Ieder jaar verdwijnen in Nederland duizenden woningen die slechts een half mensenleven oud zijn. De komende jaren zullen 100.000 woningen uit de naoorlogse periode gesloopt worden en vervangen door iets nieuws. In Midden- en Oost-Europa leeft 70% van de bevolking in naoorlogse buitenwijken of satellietsteden; men schat dat voor de renovatie van deze Plattenbau-wijken rond de 350 miljard euro nodig is, wat voor 16 miljoen mensen werkgelegenheid zal betekenen.1 Wereldwijd wordt in vele New (...)

Tehran was once the subject of one of the most ambitious, even megalomaniacal, moder-town planning efforts. The best and foremost planners and architects of the united states flocked to the Iran of the sixties and sevetnties to give monumental form to the White revolution of Shah Reza Pahlavi. Now the modern Tehran is hardly visible anymore beneath the chaotic transformations of the capital of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Asked to write an article for a book on the office of Kees Christiaanse, the author tyries to link the global legacy of Modernist town planning, to the current export of Dutch modern architecture and urbanism.

The urgency of rethinking and redesigning the postwar city is eloquently demonstrated by the riots in the streets of nearly every French city, just a few months ago. The modernist housing projects, the grands ensembles in the periphery of the urban centers, built in the 50s and 60s by a combination of an efficient state building machinery and idealistic modernist architecture, now form the backdrop for devastating riots of the mostly immigrant Muslim inhabitants against French government and the society in general. More than a backdrop even: getting ever louder are the voices that proclaim that these modernist neighborhoods and the CIAM principles they were based on actually breed dissatisfied inhabitants and riots. This is an extremely cynical inversion of the original idea that these cities would - to the contrary - breed democratic and open minded people.

De rellen in de Franse voorsteden in de herfst van 2005 leken het zoveelste bewijs te zijn dat de grootschalige woningbouw uit de jaren vijftig en zestig - in Frankrijk de Grands Ensembles genoemd - een historische vergissing vormen die maar beter zo radicaal mogelijk van de kaart geveegd kan worden. De landen die zich dat kunnen permitteren, Nederland, Frankrijk, sommige delen van Duitsland, Engeland en de Verenigde staten, zijn daar dan ook al bijna een decennium flink mee bezig.

Only six kilometers long, Rotterdam’s subway line was the shortest in the world when it opened in 1968. Not surprisingly, the city took great pride in having built the Netherlands’ first subway. It was yet another sign of the city’s agility in re-inventing itself after the devastating air raid that had destroyed it’s historical core in 1940.
Only six kilometers long, Rotterdam’s subway line was the shortest in the world when it opened in 1968. Not surprisingly, the city took great pride in (...)