Shelly Kappe introduces Herman Hertzberger. This being his third visit to SCI-Arc in four years and considering that his printed resume is over ¼ inch thick, she assumes that most in the audience know his work.
Hertzberger comments on the difficulty of presenting new work every time he speaks at SCI-Arc because his work progresses very slowly.
He shows an office project for 2,000 people that he has been working on since 1979 which is an arrangement of repeatable elements. Another office project is made up of a series of what he refers to as islands that are elevated and connected with bridges. This arrangement creates voids throughout the project that provide views for the workers at their desks.
While speaking about the interior of his music center in Utrecht, Hertzberger stresses the importance of not filling the entire hall with seats, to provide places for people to dance during concerts.
When talking about his own strategies for high density housing, Hertzberger mentions that Le Corbusier is wrongly credited with having invented large apartment buildings because he always proposed large outdoor loggia. Le Corbusier’s balcony design provides a large two story outlook from the unit but also provides moments for privacy, which tells how much he thought about real life situations and activities. Looking at one of
He discusses a housing projects in Berlin, with a children’s playground designed by his daughter. Also a proposal for an addition to an existing museum in Berlin.
Hertzberger offers a bench at Gaudí’s Park Güell as an example of precision and poetics. Likewise, in the courtyard of the Mosque/Cathedral of Córdoba, the system of irrigation canals connect, and echo, the trees. He argues that beauty of these examples is not the result of anyone trying to create beauty, but the desire to find a solution to a problem.
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