Our activity is essentially researching on how housing developed in Rotterdam during last 150 years. We are currently looking into fifty housing estates but the number will eventually go to two hundred and fifty. On the one hand we are interested in setting up a data base that will cover raw information about the way people used to live, square meters per person, proportion between public space and private space, costs of utilities etc. On the over every information will be presented with necessary historical, social and economic background, the whole context has to be understood. Apart from texts of course essential will be also the plans and sections.
This Saturday I attended a pretty much interesting seminary about Gerit Rietveld together with the exhibition at the local
Centraal Museum of Utrecht. To my surprise in the seminary programme the same amount of time was devoted to the core as to the coffee or lunch breaks. Initially I thought this meeting was just a perfect excuse for the white hair society to chat and laugh! But when drinking and eating I met and talked to a couple of fairly young but important heads: Ole Bouman, the director of the
NAI, Pippo Ciorra, chief curator at the
Maxxi Roma and Lucas van Zuijlen, who runs the project
Rotterdam woont
Firstly I thought that what
Gall and me are trying to acheive with the Superhighway project could be a sort of a data base that will have its own methodology and will gather interesting information about the Shared Heritage. All the phenomena that are felt by heart need to be justified with more perceivable and commonly acceptable data.
Secondly, if there is a data base it has to have a practical purpose. Why collect something and store it on shelves? Therefore what could be developed is a sort of Pattern Language, a series of spacial and aesthetic solutions for contemporary housing and architecture that would embrace the topic of Shared Heritage. Documentation of the past with translation to the contemporary and strong focus on implementation. In layman's language let's just imagine a Polish German house finally with forms and meanings mingling together.
What we learn from Lucas van Zuijlen is the practical approach. In his project he doesn't count anymore on public funding that has been increasingly shorten in recent years although he does everything under auspices of Delft university and other institutions. Yet the money comes from private investors, developers who are interested in having and using thorough data, understanding the tendencies in housing in the past and to use them creatively in the future.
This is something that has been attracting me since I had in my hands an issue of the
Purpose Magazine: working intellectually and practically, to change the world and possibly to earn an honest penny. With all the attention that has now shifted to the regional architecture it's probable that we can succeed also with the concept of Shared Heritage. More to come!
