Professor
Henk Hartzema

If the home lies at the origins of architecture, the street marks the start of the city. Patterns of streets lead directly to the nature of the city, just as the home tells the story of its occupants. The street determines our orientation in the city and directs our perception of urban reality. In spite of the proverbial strong planning tradition, streets in the Netherlands are informal and indeterminate in form. There are no boulevards, and it is rare for a building to make the street important. Institutes of national importance, the parliament, ministries and national museums are not located beside the main traffic arteries, and the Dutch royal family lives in seclusion.

Street Works
In the Netherlands there is a lack of interest in the linking and identifying function of the street – how a street links the city with the landscape, connects the fragments of the city with one another or gives important buildings their place. This culturally determined nonchalance towards the street leads to a reduction of complexity and anti-urbanism. This is rooted in isolationist notions of architecture and urban design. As a city grows, however, the pressure on its linking and identifying capacity increases, resulting in a growing demand for structure and territorial legibility.

The research and design project of the research group Design in Urbanism targets the articulatory function of the urban street: the study of the role of importance in the linear space, orientation within the city and its surroundings, and the role of architecture within this urban context. This is done by looking at traditions and ideological opinions elsewhere in Europe. The research targets the concept of the layered nature of the urban reality of the street: meaning, history, functions.

Street Works is a research project of the Academy of Architecture led by Professor Henk Hartzema. The design assignment for the autumn 2009 semester is the result of cooperation with the departments of Architecture of the Helsinki University of Technology, Edinburgh College of Art, La Cambre and Sint-Lucas Brussels, Universidade do Porto, and the University of Zagreb, and with the town and country planning departments of Helsinki, Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Brussels, Porto and Zagreb.

Please contact Jelte Boeijenga for participation or further information: j.boeijenga@ahk.nl.