It's quite remarkable when you find yourself in a suburb of Dorchester (England) and suddenly think of a suburb of Helmond (Netherlands). Then you find out that the urban designers for these two suburbs come from Luxembourg and are brothers. We are talking about the design of (UK) and (NL), by Leon and Rob Krier, respectively. These brothers are adherents of what is called ‘New Urbanism’ in English, while in Dutch the term translates as ‘Traditionalism’. You might get the impression that this story is only interesting for professionals. Nothing could be further from the truth. If there is one subject where architects and everyone else don't quickly agree, it is 'historicising design', where new buildings look like historic buildings. Residential areas designed in this way are eagerly taken up by buyers and residents, while the professional world usually talks about this with some disdain.
It is good for you to know that both Jan and I were trained as architects in the 1980s. Modernism was ‘preached’ during those years at our respective educational institutions; Technical University Delft (Jan) and Technical University Eindhoven (Erna). This focus on Modernism was partly a reaction to the architecture of the preceding period by professors such as Aldo van Eyck and Herman Hertzberger. They, in turn, with their focus on the human scale, opposed the functionalism and reconstruction of the post-World War II era. The movement that emerged in the Netherlands from the architects of our time was named Super Dutch, also known as Supermodernism. Apologies for all the jargon, but it forms the foundation for the story we want to share with you.
We enjoyed witnessing the battle between (Super)modernism and Traditionalism in our own region, specifically the struggle of Eindhoven versus Helmond. During the Vinex period, in the second half of the 1990s, major urban planning schemes were developed for the expansion districts of a significant number of cities in the Netherlands. There was again something of the feeling of the 'socially engineered society' from the post-World War II reconstruction period, and in the Dutch tradition, this meant making grand plans. This took place during the Supermodernism movement, and quite a few commissions ended up with firms that embraced this approach. For instance, Teun Koolhaas was commissioned to create the urban plan for the Vinex district of Meerhoven between Eindhoven and Veldhoven. Teun Koolhaas had been taught by modernists such as Gerrit Rietveld and Cornelis van Eesteren at Technical University Delft. In his work, he remained quite faithful to his masters. The plan for Meerhoven featured a rational layout with an orthogonal structure and straight strips of buildings. The only somewhat less rational aspect of Meerhoven lies the names of the neighborhoods, such as Graswijk, Boswijk, and Zandrijk, names referring to grass, woodlands and sand.
Helmond, located more than 15km from Eindhoven, took a different approach. This municipality awarded the urban planning project for Brandevoort to Rob Krier. He, along with his firm Krier and Kohl, worked on this plan from 1996 onwards. He was already known in the Netherlands, especially for the project ‘De Resident’ in The Hague (1989-2001). This project is adjacent to the city centre of The Hague and features a mix of housing, offices, and hospitality venues. Most of the offices are used by the central government. The choice for Rob Krier was quite surprising after Norman Foster and Rem Koolhaas were ruled out, designers who can safely be classified as modernists. Architects were then sought who matched Krier's urban plan. The choice for Rob Krier in Helmond aligned with the municipality's earlier initiative with the Dierdonk district in the early 1990s, featuring traditionally styled homes, which had been successful. This neighborhood was developed by Bouwfonds Projectontwikkeling, also the real estate developer of Brandevoort. Among architects and critics, there was significant resistance to Traditionalism. It was seen as a kitschy longing for the past. However, Rob Krier was very popular among municipalities, housing corporations, and developers, and not least, among residents.
The battle between Eindhoven and Helmond took shape in a symposium with Teun Koolhaas and Rob Krier at Theater 't Speelhuis in Helmond. We can't recall the exact date; it was around 1997. We must admit that this building fit more with Rob Krier's philosophy than Teun Koolhaas's. 't Speelhuis was designed by Piet Blom, a student of the aforementioned Aldo van Eyck, and featured an interior with canvas paintings by Har Sanders. The building was constructed in 1977 but was unfortunately lost to a fire in December 2011. Yet even in a different location, Rob Krier would still have won over the audience more than Teun Koolhaas. This large man, in trousers with suspenders, explained the story behind his design by mentioning elements that appeal to people. Streets, squares, meeting places, recognisable landmarks, surprising twists in the streets, and familiar materials. The modest Teun Koolhaas struggled to present the more theoretical explanation of his plan for Meerhoven effectively. The outcome was as expected, with a few exceptions: most people praised Krier, while the professional world did not.
Brandevoort was designed as an old city. The centre of this expansion district is also called De Veste. It consists of fortress-like closed building blocks with gates, towers, and a market square. A prominent tower turns out to belong to a school building. In the market square, there is a market hall resembling a Victorian iron market hall, but it was built in 2003. In De Veste, in addition to the market square and streets, there are also canals. Despite looking like a city centre, it consists almost entirely of residences. Outside De Veste, the outer areas are more open in character. Uniquely, for that time, the choice was made to no longer park cars on the street but in parking courtyards at the rear of houses. These are accessible through gates in the buildings, thus keeping the cars out of sight. After all, there were no cars on the streets in the old cities to which this concept refers. The idea behind it is that the street thus becomes the domain of the residents again, and children can play there. The standard for the density of the district was no different than other Vinex districts, averaging 30 homes per hectare. Construction began in 2000 and is still ongoing. About 6,000 homes have been built so far.
What was it that irritated the professional world? Mainly, it was that standardised homes were built that didn't look standardised because new historicising facades were added. So it seemed as if the houses were very different, but behind those facades was a rational, repetitive structure of walls and floors. It was perceived as a kind of 'deception.' Moreover, in the eyes of the professional world, the architect's profession was reduced to 'façade artist,' and many architectural firms did not want to participate in this. But the developer was proven right: the homes sold quickly, and the residents were enthusiastic. But the liveliness you would expect from the centre of Brandevoort, is not there. It takes more than situating buildings with towers around a market square with a market hall to make that space function as such. The issues that such expansion districts have too many cars and being almost exclusively residential, are also present here.
Back to Poundbury in England. There was a special reason for the creation of this Dorchester suburb. The then Prince Charles, now King Charles III, published a book in 1989 titled "A Vision of Britain: A Personal View of Architecture." The book was launched with a documentary by the BBC, filmed in the centre of Birmingham, where he gave his opinion on the buildings. In the professional world, this was met with ridicule and questions about whether he should be the one to draw so much attention to this subject. According to the Prince, the human scale had been lost in suburban architecture. He was given a unique opportunity to, as the English say so beautifully, "put your money here your mouth is". And that is exactly what happened. What now amazes us is that many people have heard of the book but not of the project where his vision was realised, nor have they even visited the suburb: Poundbury. This could very well be a result of the dismissive attitude of the professional world.
It's good to first tell you something about Dorchester before explaining Poundbury. Dorchester is the county town of Dorset, England, and now has 19,000 inhabitants. It lies on the River Frome and has traditionally been a market town for the surrounding area. The town's most famous resident is Thomas Hardy, and the town plays a significant role in one of his books, "The Mayor of Casterbridge." His house can be visited, and his statue stands in the town in Thomas Hardy Square. Prince Charles III was Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall.
In 1987, the land where Poundbury is now located belonged to the West Dorset District Council, which was exploring the possibilities for expanding the town of Dorchester. The Duchy of Cornwall saw an opportunity to implement the Prince’s vision here. The Council chose to take the lead in this development and not to sell the land to developers. In 1988, Leon Krier was hired to create the urban plan for Poundbury on the eastern side of Dorchester.
What makes the urban plan of Poundbury so different from other suburban neighborhoods? The designers indicate that the plan is designed for people rather than for cars. And this should lead to a higher quality of life. The style of Poundbury belongs to 'New Urbanism'. This movement stands for walkable neighborhoods with a wide variety of housing (big and small, rental and owned, cheap and expensive) and employment opportunities. This movement started in 1993 with a Congress in the USA with a Charter of New Urbanism with the following text:
“We advocate for the restructuring of public policy and development practices to support the following principles:
In Poundbury, this has led to a design with a relatively high housing density. The centre is built in a classical style, while the suburban areas are designed in a more traditional style with influences from the surrounding area. This includes wrought iron fences, porticos, gravel-covered public squares, and 'bricked-up' windows known as blind windows, which serve purely an aesthetic function. On the western edge, there is a sort of fortress wall. A traditionally styled market hall, Butter Market, has been built, functioning as a café. An entrepreneur even donated 1 million pounds for it. Cars are clustered in parking areas, so they should not dominate the street scene. There is no zoning, so work, retail and housing categories can be placed anywhere.
We visited Poundbury with Ruth Sladek from Australia, our English editor of JE Reis,. We were very curious about how Poundbury would appear to her, a non-professional in the real estate field. Initially, she was positive. ‘It looks very neat and varied,’ she reported. But during our walk, something began to feel off. The centre, with what looked like a town hall, turned out to be mostly filled with residences. This was true for most of the buildings. In the centre, there is a supermarket and a café-restaurant in one of the blocks, and there are some offices (also in the outer areas), but despite all these different-looking buildings, they are mostly residences. ‘Where do people shop, where do they go to church, where do children play?’ Ruth asked. There is a church, but it is on the ground floor of a larger building block with residences above it. That’s where the problem lies! The architecture feels familiar, but you also feel somewhat 'cheated' because different things are happening behind the façades than you would expect. We briefly felt like we were in ‘The Truman Show’ from 1998, where nothing is as it seems.
Construction is still ongoing in the northwest, and Poundbury is planned to be completed by 2025. It is smaller than Brandevoort; the expectation is that approximately 6,000 people will live there. It has created employment for 185 businesses, although not many companies are in the town itself. Thirty-five percent of the homes are in the social housing sector. Unfortunately, the prediction that car usage would decrease has not materialised; car usage is even higher than in the surrounding area.
What can be found of the royal involvement with Poundbury? The statue of the grandmother of the current King Charles III: Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. It was unveiled in 2016 by Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. It stands on a square with the same name that eventually also turns out to be a roundabout. Prince Charles opened the church in 2018 and the largest playground, the Great Field, in 2022. He visited Poundbury, as King, with his wife just one month after the coronation in 2023. Poundbury is—like Brandevoort—praised and criticised. What fascinates us is how these two brothers came to prove their point in these two expansion districts and who these two brothers really are.
Let's start with the elder brother and designer of Brandevoort: Rob Krier. He was born on June 10, 1938, in the canton of Grevenmacher in Luxembourg and passed away on November 20, 2023, in Berlin. He was not only an urban planner but also an architect, sculptor, and theorist. He studied architecture at the Technical University of Munich from 1959 to 1964. After graduating, he worked with Oswald Mathias Ungers in Cologne and Berlin (1965–1966) and with Frei Otto in Berlin and Stuttgart (1967–1970). He held various positions at universities: from 1973 to 1975 as an assistant at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Stuttgart, in 1975 as a guest professor at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland), from 1976 to 1998 as a professor of architecture at the Technical University of Vienna, and as a guest professor at Yale University (USA) in 1996.
In addition to his role in education, Rob Krier was affiliated with various design firms. From 1976 to 1994, he had his own office in Vienna. He partnered with Nicolas Lebunetel in Montpellier (1992-2004) and with Christoph Kohl in Berlin (1993-2010). He also published several works. His most important work, titled "Stadtraum," was published in 1975 and translated into English in 1979 as "Urban Space." A German/English reprint was issued in 2015, and the theory was supplemented with examples from his own practice, such as projects in Stuttgart, Berlin, Vienna, and Potsdam. Regarding the latter project, a separate publication was released in 1997 together with Christoph Kohl, titled "The Making of a Town. Potsdam – Kirchsteigfeld."
Rob Krier was also a sculptor, though not much of his work can be found. One of his works is in Brandevoort. It is called "Absorbed" and is situated near the central market hall. Another sculpture named "Light and Dark (double figure)" is in the Wijnhaven in The Hague. His wide-ranging interests, from urban planning to sculpture, were also shared by his eight-years-younger brother, Leon Krier. To start with the latter, he was not a sculptor but did design the pedestal for the Queen Mother statue on the square named after her in Poundbury. He was born on April 7, 1946. He is an urban planner, architect, architectural theorist, and proponent of ‘New Urbanism’. Like his brother, he combined working in urban planning and architecture with various teaching positions. He studied architecture at the University of Stuttgart in 1968 but left after a year to work with James Stirling in London. He then worked for two years with Josef Paul Kleihues in Berlin before returning to England to teach for 20 years at the Architectural Association and the Royal College of Art. During those years, he became known for his statement, "I am an architect because I don't build." In the late 1970s, he was one of the most influential modern traditionalist designers. He was a part-time professor at Princeton, Yale, Virginia, Cornell, and Notre Dame universities from 1976 to 2016. From 1987 to 1990, he was the first director of SOMAI, the Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Architectural Institute, in Chicago.
The project considered a turning point in his career is his unrealised plan for the city of Luxembourg, which was a response to the modernist plan for the redevelopment of the city. He later had a realised opportunity in this city with the new Cité Judiciaire, architecturally developed by his brother (1990–2008). A prime example of his approach became evident during the evaluation of the plans for the Frauenkirche and Neumarkt Squarein Dresden. As one of nine invited experts in 1990, he was the only one who supported the residents' initiative to reconstruct the old centre, which indeed happened in the early 21st century. He has made plans for many cities worldwide, including in Romania, Italy, Belgium, Guatemala, Mexico, and England. Like his brother, he also published numerous essays and journal articles. He compiled his critiques and concepts into drawings and diagrams (often in his own handwriting) in the book "Drawings for Architecture." In the same year, 2009, his most famous book, "The Architecture of Community," was published.
The human scale was characteristic in all his plans. This also formed his aversion to Modernism based on economic and technological growth. His growth model was the reconstruction of the European city, based on polycentric settlement patterns determined by human scale—both horizontally and vertically (height)—of self-sufficient mixed neighborhoods no larger than 33 hectares (crossable in 10 minutes on foot) with building heights of three to five floors or 100 steps (comfortably climbed on foot). Moreover, these neighborhoods were not to be constrained by mere administrative boundaries but by walkable, bikeable, and drivable boulevards, paths, and parkways. Cities would expand through the multiplication of independent urban neighbourhoods, not through horizontal or vertical extensions of established urban cores.
The similarities in style and urban planning theory between these two brothers are striking. Was this foundation laid in the small scale of Luxembourg where both grew up? After all, it is a small country with less than 650,000 inhabitants. The capital, Luxembourg City, has over 110,000 inhabitants and is not even considered large by Dutch standards. The brothers took different paths in their careers in architecture and urban planning. Yet, in their vision and projects, they come remarkably close to each other. Both paid little heed to critics and stuck to their own opinions and visions of the profession. They also succeeded in realising expansion neighborhoods to prove their point. The question is whether they succeeded.
Let's explore what we can learn from these two men who, against the tide, implemented ‘New Urbanism’. Urbanistically, it results in interesting areas with a strong identity in the plan, achieved by creating a centre with surrounding areas rather than a vast field of new buildings with an orthogonal structure. The human scale is undeniably evident in both Brandevoort and Poundbury, and the bends in streets and structure make such neighborhoods playful. These old structures were not designed with cars in mind and now they have to fit in. Yet, we notice friction when accommodating enough space for cars, despite solutions being ahead of their time and located in parking lots. Additionally, there's a slight feeling of 'deception' because the architectural language from the past does not quite fit today's use. These are not small towns, but expansion neighborhoods primarily composed of residences.
What both neighborhoods certainly do is provoke thought. They are clearly less 'boring' than many other Vinex neighborhoods in the Netherlands or suburbs abroad. It's beneficial to have more variety in the approach to designing suburbs, which provides lessons for the future. What do we learn if we keep follow the same plan? Housing shortage (affordable) is a major problem in the Netherlands and in other parts of the world, and once again, we face a moment where we must decide how to find a sustainable solution to this problem. The great need for housing means that manynew areas will need to be developed. We do experience a 'new' trend in the Netherlands viewing neighborhoods as collections of communities with a maximum size of about 35 homes, emphasising community. The future will reveal whether the Krier brothers were not only looking back but were maybe ahead of their time.
July 2024
