Dear friends, for the next three weeks we would like to introduce you to the eminent architecture critic Bart Lootsma from The Netherlands, who will be guest curating OfHouses starting from Monday September, 15th up to Sunday October, 5th.
Bart Lootsma (Amsterdam, 1957) is a historian, critic and curator in the fields of architecture, design and the visual arts. He is a Professor for Architectural Theory at the Leopold-Franzens University in Innsbruck (www.architecturaltheory.eu) and Guest Professor at the University of Luxemburg. Before, he was Head of Scientific Research at the ETH ZĆ¼rich, Studio Basel, and he was a Visiting Professor at the Academy of Visual Arts in Vienna; at the Akademie der Bildenden KĆ¼nste in NĆ¼rnberg; at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and at the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam.
Bart Lootsma was guest curator of ArchiLab 2004 in OrlĆ©ans and he was an editor of ao. Forum, de Architect, ARCHIS and GAM. Bart Lootsma published numerous articles in magazines and books. Together with Dick Rijken he published the book āMedia and Architectureā (VPRO/Berlage Institute, 1998). His book āSuperDutchā, on contemprary architecture in the Netherlands, was published by Thames & Hudson, Princeton Architectural Press, DVA and SUN in the year 2000; āArchiLab 2004 The Naked Cityā by HYX in OrlĆ©ans in 2004.
Bart Lootsma has prepared for OfHouses a very personal selection of old forgotten houses for which he wrote this brilliant introduction:
Bart Lootsma recommends for OfHouses
A selection of seven houses is not easy, as there are so many intriguing houses in the world, even considering that we are only dealing with forgotten houses. The selection incorporates houses I have a special relationship with like the Van Doesburg house in Meudon, in which I was so lucky to be able to live in for a year as a writer in residence. Mallet Stevensā Villa in Noailles inspired me to do my diploma thesis on Mallet-Stevens ā even if I let it be because I was so lucky to get an even more interesting subject thrown at me with the archives of the Philips Pavilion I found. Rem Koolhaasā Villa dallāAva I still find an incredibly interesting, intellectual project, about which I wrote one of my better texts, I think. The Visser House inspired me as a student, when I was still practicing design to become an architect. I could have introduced many others, both older and newer, but for now this should be it. I also looked for houses throughout the whole of the twentieth century, even if I had to skip the first twenty years. What the houses in this selection share, is that the architects who designed them with a very particular concept about the relation between the different arts, including music, literature and film (the SeptiĆØme Art) in mind and usually there is an interesting collaboration with a contemporary landscape architect. These are very classical themes for selections of architectās houses but still interesting enough. Most houses ābut not all- went through a careful but adventurous mediatisation in a book or films arranged by the architects themselves or their interesting clients, turning them into built manifestoes or philosophical and artistic contemplations. The villa for the count of Noailles is a good example of that. Apart from the fact that the count was an important collector, avant-garde art was integrated in the building, like the Flower Room by Theo van Doesburg, or put the building itself in a wider context, as in the Film āUn Coup des DĆ©sā by Man Ray. The different gardens belonging to it are marvellous, the garden by Guevrekian groundbreaking. Erich Mendelsohn did a special book on his own house am Rupenhorn, in which he emphasized the relationships between architecture, the arts, music and design: Neues Haus ā Neue Welt, 1932, with an introduction by Amedee Ozenfant, the former brother in arms of Le Corbusier. The house Theo van Doesburg built for himself and his wife Nelly, is an atelier more than a house. But more than that, it is dedicated to all the arts Theo and Nelly were involved in: painting, sculpture, architecture, garden design, poetry, architectural criticism and theory, art criticism and theory, music, and so on. Every year, a Dutch representative of one of these disciplines can stay in the house as a residency. I was there as an architectural critic and it changed many things in my work and in my life. The house for the gallerist Ferdinand Mƶller by Hans Scharoun is a house that camouflages on its drawings and from the side of the entrance as a non-descript traditional house, only to betray the Nazi-bureaucrats who had to give the permits when it was built. After entering the house, it opens up to the landscape in the most spectacular way, offering a series of spatial sensations, forcing the gaze through the trees down to the water. The landscape was already there, maybe, but it was never seen this way before Scharoun showed it to us. The house by Bernard Bijvoet, former collaborator of Duiker, Chareau on the Maison de Verre, and Baudoin and Lodz, is a special house that one might really consider as forgotten, even if it is officially considered one of the 100 most important architectural landmarks in The Netherlands. I would consider it, with its expressive use of materials, as an example of the influence of the Synthese des Arts in the Netherlands. The garden is done by Mien Ruys, a very special Dutch landscape architect, intimately linked to the Modern Movement. The Visser house was built in two phases by two of the most important Dutch architects from the post-war period, Gerrit Rietveld and Aldo van Eyck. Martin Visser was one of the most important (and sometimes equally forgotten) Dutch designers, working for Spectrum, later ArSpect in Bergeyk. He and his wife were also the most important collectors of post-war avant-garde concept, minimal and post-minimal art. Many pieces of their collection they donated to the most important museums in The Netherlands, which would never have had such a status without them today. The house itself, which is even after the extension rather modest, combines the qualities of both Rietveld and Van Eyck: the centrifugal plan of Rietveld finding a continuity with the forest with the centripetal cylinder of Van Eyck carefully realizing a counterpoint. The Villa dallāAva by Rem Koolhaas and Xaveer de Geyter is an intellectual and social experiment on many levels. The plan deconstructs a family of husband, wife and daughter radically, separating their respective quarters (man in basement, daughter in small villa near the road, womanās boudoir in the back of the house overlooking the garden) by a void and a swimming pool. They can meet and refigure on an open floor in the middle of the house, which is a seamless continuation of the lawn. A thick curtain āstandsā on the floor, thus having a different shape and forming a different space every time it is closes. Also the roof is a garden: partly planted, partly water. Thus, the villa is in line with Raymond Hoodās dictum that architecture is a multiplication of the natural surface of the earth. With the pool on an imaginary line to the Eiffel tower on one side and the countryside on the other, the house is also contemplation on the suburban house. It is a desire machine or, with the Story of the Pool in Delirious New York in mind, a Bachelor Machine even, oscillating between the desire for the city or the desire for nature. The house hints also at the films of Jacques Tati, with whom Remās father collaborated. As an art project, Hans Werlemann produced a film in the house, integrating the Story of the Pool, Jean Nouvel, a real giraffe greeting the postman, a black panther and other animals, probably as homage to Anton Koolhaas, who became famous for his stories featuring animals. He died when the house was just finished and Rem never wanted the photographs or the film to be used again. This material, which would have loaded the house with references and meaning, has since been forgotten.
