Herman Hertzberger: "The origin of Architecture is in the public"

Herman Hertzberger (Amsterdam, 1932) decided to devote himself to architecture after visiting Pierre Chareau's Maison de Verre in Paris when he was very young. Belonging to the third generation after CIAM and closely related from the start to the members of Team X, he is considered together with Aldo van Eyck as one of the major architects of Dutch Structuralism in the 60s.

"I’m more interested in the city than in the house actually. I put the emphasis on the collective and I’m convinced that the origin of Architecture is the public."

He founded his own studio in 1958, after finishing his Architecture studies at Delft University of Technology where he would go back to as a professor in the 70s. Moved by his interest in teaching and pedagogy he published his well-known Lessons for Students in Architecture. These books reflect his desire and effort to pass on his knowledge of architecture to future generations in a coherent and easily comprehensible way.

At the beginning of the 60s, Hertzberger worked at Forum magazine along with Aldo van Eyck and Jaap Bakema among many others. The main ideas about identity and community in the architectural approach made by Team X are still present in his work, which includes more than 30 schools and educational buildings illustrating his thoughts and concern about the relationship between architecture and society.

S.R. According to your memories, the school buildings in which you learned and the neighbourhood where you grew up had a very strong influence on your way of understanding space and architecture. Which of these spaces or these experiences were the most influential in your work?

H.H. It's very difficult to name that, because it's something which happens unconsciously. But maybe the fact that I was sent by my parents to a Montessori school was quite important, because at the Montessori school you're not sitting and listening to what the teacher is saying but you have the freedom to do what you want and you have also the responsibility to keep yourself at work. Today, when you have a modern office building, the contact of people seeing other people and asking, “What are you doing? Could we do something together?” is the most important thing.

S.R. What did you learn during your time at FORUM?

H.H. It was a big chance I got! When I finished my studies, I was asked by Aldo van Eyck if I wanted to join them. I learned a lot of Aldo van Eyck and also Jaap Bakema and also the not architect and not very well known Joop Hardy, who was an art historian, who did not write very much and therefore he’s forgotten. But he is not forgotten in the sense that I learned a lot of him. He was promoting the idea of Museé Imaginaire... which is the imaginary museum, an idea of Malraux and the idea that you have not only this sort of official art history... but you have everywhere constellations of things, which is in fact a new idea of aesthetics and of art. So he had an enormous influence in widening your vision.

I mean, when you ask me, “What was what you learned from Aldo van Eyck?” the first thing is not how to make a door or how to make a window but it's the importance of language and the impact of the words we use.

S.R. Why do you build schools?

H.H. I could also ask why architects build houses. All the famous architects were famous because of their houses. And they had rich clients and they could do what they wanted. So the architect always had a very strong position in building houses, because the houses helped for the status of the clients. That did not work with me. I never had rich clients, I always had poor clients. And for me, the sort of intimacy of the family house did not really work. I mean, I was not really interested in the family thing.

For me, schools are the ultimate public things. You are not in a family but in fact a school building is a sort of urbanism. And basically what I do is a sort of urbanistic architecture... I mean, I'm more interested in the city than in the house actually. I put the emphasis on the collective and I'm convinced that the origin of Architecture is the public.

S.R. How have your working methods changed since you started until now?

H.H. I started to make sketches, A3 sketches of the work, and for some reason, with some exceptions, I always dated them and we just made the effort to organise them. There are 7000 altogether, 7000 A3, and you can follow the whole history of a project through these sketches, you can see every line... Although in present times, first of all, I work together with other people. The second thing is the computer. Actually the structuralism idea already long before there was a computer used the same system of layers, of thinking, you know? Not designing one room after another, but always looking for the similarities through the whole. But although I had these systematics, the computer changed the whole work because I'm not making these sketches anymore. 

All of this is also connected with structuralism in the sense that structuralism says you should have the large lines, the building order or the structure, and that could be filled in by people and by time. Time changes things; we have a lot of buildings that are not used in the same way as they used to be. So we should make building not too specific; we should make buildings in such a way that they have the possibility of being influenced by their use. The same idea that I have in the studio, that people have the possibility of influencing my work.

A good example of the offspring of this idea is the Music Palace we are making in Utrecht. There used to be my building, my personal design, and now they wanted to add four auditoria from different clients, who took their own architect. So what I designed, together with my office, is a sort of big thing where you can put in these different buildings. So actually what it is, is a sort of city. And it feeds back to the idea of how cities are made.

S.R. So this is what you are working on at the moment?

H.H. Yes, and I'm not talking about beauty but this is the building that explains this idea of working quite well, with others.

S.R. Centraal Beheer is one of the main works in your career. It has nothing to do with traditional office buildings.

H.H. It's not only an office building but it could be transformed into anything else, that's another thing... and I hope it's going to happen. Right now they're going to abandon it and they're looking for new people in it. There's some sort of school that wants in it but it's very difficult in this crisis time…

And the strange thing... well it's not strange, I can explain it but I cannot accept it. People want a building which is made especially for them, for their identity, they want to have their own thing. And they're very afraid to go into that building because they think that this will colour them with the identity of the other people. So a lot of office buildings are made still today, although there are 7 and a half million sqm of abandoned office buildings in this country. Still they build because people want to show that they are special. Identity is much of trying to make a difference, desperately trying to be different, although there is no difference at all.

S.R. From your experience, how has the role of the architect changed from the sixties until now?

H.H. In the sixties Architecture was idealistic. The architects, they thought that they could change the world, make a happier world or something. And then, from the beginning of the eighties, we became a consumer product. We don't have the idea anymore that it will change the world into a better world. And like all the other advertisement things and so, Architecture is going to be, well, a part of your identity, your status and your importance, and from that moment on the emphasis of Architecture turned on to attractiveness, being attractive.

Attraction is now everything. It's not really aesthetics but attraction what works today. And modern designers desperately try to do something new, something which was not done by others, regardless whether what they are doing makes sense. I mean, makes sense... things only make sense by means of how they sell. The sense of things is measured by the selling, and not by any objective standard of aesthetics. The whole notion of aesthetics collapses today. The idea of beautiful eternity doesn't work anymore. 

We really have to consider tasks for architects that make more sense. To see what the real task for architects is. We are now on the moment that we have to rethink what architects can do, space can do. You're living a fantastic moment in the history.

S.R. What's the clue to having so much energy?

H.H. I don't know, it's the way you are made! You have to be lucky, with your choices.

S.R. What advice would you give to students who are graduating this year in a country like Spain?

H.H. You're very lucky that you are not in that flow of consuming, making big things, earning big money, etc. but that you are in a sort of scarce moment. That you say, let's think it over. What is important and what is unimportant and then... I would say, also look at the past. And know that the past is in the future and the future is in the past, etc. When you say the future is in the past and the past is in the future, in fact what you’re saying is that things are not really changing but that they're going on.

It might be a little bit theatrical at the end of a talk but you have to find out who you are, what you are doing, in terms of the people, not only the forms and space. What your relationship to people is. I'm still believing. Although I know that you cannot make a better world and you cannot make people happier and so on, at least what you can do is try to adapt, to accommodate to people. And always try to make things that work, that work for people.

Architektuurstudio HH, Amsterdam, August 2013