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Crisis? What crisis?

Editorial by Janny Rodermond, director of The Netherlands Architecture Fund

Wednesday 23 September 2009

In his daily column on the back page of the NRC Handelsblad (September 08, 2009), Frits Abrahams related a remarkable conversation and asked readers to guess the two speakers. For he, too, was struck by the fact that Herman Wijffels and Rick van der Ploeg – the first a prominent member of the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) party and the second a leading figure in the Dutch Labour Party (PvdA) – were strikingly in agreement on the TV programme Buitenhof (September 06, 2009) as they advocated a ‘paradigm shift’, an alternative to our colonial and capitalist lifestyle.

The two men are a generation apart, but they are both economists with wide international experience who share a deep curiosity about developments in society. Their diagnoses were identical. Yes, we are dealing with a financial crisis, an economic crisis, a climate crisis. But more importantly: a ‘crisis of values’. Our lifestyle harms the Third World, widens the gap between rich and poor, and damages ecological systems beyond repair.

Abrahams told how he listened to this conversation with approval and astonishment: two civilised gentlemen preaching about revolution because they see no alternative. Wijffels in particular, chairman of NGO think-tank Worldconnectors, vests his hope in the ‘culture creatives’ who, he says, are the first to recognise the need for radical change.

A hopeful sign in this context is the attention devoted to the phenomenon of the city in the world of culture this autumn in the Netherlands. Under the slogan Urban Century the VPRO broadcaster has put together an impressive range of programmes that spotlight developments in cities and metropolises around the world. Making use of the full potential of radio and TV, the broadcaster’s coverage is something of a warm-up act for the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, which starts at the end of September. The theme of this edition of the IABR, Open City, has been elaborated by six research teams under the stewardship of curator Kees Christiaanse.

For three months the entire programming of the NAi will be dominated by reflection on and debate about the city. The IABR is contagious: the Department of Physical Planning (DRO) in Amsterdam is presenting an exhibition about the future of the Amsterdam metropolis in the former Shell canteen in the north of the city. And in early October this same DRO is holding a congress about ‘the new challenges of global urbanisation’ with a choice selection of speakers on urban planning and a series of workshops morgentomorrow.nl. So plenty of opportunities to explore the necessary changes advocated by Wijffels and Van der Ploeg.


A recurring theme in the programmes of all these events is that the world’s population is increasingly an urban population. Most attention is devoted to registering and analysing the consequences of this rapid urban growth. With a mixture of fascination and criticism, research teams, photographers, designers and scholars are reporting on this widespread urbanisation, which stretches into every corner of former agrarian communities. But when reading the impressive programmes, one has the impression that urbanisation is an autonomous phenomenon, an uncheckable process, even though living conditions for much of urban society are miserable.

I think the key question for debate is: what does this mean now for urban designers, clients, officials, and investors? For those expected to make the city? 
A preview: during the opening debate of Urban Century in Amsterdam, Winy Maas presented himself as the new Le Corbusier, the visionary designer, who has a present for the people of Paris. When a member of the audience asked what the present actually was, the box turned out to contain just a meagre management strategy with a ribbon tied around it. Maas, in his presentation, was almost a parody of the arrogant architect. Bregtje van der Haak made a documentary of Maas’s experiences in Paris, where he has been appointed by Sarkozy to give shape to the latter’s visionary ideas. Entitled Grand Paris: de president en de architect, the documentary has been broadcasted by the VPRO on September 21.


The counterpart to this traditional view of the designer who can mastermind the design of the metropolis is the research project elaborated by Crimson within the framework of IABR. Under the mildly provocative title Maakbaarheid (Dutch for ‘Makeability’), the Rotterdam collective is showing nine small-scale projects that aim to improve the everyday surroundings in Rotterdam neighbourhoods – projects that are feasible and that draw attention to new working methods that breathe new life into the objectives of the ‘makeable society’. The Netherlands Architecture Fund (SfA) is presenting the results of Crimson’s research in the English-language edition of Lay-out, a newspaper for recent design research supported and published by SfA. 
The approaches taken by MVRDV and Crimson mark the extremities of the sphere of activity of designers and planners. Winy Maas has no sense of the ‘crisis of values’ and operates within a global circuit of architects who adorn the marketing strategies of rulers, while Crimson stay close to home and work diligently with local parties to find the ‘paradigm shift’ advocated by Wijffels and Van der Ploeg and others. The debate about rebuilding the city has already started.