Synopses & Reviews
Winner of theand#160;1999 Spiro Kostof Book Award from the Society of Architectural
Historians.
During the early 1900s, Amsterdam developed an international reputation as an urban mecca when invigorating reforms gave rise to new residential neighborhoods encircling the city's dispirited nineteenth-century districts. This new housing, built primarily with government subsidy, not only was affordable but also met rigorous standards of urban planning and architectural design. Nancy Stieber explores the social and political developments that fostered this innovation in public housing.
Drawing on government records, professional journals, and polemical writings, Stieber examines how government supported large-scale housing projects, how architects like Berlage redefined their role as architects in service to society, and how the housing occupants were affected by public debates about working-class life, the cultural value of housing, and the role of art in society.
Stieber emphasizes the tensions involved in making architectural design a social practice while she demonstrates the success of this collective enterprise in bringing about effective social policy and aesthetic progress.
Synopsis
During the early 1900s, Amsterdam developed an international reputation for progressive housing policy when invigorating reforms gave rise to new residential neighborhoods encircling the city's dispirited nineteenth-century districts. This new housing, built primarily with government subsidies, not only was affordable but also met rigorous standards of urban planning and architectural design. Nancy Stieber explores the social and political developments that fostered this innovation.
Drawing on government records, professional journals, and polemical writings, Stieber demonstrates how government organized to support large-scale housing projects, how architects like Berlage redefined their role in service to society, and how the housing occupants were affected by public debates about working-class life, the cultural value of housing, and the role of art in society. Applying theoretical perspectives from Foucault and Bourdieu, Stieber also examines the social history of this particular struggle to define architecture as knowledge, art, profession, and social service.
Stieber shows how politics, class, and culture contended in this new public forum on housing quality. Focusing on two aspects of the debate, social hygiene and urban aesthetics, she describes how experts attempted to normalize the dwelling plan and the housing facade. For both plan and facade, the problem of setting norms and establishing public standards engendered conflict over the extent and nature of government control, the troubled relationship between the values of experts and of those to be regulated, and the question of collective or plural standards. With an extensive analysis of the plans and facades approvedbetween 1909 and 1919, Stieber illustrates how debates over the facade's design raised issues of style and taste, while debates over plan typology touched issues of lifestyle and ideological conviction.
As Stieber emphasizes the tensions involved in making architectural design a social practice, she also demonstrates the success of this collective enterprise in creating effective public debate about social policy and aesthetic progress.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Ch. 1: The Politics of Daily Life
Ch. 2: Social Hygiene and Aesthetics
Ch. 3: Setting Housing Standards
Ch. 4: Civilizing the Working Class
Ch. 5: The Standard Plan
Ch. 6: Controlling Urban Aesthetics
Ch. 7: Reforming Workers' Taste
Ch. 8: Normalization of the Facade
Conclusion
Appendix
Note
Index