Lecture date: 1987-12-09
In 1958, after completing his studies at the Technical University in Delft, Herman Hetzberger returned to his native Amsterdam to set up a private practice. Youngest of the Forum Group, Hertzberger’s accumulated works constitute a formidable oeuvre and an unparalleled didactic resource. Central to his position is that architecture is inextricably bound up with life. He studies social rituals and responses to the built environment with the same intensity that he looks at historical buildings or keeps revisiting, studying and criticising his own ones – which are treated almost as hypotheses awaiting refutation. In the process, his work has lost the manifesto and stridency of the early buildings to become more fluid, restrained and subtle. From 1965 to 1970, he taught at the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam. In 1970 he became a professor at the Technical University in Delft.
