What do you think?
Rate this book
The artificial landscape: Contemporary architecture, urbanism, and landscape architecture in the Netherlands
The architecture and architectural culture of the Netherlands have been causing quite a stir in recent years: a great many remarkable new buildings and projects testify to the current flowering in Dutch architecture, urban planning, and landscaping that's so exciting to so many in and out of the field. Artificial Landscape illustrates the results of this late twentieth century surge of creativity and traces the background of its success, examining both the 'Dutch phenomenon' and its socio-historical context to find out what makes it work so well. What we find is that even in a period of globalization there is still such a thing as a Dutch 'climate,' yet despite this culture's specific national character we have much to learn from it, particularly where its unique synthesis of architecture, urbanism, and landscaping is concerned. This exciting movement is represented by a selection of designs, built works, ideas, plans and manifestoes from such architects and firms as OMA/Rem Koolhaas, Neutelings Riedijk, MVRDV, Maurice Nio, and Max 1, to name only a few. Apart from recording the state of things in Dutch architecture, Artificial Landscape also serves as a survey of contemporary architectural criticism, collecting the most important critiques of Dutch architecture, urban planning, and landscape architecture to have appeared in recent years.
302 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
16 people want to read
About the author
Hans Ibelings
97 books8 followersHans Ibelings is a Dutch architecture critic, writer and exhibition maker. He is chief editor and founder of A10, Magazine for New European Architecture. Alongside he became a specialist in writing architects monographs. In 2004 he wrote a book on contemporary traditional architecture in the Netherlands.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 2, 2023
The work of Dutch architects like Arets, MVRDV, Koolhaas, Mecanoo, Coenen and others is so thoughtful and spirited that, concentrated together in this excellent book, it makes the Netherlands look like some kind of Renaissance Italy de nos jours. There is indeed something afoot in Holland, and it seems unusually important: a liberation. I don't know if it has to do with what they smoke, but there's a romantic imagination at work: relaxed minds floating gently downstream beyond the old concerns that made "first modernism" so damned pompous and uptight. Take John Körmeling's t&g krazy kabin, complete with stovepipe, front porch and sliding sashes, stuck on top of the Customs and Excise building. What is that about? Is he out of his mind? Various labels are put forward to try to describe how this very adventurous Dutch experience seems to be staking out new territory. Should we call it "dangerous modernism" "multiform modernism" "aesthetic pragmatism" or even "the fear of being unfresh"? Luckily they don't have a Charles Jencks over there. In truth, it's the criticism that is the really good thing about this book (despite the fabulous architecture) - a series of sharp stabs from some of the best minds at the Netherlands Architecture Institute and which really are worth getting into.
It was Roemer van Toorn (elsewhere) who got the knife in deepest, suggesting that Dutch architecture is now part of the late-capitalist amusement industry, offering merely the illusion of a fresh new landscape beneath which "the old forces can quietly pursue their battle". For Neo-situationists like him the newness was the problem, because it's the newness (at the time; who remembers them now?) of the Spice Girls or All Saints: worthless, feeding a constant need for spectacle, keeping us all stupid and wanting more. If he's right, contemporary Dutch architecture is devoid of any serious mission and is entirely feeding us entertaining images: Sunday supplement architecture. For Michael Speaks on the other hand, van Toorn's approach smacks too much of the old left-right dialectical oppositions. If Dutch architects have managed to shake themselves free of that stuff, then this is a "genuine" newness. OK, it's an old debate (and as Colin Rowe always said, architecture is the fashion business of the construction industry) but it is given new relevance here.
Between two possible scenarios for the architect of tomorrow (either you go for the messianic ideological thing and try to address "serious issues" like sustainability and social housing or, alternatively, you become a décorateur of rich peoples' toilets or Japanese restaurants) I see an experimentalism that is a child of the Radical Architecture of the Sixties and allows people to go really far out like Körmeling, or to explore a ludic, irresponsible urbanism like Koolhaas or MVRDV (relegating today's plodding "urban designers" to sad anorak-land). Hans Van Dijk has interesting remarks to make about how architects have allowed their professionalism to be put in the hands of regulatory bodies stuffed with political fixers who dictate good and bad design - leaving architecture to search, subversively, for a new definition that will elude these fat janitors. And it might just be that the Dutch are getting to that place before everyone else. As I said, these essays are worth reading.
As for the international superstar, Rem Koolhaas is stripped bare here and left shivering in his underwear by an evidently bitter Bernard Colenbrander who, under the provocative title "The Heritability of the Genius Complex" gives us a quite appalling insider's story about what it was like working at OMA. Horrible: it would put anyone off wanting to work for Koolhaas. Deep joy, though, to see a book that goes beyond the superficial excitement Dutch architecture generates, pouring cold water on it and investigating the big picture. We are in a Second Modernity in which the critic is "a helmsman adrift on a sea of opinions, with a limited view of where the vessel is heading " (Ton Verstegen). Van Dijk (following good old Tafuri) worries that modern architecture has gone out of the loop, and is only a trendy amusement now - offering little acts of faux-rebellion but no real beef. Does that bother you? Get the book and give it plenty of your time.
It was Roemer van Toorn (elsewhere) who got the knife in deepest, suggesting that Dutch architecture is now part of the late-capitalist amusement industry, offering merely the illusion of a fresh new landscape beneath which "the old forces can quietly pursue their battle". For Neo-situationists like him the newness was the problem, because it's the newness (at the time; who remembers them now?) of the Spice Girls or All Saints: worthless, feeding a constant need for spectacle, keeping us all stupid and wanting more. If he's right, contemporary Dutch architecture is devoid of any serious mission and is entirely feeding us entertaining images: Sunday supplement architecture. For Michael Speaks on the other hand, van Toorn's approach smacks too much of the old left-right dialectical oppositions. If Dutch architects have managed to shake themselves free of that stuff, then this is a "genuine" newness. OK, it's an old debate (and as Colin Rowe always said, architecture is the fashion business of the construction industry) but it is given new relevance here.
Between two possible scenarios for the architect of tomorrow (either you go for the messianic ideological thing and try to address "serious issues" like sustainability and social housing or, alternatively, you become a décorateur of rich peoples' toilets or Japanese restaurants) I see an experimentalism that is a child of the Radical Architecture of the Sixties and allows people to go really far out like Körmeling, or to explore a ludic, irresponsible urbanism like Koolhaas or MVRDV (relegating today's plodding "urban designers" to sad anorak-land). Hans Van Dijk has interesting remarks to make about how architects have allowed their professionalism to be put in the hands of regulatory bodies stuffed with political fixers who dictate good and bad design - leaving architecture to search, subversively, for a new definition that will elude these fat janitors. And it might just be that the Dutch are getting to that place before everyone else. As I said, these essays are worth reading.
As for the international superstar, Rem Koolhaas is stripped bare here and left shivering in his underwear by an evidently bitter Bernard Colenbrander who, under the provocative title "The Heritability of the Genius Complex" gives us a quite appalling insider's story about what it was like working at OMA. Horrible: it would put anyone off wanting to work for Koolhaas. Deep joy, though, to see a book that goes beyond the superficial excitement Dutch architecture generates, pouring cold water on it and investigating the big picture. We are in a Second Modernity in which the critic is "a helmsman adrift on a sea of opinions, with a limited view of where the vessel is heading " (Ton Verstegen). Van Dijk (following good old Tafuri) worries that modern architecture has gone out of the loop, and is only a trendy amusement now - offering little acts of faux-rebellion but no real beef. Does that bother you? Get the book and give it plenty of your time.
Displaying 1 of 1 review