Amphithéâtre Marguerite de Navarre, Site Marcelin Berthelot
Open to all
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Abstract

Throughout the post-WWII decades Dutch architect Jaap Bakema (1914-1981) was inspired to build for a democratic and egalitarian society which recognized and accommodated diversity in lifestyles as a starting point for urban planning. This is evidenced by his many interventions within the CIAM, to begin with his statement on behalf of young Dutch architects at the 1947 reunion congress in Bridgwater, England.
At the Otterlo congress, Bakema introduced in 1959 the subject of an open society to the circles of CIAM and Team 10. He continued the conversation on the subject throughout his lifetime, especially in international exchanges with colleagues in the USA and Japan.
For Bakema, the open society implied a social project of change, contestation and communication. It was to be built on comprehensive welfare state arrangements between government bodies, citizens and the industry. At the same time, he envisaged a modernized Netherlands as the open society par excellence.
However, in the early 1970s, when the welfare state redistribution system seemed to be fully established, a new wave of radical democratization and economic change drastically affected Dutch society, and Bakema's project for a new integration of architecture and regional planning lost its momentum.

Dirk van den Heuvel

Dirk van den Heuvel is an Associate Professor at the Technical University Delft and directs the Jaap Bakema Study Centre at the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. He curated "Open: A Bakema Celebration", the Dutch contribution to the Venice architecture biennale in 2014. He is an editor of the series DASH (Delft Architectural Studies on Housing) and the architecture theory journal Footprint. He also served as editor of OASE. His publications include Alison and Peter Smithson: From the House of the Future to a House of Today (Rotterdam, 2004), Team 10: In Search of a Utopia of the Present 1953-1981 (Rotterdam, 2005), Architecture and the Welfare State (London, 2015), and Jaap Bakema and the Open Society (Amsterdam, 2018). In 2017, he has received Harvard University's Richard Rogers Fellowship.

Speaker(s)

Dirk van den Heuvel

Technical University Delf