Lecture date: 1999-11-23
Through his designs and texts Aldo van Eyck had an immediate impact on the buildings of the 1950s and 1960s. His work provided a new view of architecture and of the world – a humanistic view that reacted against technocracy and superconsumerism. For half a century van Eyck has composed manifestos, crafted images and created structures that have shaped the critical sensibilities of his contemporaries. A ‘rebel’ advancing some of the most creative design ideas of the century and developing a unique poetics of ‘the inbetween’ that sustains human community in buildings.
In their book Aldo van Eyck, Humanist Rebel, Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre explore van Eyck’s poetics of ‘the inbetween’ in all its facets – from the early pioneering playgrounds of Amsterdam to the latest complex institutional research buildings, where previously incompatible ideas, formal or functional, are united in a new syncretic whole.
Alexander Tzonis is the chair of Architectural Theory at the Technical University of Delft and the author of numerous books and articles on architectural theory, history and design.
