Internationally, the Netherlands is recognized as a country willing to experiment at a large scale, to devise state-wide systems to protect its land and improve the quality of life for its citizens. Provocative proposals from architects and urban planners such as Gerrit Rietveld, Piet Blom, Rem Koolhaas, and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), have had an international impact, as they often challenge traditional ways of practice.
Still, the country faces expected and unexpected challenges, from an acute housing shortage to raising concerns regarding climate change and shifting ideas of ecology. In the words of curator Suzanne Mulder, the country is “once again on the drawing board,” as architects, urban planners, and designers are reopening conversations about the future by looking at past lessons. To come to their help, Rotterdam’s Nieuwe Instituut is organizing the exhibition ‘Designing the Netherlands: 100 Years of Past & Present Futures.’
Curated in collaboration with the Board of Government Advisors, the event opens up the archive of the institute to present important historical precedents and new design proposals. Organized around overarching themes, rather than chronologically, the exhibition aims to give context to the development of architecture and urban planning and offer inspiration for new visions. The exhibition was researched and curated by Nieuwe Instituu’s Dirk van den Heuvel, Suzanne Mulder, Setareh Noorani, and Stefanie Korrel, and Government advisors Saskia Naafs and Jafeth Hagoort.
Past Visions of the Future of the Netherlands
Due to its unique natural conditions and tight physical constraints, the Netherlands is particularly reliant on engineered systems to regulate matters such as water control and agriculture. Consequently, this reliance has led to an increased belief in the power of such systems, and an openness to create top-down centralized approaches for managing all aspects of life. In the early 20th century, designers began to imagine scenarios for the future of the country, responding to pressing issues such as climate, housing, and energy crises.
This planning style relied on top-down legislative and financial instruments. The long-term oriented policy was proven to have advantages for the protection of landscape, raising awareness among citizens, and leading to an ease of implementation of large-scale projects of regional and supra-regional importance. This has made the Netherlands an international example of experimentation and systemic thinking.
The Netherlands has always stood out in my mind for its capacity to experiment, to try out new ideas and rethink assumptions in an almost fearless, yet rigorous, way. That ethos is still here, and it has in many ways made the country a testing ground for the rest of the world. - Aric Chen, General and Artistic Director, Nieuwe Instituut
Towards the end of the 20th century, this approach shifted. While retaining most of the features of hierarchical governance, spatial planning became more sensitive to social dynamics and started to include citizen participation during the 1980s. Slowly, the approach got more and more decentralized, placing trust in self-regulating market forces. Now designers are taking inspiration from previous models, but not to recreate the rigid top-down systems, but to reimagine platforms for efficient public debate.
Transformations and Engineered Landscapes
The Netherlands is a largely engineered country. With over a quarter of its surface below sea level, its relationship with the natural landscape and waterscape has been one of negotiation and confrontation. To maintain its land surface, Dutch people rely on new and old technologies such as dams, dykes, levees, and floodgates to keep the water out. As climate change poses new risks, the relationship between natural and urban landscapes requires constant readjustment. Projects such as the 32-kilometer-long dyke at Afsluitdijk represent iconic feats of Dutch engineering, protecting entire communities from flooding, but it is also a barrier in the natural ecosystem, hindering fish migration. Now debates about the possibility of renaturalization begin to challenge the reliance on man-made and man-centered systems, hoping to provoke new solutions.
Housing Issues and Policies
In recent years, the acute lack of affordable housing options has become one of the most pressing issues faced by the Netherlands. Government policies have led to a proliferation of bad and illegal temporary rental contracts, while also leaving the building of housing to be regulated by market forces. This, combined with the selling of social housing by the government, has led to increased prices, leaving over 300,000 struggling to find a place to live.
The challenges we face now require looking far ahead. Not to paint beautiful vistas, but to find out what needs to be done now. Designers play a crucial role in envisioning the future, and change begins with imagination. Everything we think, say, and do influences what that future will look like. What we cannot imagine, we cannot accomplish. - Francesco Veenstra, Chief Government Architect
However, this was not always the case. Social housing has a rich history in the country. At the beginning of the 20th century, the state changed its attitude and took a more intensive role in the matter of housebuilding. Beginning with the 1901 Housing Act, the state banned substandard and unhealthy housing and encouraged the construction of affordable rentals in cooperation with the private sector. A semi-public system evolved from these conditions, one where housing associations subsidized by the state were encouraged to build.
This renewed interest in the quality of life provided by the built environment led many architects and designers to experiment with emerging ideas of modernism. Among them, Michel de Klerk has become one of the pioneers of the Amsterdam School and early modernism for designing workers’ houses like the ‘Het Schip’ ensemble. Across the decades since, generations of architects have continued to focus on the topic of living, with solutions ranging from restrained proposals for reutilizing built structures or employing modularity to futuristic solutions and urban living room studies. However, towards the end of the 20th century, housing associations started to become privatized and the focus on the common good and accessible housing policies faded, raising questions about inclusivity and the balance between market forces, government policies, and the need for communal living.
Protest and Participation
Offering a counter to the advantages of a systemic approach to spatial planning, cities can be understood as open, complex, and incomplete structures. According to Saskia Sassen, these qualities, unique to urban environments, allow those without power to express their presence and affect real change. Public involvement can take many forms, from direct participation or open competitions to more radical movements.
One example of the latter category is the modern squatters’ movement. Having begun in the 1960s, the movement was self-organized and self-regulated according to specific protocols aimed at helping those in need of a home to occupy unused spaces in the city and negotiate with police and owners. Encouraged by relatively relaxed legislation, it soon became a political activity on an urban scale. The practice was criminalized in 2010 but continues in a diminished form. As the housing shortage continues, the movement calls into question the ways of utilizing space within the city.
By drawing from the past, the exhibition aims to offer lessons for a present that seems to have lost direction. This is of course not to recreate what happened before, but to instead remind us that we do not have to rely so much on the market, as we do now, to shape our lives and landscapes. Indeed, perhaps the key lesson here is that tackling the many challenges we face requires a whole-of-society approach that includes the private sector, yes, but also an inclusive government that draws from a range of expertise while representing the interests and voices of all people as well as nature. - Aric Chen, General and Artistic Director, Nieuwe Instituut
Bringing together all these visions of past and present, the exhibition ‘Designing the Netherlands: 100 Years of Past & Present Futures’ is also celebrating the 100th anniversary of the National Collection of Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning, which is held and managed by the Nieuwe Instituut. The collection, which predates the institute itself, gathers architecture and urban planning drawings, models, and documents from all regions of the Netherlands, representing one of the largest archives of architecture worldwide. Het Nieuwe Instituut manages the archive of approximately 4.5 million documents and provides access for researchers, curators, students, and writers. Based in Rotterdam, Nieuwe Instituut is the Netherlands’ national museum and institute for architecture, design, and digital culture.
