs they use. It is already happening in some other universities, where they claim that architecture is a paperless profession. To me things like making a drawing, materializing an idea, translating an idea into a spatial form or spatial intervention, whether this is a model or represented by a material, are crucial when thinking about architecture in both education and profession. Therefore to me it was kind of strange that all the main facilities like the model workshop and the drawing rooms where separated from the ateliers. To split the two would suggest both a spatial and educational separation.
If the new building would turn out to be such a ‘nightmare of the paperless faculty’ then the disaster will be of a larger scope than just the loss of a building.’
Hertzberger on the other hand, thinks that the new building should not be drawn from the architectural education. ‘It should be a flexible building with no fixed program, which is easily adaptable to different kinds of education. To design a new building based on a new type of education would cost too much discussion and too much time.’ Hertzberger continues explaining that ‘a city with streets’ could be an interesting model or reference for the new building. ‘Not only, as we have seen in the old building, is the street a high quality space, it also gives the building a certain neutrality. Just like the streets in the city, this street can hold different kind of programs over the years, while the street remains the same street.’
Maas would like to get rid of this neutrality. ‘This could be the perfect moment to take a look at what we would like to investigate in the world of architecture schools. We have to ask ourselves what our main focus will be and what we need to reach this. Now it is the time to stir up the faculty and think about the position we would like to take in as a school using the knowledge we have. I do not know yet what this should be. It could be a technical specialism; to establish the best model workshop or media lab. We could also develop a new organizational structure, which fits our new faculty best or we could put our focus on a certain research area.
To express all this we need spaces where architecture can be shown and expressed with discussions, exhibitions, movies and more. Spaces to work together, which contain a good bar to stimulate a non-stop working spirit.’
The same design attitude Maas would like to see in the appearance of the building. ‘The expression of the building must be exciting and good enough to bring architecture back on the agenda. We should make a spectacular building and therefore not avoid the experiment but embrace it. We have to focus our attention on the experiment in a constructional, architectural and educational way.’
Hertzberger does not see the importance to give the building a strong expression. To him, a building where so much architecture is being made on the inside, doesn’t need a strong architectural expression itself.
According to Riedijk the education should not be hindered by taste or specific esthetical givens. ‘At the same time I think this building should express what architecture is about. It is about making things for reality. A shelter against the forces of nature, which is a very poetic side of architecture. It is related to knowledge, to know your history, to know why you make a certain composition and what the cultural meaning is of a certain composition. At the same time our profession is also related to a métier and a craft of drawing; expressing an idea through the drawing. I would like to compare this to the Bauakademie by Schinkel; a faculty of Architecture should be about three things at the same time: contemporary culture, architecture and architectural education. The discussion about the new building should be focused on these different aspects and this should be discussed before the official brief is written.’
Remarkable in these short interviews is that the most discussed topic in the contemporary architectural debate is only mentioned by the dean. To Patijn it is very important that the building is inspired on the new thoughts on sustainability. He already pronounced that sustainability will be a very important part in the brief of the new building.
What do all these opinions tell us? First of they show that a building is capable of stimulating the education. Although the former faculty of Architecture also holds examples where it did not work the way he hoped it would work, the street is a very good example of a place, which did encourage a certain way of teaching architecture. The model workshop on the street for example was a space where the students were encouraged to work with their models and discuss each other’s projects. Also, through the void on the second floor, it brought a kind of liveliness into this part of the faculty, which created another stimulus to make models.
Secondly, we have learned that an architecture faculty is in fact not the same as other faculties and therefore needs a building designed for this purpose. However even Hertzberger, who praises the flexibility of the new building, does also express the importance of a high quality spatial structure and spaces. To him a faculty of architecture should never turn into a kind of neutral office building.
Finally, the conversations show the impact of the educational visions on the design. Without having seen any designs it is already clear that for example the Maas design will differ completely from the Riedijk or Hertzberger building. Not only will the design be different but also the focus of the building. The Riedijk building will probably try to challenge the students to draw and build their ideas, while the Maas building could be designed from different studios researching the frontiers of knowledge. The building will have a different expression and spatial structure and therefore will encourage the students in different ways.
We believe that the building, which holds the faculty of Architecture, can stimulate the way students learn this profession. Or as Patijn puts it ‘there should be a new building which guarantees the architectural education. I do not believe that buildings can make people, but I do believe they can make things possible.’
Thus, the importance of the architectural education within the brief and the competition may not be underestimated. We hope that the architectural education will be on top of the agenda (at least as high as ‘sustainability’). We are not pushing to change the complete system of the education, but we would like the main questions of education to be questioned again by both the authors of the brief and the participants of the competition. What does this faculty of Architecture stand for? How is architecture educated here? What tools are needed to establish this?
At an architecture school where again 700 new students, which ironically is almost as much as the number of students the former faculty was designed for, who all have a different idea on what they are going to be educated, it can never hurt to ask these questions again.
However, we already agree with Röling that if we would step away from all tools, which give us a practical understanding of our profession, the tools that were also valuable to Van den Broek, then the loss of the building will be ten times as terrible as it is now. Luckily, this makes the competition for the new building a more interesting challenge.