Film and Conference Modules
Pioneers of the Dutch Modern House
This program consists of five modules, each with a keynote lecture and an episode of a series of thematic videos in which twenty iconic houses across the Netherlands are featured: from the Amsterdam School and De Stijl to Postmodernism; from Gerrit Rietveld to Mart van Schijndel and many others. We also offer the five thematic videos as one film of an hour. The film also presents famous examples of social housing, an area in which The Netherlands was particularly rich in the 20th-century.
Module 4
Experiments with Space
Video on demand.
Lecture: English. Video: Dutch spoken and English subtitles.
Keynote address by Anita Blom and video presented by Robert von der Nahmer.
Experiments with Space
Anita Blom is an architectural historian and Senior Specialist in post-war architecture and urban planning at the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands and author and compiler of the book Experimental housing in the Netherlands 1968-1980. She currently heads the RCE’s 'Post 65 project', which examines ways of dealing with recent heritage. She researches in particular post-war residential areas; in addition, she promotes wider public interest for the Netherland’s post-war cultural heritage and stimulates the redevelopment of post-war areas. She is also the co-author of Post-war reconstruction the Netherlands. The future of a bright and brutal heritage.
In her keynote address, Anita talks about experimental housing in the Netherlands of the 1970s.
Experiments with Space
Robert von der Nahmer is an architect and the owner of the Diagoon House, an experimental home by Herman Hertzberger, and a member of Iconic Houses. A graduate of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague and the Academy of Architecture and Urban Design in Rotterdam, he was an architect at Alkemade & Von der Nahmer and the multidisciplinary design agency ProForma while also teaching widely, including at the Academy of Architecture and Urban Design. He lives in the Diagoon House in Delft. His film is about the search for architectural and visual ways to guide and intensify our experience of space and time, and experiments involving these. It explores what in Dutch is called 'wooncultuur' – the culture of living in our homes.
The experimental houses that are featured in this episode are:
Van Doesburg Rinsemahuis, Theo van Doesburg, 1921
Van Zessen House, Cornelis van Eesteren, 1923
Diagoon House, Herman Hertzberger, 1971
Cube House, Piet Blom, 1984
Wall House #2, John Hejduk, 2001