Page 43 - Studio Internatinal - October 1974

developments of life in different directions, and result of topological order. They are inclusive relationships. The plan has an outspoken
they are susceptible to be appropriated. They i.e. they easily absorb 'impure' everyday Palladian character, but whereas in Palladio's
don't create monuments of any great superiority devices and so they suggest personalization. villas one hardly experiences the refined mutual
but they are interested in the quality of Moreover, they acquire other dimensions proportions of the different rooms which can
ordinariness. according to one's movement through the only communicate through open doors,
Bob van Reeth, a young architect, started structure. The resulting spatial complexity Vandenhove has designed an open structure,
his career with a rather unusual office building gives an image of 'unsurveyable, insusceptible generating continuous space and making
in Kalmthout near Antwerp, combining some life'. It constitutes a sort of artificial ecology, evident relations. This feature is not due to the
influences of Le Corbusier and James Stirling. and in this sense joins the Belgian Art Nouveau technological methods that are considered often
When working on this design he gradually tradition as it was created by Victor Horta. the main source of architectonic invention.
dismissed the functionalism on which it was The work of Charles Vandenhove looks in Palladio had the disposal of all the techniques
still partly based. He himself has stated: many ways like the visual opposite of van Vandenhove employed in the Olne house and
'Architecture doesn't mean solving functions. Reeth's. His work has little or nothing to do hence could have built the same or a similar
Architecture means to formulate responses to with the Belgian vernacular. The pitched roofs structure; but sixteenth-century man had
situations, answers to questions arising from of his latest houses are perhaps the only formal different, more hierarchical, views of family
intercourse with a situation. Questions are not concession in this direction. His work, on the life. Every room was clearly subordinated to
problems. Questions are not so outspoken. They contrary, can be considered as a participation in the central living room, and the house itself
come from and belong to people. As a rule, the idealist tradition of modern architecture — significantly dominated its surroundings. The
striking solutions amount to the negation and a tradition based on the conception that house in Olne, on the contrary, is hidden in its
the destruction of values in the existing architecture should be structured according to surroundings, and all its spaces have an equal
context. They are not answers.'6 He thus certain ordering principles found throughout weight, symbolising open relations of equals.
experienced the current functionalism as an nature, and on the belief that the projection of As Louis Kahn stated: 'The kitchen doesn't feel
abstract and alienating problem-solving process, this order in the built environment can be a humiliated by the living room'. Every space is an
and instead began to look for an architectural contribution to more harmonious human equivalent articulation of the same structure.
approach susceptible to generating 'immediate interrelations. The intuitive tradition, in which Finally, despite its clear neo-platonic structure,
and spontaneous translations of life'. This he van Reeth participates, has similar aims, but the house claims no perfection of content. The
found in the work of Rudoph Schindler and whereas it refers to a visible structure of nature materials the structure is made of are not
also in the Belgian vernacular I mentioned and traditionally connotes anarchism, the untouchable. Despite their refined jointing they
before. In the work of the Californian master he idealist tradition is bound up with a bona fide preserve a provisory character and suggest
discovered an alternative modern architecture, democracy and looks for its foundations in the appropriation. The structure offers places of
the identity of which was no longer determined hidden structure of nature. application for life which develops in and
by the segregation of abstracted functions, but While designing several houses and semi- around it as a counter-structure. Whereas in van
by the embrace of human complexity: an public buildings, Vandenhove patiently developed Reeth's houses the enjoyment one experiences
architecture thought from the inside out and his own building system during the sixties with stems from a dynamic empathy, and from the
hence not exhibiting the object character of refined structure elements, a kind of grammar assimilation of personal culture, in Vandenhove's
European purism, but linking up its complex of mutually conjugable forms and spaces. In his it stems from the confrontation of two distinct
relations with its context. In the Belgian first works he coupled his research to a well- complementary structures. Although his houses
context it was mainly the 'back vernacular' he tempered 'brutalist' idiom and deliberate suggest order and harmony, they happily
felt attracted to. In this native 'architecture picturesque planning, but from about 1965, it associate with changing pluriformity and
without architects' he discovered neologisms drove him to systematic geometric configurations, ordinariness.
and popular ad hoc planning (the imaginative with an outspoken symmetry. Unlike van
use of industrial products for new purposes). Reeth who creates an elaborate accompaniment
He unified these factors into an inclusive idiom to life, Vandenhove confines himself to a
which fitted into the Belgian context, or at least structure capable of bearing life and stimulating
its vernacular. But he did not of course confine its development. This doesn't mean at all that
his idiom to the outside but projected it to the he designs flexible neutral spaces. His geometry
inside. In fact, he designed his houses from is not Miesian but can be traced back to the
within, out of close intercourse with his clients. idealist approach of Louis Kahn and Aldo van
In each case he tried to identify with their way Eyck. He once summarised his intentions in this
of life and to grasp their mutual relations. As a way: `If I came to design systematically
result he has realized very different structures modulated spaces, it is because I wish that these
which are not a gratuitous plastic whim but a structures should provide starting-points for the
kind of open portrait of his clients' life patterns. most diversifying human action. But I want
This empathy for private and popular culture these structures not only to be strong enough
led him away from the classical geometry of not to be destroyed or damaged by the interplay 1 The Observer 24 September 1967.
2 Dutch Forum July 1970 p.15.

modern architecture (which largely originated they allow, but also open and rich enough to
3 Neither Ch. Jencks, 'Modern Movements in
from the studio houses of intellectuals and evoke continuously new alternatives, to provoke Architecture' (1973) nor D. Sharp, 'A Visual History
of Twentieth-Century Architecture' (1972) mention
artists) and generated a topological approach new exchanges, and to nourish new dreams.' 8
any work by a Belgian architect after 1940.
with a 'geometry of innocence'7, answering a So his structures are less an accompaniment 4 See: M. Culot and F. Terlinden, 'Antoine Pompe
et ('Effort Moderne en Belgique 1940-1970', Brussels
desire for small-scaled articulations and images. than a counterform of life. He doesn't design
1969; G. Bekaert and F. Strauven, 'La Construction
Many Belgian people do not like the hard-edged portraits but a kind of universal matrix. The en Belgique 1940-1970', Brussels 1971.
5 See Ch. Jencks, 'Modern Movements in
clean environments of modern architecture, but house he built at Olne (1968-69) for a family
Architecture', Pelican 1973.
like to surround themselves with all sorts of with three children, has a refined crystalline 6 See Bekaert and Strauven, op.cit., p. 366.
7 Bob Dylan, Highway 61 revisited; 1965:
images (wall papers, hangings etc.), and van structure portraying a concept of harmonious
'The geometry of innocence
Reeth meets this wish by originating images family life. Covered by a unifying low pyramidal flesh on the bone
caused Galileo's math book
from the building structure itself. These images roof, the carefully articulated and mutually
to get thrown.'
are by no means applied decoration, but the balanced inner spaces suggest gentle, releasing 8 See Bekaert and Strauven, op.cit., p. 359.
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