Film and Conference Modules
Pioneers of the Dutch Modern House
This program consists of five modules, each with a keynote lecture and an episode of a series of thematic videos in which twenty iconic houses across the Netherlands are featured: from the Amsterdam School and De Stijl to Postmodernism; from Gerrit Rietveld to Mart van Schijndel and many others. We also offer the five thematic videos as one film of an hour. The film also presents famous examples of social housing, an area in which The Netherlands was particularly rich in the 20th-century.
Module 1
Hygiene and Health in the Modern Home
Video on demand.
Lecture: English. Video: Dutch spoken and English subtitles.
Keynote address by Beatriz Colomina and video presented by Hetty Berens.
Architecture in the Age of Pandemics
Beatriz Colomina is Howard Crosby Butler Professor of the History of Architecture at Princeton University. She writes and curates on questions of design, art, sexuality and media. Her books include Sexuality and Space, Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media, Domesticity at War, Manifesto Architecture: The Ghost of Mies and The Century of the Bed. Her latest book is X-Ray Architecture. She has curated a number of exhibitions including Playboy Architecture, and The 24/7 Bed. In 2016 she was chief curator with Mark Wigley of the third Istanbul Design Biennial. In 2018 she was made Honorary Doctor by the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and 2020 she was awarded the Ada Louise Huxtable Prize for her contributions to the field of architecture.
In her keynote address, Beatriz focuses on the huge impact of health and hygiene on modern architecture from the end of the 19th century to today’s pandemic. 'I will try to show that theories and fears of disease literally shaped the architecture we live in.'
Hygiene and Health in the Modern Home
Hetty Berens, an architectural historian and curator at Het Nieuwe Instituut Rotterdam, is also responsible for the Sonneveld House in Rotterdam, which has been restored to its original 1930s glory. She is a board member of the Iconic Houses Foundation and Co-Chair of the 2021 conference. In her video she explains how improved hygiene made healthier homes in The Netherlands.
Houses featured in this episode are:
De Kiefhoek, J.J.P. Oud, 1930
Erasmuslaan Model Home, Gerrit Rietveld, 1931
Sonneveld House, Brinkman & Van der Vlugt, 1933
Dijkstra House, Ben Merkelbach and Charles Karsten, 1934
Kraayeveld House, now Chabot Museum, G.W. Baas, 1938