Bijlmermeer – Zuidoost sub-municipality, south east of Amsterdam.
"My past is inscribed in those walls. My life is quantifiable, it is tangible only through space: I know I have lived thanks to the fingerprints on that wall. I know I am alive because I can touch it, this past, and I will live for as long as I can do it: Yana Dimitrova is me as much as the house in which I lived. The Biljmer: they called it the future. I was always interested in what the words progress and globalization meant for its residents, in what the word future meant for those whom it had been promised. To me, this future looked bright. It was more than that: it was hope. It was so different from what I had left in Sofia. I remember… There was a point in which it became clear. It was a loud, invisible crack. In that moment, i knew modernism had died. It had killed itself: I could almost hear its painful farewell. It wasn’t in the walls, it wasn’t tangible, it wasn’t a gash in the shiny architectural quality of the biljmer. I think it had to do with something that was underneath it all. Monoculture had to be cause of this enormous tear in the social fabric. I understood that it was inevitable, it was part of its own process of affirmation, it was proof that failure trama nel buio in attesa che l’ambizione si spogli della sua natura menzognera. The biljmer was built in the name of something, and it lost sight of it, lost the battle for its own cause. You see, the human subjects of my painting explore the fear for this future that they embarked on.. the utopia of modernism was thrilling, but fragile. So much that, in a way, people felt estranged. Architects are demiurges, spinti dal desiderio di promote development and to shape social relations, but forget about the human nature. When multiculturalism is just ideological, it becomes a metaphor. Sometimes, planners keep it as an ideological reality, and end up not dealing with its consequences. I remember what Mentzel said: “the genesis of the Amsterdam extension of the city shows the grandiose contradiction between the values of architects and urban planners, who wanted to build a city for the future, and the actual demands of residents”.
There was fear… fear that the world that had been built for us would collapse over our heads. But this dread, to me, was still a necessity, it was still part of the Utopia. The dream standed… it was holding on to the hope. Until there was no hope anymore. When we opened our eyes, when we finally did, what we saw was this huge, black void. there was no beginning, there was no end. Repetition. Modernism was to us just a monotonous collection of repeated entities. Entities: first, facades, then… there was us. We suddenly found ourselves in the liminal space, whilst what surrounded us now felt like like nothing but a deceptive environment. From this point, I was interested in exploring the resident’s view on their own future. I found out that not everything had been lost: some people still believe in the utopia of globalisation. some still talk of the multi-ethnic bijlmer, of themselves as the future. perhaps it was just our present that had changed: the fear, at least, was gone. We were walking on ashes, but we were still standing.”
It was back in 1966 that a start was made on what was a unique, daring building experiment. The Bijlmermeer housing complex, inspired by Sheffield’s Park Hill and Toulouse’s Le Mirail estates,
was built during the 1960s to ameliorate the post-war housing shortage within Amsterdam: not only was it supposed to become a model satellite town, it also borrowed the concept-utopia of the “Functional City” from Le Corbusier’s Voisin, which was based on the idea of a separation of the various functions of the city: working, living, traffic areas and recreation. What was going to take shape in the polder land of the Bijlmer was a car-free idealistic city, with
9 to 15-storeys high buildings laid out in a honeycomb grid enclosing open, green spaces. Furthermore, the various types of traffic were designed to be on different levels, with cars diverted on raised roads. There were internal corridors which lead to rooftop car parks and metro channels, there were footbridges at ground level. Unfortunately, for financial reasons, a number of ideas had to be abandoned in the final plan, compromising the “quality of life” and environment which was then promised to the future tenants. Inner streets became storage rooms at ground level, long galleries were built to reduce the number of lifts, platforms supported on big, concrete pillars were placed. Recreational facilities lagged behind the needs, as were public transport links with Amsterdam. In 1968, when the first people moved into the Bijlmermeer, the complex was embraced wholeheartedly both by most national media outlets and residents, whilst other critiques saw the new complex as something alienating and frightening, of inhuman scale.
Soon after completion, it became general belief that the estate’s social problems were strictly linked to its urban design. Rising rents, structural deficiencies, lack of central amenities and a rapid growth in inner city as well as suburban housing alternatives led to a thorough discreditization. Economically weak population groups, including people from Surinam and Dutch Antilles soon replaced the mostly middle-class population. The “Street of 1.000 Cultures”, as Matthijs Bouw called it, was also home to illegal immigrants from Ghana, poor people from the Antilles, and junkies from the city.
With rent prices rising and the offer of generous subsidies, which were provided in order to deal with continuous rent arrears, the estate became home for those who did not want to live there, but whom had no other choice.
The situation worsened with the develoment of housing alternatives in the 1970s, the rise of the so-called suburban “growth nucleuses” (e.g. Purmerend and Almere”) and the revaluation and gentrification nineteenth-century districts of Amsterdam, with their semi-detached houses, the Bijlmer faced an even tougher reality: demand was always exceeded by the supply. Community relations, dall'altro lato, venivano scoraggiati dal continuo inflow – out-flow of residents. Furthermore, social imbalances were caused by a marginalisation of the poorest, which was caused by schemes atti a incoraggiare homeownership.
Critiques and bad press higlighting the high vacancy and crime rates started in mid-1970s, and the ‘failed’ design principles led, in the late 1980s, to the start of continuous series of interventions in the built environment.
It is necessary, at this point, to ask ourselves whether it was really to the Bijlmer’s "modernist dream”, as to that of many other post-war estates throughout the world, that the stigma of social failure was to be attribuito.
Perhaps it's in stigmatisation that we have to seek for answers. The word “Suburbia”
veniva urlato dalle testate di ogni giornale, veniva issato sulle teste dei residenti come una bandiera, mentre tutti I clichè, tutta la negatività simbolica, le assumptions derivate dai well-known capostipiti delle favelas, dai banlieues ai ghettos americani, ed indistruttibile del suo significato, venivano lentamente incise indelebilmente in ogni concrete slab. The french sociologist Loic Wacquant talks of a symbolic dispossession: riots, misery, decay, vandalism, crime. Your postcode does no longer just belong to you. it writes your story. your identity IS just another brick in the monotonous decòr of blood-stained walls which have seen, which have heard the il dolore of alienation, della non-identità in un impianto architettonico spigoloso e seriale, which know the peso esatto della segregazione nella rigida, ossessiva gerarchia geometrica of a district with no future.
Stigmatisation doesn't fade over time. Was image change really possible? Was it with the resolution of physical problems that a renovation of the Bijlmer was to be approached? Was demolition of high-rises a way to deal with the intricacy of a problem whose radici erano nel tessuto invisibile di una claudicante multiculturality?
the Amsterdam planning department decided to intervenire con uno Spatial renewal. high-rises had to be reduced, with some flats replaced by single-family dwellings with gardens. Ma Failure faceva ancora capolino tra gli enormi corpi abbattuti of “Suburbia”.
In 1986, Soluzioni alternative furono cercate. Rem koohlas was incaricato di pensare a un nuovo processo di recupero che non prevedesse una forma di demolizione, ma di trasformazione, di “glorification”. With irony, he talked of an «estetica della tautologia: un ponticello pedonale conduce ad un isoletta esagonale in un lago esagonale circondato da stecche esagonali». It was a simple, yet completely new way to see things: OMA decided to preserve that “freddezza”, la monumentalità e “l’astrazione” della grandezza fuori-scala dei fabbricati, il fascino monumentale del Moderno,
Koohlaas approach shifted the problem's baricentro, spostando l'attenzione dagli edifici allo spazio tra gli edifici. introducing the concept of “urbanizzazione retroattiva”, di “ritrovamento archeologico” e scansando, come in antitesi, quello della “tabula rasa” dei demolitori. To him,
Ciò che the flaw was da ricercarsi nell’architettura per se, quanto nel tipo di città è che è determinato da tale archiettura. The void, the black void, with no beginning and no end, così esteso ed omnicomprensivo, e allo stesso tempo così alienante, così povero, così indistinto e impossibile da gestire. il riutilizzo del vuoto di Yana avrebbe costituito la chiave per la rivitalizzazione e l'aumento del livello di complessità urbata, di una mixitè funzionale. Il nuovo Bijlmer prevedeva il riutilizzo delle infrastrutture, la differenziazione degli spazi pubblici, e un nuovo approccio qualitativo, di contrattura e diversificazione del verde, il tutto col fine di intensificare la relazione tra le parti, la varietà tipologica (si parla anche di un “bombardamento tipologico”, con l'innesto di nuove residenze in torri, patii, schiere), l’identità. Kohlaas also talked
di una trasformazione del viadotto della metropolitana, da elemento di separazione in spina dorsale of the area, attraverso la creazione di un boulevard commerciale sottostante, e di varie tecniche di densificazione quali completamento, innesto o saturazione (o infills), utili per affrontare le frequenti esigenze di colmare, diversificare, arricchire i grandi all’interno di interventi di matrice modernista.
Il progetto di OMA rimase su carta, e nel decennio successivo si alternarono altri studi di fattibilità. Since 1992, the number of high-rises has been reduced from 95 to 45 percent, and various areas have been interessate da processi di trasformazione e differenziazione delle tipologie edilizie.
Ma l’intuizione di OMA su un possibile riutilizzo delle strutture ebbe conferma nel 2002, quando la proposta di intervento sul Kleiburg Block (500 appartamenti in 400 m di sviluppo lineare) di Greg Lynn fu accolta dal Woningstichting Patrimonium. L’intervento si fondava sulla suddivisione in vicinati del blocco unico e la realizzazione di una nuova facciata “scollata”, in grado di alloggiare allo stesso tempo spazi per i collegamenti verticali e per la differenziazione del taglio degli alloggi, garantendo l’adeguamento delle prestazioni tecniche ed energetiche.
Perhaps a better approach is to find in a design which can also assumersi il ruolo di architettura politica. If we take into analysis The Hoogvliet estate in Rotterdam, whose historical background is very similar to that of the Bijlmer, and the approach of the ‘Welcome In My Back Yard!’ project attuato sullo stesso nel 2007, we can see an example of how it is important, for renewal plans' succesfullness, to give importance to non-material aspect, to the existing mentality and involvement of the residents. The Wimby! Project prerogative was that of reorganizing and enhacing cultural and infrastructural condizioni preesistenti, through an analysis and awareness of the “hardware” of the city, therefore of the physical reality, of ‘software’ (the informal) and ‘orgware’ (the organisation structures). This study, this interlinked communication, this way of designing hand-in-hand with residents would help intaccare il substrato politico della realtà sociale, attuando interventi ad un livello più basso, più emblematico e meno epidermico. There is a compromise between “the informal” and the ambitions of the drawing board, between reality and utopia.