Structuralism in Architecture and Urban Planning / Strukturalismus in Architektur
und Städtebau / Structuralisme en architecture et urbanisme /
Structuralisme in architectuur en stedenbouw.
Statements and other texts by the protagonists of the architectural movement.
Jacob Bakema / In 1957 Bakema, together with members of a re-organisation
committee, called for the alteration of the name CIAM: Congrès international
d'architecture moderne (Ciam) to CIAM: Groupe de recherches des interrelations
sociales et plastiques (Team Ten). The original French notion "Working group
for the investigation of interrelationships between social and built structures"
is probably coming from Le Corbusier. / Building houses for anonymous
employers (in special issue on Split, Forum 2-1962) /
Piet Blom / I'm the fool in the game. I'm not against the game itself. / The urge
to overthrow existing structures was strengthened in me by the Provo's (in
Amsterdam mid-1960s). Hundreds, thousands of people went out in the streets
to demand that everything must change, become more playful. / I have an
aversion towards the word housing, because it is associated with the idea of
a roof over one's head. But housing also includes the neighbours, the street,
furnishings and the atmosphere of a district. / Towns should be inhabited in
a village-like manner. 1959 /
Georges Candilis / Habitat for the largest section of the population / Up to now
the house is built down to the smallest detail and man is pressed into this
dwelling – in spirit the same from Scotland to Ghana – and adapts himself as
best he may to the life that the architect furnishes him with. We must prepare
the "habitat" only to the point at which man can take over. We aim to provide
a framework in which man can again be master of his home. 1955 / The street
as a corridor disappeared with the Charter of Athens. Today it is the spatial
corridor which has to go (the green-lined space between the functionalistic
blocks). 1956 /
Herman Hertzberger / Structuralism deals with the difference of a structure
with a long life-cycle and infills with shorter life-cycles. / Polyvalent form and
individual interpretations. 1962 / Structure and infill. Participation of the user.
Reciprocity of form. / It is not an outward form wrapped around the object that
matters to us, but form in the sense of unbuilt capacity and a potential vehicle
of significance. Form can be filled in with significance, but can also be deprived
of it again, depending on the use of it. / However far the designer goes, the
occupants put the finishing touches to a building and take possession of it.
They interpret the building in their own way, and the more diverse the ways
for completion, the more people will feel at home in it. / What we need to draw
on is the great "Musée Imaginaire" of images, wherein the process of change
of signification is displayed as an effort of human imagination, always finding
a way to break through the established order to find a more appropriate
solution for the given situation. 1973 / Every solution at a different place or
time is an interpretation of the archetypical; both general and specific, like the
individual application of a formula. 1967 /
Louis Kahn / In order to come to terms with the nature of architectural form
Kahn uses expressions such as "inspiration" and "belief" in form: I really felt
very religiously attached to this idea of belief, because I realized that many
things are done only with the reality of the means employed, with no belief
behind it. You don't know what the building is, really, unless you have a belief
behind the building, a belief in its identity and in the way of life of man. /
Charles Jencks comments: "Kahn starts with a conclusion and works back
towards a beginning. It is the exact reverse of the process which Gropius and
others had preached of washing one's mind of all preconception and starting
from scratch with a clean slate. What Kahn starts with and tries to achieve is
a preconception, a preform. By keeping the form (or preform) archaic, he always
keeps his belief in it." / Louis Kahn often worked with the principle of "servant"
and "served" spaces (auxiliary and main rooms). /
Lucien Kroll / Le visage pluraliste (pluralistic architecture) / Client centered
therapy / We are looking for a way to create a built environment, which
expresses the wishes of the "small voices". I don't pretend in any way to be a
"social worker". I'm seeking, often in some desperation, a form of landscape,
which is compatible with the popular culture (landscapes which are diametrically
opposed to the apparently inevitable authoritarian milieus). We want not simply
to decolonise the residents, but primarily to prove that such co-operation
between cultures which respect each another is possible. The outcome of such
groups will always be closer to the complexity of reality than all the simplifications
which we are tempted to impose "for the sake of brevity". /
Le Corbusier / I was labelled a revolutionary, whereas my greatest teacher was
the Past. My so-called revolutionary ideas are straight out of the history of
architecture itself. / One of the earliest Structuralist projects is the Student City,
where aspects as coherence, articulation, growth and extension are integrated:
The university city is presented here as a "shed"-system in a form of construction
that allows an extension of the overall complex to infinity. 1925 / The project
"Fort l'Empereur" shows principles as change, participation of the inhabitants,
integration of high culture and low culture, structure and coincidence,
2-components-approach, plan libre and pluralistic architecture: Here, you see,
are the artificial building sites, the elevated garden cities. The architectural aspect
is wonderful: a truly moving picture! Maximum diversity within unity. If one wants
it, every architect can build his own villa; and it makes no difference to the whole,
if Moorish stands cheek by jowl with Louis XVI or Italian Renaissance styles.
1932 (Quotation in La ville radieuse) /
Alison and Peter Smithson / Patterns of Association / We are of the opinion that
we should construct a hierarchy of human association (house, street, district, city)
which should replace the functional hierarchy of the Charte d'Athènes. 1953 / At
all levels of the community identifying devices are necessary, but at the city scale,
the community cannot be made comprehensible without something particular to
city. 1956 / Feeling that you are somebody living somewhere / Architect-urbanist /
Urban structuring / Change and growth / Sense of place / The philosophy of the
doorstep / Mobility / Identity / Cluster / Core /
Kenzo Tange / It was, I believe, around 1959 or in the beginning of the Sixties,
that I started to think about what I was later to call Structuralism. (Quotation in
Plan 2-1982, Amsterdam) / In his article 'Function, Structure and Symbol, 1966'
Tange writes: There are problems which are impossible to solve with the
functional approach alone. In addition to the functional aspect we need a
process of "structuring", a process that links the functional units. We come to
believe that developing the process of "structuring" is the basic theme of urban
design. A high- order traffic system gave structure to the entire civic axis of our
Tokyo Plan. / Udo Kultermann comments: "The development from 1920 to
1960 is subsumed by Tange under the designation of functionalism. The period
since 1960, on the other hand, he regards as belonging to what can be called
structurism." 1970 /
Aldo van Eyck / Statement against Rationalism. 1947 / Imagination versus
common sense / Transparency of time / The unchanging conditions of man in the
light of change / We can discover ourselves everywhere, in all places and ages,
doing the same things in a different way, feeling the same differently, reacting
differently to the same. To discover anew implies discovering something new. /
Transformation of archaic principles into present-day architecture. / I think it is
disquieting, historically, that modern urbanism should have been created in the
only avantgarde movement that has proved to be irrelevant. / Whatever space
and time mean, place and occasion mean more. / The city as "interior" of the
community. 1959 / For half a century architects have been providing "outside"
for man, even inside. But that is not their job at all: their job is to provide "inside"
for man, even outside. / We shall have to extend our aesthetic sensibility: uncover
the still hidden laws of what I have called Harmony in Motion, the Aesthetics of
Number. / Quantity cannot be humanized without sensitive articulation of number.
/ Decentring of the subject / Amsterdam orphanage: A "house" must be like a
"small city" if it's to be a real home; a "city" like a "large house" if it's to be a real
city. In fact, what is large without being small has no more real size than what is
small without being large. If there is no real size, there will be no human size.
The building was conceived as a configuration of intermediary places clearly
defined, an articulation between spaces, between outside and inside, between
one space and another. 1960 /

John Habraken / Supports - An alternative to mass housing. 1961 / There is an
architecture of uniformity and one that creates form in variety. In the latter case we
are concerned with the principle of „support structure and infill package”. In such
a case it is possible for a façade form to be so powerful that anything can happen
within it without the overall impression being chaotic from the outside. One will
see it as a lively variety. / Het alledaagse (Everyday things). 1967 /
Wim van Bodegraven / We are faced with the necessity of evolving structures and
forms, which can develop in time, which can remain a unity and maintain the
coherence of the components at all stages of their growth. The absence of this
must lead to selfdestruction. 1952 (Quotation in Forum 7-1959) /









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