DMJ – Riddle as Method, Transparency at Play: Aldo Van Eyck at Baambrugge
As work on site at the Orphanage (1956-1960) neared completion, Aldo van Eyck was busy exploring and expanding the reach of his ideas through a number of interlaced and mutually generative projects, editorial of Forum magazine (1959-63), contributions to the reorganisation and ultimate dissolution of CIAM (1954-1960) and the design of a small house for himself and his family on the southern approach to Amsterdam, along the river Angstel at Baambrugge (1958-1960).
This house, both unbuilt and little known, often falls in the shadow of the Orphanage, mentioned frequently as a minor footnote or an aside. And yet, carefully collected as a folio of preparatory drawings, the project contains and compels more detailed attention. While the house design has been catalogued and included in Aldo van Eyck, Works (1999), the folio of preparatory drawings has never been considered. This article pays attention to these for the first time, presenting a close reading of them as generative drawings, attending to their particularities, dead-ends and forceful imaginaries as means to enter, explore and ultimately celebrate the continued presence and potency of the project.
With a sense of active and lively engagement, the article takes the phenomenon of the riddle as its guide. While the term ‘paradox’ has frequently been used in discussions of the work of Van Eyck, here ‘riddle’ is suggested as more appropriate – not least because it suggests a method that resolves into an action, an approach. Aiming to reveal something critical, riddles posed in stories set a challenge and expect a solution. The resultant attempts and flawed efforts secure and protect the ultimate deliberation. Displaying an active and lively proclivity, the riddle seeks an answer, and this answer must be reasonable, albeit often only in retrospect. Using the riddle as method, the article proceeds to set out the case for the novel and generative capacity of this little house project, in and through which new forms of spatial relation were tested out, sanctioned, and occupied.
Download the full article as a printable PDF
DMJournal–Architecture and Representation
No. 3: Storytelling
Edited by Mark Dorrian and Paul Carter
ISSN 2753-5010 (Online)
ISBN (tbc)
About the author
Laura Harty is an architect and writer. As Lecturer in Architectural Design and Detail at the University of Edinburgh, she contributes to teaching and research on architectural detail, drawing and configurative design practices. Her work engages with topics in architecture and culture, architectural practice, education, history, theory and media studies, and has appeared in publications such as the Journal of Architecture, Drawing Matter Journal and Building Material.
