Column | Thijs Asselbergs
The major issue of the housing shortage of our time is not the amount of new housing to be built but the adaptability of the built environment. The disruptive effects of ever-changing rules disrupt standardization, design freedom and adaptability. Construction must reinvent itself. What is needed to do so? With ‘framed freedom’ Thijs Asselbergs makes a proposal to radically change construction.
It was the late 1960s, I was in my parents’ car, an NSU Ro80 with a Wankel engine, a unique innovation at the time. My father was behind the wheel; he liked to keep the momentum going. 180 kilometers per hour, which was still allowed at the time, was no exception. We drove through the Bijlmermeer, where large apartment buildings were rapidly being erected to meet the high housing shortage. Mostly tunnel construction: tunnels, surrounded by concrete. A lackluster, but very functional, systematic way of building. The residents were to live in a safe, green environment, not far from the city center – green structures with playgrounds and elevated roads were built between the flats. The municipality pushed the neighborhood as the epitome of progress, and it paid off. ‘Oh, what a wonderful picture of the future: Bijlmermeer!“ people enthusiastically sang on the then highly popular TV program ”The Schaep with the Five Legs. My mother was not convinced. ‘Just look what they are going to house the people in?’ she said from the passenger seat. ‘In this kind of rabbit hutches.’
As an apprentice architect in the 1970s, I grew up in the shadow of this kind of big building. For big issues, big solutions had to apply, people thought then. Modernism was not so much taught as adhered to as if it were a religious principle. My teachers trained us to be producers of buildings. Anticipation of reuse did not seem to exist. Architects such as John Habraken or Herman Hertzberger, who had a great eye for framed freedom of the architect, who believed that the wishes of the user should be central, were not really accepted during our studies. Indeed, they were kept away from us or even mocked. We young architects, we skywalkers, did not want framed freedom at all; we would build big. Somewhat exaggerated, we were all going to build rabbit hutches. Everything was literally cast in concrete. At the time it was all giant innovative, we thought. But what we were making was completely non-adaptable.
In retrospect, in architectural terms, the twentieth century was the century of mass construction: industrial housing during Reconstruction, the Bijlmer in the 1960s and 1970s, the traditional Vinex neighborhood in the 1990s. But what seemed modern then is outdated now. And what seemed old-fashioned then has turned out to be modern now. For although the housing shortage at the time was partially solved by mass construction – in 1969, for example, more than 114,000 homes were built, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics – this partial solution also brought problems for the future: the mass-built new homes were not adaptable, and would therefore face a short life span.
In 2017, I ran into John Habraken on the sidewalk of The New Institute, the former Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam. He was eighty-nine years old at the time, wearing a blue jacket and solid brown sneakers. I was approached by Sjoerd Soeters, a friend of mine and a former student of Habraken’s. ‘I need you,’ Sjoerd said. ‘I’m sitting here with John and we want to transfer his archive properly. Can you help us? So it wasn’t just a meeting, I immediately took charge of his body of thoughts, and I have continued to do so, until his death in 2023. And that body of thought, which had been somewhat “suspect” during my college years and had therefore remained marginal, simply because it did not fit the esprit of the college benches, turned out to be wildly interesting. In the 1960s, in that era of mass housing construction, he had coined the term open building, a principle that has an important place in my current view of architecture: essential in this is that the support and infill of buildings are separated, a concept as simple as it is progressive. His apparent place in the rear of architecture had in reality been a place in the vanguard; he was simply a lap ahead of us.
Sixty years after the construction of the Bijlmermeer, we face a similar problem as we did then; there is a great housing shortage in the Netherlands, which not only leaves its mark on the lives of many Dutch people in a real sense, but also carries great weight politically. The housing shortage has become a so-called headache file, which, if some political parties are to be believed, even affects the extent to which the Dutch are open to hosting political and economic refugees. And it does not look like that demand for affordable housing will diminish in the coming years. So, a similar problem, and just as then, we take the adage for big issues, big solutions must apply.
But here we are in danger of going wrong. The solution to the housing shortage of our time is not to build as many new homes as possible; that is a categorical fallacy. It is about adapting and reusing the already built environment as best we can. The methods and forms of organization that sufficed in the 20th century do not provide an answer to the ecological and social challenges facing the building industry century.
And all the while construction is in dire straits. First, there are the many practical problems. In fifteen years or so there will be hardly any personnel left to work on construction sites; many jobs have been robotized or automated, and many jobs will follow. Material costs have risen sharply in recent years, and they will continue to do so in the years to come. For these and other reasons, construction has become fragmented. There are lots of small companies and a few large contractors, who in turn depend on countless subcontractors. Each builder tries to bring innovation on the square foot, rolling out its concept, which then usually allows for cost savings. Cost cutting has become the holy grail, which is a serious barrier to innovation; there is simply too little investment. When an innovation does occur, a new technology or a clever application of existing technologies, the innovation is not simply shared between them. There is no interchangeability, no structures that could support a collective approach. It has become every man for himself, fighting for scraps.
There is also a more fundamental problem in construction: the incessant lobbying of builders with their short-term logic is insufficient to meet long-term challenges. As mentioned, the buildings of the future must be adaptable. If we erect concrete juggernauts now that we have to abandon in 30 years because they no longer meet the needs of the time, we will again be empty-handed. Yes, then some construction companies will have made good money twice, but that’s where it ends.
The impasse looks like this: the construction industry is divided and uninventive, and the government is guided by the market economy, because they are under the mistaken assumption that the market will resolve itself. Well, it won’t if solutions are needed that won’t lead to maximum profit. The market also has blind spots.
Construction must therefore change radically if we are to meet the wishes of the Dutchman, now and in the future. A fundamental system change, no more and no less. A reorganization of the sector, both from above and from below.
Such a reorganization is not a pipe dream. For example, the Japanese government legally requires builders to work with their version of the open-building concept. This way, there is also no rat race to the easiest, cheapest shortcut; the builder cannot avoid it. Such an intervention by the government is necessary because, as said, the market will not just “fix it”; on the contrary, the market will resist. It is time for the government to stand above the construction industry, rather than beside it, as is currently the case. The attempts at a more collective approach in the construction industry that the government advocates have always been rather feeble. Then ever changing advisory committees determine that new ground rules for construction must be established. These ground rules are money-driven in a very childish, short-sighted way. An example: the minimum height of a floor is lowered from 2.60 meters to 2.40. Then less material is needed, and thus building becomes cheaper. But making such an adjustment takes an awful lot of time, and thus an awful lot of money. So what do we gain? No, the ever-changing rules disrupt standardization, design freedom and adaptivity are very disruptive.
A system change like this requires a major, collective effort, from various parties inside and outside the construction industry. The government must provide clear legal frameworks, and create the preconditions for innovation to flourish. Agreements on dimensions and sustainability requirements must be imposed from above, so that mutual coordination is promoted, instead of being hindered, as is currently the case. After all, we don’t leave traffic to traffic either, hoping that their individual interest of traffic users will eventually lead to the greatest possible benefit of the whole group, as we think when it comes to the market. No, there are traffic rules, there are pedestrian crossings, traffic lights. Similarly, work, outcomes, capabilities or behavioral rules need to be standardized. Those standards provide the grip that builders need to find, and exercise, their freedom. That without rules, chaos breaks out is well known. But that without rules no real creative freedom can be found either, is at least as true, and should carry at least as much weight. A unified, standardized approach is essential to give innovative impulses the space they need to reach maturity.
After the government creates the right frameworks, universities and research institutions can then devise and develop new technologies and methods based on the principles of open construction, which must then also be embraced by construction companies, architects and clients.
Open building, of course, is not a panacea. More is needed. For example, it is equally important for clients to focus on existing stock, rather than assuming entirely new designs and projects. For example, as many as two hundred thousand homes could be built in the various vacant buildings in the Netherlands. Or let me take the example of schools. These are usually highly functional buildings that, with a few investments, could last for decades. The practice now is: if a school building is too old, it has to be demolished. I believe that five thousand of the ten thousand schools in the Netherlands are nominated for demolition. Wonderful for builders and consulting firms, of course, because after demolition a whole new building can be put up again. But this is a false rejuvenation – in fact, in this way we are creating far more ecological burden than would be necessary if, instead of looking only at the initial construction cost of a project, we took into account its total life-cycle costs, including the costs of maintenance, renovation and demolition. Those life-cycle costs provide a much more accurate measure of the value of a construction project than construction costs alone. Surely we are not at all waiting for hundreds of thousands of homes that will be obsolete in 20 years and with little or no adaptability.
If we calculate with life-cycle costs, it turns out to be much more efficient, cheaper and better for the environment to reuse. In other words, energy transition should be integrated into the task.
The goal should be to build for eternity. This involves optimizing the use of materials and always considering the environment, both the natural and built environments.
Socially, it is also better to honor existing buildings, such as school buildings. Those schools usually fit very well into the ecosystem of the neighborhood they are in, they have a specific context, which is adapted to the school, and the school in turn is adapted to the context. We just need to make those buildings adaptable, to the changing demands of the school, and of the environment. As paradoxical as it sounds, renovation is the future. There is a great need for structures that are reusable at all scales, as advocated by John Habraken. This will require an infill industry focused on incorporating pre-fabricated elements, making it easy to modify existing buildings.
The fact that this often proves difficult, if not impossible, leads to curious situations. For example, the City of Amsterdam has for years been looking for more school buildings to house the increasing number of students. But supply lags behind; there are too few people to build, and the municipality’s environmental requirements are considered too rigorous. In short, the demand is becoming increasingly complex, while the answer heard from the construction industry, with the exception of a few front-runners, remains painfully simple.
Governments can also outsource such large projects. Housing corporations are well aware that if things continue as they are, in fifteen years they will no longer be able to build freely. By then they will no longer be able to find people, materials will be too expensive, and the environmental requirements, from the perspective of profit maximization, will have become too prohibitive. For their survival, those corporations must enter into consultations with construction parties. Let me give an example: ten corporations buying five thousand houses from six builders, which they will build over the next five years. Those builders, architects and clients should consult among themselves on how to put these homes together. In this way, cooperative thinking is encouraged. In a long-winded way, this is called “an integrated project approach”. A promising model by extension is Integrated Project Delivery (IPD). IPD is a collaborative model in which the parties work together as a team from the beginning of a project. They have a common goal, namely the construction project to be completed, but also share responsibilities. It is in all their interests to communicate openly, to work transparently. Trust is essential in this.
Something similar can be done by individuals; they can go to the bank to secure a loan, with which they can take out a mortgage to have a home built, with a construction partner of their choice. These are inspiring necessities from the bottom up, showing once again that the government has failed to provide the right infrastructure, and has turned its ears to the all-powerful market.
Today’s big building question cannot be answered with yet another round of large-scale, systematic solutions that saddle us with unadaptable concrete behemoths. Instead, we must opt for a different course: a building culture that is flexible, collective and future-proof. Not bigger, but smarter. Not faster, but more sustainable. The principles of open building offer a guide in this regard, because they provide room for change, adjustments and the wishes of users over time. Now is the time to reinvent ourselves, as Habraken foresaw sixty years ago. Only then will we not build the next failure, but a resilient living environment that does stand the test of time. That way we prevent me, in the car with my children or perhaps one day my grandchildren, from sighing, “Look what they are going to house the people in? In this kind of rabbit Hutch”.
Photo: Bijlmer under construction, stadsarchief Amsterdam
