Editorial

Authors

  • Dick van Gameren TU Delft, Architecture and the Built Environment
  • Paul Kuitenbrouwer TU Delft, Architecture and the Built Environment
  • Eireen Schreurs TU Delft, Architecture and the Built Environment

Abstract

In today’s service economy, the functional zoning typical of modern urbanism is no longer self-evident. People’s domestic and professional lives increasingly take place in one and the same domain. They need a different type of city, one that accommodates a wide variety of programmes, with tailormade facilities that allow combinations of living, working and care. This issue of DASH focuses on the building block as the spatial cornerstone of this development. It is where the individual dwelling, the collective domain and urban life meet.

Workhome blocks that combine new ways of living and working are more than commercial bases topped by a couple of dwellings. Historical projects abound, but contemporary workhome blocks are more difficult to find. Apparently, many of the parties concerned need time to get used to the idea of realizing such projects. What is required, in short, is a cultural transformation. This is why the essays and examples in this issue are a plea for a different way of building.

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.

Paul Kuitenbrouwer, TU Delft, Architecture and the Built Environment

Paul Kuitenbrouwer graduated in 1988 as an architect from the Faculty of Architecture of Delft University of Technology. Since then he worked for, among others, Wiel Arets and Jo Coenen, for whom he was deputy supervisor of the Sphinx-Céramique site in Maastricht. In 2001 he followed Coenen, who was appointed Dutch Government Architect, to The Hague. Since 2006, he has been an assistant professor associated with the Chair of Architecture and Dwelling of Delft University of Technology; he has conducted research into high-density low-rise housing (Intense Laagbouw) and student housing (bouwjong!), teaches both Bachelor’s and Master’s degree design studios and analysis seminars with an emphasis on typology, density and the urban context, and is an editor of DASH. In addition, he has taught at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture (2009-2012) and since 2016 teaches at the Maastricht Academy of Architecture. Since 2017, he is also a member of the Board of Examiners for Architects at The Dutch Architect’s Register Agency in The Hague.

Eireen Schreurs, TU Delft, Architecture and the Built Environment

Eireen Schreurs is an architect, educated at Delft University of Technology. With Like Bijlsma she founded SUBoffice architecten in Rotterdam, a practice with a focus on issues concerning the public and the collective, both in built work and in research. She teaches at Delft University of Technology and KU Leuven (Sint-Lucas Ghent) where she also holds a PhD position. Her research topic is the influence of material practices on the development of architectural culture. She is a member of the Jury of the Geert Bekaert Prize for architecture critique, a co-editor of the recent publication The New Craft School (2018), and she regularly writes for architecture magazines.

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Published

2019-04-01

Issue

No. 15 (2019): Home Work City: Living and Working in the Urban Block

Section

Editorial