Editorial

Authors

  • Dick van Gameren TU Delft, Architecture and the Built Environment
  • Hans Teerds TU Delft, Architecture and the Built Environment
  • Jurjen Zeinstra TU Delft, Architecture and the Built Environment

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7480/dash.11.4955

Abstract

The cover of this issue of DASH shows a home interior that was exhibited in Berlin in 1952, at the exhibition ‘Wir bauen ein besseres Leben’ / ‘We’re Building a Better Life’. In this model interior, which was designed like a brilliant white laboratory, American actors showed the audience that had flocked to Berlin how you were supposed to live in this kind of house. An expert in a white coat, who towered above the drab audience, was on hand to explain the house, and what the actors were doing.

Like no other picture, this photograph shows how the housing interior has been seized upon in the modern era as a tool in emancipatory and political processes (from both the outside in and from the inside out) that have dramatically changed the dwelling landscape. With the rise of mass housing in the previous century, dwelling undeniably became an architectural task, and the interior has played an important role in this process.

Yet one can also ask whether the home interior can indeed be seen as an architectural project. After all, within the four walls of one’s own house, the resident will go his own way, unseen and undisturbed, with the walls separating the private from the public. The house is furnished and customized to one’s own needs, and is decorated with the paraphernalia of everyday life and the memories of the past. Despite this personal dimension, history has shown that the home interior has also always been linked to representation, and that makes it by definition an architectural assignment: just think of the interiors of large houses and noble palaces. The rise of mass housing over the past 100 years concentrated on dwelling as an architectural task, and that created the space for the home interior to also be an architectural assignment, one that has since overtaken the noble elite and the decorative. Nowadays it seems that every interior is considered an ‘architectural’ project, or better yet a ‘design’ project: just take a look at any magazine kiosk to see how dwelling consumers are inundated with information on the latest trends. The interior seems more than ever to have become an instrument by which an individual presents himself to the world, much in the way that fashion is also such an instrument.

For DASH, this focus on the home interior is interesting because (in)explicitly formulated ideas about the interior always play a role, and always have done, in the design of homes; this is true not only in the design of private houses, but also of mass housing. The transfer of these ideas primarily took place, and still takes place, through the interiors themselves, which are publicized by the media (books, magazines, newspapers, television, films, exhibitions, department stores, catalogues, home design blogs). Some of these interiors are specially made to express a specific view about dwelling and architecture. In this issue of DASH, we explicitly focus on these exhibited home interiors, which we call ‘interiors on display’. We examined 15 of these rooms from the last century: interiors that were never inhabited, but that were exhibited at exhibitions and fairs. In most cases, the interiors were broken down, and only live on in the form of drawings and/or photographs. Leading up to this documentation, five essays and an interview offer different perspectives on the idea of the interior as an architectural assignment, as a commercial object and as a tool in creating artistic, avant-garde and cultural reflections on society. This issue of DASH thus presents a small cross section of more than 100 years of dwelling, in the context of the rapidly changing (Western) society, and shows how these developments have been architecturally projected onto the interior.

Author Biographies

Dick van Gameren, TU Delft, Architecture and the Built Environment

Dick van Gameren is dean and full professor at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment of Delft University of Technology, and partner at Mecanoo architecten in Delft, the Netherlands. Combining his work as an architect with a professorship, Van Gameren maintains a critical approach to design by lecturing, researching and publishing. In 2007, Van Gameren won the prestigious Aga Kahn Award for the design of the Dutch Embassy in Ethiopia. In 2008, Van Gameren founded the book series DASH (Delft Architectural Studies on Housing) and is since then editor in chief. At TU Delft. He leads the Global Housing Study Centre and is also board member of the Archiprix foundation, of the Jaap Bakema Study Centre in Rotterdam and of the Amsterdam based AMS Institute. He is also a member of the TU Delft Global Initiative Steering Committee.

Hans Teerds, TU Delft, Architecture and the Built Environment

Hans Teerds works as an assistant at the Chair for the History and Theory of Urban Design at the Institute for History and Theory of Architecture (GTA) of the ETH Zürich. He wrote a dissertation at the Delft University of Technology, discussing the public aspects of architecture as seen through the lens of the writings of philosopher Hannah Arendt. Together with Tom Avermaete and Klaske Havik, he edited the anthology Architectural Positions: Architecture, Modernity and the Public Sphere (2009), and published together with Johan van der Zwart, Levend Landschap: Manifest voor stad en land (2012). Teerds is a member of the editorial boards of the architectural journals OASE and DASH.

Jurjen Zeinstra, TU Delft, Architecture and the Built Environment

Jurjen Zeinstra studied architecture at the Faculty of Architecture TU Delft and has been editor of the architectural magazines OASE and Forum. Together with Mikel van Gelderen he founded Zeinstra van Gelderen architecten, that has realized projects on various scales. Currently he works in the Department of Architecture as acting Associate professor in the Chair of Architecture of the Interior, where he teaches design. He initiated the program ‘Culture of Care’ in 2012 and has edited Amsterdam Places; Interiors, Buildings and Cities in 2013.

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Published

2020-06-02

How to Cite

van Gameren, D., Teerds, H., & Zeinstra, J. (2020). Editorial. DASH | Delft Architectural Studies on Housing, 7(11), 1–3. https://doi.org/10.7480/dash.11.4955