diagoon housing by herman hertzberger

this is the diagoon housing project by herman hertzberger, built in delft in 1971. one of my peers at MIT studied it as a precedent in a studio last spring. i was looking up hertzberger's work in the netherlands and discovered that this project, a small single building for 8 or so families, is very close to me. it is tucked into a dense pack of suburban developments southwest of the center, right near the delft zuid train station off the kruithuisweg. you approach this through a maze of houses with cars in front, gardens in various states of disarray, cats on the prowl, and two kids climbing trees on a sunday afternoon that is cold enough to bite your ears when you ride quickly through it without a hat. the building faces west towards a square of land long overgrown with trees but still with paths cut through. dutch ideas of gardens are always messy and overgrown, a bit ragged as if you have been on vacation for months. i was late for something so i only had a chance to observe quickly and then continue. it always makes me nervous to start architecturally undressing a building with people inside looking out at me. i could only take one picture without feeling awkward because somebody in a white shirt was in the second-floor kitchen. hertzberger built some cool stuff with plain CMUs and modernist detailing. the cool thing about this project was its supposed interior flexibility and split-level floor stacking. it seemed nice from the outside, like a little commune set among the banality of suburbia. really, though, you couldn't tell it was much different from the surrounding blocks except that this one looked particularly austere and plain. the flickr photos of this place make it seem very clean cut and maintained, whereas in my picture it sits beyond a bulging hedge and empty tree. i almost like this more, as an image of a work that is lived in, inhabited, and has its own life. its domestic scale and simplicity give it a humble reading i admire, as if to say "i can't change much about the rest of the built environment, but i can provide a worthwhile place to make a home."

i had a discussion recently with another architecture student at the halloween party at the nieuwelaan house, the one where i was dressed as the great state of texas and encouraged people to write their stereotypes of the state on its foiled shape that hung over my shoulders. he is fed up with starchitecture and the lack of concern for details or at least architecture as something other than image or brand. he asked me who my favorite firms were in america who were unknown here but doing solid, well-designed, respectable work. i could only name a handful, embarrassingly (i did mention the name lake/flato because i like them a lot). but it made me think about how much work there is out there for architects and how even the smallest projects can be so satisfying. projects that have clean lines and are enjoyable places to live are beautiful. this is why dwell magazine does so well.

maybe: fuck the birds nest and zaha hadid and santiago calatrava and design competitions. maybe what we need instead of legions of grad students with thick glasses getting off to the rem koolhaas el croquis are people who want to move to a small town somewhere and start building solid, inspiring, cheap buildings. the chances to work at that huge scale and with that piercing urban/global vision are so minimal and the situations so saturated with compromise and legality. even if i end up being an architect i will never work like that. thought i would be open to working for somebody who works like that. in the end, there is probably more value in sitting in your hometown and designing schools, fire stations, churches, and homes. i worked for a company that did just this and has had a great impact on denton over the last 30 years. of course this takes a narrow view of what architecture can be (just buildings) but it is an inviting, human-scale version of an architectural career. so lets all light a candle for the architects who get no recognition in online rags like archdaily for putting in long hours on local projects that really change lives. god bless samuel mockbee and architects for humanity. amen.

ok, now i'm going to sleep. i have work to do tomorrow and a short presentation with winy maas present about a why factory workshop i'm participating in. goodnight.