Eindhoven: good to have you here

On entering the city limits of Eindhoven a sign greets you stating: Goed dat je er bent (good to have you here). This motto was the inspiration for an outdoor art project by Centrum voor de Kunsten Eindhoven or CKE. Under the instruction of Marcel de Buck and Hanneke Franssen-Moorren a group of amateur photographers in the CKE (Eindhoven Arts Centre) photography class tried their hand at portraiture in the style of Richard Avedon. The first series of these portraits is on display on the building fences near the train station (a monument from 1956 that is being remodelled and expanded to double capacity) starting January 14 2017. The ambition is to have new series of photographs of ordinary people made by ordinary people all over the city as temporary exhibitions.

People going about their daily business were portrayed in a uniform manner against a white backdrop. The idea was to select character faces (or "tronie" a genre in 17th century Dutch painting).The photographs were printed on paper and stuck to the building fence behind the public bicycle parking at Eindhoven Central station. Now some two weeks after they were put up about half of the pictures have come down...

Bookworming: Hermann Muthesius, Das Englische Haus

This German architect, author and diplomat was born Adam Gottlieb Hermann Muthesius in 1861 in a small village in Sachsen-Anhalt as the son of a master builder. This pioneer of design is little-known in the Anglo-Saxon world, but is seen as a pivotal person in the development of modern design and architecture throughout continental Europe. He is renowned for promoting the ideas of the Arts and Crafts Movement within the German-speaking world. He is best-known for influencing early modernism in architecture and design as one of the founders of the Deutscher Werkbund and Bauhaus.

Muthesius started his academic career studying philosophy and history in Berlin, but changed to study architecture in Charlottenburg after two years in 1883 whilst working as an architect apprentice. After completing his studies he worked in Tokyo between 1887 and 1891 before returning to Germany to work for the Prussian Ministry of Public works. In 1895 he studied in Italy on a stipend before accepting the position of cultural attaché at the German Embassy in London. Here he worked for the next six years, returning to Berlin in 1902. As an avid admirer of English culture he was met with some resistance and accused of unpatriotic behaviour in Germany. He was also accused of spying by the British. I will focus on the first volume: Band 1 Entwicklung des Englischen Hauses (Development of the English House).

Hermann Muthesius also wrote books and articles. His most famous work is Das Englische Haus, a three volume report on residential architecture, domestic life and design, published in 1904-05. In 1908 the joined edition was first published. The book starts with the observation that the English have their own sensibilities and customs that set them apart from continental Europe. Although a narrow channel separates the island from the mainland there have been few influences from there. Instead, Muthesius states, cultural influences have been taken from further afield and have been appropriated by the English. [This isn't completely true but fits well with how the English saw -and still see- themselves.] This particular character is especially expressed in their buildings. [This is the premise of the book "The English House".]

The title page of Das Englische Haus (the second edition of 1908) on the left. In the middle a typical floor plan of a house by an Arts and Crafts architect with a free asymmetrical layout. On the right a picture of an example of a house with a dominant chimney stack that was included in the book as typical for an English domestic home.

Muthesius draws attention to the tradition of the free-standing single dwelling, comparing London to an expanded village opposed to the continental urban metropolis. Also he makes mention of the phenomenon of commuting into the city for work whilst living in a semi-rural environment of street after street of small family houses at travelling distance. He attributes this to the emphasis placed on owning a house, a cultural fixation of on the countryside and the dream of a self-sufficient life. He also cites the climate as a reason. The damp and often cloudy days promote indoor living. This all stems from a deeply conservative nature, Muthesius concludes. The yearning for country living, expressed in cities littered with gardens and the countryside being built over with files of free-standing homes, is innate to every Englishman.

Muthesius than proceeds with a history of the development of the English home. He starts with buildings in Norman times and works towards the 1860s, in his view the glory days of English house building. There are several paragraphs on old architecture dating back to Norman, early and late gothic and Elizabethan times. The examples featured include solely residences and castles of the nobility.

In the 17th century there is a clear influence from both France and Italy. Muthesius calls this the Period of Palladianism. This coincides with baroque architecture in continental Europe, but examples of this style are few and far between and more akin to the understated Dutch Baroque (also known as Dutch Palladianism in Britain). This classicist style also dominates the 18th century with Vitruvius Britannicus (1715-25) as the key publication. Muthesius includes several plans of buildings in this style, often on a strict axial layout.

The first domestic building featured in the book dates from the 1800s. It is used to point out the specific rooms of an English house -derived from grand mansions- such as the (with)drawing room, the parlour, the scullery and the pantry. The development of the single family dwelling expands greatly in the 19th century. In a separate train of thought Muthesius also points to Scotland as the place where romanticism originated in the British Isles. He also draws attention to some forms of romanticism being rooted in orientalism and chinoiserie.

The second and third sections of the book delve deeper into domestic architecture. The book shows examples of urban dwellings that emulate grand mansions inspired by the Italian renaissance, classical temples and the gothic era, all without a clear preference and with the thoroughly modern use of cast iron in construction and ornamental detail. As an admirer Muthesius devotes a lot of attention to the "Glasgow School" and William Morris an opposes this -in his mind better and more instinctive architecture- to the eclectic styles that are the norm at the time. Pictures of old farmhouses are included in the book. He sees the Arts and Crafts Movement as the beginning of a more artistic approach with country buildings as the source of "honest" contemporary domestic architecture.

In this modern English domestic house chimneys take centre stage as the defining feature of the building. The architectural style can vary widely from the vernacular style of the Glasgow School to a return to gothic, medieval and English profane baroque. Although some symmetrical house types remain, the real change of this time is the free floor plan with corridors and separate sometimes linked rooms (en suite). Several examples of named Arts and Crafts architects are presented in the book. Often these have floor plans and images of the exterior.

After 200 pages the Garden City Movement is mentioned for the first time. Mind you this movement is only a few years old when Muthesius produces this first volume in 1904. He lumps the Garden City together with model villages like Port Sunlight and Bourneville and the Millbank Estate, the Boundary Estate and some Peabody Estates. Only 10 pages are dedicated to these recent examples of social housing. In 1908 a short general history of garden design in England was included after this. It focuses on the development of gardens with examples in the French and Dutch style and informal chinoiserie and landscape gardens.

This book was very important for the spread of vernacular architecture and the Garden City Movement in the German-speaking world and countries under its direct influence. It is also an exemplary book on how to discuss architecture.

Digging deep: hidden infrastructure

When mentioning infrastructure most people will think of roads and rails. They are forgetting that there is a hidden world of infrastructure that lies beneath our streets. This hidden infrastructure is equally important for the well-functioning city and consists of sewage pipes, electrical cables, water pipes and communication cables such as fibre optic cables. The rules are that this subterranean infrastructure is built in the location indicated on the permit. Alas it often happens that contractors place them where they can get them in easiest resulting in broken cables and destroyed pipes when years later another contractor starts digging...

Sewage pipes used to collect both clean rain water and the dirty waste water from homes and businesses. Now this system is changed in separate pipes for each to better manage flooding and spend less on water treatment. This means two smaller pipes instead of one larger pipe. Drinking water (in the middle) comes in via separate pipes with these typical home connections in the standard household width.

Bookworming: Ebenezer Howard, Garden Cities of To-morrow

For most people in the English-speaking world modern town planning (i.e. city and country planning as we know it now) started with the publication in 1898 of To-morrow: a Peaceful Path to Real Reform by Ebenezer Howard. This book in the utopian tradition of the late nineteenth century describes an idealised place to live that marries the advantages of living in an urban environment (work and facilities) with the merits of country living (sense of community, clean air, connection with nature). This Garden City became truly popular after the 1902 reissue of the book as Garden Cities of To-Morrow coupled with the already established Garden City Association, founded by Howard in 1899. Howard envisaged clusters of Garden City satellites around existing (industrial) cities separated by a green belt of (semi)rural land with road and rail links between them.

Brett Clark, in his Introduction to Howard's Garden Cities of To-Morrow (2003) formulates it well: 'Ebenezer Howard advocated the construction of garden cities to reduce the alienation of human society from nature. The social world was to be reorganized and integrated into the surrounding environment to ensure sustainable interactions. In Garden Cities of To-morrow, Howard provided an outline of a garden city that promised a clean environment, free from air and water pollution, and an abundance of parks and open spaces. Social production was organized for local demands with the goal of creating self-sustaining communities, thus reducing the need for long-distance trade. Howard insisted that the long-term sustainability of garden cities was founded on abiding by the law of restitution, where all wastes were recycled back to the soil to ensure the continued productive potential of the land. In this, Howard's garden cities dissolved the divide between town and country and provided a model for an ecologically sustainable society.'

The title page of the 1902 edition reproduced here. In the middle Robert Beever's critical biography of Ebenezer Howard. The well-illustrated book on Letchworth by Mervyn Miller.

The book with many schematic illustrations has been an inspiration to many in many different countries, but each times the ideas were appropriated. Even Ebenezer Howard didn't manage to create true Garden Cities fully compliant with his ideals. Only two official Garden Cities were realised in England. Both Letchworth Garden City (1903) and Welwyn Garden City (1920) lack several essential elements, most prominently the communal ownership of the living environment, reinvestment of revenues into the local community and the absence of private landlords.

Much has been made of the illustrations in this seminal book. Some have tried to adopt these as the intended representations of the spatial design for such suburban satellites. I feel they were intended however more as organisational representations. The book is full of such lists and schematics to prove the point that such an ideal should and indeed could be realised. They are more organisational in nature than proposed layouts. The writer we must remember wasn't a design professional, but a clerk (making him the opposite of Camillo Sitte).

Two of the famous schematic representations included in Garden Cities of To-Morrow. On the left the Three Magnets representing the pull factors of town,  country and town-country (the garden city). On the right an organisational drawing showing the garden city suburban satellites that would be part of a future based on cooperative socialism.

Howard drew from various contemporary sources for his ideas. He never actively looked beyond Britain and the USA for inspiration. He turned to the American poets Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson, to the work of Henry George (Progress and Poverty, 1879) and dr. Benjamin Ward Richardson (Hygeia, or the City of Health, 1867) for inspiration. Many consider the time he spent in America -as an unsuccessful pioneer- as pivotal. Howard grew-up and lived in the city all his life. He left London for America only to return few years later. That city -or rather Greater London- grew rapidly during the nineteenth century. The growth of metropolitan areas all over Britain lead to the depopulation of rural areas around them. People found themselves in often dismal conditions in these expanding industrial cities.

Ebenezer Howard joined a debating society (the Zetetical Society) and thus came into contact with the ideas of freethinkers, preachers, prophets of change and progress, reformers and revolutionaries. Edward Bellamy's utopian novel Looking Backward (1888) inspired him to want to write his ideas down himself. He produced a hybrid utopian novel that also wanted to demonstrate the feasibility of what was proposed (he was after all a political clerk) as he saw the need for radical reform, notably in housing, employment and industrial policy in general.

Through his contacts Howard was introduced to the ideas of the Co-operative Housing Movement. This was the English branch of the co-operative movements that sprang up in both North-America and continental Europe -notably in Germany as Baugenossenschaften. In England the rapid growth of the co-operative movement can be directly linked to the Rochdale Principles, a set of ideals for a co-op formulated by the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers in 1844. The ideal of co-operative housing was first realised in Brentham Garden Suburb in Ealing, west London, in 1901. Despite the name this housing project isn't an offshoot from the Garden City Movement, but like Bedford Park (1877) it served as an inspiration for it. In that same year -1901- Ebenezer Howard managed to persuade Ralph Neville, chairman of the Labour Association to chair the Garden City Association. He introduced Howard to the wealthy backers of the Co-operative Movement, notably the Liberal MP Henry Vivian, who had already invested in the Ealing project. In 1903 Howard had secured financiers for Letchworth Garden City. Thus the utopian vision could take shape and become a reality!

Crazy Paving: signalling an attention zone

The urbanised landscape is littered with signs aimed at organizing behaviours in public space. The overkill in signage can sometimes lead to a lack of attentiveness. Some experiments have shown that by also signalling on the surface of the street accidents can be avoided.

A school zone is indicated by the word "school" painted on the road surface. To make sure motorists slow down -as the signs indicated they should- colourful shapes have been incorporated into the paved surface in bright red and a violet colour. It's a simple intervention, but like other messages beneath our feet it works!