The winter of 1990 saw the publication Aldo wandering around the catacombs of Joost Meuwissen

ALDO IN
of OASE double issue 26-27, bearing the the giant oak, like some bewildered visitor.
slightly pretentious title: his job is to bring Revelling in his own prose, Joost
about an IMAGINED ORDER, Aldo van whirls past Aldo’s houses without discov-
Eyck. As this longish title suggests, the ering any real virtuosity. The article’s title
entire issue was devoted to the work of characterises Aldo van Eyck as a master

WONDER-
Aldo van Eyck. Its editorial dwelled on who, in his homes, conjures with scale and
the fact that a serious architectural cri- ushers the users into a wondrous world of
tique of Van Eyck’s oeuvre would be pos- changing dimensions. At the same time,
sible only by avoiding Van Eyck’s person it also explicitly describes him as a giant
and by steering clear of his digressions stumbling blindly through the china cabi-

LAND
on the ‘human dimension’ and ‘poetic de- net of architecture.
sign’. That very same editorial indicated The homes have a unique logic that
that the editorial board had set itself the is quite different from his public works,
momentous task of ‘incorporating [Van because here he does not put together
Eyck’s work] into the science of architec- façades. Instead the floor plan gives rise

Remarks on
ture’, which up until that point had clearly to the finished product. The façades have
not been possible. The issue addressed a disappeared and the building derives
range of topics, among them Van Eyck’s meaning from its surroundings and the
approach to living, the journal Forum, floor plan structure.
CIAM, Otterlo 1959, his urban devel- Meuwissen’s article appears to imply

the Houses of
opment work, Nagele and finally Joost that Van Eyck’s homes, which up until
Meuwissen on Van Eyck’s private homes. that point had gone unnoticed and uncen-

FIRST PUBLISHED IN OASE 26

The inclusion of Joost Meuwissen was sored, show a weakness and ambiguity
something of a surprise. He had been as- that may be more interesting than the
sociated with the journal Plan and at the meticulous and over-composed clarity of

Aldo van Eyck

time of this publication he worked for the his public buildings. In fact, Meuwissen is
journal Wiederhall. Meuwissen had never carried away by them. The paradox of this
shown any affinity with Aldo van Eyck’s article is that whereas Meuwissen wants
ideas or finished work in either of these to provide a dry, analytical description of
two journals. Wiederhall had its heyday in Van Eyck’s work, Van Eyck may ultimate-
the late 1980s. It had stressed its creden- ly have touched a chord in him. He thus
tials as a platform for the kind of architec- concludes with the poetic image of Aldo
ture that infuriated and terrified Van Eyck. van Eyck up in the tree like the invisible
Nor does it seem likely that Wiederhall’s cat with the mysterious smile.
editorial board, including the likes of
Carel Weeber and Umbeto Barbieri, Juliette Bekkering
would have inspired much confidence in Member of the editorial board
Van Eyck. In the late 1980s Wiederhall from OASE 28 to 40
was a remarkably polished journal – seem-
Translated by Laura Vroomen
ingly the opposite of OASE in everything.
It had a large, square layout, deliberately
designed to prevent photocopying. In the
first Wiederhall editorial Meuwissen wrote:
‘I love architecture because it is old. In its
treatises and manuals it has preserved a
dead language up until now.’
Judging by his article Joost
Meuwissen appears to have little affin-
ity with Aldo van Eyck’s work. The title
should have read ‘Joost in Aldo’s Won-
derland’ rather than evoking an image of

136
Within Aldo van Eyck’s body of work, residential buildings present to us from their modern condition, their passive voice Deleuzian categories are

OASE #75
1
form neither a distinct category nor, by any means, a promi- The reception history of – the same voice that speaks to us from the sparse design used here not in an applied
Aldo van Eyck’s works is still manner but in a reconstructive
nent one. Their role is modest. In surveys and other publica- notes, like the hermetic poet Gerrit Achterberg, singing the one. If my approach must have
too short for us to take any dis-
tions about his oeuvre, they are not usuallly presented as a tance from it. For that reason, praises of something unattainable. The only activity is that a name, therefore, reconstruc-
separate group. In his architectural aesthetics, in word and not much attention is paid here of things, the sun entering, the door opening: ‘When the door tionism seems most suitable.
image, Van Eyck does not make a categorical distinction be- to the secondary literature of opens, spring has truly arrived!’2 Truly? Living in the house is 2
prior interpretations, despite Jan Rietveld and Aldo van
tween types of buildings. Each building is called home. His the frictions between the hagio- waiting for the door to open at last. Deep inside the house, the
Eyck, ‘Huis aan de Herman
two largest public projects, the Burgerweeshuis and Moeder- graphic (Herzberger), empa- prime numbers are keeping watch. The play of contrasts, in Gorterstraat te Amsterdam’,
huis in Amsterdam (a home for orphans and a home for single thetic (Strauven) and critical the larger-scale works, reaches its limit in literary content and Forum, 1956, 118, 119.
(De Heer, Barbieri) approaches.
mothers, respectively), both have a residential function. Van This article attempts to trace ends with a resulting leap towards understanding – the Burger-
Eyck’s aesthetics does include a theory of coming and go- the definition of building, resid- weeshuis and Moederhuis are run-ups to such a leap. In the
ing, though more of coming than of going – a theory of stay- ing and thinking in the houses smaller-scale works, the monuments and pavilions, that same
of Van Eyck, from an angle that
ing somewhere, of ‘dwelling’, but not a theory of residing or is not so much deconstruction- play of contrasts can – through the restriction of the means of
living somewhere in the strict sense. In the structure of this ist as it is Deleuzian. This is expression – be celebrated directly, as an image: the sign, em-
aesthetics, each work avoids stylistically refining the previous because Gilles Deleuze has blem or logo of an idealised working method. The difficulty
formulated more, and more
ones; instead, the objective is to ‘merge prior experiences’ into global, descriptive categories, is that this play of contrasts in Van Eyck’s houses has neither
a rich awareness, and so each work acquires a characteristic which can serve as keys to the a beginning nor an end. The mode of address is not the ‘we’
tenor that is all its own, offering a truly new and different interpretation of an aesthetic of the architect or the ‘them’ of the occupants, but reality
system, especially in Différence
definition of architecture. Nevertheless, houses seem to have et répétition (Paris, 1968). Or at itself. The game grows more fluid. There are no rules. In his
played but a small role in the reception of his oeuvre.1 Per- least, it seems to me that in this houses, no connection can be made between height, breadth
haps the concept of architecture that they embodied was less approach, the deconstructionist and depth. They threaten to escape not only his oeuvre, but

JOOST MEUWISSEN
preoccupation with destroy-
timely, less historically compelling or less urban. ing dialectic and constructing architecture itself. Reality is not rescued there by a concept
Van Eyck’s houses are admired, to be sure, but not often equality is coupled with a pos- or image, but because it is indicated as outside. Accordingly,
discussed. I do not wish to change this situation radically. sibility that has not yet been the inside – the interior – is devoid of representation; it is va-
relinquished, the possibility
Rather, I would like to take their silent builtness and their that an aesthetic system is also cated; it creates an almost postmodern emptiness, posing a
abstract conceptualisation as a basis, and examine what they thinkable. In this sense, the transcendental question – under what conditions is the play

ALDO IN WONDERLAND
Jan Rietveld and Aldo van Eyck, Damme House, Herman Gorterstraat, Amsterdam, 1951-1954

Jan Rietveld and

Aldo van Eyck,
floor plan of the
Damme House,
Herman Gorter-
straat, Amster-
dam, 1951-1954

Jan Rietveld and Aldo van Eyck, Damme House, Herman Gorterstraat, Amsterdam, 1951-1954

139
 of contrasts possible? – and answering that question by build-

OASE #75
ing, by erecting an almost unbridled elevation.

TWISTS
Not that the houses have very different twists than the other
works. The entrance recessed deeply into the house, the bayo-
net reflection in the floor plan, the dominant cornice, the bub-
bling domes on the roof, or the aggregation of rooms around 3
a larger space, the tectonics of the elevation – these features Because they indicate different
appear in all his works. But their point differs. For instance, contents, namely inside and
outside, I speak of a different
the bayonet reflection in the houses is developed only in one scale, although the propor-
direction, and not in multiple ones. To put it differently, an tional system does not actually
orthogonal bayonet reflection can prompt a diagonal one on a differ.
4
different scale,3 but the two are not united in a single system In a recent exchange with Jan
of their own, unlike in the larger-scale projects, such as the de Heer, Johan van de Beek
Burgerweeshuis, or the design for the cultural centre in Jeru- refers to the self-contained
compositional quality of these
salem, where bayonet reflection seems to be used both length- buildings, which have a compo-
wise and breadthwise, occasioning a system of swastikas that nent structure but whose com-
aims to unite part and whole within itself and thus achieves ponents never become a model
of an infinite structure: ‘Een in-
its effects through the medium of scale.4 In the houses, the gezonden brief naar aanleiding

JOOST MEUWISSEN
reflections are more likely to assign a central role to space – van het centrumloze labyrinth:
or emptiness – than to scale. Gerrit Rietveld en de stede-
bouw’, OASE 25, 1989, 22, 23:
Something similar is true of the deeply recessed entrance, ‘In the work of Van Eyck, the
which results in the absence of some formal element of the point is to use the turbine (swa-
house: the hallway, the courtyard, the separate circulation stika) in such a way that it cre-
ates a composition correspond-
space, which in the larger works seem to function precisely as ing to the size of the particular

ALDO IN WONDERLAND
an aggregate, as a larger-scale element – at least in the floor project. It never becomes a
plan.5 In this respect, again, the houses indicate an informal fragment as a model for a theo-
retically infinite structure. The
centre to which the smaller rooms will not, in fact, relate in composition is not acentric,
terms of scale. But is this a loss? At first sight, it seems to be but polycentric. Its dynamics
experienced as one. The building is too small, as it were, to are sometimes kept in balance
through a countermovement by
formalise the complex relations, and so those relations remain a swastika of a different kind
informal, like the very experience of living in the house. The . . . Van Eyck creates a spe-
hall is absent but, perhaps for that reason, is placed on the cific relationship between the
designed composition and the
upper floor in the houses in Amsterdam and Venlo. But once given context, often by leaving
it is there, is it still because it is missing on the ground floor? one arm of the swastika open
In fact, the hall is opened up, by means of one or two voids, to the environment’. But this is
not the point at all! The point
opening both outwardly on the upper floor and towards the is how repetition is conceptu-
ground floor. It becomes the central tectonic element, finally alised within the composition,
indicating that the upper floor is an extension of the ground how the composition deals with
infinity, that of the ground, the
floor – not merely a second level, but an element in the struc- materials and the sky. In their
ture of the house. Here, the hall is not an element of the floor elevation, their elevation, these
plan and its problem of scale as it attempts to interpret the ar- buildings do, in fact, have an
infinite structure. Attention is
chitecture on the theoretically infinite plane of the earth. It is always focused too much, and
a tectonic element that indicates the elevation of the house or, exclusively, on the floor plan,
rather, suggests that the house is an elevation. which is described as if it were
the building.
While in the larger projects the twists are necessities, com- 5
Aldo van Eyck,
plex and seemingly interlinked and having a function related Jurgen van Staaden makes a
design for his to scale – a function that is therefore literary and laden with telling observation about this
own home in issue in ‘Het ontbreken van
Baambrugge,
meaning – the serious play of the houses, the elevation erected het plein’, 6-nieuws, 1976-1977,
1958-1960 indoors, requires only one scale. Consequently, the houses 713-715.

141
 can celebrate the festival of proportion without much refer-

OASE #75
ence to the outside. Or at least, this could form the basis for an
analysis seeking not the similarities but the differences within
Van Eyck’s oeuvre. The houses more strongly resemble the
tectonic signs of the monuments and pavilions, which are also
pure proportion, but they keep those signs indoors and do not
let them shine out over the city – or rather, the woods in which
they are found. Perhaps the inside and outside of the private
house are not divergent enough in character to enter into a for-
mal merger of scale in the design, or to be significant. Both in-
side/out and private/public seem barely able to signify a social
or cultural value in this work. They can form a psychological
content, but that is by grace of their informality, their lack of
form. Aldo van Eyck must have been avoiding the educational
function that, in the 1950s and ’60s in the Netherlands, was as-
sociated with living in a small country house in a modern style.
For him, in a sense, this work must have been a non-genre and
thus have represented a kind of building as such, more so than
his schools, playgrounds and other urban creations.

JOOST MEUWISSEN
TRANSITIONS
Van Eyck’s houses do have transitional spaces between the
Aldo van Eyck, Hubertushuis, Amsterdam, inside and the outside, but those spaces are almost always in-
1973-1978, entrance hall and stairwell; elevation
and floor plans and axonometric projection corporated into the volume of the house itself. Within those
houses, they manifest more as a vertical absence or void than

ALDO IN WONDERLAND
Aldo van Eyck, Hubertushuis,
coloured tiles in a mirror frame

Aldo van Eyck, Hubertushuis,

Aldo van Eyck, Hubertushuis, Amsterdam, 1973-1978 wall columns; at left, coloured tiles in
descending spectral order from purple
to red; at right, in ascending spectral
142 order from blue to red
as a horizontal connection – ultimately, more as a window intense confrontations in the sphere of perception, is not fron-

OASE #75
than as a door. No matter how articulated and linked some tal or orthogonal, but solely diagonal, as the path of the build-
houses may seem, their exterior space does little to engage ing’s main circulation routes indicates. But the exterior view
with forms in the vicinity – a square, a circle, a canal, a larger of the building reveals no more of this – despite, or precisely
but well-defined space – that could give coherence and mean- because of, the fractal overgrowth of the outside space – than
ing to the house as a grouping.6 Even in the house in Rétie, 6 the hint of a perceived diagonal. This fails to add much to
I would argue, this is in fact the case. The coherence seems Their centre is a horizontal or the outer wall, however, and the undulations of the roof are
vertical decentring, a shift, a
to be defined internally, in terms more of composition than change, around which the rooms weakened by the stacking of the architrave and cornice. The
of grouping. Although all of Aldo van Eyck’s buildings have are not grouped but reflected, rooftop is flattened, not in its entirety, but in the vicinity of
substantial cornices, the houses seem most deeply embedded while in the larger projects the the outer wall. This is unlike the houses.
elements of the floor plan are
in the frames that those cornices provide. clustered together relative to The result that emerges, in the sectional view, is a reiter-
The cornice or the edge of the roof surrounds a surface, the centre, which however is too able elevation of vaults, a measure, a proportion that can
the rooftop, where the elements of the composition extrude or empty to hold them in place. articulate, divide and expand the floor plan. Because the eleva-
See note 4: More acentric than
intrude, a surface that therefore never manifests as a plane but polycentric. In the Loosduinen tion functions as a single material envelopment, the floor plan
is always a little more than planar. It is the fractal dimension church, the actual centre is the becomes available. Because proportion predominates, every
of the rooftop that forms the compositional reference point drainage channel that ceases to scale becomes identical, at least conceptually. This is also the
exist somewhere in front of the
for the entire house. As a result, the elements of the compo- front door. In fact, this is anoth- case with the foundation and upper floors of the Moederhuis,
sition are in fact all conceived as vertical, reaching upward, er decentring and shift, but not and certainly at the ESTEC site in Noordwijk. The elevation
towards their fractal levelling in the rooftop, and the house is a change, except in the material is vaulting that creates a certain tension between the inside
used, namely water, in which
not erected out of the floor plan but conceived as a complex the church is reflected naturally and the outside. Height cannot truly be conceptualised in the
elevation, a system of towers, from its very inception: the San but not architecturally. Or at outer wall; depth is not truly tolerated. The outer wall, right

JOOST MEUWISSEN
Gimignano connection that has served as a route in architec- least, the relationship between down to the distribution of glazing bars in the case of the
the church as a grouping and
tural metabolism and structuralism. this centre is structural, possibly Burgerweeshuis, can in fact only be given form as a stack of
‘House on the water with four towers’ is the phrase used to even symbolic, but not, as I see horizontal bands, a complex frame, a parergon: that which is
describe the Baambrugge design.7 Why four? Why not one, as it, in the nature of a mirroring. found outside the work but, from an outside perspective, is
Unfortunately, further analysis
in the houses in Amsterdam and Venlo, or many, as in Rétie? of this point would take us far part of that work. Precisely for that reason, the floors of the
It is not just that this design is for a house for the architect beyond the scope and topic of building cannot also be stacked. The tectonic model of the

ALDO IN WONDERLAND
himself, who could hardly be expected to wall himself up this article. vaulting militates against it.
7
in a single tower, and instead opted for a place of unbridled ‘Four two-storey towers each The larger buildings are extension, theoretically infinite.
building in which his many-faceted, ‘chameleonic’ personal- give access to four independent They require an elevation that can be horizontally reiterated.
ity could sojourn. The number four itself must also have been quarters. Inbetween, covered This is what leads to the problem of the floors, the levels,
outdoor living spaces enclosed
important, because it suggests the four, rather than two, direc- within the perimeter of the that is resolved only with difficulty in the outer walls of the
tions in the floor plan – the four points of the compass, the house . . . Recurrent motif in Burgerweeshuis and the Moederhuis. But the houses are el-
four seasons – in their lack of difference as an elevation, or most subsequent projects’, Aldo evation. The upper level is part of the elevation, not a true
van Eyck, ‘In Search of Laby-
rather, in the repetition of their elevation. Because the eleva- rinthian Clarity’, l’Architecture floor. The houses develop vertically, not as domes but as tow-
tion repeats itself, the differences in the floor plan become d’aujourd’hui, 177, 1975, 15. ers. They rise to their peak at the centre. This is one reason
free, rather than designed, content. The intended message is that in the outer wall, again, the possibilites are quite the op-
that in the houses no three-dimensionality will be pursued, or posite of those present in the larger works. The articulation of
in any case, a different three-dimensionality will be suggested the outer walls of the houses serves merely as a transparent or
than in the public works, which have more to do with the small flimsy veiling of the elevation; it is dependent on the arrange-
and large. ment of the towers or the cornice and designed out of a sense
of ‘weakness’. However much the formal solutions resemble
one another, as they undeniably do in the Burgerweeshuis and
ELEVATION the house in Rétie, there is a world of difference between the
In Van Eyck’s public buildings, the vaulted roof and outer strong, even classical, Palladian, foundation-tectonic physi-
wall can be conceived more or less as a single elevation, no ognomy of the Burgerweeshuis’s outer walls – a veritable
matter how complex they may be. In the Burgerweeshuis, series of funny faces like those that Aldo van Eyck himself
the play of open and closed in the flat outer wall is kept in sometimes pulls – and the somewhat textile-like patterns, with
balance by the round, three-dimensional columns that cre- no top or bottom to speak of, that are on display in the outer
ate space around themselves, that make themselves spatial, walls of the houses. The house in Venlo does not present the
that envelop themselves in space like the dancers in a George face of the architect but merely wears his inseparable floppy
Balanchine ballet. The choreography here, however, with its hat. The house front in Rétie is, as it were, no longer designed

144 145
as a front or outer wall in any sense, but is dissolved into the 8 entire concept of stacked floors. The height of the building is perience’. The result, after all,

OASE #75
weak contour of the woods’ edge, which borders the clear- The fractal exuberance of the involved in the tectonics of the outer wall not as height, but as is that the idea is concealed.
wall line in the floor plan of the Herzberger (see above, page 23)
ing that contains the furnished complex. Precisely because Burgerweeshuis could also be colour. The simple graphic technique – colour – is not the larg- is undoubtedly right to claim
this edge is drawn so exactly around the complex, and does seen as an attempt to make the er-scale element intended to bring together multiple levels in that Aldo van Eyck’s buildings
not presuppose a different, grander scale, its curve does not outer wall visible from within – one colossal order. On the contrary, the bays differ in height. do not aim to change people’s
an attempt that clearly is never behaviour but rather ‘to give
appear to be a natural boundary but an unnatural palisade, a entirely successful, not until the Colour is not a concept relating to scale, but a transcendental people richer opportunities to
dividing line, a front, a defence, a resonance or a response to house in Rétie. In addition to category that links the texture of the upper levels to building determine their own attitudes
the ramifications of the development of this clearing for the this minimisation of the outside as an elevation, as an act. towards one another at all
of the outer wall and the nomi- times’. But the problem is that
tectonic evolution of the woods. An outer wall without an nal minimisation that results But the difficulty is that just like the displaced window at one’s attitude towards things
outside, a façade without a face. from the inclusion of the outer the Burgerweeshuis, this imaginative trick also dominates the disappears from view, not only
wall as material in the elevation, outer wall. The train of thought proceeds in the wrong direc- in involuntary observation but
of which it can then only form also in the minimal aesthetic
the base, there is a third minimi- tion. The non-tectonic element – unambiguous horizontal system of this architecture. In
TEXTURE sation, which we could describe shifting, colour as surface – is brought into the building proc- this respect, of course, the ar-
The weak outer walls of the house may be the reason that as open. This minimisation ess as a last resort available only once, as an element which chitecture of Aldo van Eyck is
attempts to remove the outer a kind of abstract art after all.
commentators have typically kept silent about them – because wall from view in order to give makes it possible to continue building. It serves as the repre-
their laxness is seen as a deficiency, or because the endlessly direction to the movement. Eyes sentation or concept of the possibility of building, instead of
eulogised aesthetics of the larger projects rules out any mo- and feet are directed elsewhere, building itself serving as the condition of possibility for this
and so the only remaining im-
ments of weakness, and where they arise it conceals them pression of the outer wall is as concept, this term, for colour, graphics, celebration. As if the
from the eye through the simplest of graphic devices. This is a screen. In the Burgerweeshuis party tent was the point of the party. Because the architect
what we find at the Burgerweeshuis in the south wing, with it is the horizontal movement, cannot give shape to any upper levels, they are covered up and
as a result of which the glazing
an upper level, where the wards for older children are lo- bars around the courtyard enter represented by an element that cannot give shape to any upper

JOOST MEUWISSEN
cated. The upper level rises too high to be incorporated into into a geometrical relationship levels either, but can act as tectonic writing on the wall. The
the elevation as an architrave or frame. Regular placement but are equal in width, because problem is that the textile-like writing is the condition of pos-
people and their gazes move
of windows would make it an extended architrave or frame horizontally rather than verti- sibility for the wall on which it is written. That is why in these
with an unacceptably weak, textile-like appearance. The pat- cally. In the Moederhuis it is larger projects the writing also has to play the role of the wall.
tern of windows would dominate and somewhat detract from the vertical movement, ‘the In the houses, in contrast, the outer wall does not have this
distribution of windows on
the tectonics of the substructure. Finally, the windows would the street side, which distracts function, because it does not have to be seen from outside, un-

ALDO IN WONDERLAND
merge with the dome in an excessively three-dimensional you from the houses across the less by a thief or an architecture critic. The textile-like quality
way. The rightmost of the three windows on the upper floor is street and leads you (without we find in the larger projects defines building as a graphic sign,
compelling you) to gaze invol-
therefore displaced out of its plane and incorporated between untarily at what is going on a kind of writing; in the houses, the act of building is instead a
the planes and above the column as a tectonic moment in the in the street below’, Herman condition of possibility for their textility, for the thinking, for
elevation of the outer wall over the two floors. Not the plane Herzberger, ‘Het twintigste- the curtains, the house front, for the freedom of difference and
eeuwse mechanisme en de ar-
of the house front for the upper floor as a whole, but only this chitectuur van Aldo van Eyck’, the development of ideas. While in the larger projects the idea
window is incorporated into the vertical development of the in Aldo van Eyck, Hubertushuis, of building is sought in the identity of the building as ‘house’,
front elevation. This makes the upper floor not only literally Hubertus house (Amsterdam, in the houses this idea is stripped of any form or design, to be
1982), 23. The architecture does
but also figuratively asymmetrical. A conceptual difference its job without compulsion and enjoyed, as it were, as informal, liberated content.
is also imposed onto the windows: part of the fabric of the involuntarily, but it does get
upper floor, but also part of the elevation of the entire house the job done. In Architectuur als
oude wetenschap (Amsterdam,
front. The upper floor is not seen as a floor, but drawn into 1988), 170 (the relevant chapter WONDERLAND
the tectonics of the house front by means of the windows. had been previously published In the Burgerweeshuis, the window shifts across the wall in
Although the swastika floor plans on both levels offer every in Plan 1982, no. 7-8) I asked a tapestry-like pattern, without a great deal of top and bot-
whether the distance between
reason for such a solution – with Van Eyck’s game of bot- the nominal concept of the tom, and then becomes a one-off sign, a single gesture, that
tom corner open, top corner closed – still, you cannot deny observed outer wall and the rescues the top and bottom of the building’s tectonics. Like-
that, even from a diagonal perspective, the house front is cre- free concept of involuntary ob- wise, in the Moederhuis, the spectral colour pattern of the
servation as experience has not
ated through a completely unambiguous shift, a graphic trick become too great in thise case vertical series of tiles that straddles the columns is expressed
which in itself is entirely pointless and has little to do with and in fact comes at the expense in two series, one ascending and the other descending. This
architecture, but does dominate the view.8 of the architecture: ‘That the creates a kind of woven thread pattern, giving the different
buildings, in other words, are
The same thing applies to the two left-hand bays – extend- not appreciated in terms of the but uniformly coloured groups of windows in each bay the
ing onto the upper level – for which the principle of giving ideas involved in their design, appearance of a tectonic plane. It is in relation to this build-
every window a face becomes very difficult to maintain on but experienced in a “different” ing that the architect emphasises unity of scale: ‘Between
way . . . An architecture that
every level. Each bay has a single colour of its own from top was about architecture would the largest room and the smallest . . . the intensity changes
to bottom, creating vertical bands of colour that negate the evoke an experience about ex- but not the scale . . . because it is only Alice who sometimes

146 147
 shrinks and sometimes grows.’9 Here, Wonderland is charac- 9

OASE #75
terised as the place where things grow and shrink at a grad- Aldo van Eyck, ‘De bouw
van een huis’, in: Aldo van Eyck,
ual pace, and not by fits and starts, as they do in our world. Hubertushuis, Hubertus house,
The dream is of a space so continuous that directions mingle op. cit. (note 8), 84.
with one another and dimensionality becomes entirely weak.
The reality is that the elevation and the outer wall cannot be
reconciled with one another because they imply different ori-
entations. The elevation can be a single, fluid movement, but
the price that must be paid is the minimisation of the outer
wall, which must nonetheless be designed. Or the outer wall
can be weak, like those of the houses, but the consequence
is that the elevation is then internalised and can no longer
be observed.
1. entrance 5. bathroom Displacement (in the Burgerweeshuis) and colour (in the
2. living room 6. loggia
3. kitchen 7. storage space Moederhuis) are immaterial but without content. They are
4. bedroom intensive quantities and not qualities. Wonderland is the intui-
tion of pure space without extension and without dimensions,
without directions, without high or low, without left or right,
and so without symmetry, without up or down. Things grow
and shrink there without an external scale, become purely di-
mensional – the power of proportion, of different proportions,

JOOST MEUWISSEN
is unchained. But the intensity, which in the form of unity of
scale (and thus in the form of an egg, essentially) seems to es-
cape observation because it precedes it, is defined as change.
Displacement and colour evade observation in the form of
change and, for this reason, cannot be assigned any meaning

ALDO IN WONDERLAND
Aldo van Eyck, Verkerk House,
Herungerweg, Venlo, 1967-1970

Aldo van Eyck design for R. van Eyck House in

Saint Paul de Vence (France), 1968 Aldo van Eyck, Burgerweeshuis, Amsterdam, southern wall of one of the wards for older children
148
 either. As transcendental categories, they cannot have any 10

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content of their own – all they can do is rescue the tectonics. Aldo van Eyck, ‘Inleiding
tot de Loos tentoonstel-
Displacement and colour are not symbolic but imaginary ling op de afdeling Bouw-
in nature. They are not an image but a mirror of decline, cri- kunde, bij de opening woensdag
sis, architecture. Accordingly, in the Burgerweeshuis it is the 17 maart 1965 uitgesproken’,
Delftse School 12, 1965, 269-273.
window that is displaced, the mirror of inside and outside, 11
and not any other element of the outer wall. And so the col- Many of Aldo van Eyck’s
our spectra in the Moederhuis are sometimes interrupted by pronouncements and those of
his admirers are doctrines and
mirrors or even, at the base of the bays, captured in a frame recurring formulations of what
of mirrors. What a topsy-turvy world, in which instead of the Evert van Uitert has called
mirror being contained in a frame, the frame becomes a mir- ‘faith in modern Art’ (in Het
geloof in de moderne Kunst,
ror. Intensity is a mirror held up to the observer. ‘Space is the Meulenhoff/Landshoff, 1987).
undergoing of space’,10 not the experiencing, observing, think- They serve to shield the works
ing or discussing of it. The discussing of what? The difficulty from misuse by non-believers.
It is thus understandable that
for the critic is that he or she, in his or her text, has no choice in the structure of his aesthetic
but to attach meaning to these elements, which throughout system, uninterested observa-
the building never wish to be substance, content. They do not tion is given priority over inter-
ested observation, or at least,
Gerrit Rietveld, Martin Visser House, Eikendreef, wish to mean or to be meant and are not even intended to be it is assumed that even the
Bergeyck, 1956; floor plan
observed. As a category of experience, the intensive quantity interested variety can be under-
(‘space is the undergoing of space’) is passive in this case. stood and described in terms
of lived experience. That is the
The reality of the building can be enjoyed not by seeking but approach consistently taken

JOOST MEUWISSEN
by finding, not by looking but by seeing.11 But the result is by Herman Herzberger: a re-
that what emerges from this source, the building itself in its port of actual visits and actual
observations, which are there-
extension, its dimensions, its materials and its completeness fore always in the past tense.
as a work of art has no other meaning or purpose than the Despite the suggestion of a
sheer fact that it was built. Tautology, cycle, identity. It is al- Kantian definition of beauty
as disinterested pleasure, the
ways this same concept that is brought to the fore and makes only thing this seems to under-

ALDO IN WONDERLAND
the architect’s spoken comments sound like a constantly score is the importance of this
repeated manifesto. architecture and its aesthetic
system. Herman Herzberger’s
In a sense, it would be impossible to arrive at this concept final assessment, however, does
without the existence of another series in his oeuvre, one not have the character of lived
which does not found building on thinking in terms of non- experience at all, but of estab-
lished causality: ‘a question
tectonic cleverness, but founds thinking on the act of building. of the correct measurements’
Because the cleverness of the architect is then no more than (Herzberger, ‘Het twintigste-
a special case, it makes sense that the latter series – that of eeuwse mechanisme’, op. cit.
note 8, 23). But the measure-
building that provides a foundation for thinking – is an earlier, ments are always correct if
older current in Van Eyck’s oeuvre. And perhaps both series they are measured, and if they
could be examined as changes of direction within the chro- are experienced they are equal-
ly correct, though only within
nology of the oeuvre, as the alternation of constructive and this aesthetic system. What is
deconstructive signs. This is similar to what Theodor Adorno more, observation is no longer
found in the work of Arnold Schönberg, the ‘dialectical com- an adequate response to the
metrical feeling, and there is a
poser’ who changed direction completely in each new work. tension, a quality of intensity,
Building is also repetition and Aldo van Eyck’s houses, above between the observed and the
all, seem to have been conceived as time machines, machines felt measure: ‘The intriguing
thing . . . is not the shift of ac-
à oublier. It thus seems plausible that thinking, thinking based cent in itself, but the tension
on living in these houses, will be done in terms of an open or that exists between the accent
free difference, an unleashing of concepts that are potentially you expect and feel in your
mind and the accent you actu-
just as unbridled as the elevation hosted in their interior, but ally hear’ (ibid., 21). A ques-
without being analogical to it, precisely because that think- tion of metrics and rhythm.
ing is directed out of the interior and into the world, like a The shift of accent is seen not
as a complex repetition but as
Aldo van Eyck, expansion of Martin Visser House, kind of orthogonal. At least, the two staircases in the house a foundational difference. The
1967-1969; floor plan in Amsterdam that Van Eyck built with Jan Rietveld can be observed is observed in a field

150 151
interpreted this way, for instance. The inner staircase is part of expectations. Nevertheless, umes and the spiral shape. In terms of their shape, they are

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of the unbridled elevation, and seen from ouside, through the Herman Herzberger’s interpre- halfway between the geometry of the exterior and the uncer-
tation is closer than than
openwork glass outer wall of the middle quadrant of the floor of any other commentator tain curve in the centre. As an intermediate form, however,
plan, it looks like something mobile, some kind of furniture, to the core, the deep ob- they are too inchoate to support the elevation. The result of
something abstract – lines – and thus seems to float, while the stacle, in Aldo van Eyck’s the idea that the house is toothed where it faces the slope –
aesthetic system, namely that
outer staircase, in contrast, flings itself out casually like an repetition, the repetition of while the slope folds towards the house and the house folds
orthogonal around the omitted quadrants of the house (which elevation, materials, large and into its own centre, with the spiral emerging like a tooth from
is actually square), without having much impact on the outer small spaces, can be observed the large fold in the centre – is that everything seems to grow
hors système only as an event, as
walls, which are so weak as to remind one of Hein Salomon- an image in a dream, without but nothing stands. If the house folds in on itself, the result is
son. In the front view, the landing of the outer staircase seems any field in which it might take that the rooms will have to protrude outward. Outward, not
continuous with that of the inner staircase, which is barely or place, and within the system upward. In a sense, the house on the hill requires a horizontal
only as measure, as number,
not at all visible. The result is that where the actual elevation as a ‘shift of accent in itself ’. sequence. The sequence of square, circle and oval is too well-
of the inner staircase is apparent in the outer wall, it seems to The concept of identity, hav- tempered and, at the same time, too complicated for the sign
be part of the outer route. ing a single scale or at least an of the spiral to mean much. If the house had been built, it
unchanging one, is compatible
with the repetition but not with would undoubtedly have looked quite different.
the idea of space that is free of Even so, the function of a simple graphic form of this kind
SCREEN concepts. Aldo van Eyck: will always be the same, whether the wall is a sign or there is
‘The point is not space, but the
It is not always the case that the elements indicating the out- interior of that space and the writing on the wall. The point is always to make space tec-
side can be drawn so closely around the house, like a virtual inner horizon (as my wife has tonic by a method that is so minimal, so simple, that where
outer wall. Or rather, sometimes the surroundings are so called it . . .) of that interior it is unsuccessful the method itself appears to be a potential
(even if it is outside)’
patently present that it is impossible to create a conceptual (Van Eyck, ‘De bouw van een expansion of the repertoire (and it does not work because the

JOOST MEUWISSEN
exterior. In such cases, there are two ways in which the house huis’, op. cit. note 9, 80). method is so minimal; the application of it is minimalistic pre-
screens itself off. In the design for Saint Paul de Vence, this cisely because it is not an architectural method). However, it
is achieved by reversing the plan, by turning the house inside- does not make an appearance unless the tectonic possibilities
out, and at the house in Bergeyck there is an actual screen, in have been exhausted, as a kind of second choice. The working
which the wall entirely coincides with the textile sign. Both method thus does not involve any investigation of how this
approaches arise from the nature of the project. The hilly ter- means of expanding one’s repertoire could actually be used

ALDO IN WONDERLAND
rain of Saint Paul de Vence tucks the house so thoroughly into more than once – in multiple projects, for instance.
the folds of the landscape that the building cannot, in addi- Graphics defines architecture differently every time as a
tion, veil itself in its own drapery. Aldo van Eyck consistently transcendental category, but always defines it systematically
avoids a rhyme that would imply a difference in scale. If the as a field of tectonic dissociations or, more precisely, as a
elevation of the outer wall has a stacked structure, the floors field of dissociations of tectonic modes, as different types
of the house cannot be stacked. If the landscape has rolling of construction, in which the building is always identical.
hills, the outer wall is toothed – though in this case, there is And also because the building is always identical, always the
another difficulty, namely that the slopes complicate thinking same, always a ‘house’. The house in Bergeyck may be the
about building in terms of height and elevation. This is why best illustration of this line of thought, precisely because the
the house is turned inside-out. The weak spiral in the centre graphic method is applied as an addition to an existing house
of the house erases the centre of the composition, brackets it designed by a different architect, of which it was necessary to
and thus makes possible the fragmentary volumetry of the rec- have an opinion.
tangular composition on the outside – which height and eleva- Bergeyck was in fact one of the most beautiful, if not the
tion, despite their geometry, cannot formulate. This volumetry most beautiful, of Gerrit Rietveld’s houses, the sloppiest zig-
is somewhat reminiscent of Theo van Doesburg and Cornelis zag he ever made. The rudimentary butterfly floor gives the
van Eesteren’s 1923 Maison d’artiste. central place to a living room that is not really a room at all,
While the rectangles are rectangular because they are on but an entrance hall, where home life retains something of its
the slope, the spiral is spiral-shaped – expansive – because it potential festivity, its public character. It may be the finest ex-
is at the centre of the house, and not on a slope. But because ecution of this somewhat bourgeois aspect of the programme
the centre of the house has more to do with an artificial for the Dutch post-war genre of the small country house. This
height, with the elevation of the staircase and the upper level, entrance hall had just one wall, the rear wall, along with a fire-
than with a natural height – or, rather, a height that would place and side entrances. It was a stage on which everything
serve as a natural sign – the sign of the spiral remains power- became mobile, a repoussoir, part of the scenery, where the
less. However, a difference is created that motivates the small, depth and shallowness of the room brought into theatrical re-
circular motifs in the floor plan between the rectangular vol- lief the play of the actors entering and exiting, stage left and

152 153
 stage right, whose conversation there could for the last time

OASE #75
be considered a form of art, before the dark audience of silent
and applauding trees. Was it necessary for this of all houses to
be tectonised? Gussied up? Aldo van Eyck’s addition looks like
a butterfly net. ‘Counterpoint’, Herman Herzberger calls it.
I would like to quote Herman Herzberger’s elegant analy-
sis of this design at greater length here, because it shows so
clearly what is going on: ‘Although it was not a true Rietveld
house, it was still a house by Rietveld, not so very tense, and
not really relaxed either, but there was not a great deal of
space, especially not for paintings and sculptures. We can only
imagine the moral and ethical dimensions of the decision to
extend this of all houses, but Van Eyck’s masterstroke here
dispels all doubt in a single gesture. The circular curve of
the wall is placed so that in a single motion it gathers within
its rondure the entire, somewhat indistinct openness of the
‘garden wall’ together with the opposing world. Between the
two components, the new and the old, new areas emerge on
the outside and new rooms on the inside. The unclear patio
takes form, the undefined, blunt corner suddenly has mean-
ing, and the rectangular system of the existing living room

JOOST MEUWISSEN
is reinforced by a continuation of it. We see that the house
was really only a torso, which now has a head. Van Eyck
completed Rietveld’s house, exposing its weakness and at the
same time transforming it into a strength as a component of a
new whole, just as a good answer can lend meaning to a trivial

ALDO IN WONDERLAND
Aldo van Eyck, G.J. Visser House,
Rétie (Belgium), 1974-1976; plan and
axonometric projection

1. living room
2. sitting room
3. kitchen
4. bedroom
5. bathroom

Aldo van Eyck, G.J. Visser House, Rétie (Belgium), 1974-1976

154 155
question. . . . Aldo van Eyck’s respect for Rietveld would have in a spatial sense; it is reflected as an enclosure, a palisade, an

OASE #75
been clear enough by now, even without this house, but here outer wall, sometimes vertical, sometimes horizontal, as a di-
we find new confirmation of it. To doubt it, you would have viding line and a screen, but also, in fact, as a movement, a se-
to lack all sense of proportion. What architect other than ries of material elements. The forest is what is located outside
Van Eyck could have come up with such a solution in a place the complex; the wood is a parergon, a frame. From the forest
like this? I can only think of one: Rietveld himself!’12 12 it looks like a wooden house. From the house the wood looks
Nevertheless, there is no getting around the fact that the Herzberger, ‘Het twintigste- like a forest. The wood, the frame, the dividing line, the eleva-
eeuwse mechanisme’,
description of Gerrit Rietveld’s house abounds in pejora- op. cit. (note 8), 16-18. tion – they do not separate the inside from the outside but
tives – ‘doubt’, ‘indistinct’, ‘unclear’, ‘undefined’, ‘weakness’, are both inside and outside, or rather, alternately inside and
‘trivial’ – while Aldo van Eyck’s addition is referred to as outside depending on the mindset. The wood, the frame, is
‘a single gesture’, a ‘masterstroke’, ‘a single motion’, an ‘an- ambiguous. The elevation is the domain of difference, not of
swer’, a ‘solution’, but in fact described solely as the ‘oppos- form. Seen from the frame, the difference between what is in-
ing world’. I would be more inclined to describe the addition side and outside the frame is arbitrary, but this establishes the
as a problematisation of the existing house than as a solution difference in content. Or, in the architect’s words, the wood
to a problem. Herman Herzberger chiefly describes what the makes it possible, within the house, for the difference in form
addition does to the existing house, in terms of ‘gathering’, between inner rooms and outer spaces to become so small that
giving ‘form’ and ‘meaning’, ‘reinforcing’ and ‘completing’, only their ‘content’ still counts as a distinction.14 14
‘transforming into strength’, ‘lending meaning’ and ‘solving’. Inside and outside are seen as a thought, a possible con- Ibid., ‘bei . . . Verminderung
der formaten Unterschiede . . .
Tectonics is reintroduced through a single gesture that is not cept – or, better said, a condition of possibility for all possible inhaltliche Unterschiede her-
itself examined in tectonic terms. What is suppressed is the concepts – for a nearly unbridled art of conversation. It would vorheben’ (because the size of
view, the elevation, of the addition itself, which is sketched be wrong for us to suppose that the minimisation of the dis- the difference is reduced, differ-

JOOST MEUWISSEN
ence in content is emphasised).
only as an interior, as a ‘world’ and as a ‘component’ – as an tinction between interior and exterior spaces could, in this
egg, in fact – and not as a view, an elevation, something that case, be based on a lack of difference, a similarity, instead of
can be independently examined. Ultimately, the circular form an intensive quantity. Or in any event, the thesis that becomes
is described as a ‘screen’ and a ‘moderate square’ – in other the central issue in this house is that when two things resem-
words as a weak, geometrically unsound square without a cen- ble each other their content must differ – precisely because
tre – but only from the inside. Herman Herzberger’s descrip- they contain a shift, because they are not located in the same

ALDO IN WONDERLAND
tion keeps a secret, not on the inside but on the outside, that place, because they disguise themselves, diverge, decentre.
the architects of this complex are said to share: some reason Only by speaking explicitly of content does the artist avoid a
that no other architect than the two who built it could have situation in which the only difference is natural – for instance,
thought of this solution.13 13 the difference between the indoor climate and the weather –
‘Obwohl Rietveld dieses which would emerge from comparison and the experience of
Haus selbst kaum schatzte
Rietveld-Haus’, Aldo van which would, after all, not be the primary topic of conversa-
RÉTIE Eyck, in Dortmunder Architek- tion for the inhabitants of the house. These people do not talk
This is the secret that is ultimately revealed, as it were, in the turaussteüung 1978, Dortmunder about the weather.
Architekturhefte no. 3, Prof.
house in Rétie, as content without form. The woods, the actual Josef Paul Kleihues/Abt. Difference must become open, free – that is one way of
outdoor space, is fractal to the highest possible degree, so that Bauwesen der Universitat summarising the aesthetic programme of this house, of this
the edge of the woods, the outer wall, is infinite. The screen Dortmund, Dortmund, 1976. complex repetition. The aesthetic system finds its sublime mo-
The sentence is altered in the
has become unlimited and infinite, so that the border, the errata: ‘Obwohl dies nicht das ment in the endless fractal boundary, yet in its intensive qual-
limes, has to be repeated in the elevation of the house and its beste Rietveld-Haus ist, ist es ity it presents the possibility of informal understanding, of
echoes. With an overabundance of types of bayonet reflection dennoch ein Rietveld-Haus’ content without form, of smile without cat. Living in Rétie,
(‘Although this is not the best
that dissect the rooms by decentring and shifting them, the Rietveld house, it is a Rietveld in Wonderland, is a smile without a cat.
floor plan looks more like a mathematical model, a diagram, house all the same’). Appar-
ently, Rietveld believed that, Translated by David McKay
a blueprint, than a composition kept in balance by the differ-
after all, this was not the worst
ence in scale between the inside and outside, or between small of his houses, or he was thought
and large. In fact, the house understands only proportion, and to have believed that.
not scale. This is because the relationship with its surround-
ings is conceived in terms of materials and fractality, rather
than surface or space.
The forest is incorporated into the house in material
form – in the form of the wood of which the house is made.
It therefore does not have to be incorporated into the house

156 157