The street, a landscape A task for the landscape architect Noël van Dooren
This essay originates from a series of analytical sketches of the street grid of The Hague. These materials from 1982 were made by the city architect and urban planner Rein Geurtsen and his assistants at the time, Maurits de Hoog and Kees Thielen. The Delft-based trio made the sketches to support a critical analysis of the new building that housed the Lower House of Parliament. The essay could be mistaken for an investigation of some fairly marginal matters. However, I will attempt to show that I have pulled a single thread from a fascinating tangle, like a tracker picking up a scent. So what is it all about? Let us take the scenic route before returning to the sketches made by Geurtsen and his associates. About 25 years ago, landscape architecture started to significantly grow in popularity, something that could be likened to the conquest of the city. I started my studies at Wageningen University in 1985, and can irreverently state that our most profound encounters with the city were with the urban green structure, the city park and the cemetery. Barely 10 years later, city squares, streets and even whole residential neighbourhoods were completed, which were designed by landscape architects. Consider the station square in Enschede by OKRA, the city centre of Breda by B+B, Monnikenhuizen in Arnhem designed by Buro Lubbers, and the Borneo-Sporenburg housing development in Amsterdam by West 8. It is immediately apparent from these examples that this development did not involve green squares, green streets and green neighbourhoods — quite the opposite. The landscape architect turned out to be a stony type. It is one of the movements that significantly changed the face of landscape architecture in a short time. Even more than before, it placed Dutch landscape architecture in an exceptional position in the international arena. It is unique to see such an active interest in urban design that could also be expressed in tangible projects. The fascination for this increase in popularity dates back to the 2002 publication about Alle Hosper, which I co-authored. In that book, we portrayed several decades of professional development in landscape architecture, focusing on the master craftsman Alle Hosper. In 1987, Hosper was assigned a leading role in a project in The Hague, De Kern Gezond (‘Healthy to the Core‘), in which the municipality worked to improve the inner city public spaces in The Hague. We viewed that massive project as one of the tangible moments when landscape architecture began its conquest of city squares and streets. In addition, not insignificantly, this project marked the return of design in city spaces. That raised the question of the conditions that gave rise to this project and why Alle Hosper, or — more abstractly — a landscape architect, was assigned such a role in that project. While trying to figure out this kind of puzzle, I enjoy leafing through magazines from the time period in question; in this case, Wonen TA/BK and Plan. In those pages, I came across the series of drawings I referred to earlier, made by 54
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