Centraal Beheer: los límites del estructuralismo en la configuración de un espacio-soporte

PROYECTO, PROGRESO, ARQUITECTURAN19_ARQUITECTURA Y ESPACIO-SOPORTE R. MERINO DEL RÍO; J. GRIJALBA BENGOETXEA. “Centraal Beheer: los límites del estructuralismo...”. Proyecto, Progreso, Arquitectura. November 2018. Universidad de Sevilla. ISSN 2171–6897 / ISSNe 2173–1616 – RECEIVED 2018–01–31 / ACCEPTED 2018–07–18 CC BY-NC-ND – DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12795/ppa.2018.i19.02 R. MERINO DEL RÍO; J. GRIJALBA BENGOETXEA. “Centraal Beheer: los límites del estructuralismo...”. Proyecto, Progreso, Arquitectura. November 2018. Universidad de Sevilla. ISSN 2171–6897 / ISSNe 2173–1616 – RECEIVED 2018–01–31 / ACCEPTED 2018–07–18 CC BY-NC-ND – DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12795/ppa.2018.i19.02 p.37 p.38 p.42 p.43 CENTRAAL BEHEER: LOS LÍMITES DEL ESTRUCTURALISMO EN LA CONFIGURACIÓN DE UN ESPACIO-SOPORTE CENTRAAL BEHEER: THE LIMITS OF STRUCTURALISM IN THE CONFIGURATION OF A SUPPORT-SPACE Rebeca Merino del Río (https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8415-4872) Julio Grijalba Bengoetxea (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3437-7044) At the beginning of 1968, J. W. Ruiter, CEO of Centraal Beheer cooperative, commissioned Herman Hertzberger’s architecture studio the design of the new company’s headquarters in Apeldoorn. The freedom he enjoyed to do so, allowed him to continue developing the model on which he had been working for several years. Centraal Beheer office building, built between 1968 and 1972 (figure 1), results from the evolution of two previous designs for the competitions of Valkenswaard (1966) and Amsterdam (1967) town halls1, where the human dimension of architecture is the axis around which an anthropocentric model is developed. In these late 60s protests, strikes and riots took place in various European cities like London, Amsterdam and the major events in Paris in May 19682. A popular rebellion by mainly youngsters demanded a revision of the forms of government standing up against the increasing dissociation between people and power that was leading into a real loss of the capacity of choice and the identity of individuals. Under these claims lies the ideology of Situationist International3. Many authors in the 60s tackle the concept of the support-space from different perspectives in a search for architectural models able to respond to the renewed demands by society. John Habraken widely develops the concept of support in his theoretical work and presents it as a housing alternative for mass society. The deviation from Hertzberger’s work lies in the definition degree and the scope, since Habraken advocates a limitation of the architect’s intervention to “a design of the support”, what he defines as “the communal”4, what would result into an indeterminacy of the rest of spaces. This description is far from the concept of the support-space as a perceptible, stable and permanent scenery which Hertzberger follows in the design of public and collective buildings. The situationist interpretation of the traditional city as a support-space would be the one that, in this context, better depicts the essence of the model reproduced in Centraal Beheer because of its theoretical references and motivations. REDISCOVERING THE CITY AS A SUPPORT-SPACE: SITUATIONIST DÉRIVE AND PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY Situationist International was established in 1957, bringing together the interests of the Letrist International and the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus. The theoretical foundations on the work by the philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre, together with a search for references among surrealist creations —mainly by the poet Tristan Tzara—, are present in the imagery of Situationist International5 and some of its predecessors, e.g. CoBra6. This common denominator extends Situationist International’s sphere of influence to certain subjects though CoBra: the modern city criticism; everydayness as a source of inspiration and wandering as a recognition technique. Hertzberger’s closest approach to Situationist research occurs in between 1959 and 1967, when he is in the Forum voor Architectuur en Daarmee Verbonden Kunsten editor’s team. Numerous references to avant-garde art and literature, to cultural trends from the first half of the 20th century were launched in this magazine which also gave support to Situationist International. Jaap Bakema and Aldo van Eyck, who was also non officially linked to the CoBra group7, were also part of the team. In 1959 the Forum issue n.º 12, edited by the team in which Hertzberger was in, this approach to the artistic and cultural avant-gardes is most evident. In the introduction, a poem written by the surrealist Guillaume Apollinaire, presents a sensitive subjective narration of the atmosphere of an industrial street in Paris. The main content comprises a series of photographs of urban areas that acquire meaning thanks to various poems by the Dutch writer Lucebert, from CoBra. Far from the Euclidian logic, these poems present a Heideggerian reinterpretation of the urban landscape raised as a consequence of a receptive observation of the city space. The Forum editors’ team, thus, got closer to surrealism and CoBra, conceiving the city as a framework able to accommodate diverse interpretations —as a support-space—, and the flàneur technique as a method of experimentation and sensitive recognition of the built environment, genesis of situationist dérive. Hertzberger evidences his opinion in this regard when he refers to this content in the editorial of the following issue. He acknowledges the leading role of traditional cities in order to achieve fulfilment by humans; he maintains that modern urban formulas become obsolete as they are incapable of inciting and complementing the user, so increasing their sense of alienation. In his own words: “For the reader it [the last issue] is meant to be an appeal, so that he becomes restless and that the comparison with modern urbanism shows that we have become entangled in a number of inadequate formulas; inadequate because the result turns out to be incomplete”8. Dérive, one of the experimental methods proposed by situationists, is defined in issue n.º 2 of IS as “a technique of transient passage through varied ambiances”9. The aim of this technique is to rediscover urban space from a non-utilitarian perspective promoting the creation of new associations as an outcome of facing and interpreting the surroundings. This was exclusively achievable by wandering; without any fixed destination which could, unconsciously, direct our steps. From a scientific point of view, dérive becomes a method of gathering the necessary foundations for the creation of the psycho-geographical maps in which the city and its diverse ambiences are represented according to the record of the subjective experimentation of the wanderer. From an artistic perspective, the technique of dérive is a source of inspiration that takes daily examination of the city and everydayness as aesthetic resources. In an attempt to shape a support-space able to abridge some of the features of the traditional city, the member of Situationist International, Constant Nieuwenhuys (also known simply as Constant, as we will refer to him from now on), presented his artwork New Babylon. Constant defended, in a utopian exercise, the capacity of an ever-stimulating urban milieu to subvert the established order and evolve from a utilitarian society to a chimerical ludic one10. New Babylon is an urban-scale integral project formed by various changeable ambiences which try to give response to the hypothetical needs and interpretations of homo ludens11. Constant refers to this support-space, New Babylon, as a dynamic labyrinth12. He represents its interior by means of a three-dimensional network superimposition in which the opaque surfaces represent the changes conducted by the users, who deliberately mean an isotropic physical milieu (figure 2). The interior landscape evolves throughout time adapting itself to the interests of the different users13 nourished by particular creative acts and the consequent social response to them. The strolling about New Babylon is a must if we want to eschew the classic space-time perception and begin a new interaction with our environment. Disorientation, product of unceasing transformations in the environment, becomes a target opposed to those modern urbanism features developed until then: static nature and lack of surprise. Centraal Beheer, like New Babylon, is a support-space designed ex novo; its set up follows an urban layout in which the definition of proportions and incentives design intend to reproduce the habitability conditions of the traditional city, considering the same references as situationists. Hertzberger recently acknowledged that his goal “was not to make one building, but rather a sort of city”14 when he designed Centraal Beheer. We can appreciate in the mock-up (figure 3) that Centraal Beheer is incorporated into the urban tissue showing, apparently, no will to follow the neighbouring pattern. Centraal Beheer, close to the railway station, sits in one of the first half of the 20th century city’s expansion areas. The proportion of the towers and their gaps, emulating city blocks and streets, contrast with the urban planning and the proportions of the buildings nearby. Centraal Beheer retrieves the distinctive scale and density of the traditional city, seeking to promote the intensity of the human relationships produced there. It is a city within the city. Centraal Beheer paths, as on public streets, are catalysts for casual encounters and social meeting. Pathways are organised in two different levels: there is a network of main streets whose gridded layout outlines the tower units; and there is a secondary traffic network at the higher levels and with a different section to the main one running along the towers’ axes (figure 4). Workplaces, accommodated in the towers from the first sketches15 (figure 5), are the arrival points for commuters. Hertzberger compiled plenty examples of urban structures that had changed use through time, this proves the ability to withstand the interpretations of their inhabitants without losing their identity traditional cities have. In Centraal Beheer, he tries to encourage employees to customize their workplaces within the limits determined by the structure, which turns the building into a support-space. In a recent interview he maintained that the diverse spatial stimuli “where you can express your own personality”, intend to “encourage people to tailor their own environment”16. As the interior landscape varies depending on the employees’ involvement and needs —something Hertzberger assumed from the very beginning when he designed the polyvalent workplaces for example (figure 6)—, an unceasing apprehension of space is necessary. Multiple trips to-and-fro two points acquire the character of dérive as they become the survey mechanisms of the changeable milieu. In contrast to the urban sphere, object of the situationists research, this implementation of dérive and psychogeography poses a lessening of architectural significance. If we consider Centraal Beheer a replica of the traditional city’s conditions of habitability and interpretability, what transcends is a support-space. Wandering throughout the building becomes the key mechanism for tailoring the intrinsic characteristics of urban environment. Hereinafter, we are trying to prove how Herman Hertzberger’s structuralist background is, precisely, what allows us to understand the urban facsimile of Centraal Beheer as a support-space from two dimensions: the anthropological and the epistemological one. THE DUAL PHENOMENON IN CENTRAAL BEHEER: ANTHROPOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE OBJECT OF A SUPPORT-SPACE From an architectural point of view, Herman Hertzberger was profoundly influenced by the Forum magazine’s editorial team; especially by Aldo van Eyck17. After the Second World War, the members of Team 10, the Dutch section formed by Van Eyck and Jaap Bakema included, had detected a series of malfunctions in some of the architecture and urbanism developed during the first half of the 20th century18. Their fierce opposition to the functional model sponsored by the C.I.A.M. constitutes the starting point for their researching, which was centred, among other subjects, on estrangement problem and identity crisis. Claude Lévi-Strauss, their coetaneous, developed his sociological theory in those years; for the very first time, social structures are put at the same level as elementary ones. Based on numerous comparative studies of social structures in primitive societies, he concluded that given the presence of features common to all of them, these social p.39 PROYECTO, PROGRESO, ARQUITECTURAN19_ARQUITECTURA Y ESPACIO-SOPORTE R. MERINO DEL RÍO; J. GRIJALBA BENGOETXEA. “Centraal Beheer: los límites del estructuralismo...”. Proyecto, Progreso, Arquitectura. November 2018. Universidad de Sevilla. ISSN 2171–6897 / ISSNe 2173–1616 – RECEIVED 2018–01–31 / ACCEPTED 2018–07–18 CC BY-NC-ND – DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12795/ppa.2018.i19.02 R. MERINO DEL RÍO; J. GRIJALBA BENGOETXEA. “Centraal Beheer: los límites del estructuralismo...”. Proyecto, Progreso, Arquitectura. November 2018. Universidad de Sevilla. ISSN 2171–6897 / ISSNe 2173–1616 – RECEIVED 2018–01–31 / ACCEPTED 2018–07–18 CC BY-NC-ND – DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12795/ppa.2018.i19.02 p.45 p.49 p.50 structures are primary and universal. Thus, defending the natural origin of the social fact19, he settles the historical conflict between the antithetical doctrines of Mauss and Durkheim. Hertzberger, taking Aldo van Eyck’s early studies on the dual phenomenon, and implementing the advances in sociology conducted by Lévi-Strauss, proposed an architecture model in which the dual phenomenon constitutes the theoretical basis the individual’s nature is re-defined over. From an anthropological point of view the dual phenomenon presents the man from a double, conflicting perspective, as a social being and as an individual being. This double dimension had historically been addressed unequally, since it had been mainly considered that individual dimension was primary unlike social dimension20. Hertzberger assumed that architectural work had a certain ability to influence on these two inherent dimensions of the human being, opposing those models which deliberately blocked the development of both collectivity and individuality. He thinks that, towards the middle of the 20th century, architecture shows few signs of being able to deal with the problem of collectivity as the sum of individuals different from each other and then takes refuge in conventional, individual patterns of life that, once imposed on an ensemble of users, contribute to their alienation21. He advocates an architecture model able to elevate both dimensions to the same category, considering them equal. Hertzberger writes: “The aim of architecture is then to reach the situation where everyone’s identity is optimal”22. Centraal Beheer is presented as a support-space where the user is encouraged to choose the optimal proportion in which his collective and individual dimensions become apparent depending on the use he makes of a built environment designed to accommodate all kinds of identities. Taking as reference the urban sphere, where the public and the private are defined and organised in the physical space, Hertzberger reproduces the atmosphere of the streets and constructions inside the office building. Two differentiated ambiences can be distinguished where the intended uses entail dissimilar interpretations, in the very same way that in the city understood as a support-space. We have the ambience of the main streets that accommodate the routeways and where meetings and social gatherings are mainly promoted (figure 7) and the reality of the workspaces in the towers, where there is a greater intimacy and individual response and interaction with the built environment are incited (figure 8). The visual and acoustic connection between the streets and the inner space of the towers is achieved by the vertical walls with low height parapets that separate and, simultaneously, attach divergent areas, blurring the boundaries between these ambiences. The model used in Centraal Beheer does not consider a homogeneous group of users to which an architectural answer based on conventional, individual patterns of life is adequate. On the contrary, it contemplates the group of users as an aggregate of different individuals with common vital necessities assembled in the collective pattern of life —social function among them— and with a series of singularities that should be safeguarded. One of the contributions where the connection between city, movements and impact on the individual’s perception is more clearly reflected is “The Idea of a Town” by Joseph Rykwert published for the first time in Forum —edited by Hertzberger, among others—. Despite his education as an architect, Rykwert carries out a historiographical and anthropological style study about rites and ceremonies linked to the foundation of towns in ancient times. Commemorative, labyrinthine dances stand out among the analysed practices. Rykwert states that “maze dances had much the same function as maze patterns”, they were “patterns of initiation”23 their aim was to help move from wandering and uncertainty to a strong sureness. These dances represent the hypothetical movement through a labyrinth associated with the settling city. The diverse movements represent the knowledge of the path that allows us to overcome different obstacles, this is related to the users’ security and wellbeing. An editorial by Aldo van Eyck prologues this writing; he calls for a user’s active attitude towards the interiorization and reconfiguration of the image of the city, in view of the alleged difficulty to comprehend the town as a complex phenomenon. In his own words: “As the idea of the town opens up we encounter ourselves contained in it”24. In Centraal Beheer, Hertzberger opts for a radical design of equivalent unities that generate an office landscape without hierarchies, where employees whatever the ranking, from top executive managers to low-rated workers, share the same workspace and collective facilities, this it is clearly observed in the plan sketch of 1968 (figure 9). The set of identical streets and towers configure an isotropic space where multiple paths are superimposed in various planes. In such a situation, the man becomes a subjective observer surrounded by a set of elements which he needs to arrange to determine his position at every moment, he relates the diverse components to his own sensory experience. This is the equivalent to stating that man becomes the origin of an anthropocentric references system where he achieves to orientate himself through the interiorization and the signification of the surroundings. Thus, a double process of environment apprehension and re-creation by the individual takes place. This major user involvement in the customization of his habitat contributes to achieve the total maturity and optimal wellness25. The creative act acquires a social dimension the very moment the space is experienced by different people, who, consciously or not, experience a catalytic reaction of interpersonal relations through the imprint left by the rest of users. What turns the office building into a support-space from a structuralist perspective is precisely the consideration of the collective as key in the recreation of the habitability conditions of the city. The regenerative purpose of the labyrinthine dances26, similar to that of the situationist dérive throughout the city, as it results from the exploration and interiorization of the milieu, is present to a certain degree in the displacements inside Centraal Beheer. The movements are not encapsulated according to preconceived patterns. Much the opposite, a possible range of movements is considered since the first stages of the design, which allows the user to take his own decisions. In the sketch (figure 10), Hertzberger evidences four of the possible accesses to one of the work sectors, that is schematically represented by means of its contour. The routes become vehicles of environment recognition and of emancipation. The user generates psycho-geographical maps as he advances, like he would do it in the city, they allow him to distinguish and categorise the different stretches to guide himself in the future. Given the changes suffered by the workplaces, which have their origin in the rest of employees, the individual recreates a virtual image of the building and modifies his initial criterion, being able to opt for other paths insofar as the design makes it possible. WARP AND WEFT IN CENTRAAL BEHEER: TEMPORAL DIFFRACTION IN THE DEFINITION OF A SUPPORT-SPACE The same way that the dual phenomenon allows us to go deeply into the individual’s conception and his relationship with his peers and the environment; the transposition of structuralist methodological principles to architectural discipline is important to understand the mechanism thanks to which the physical form can undergo continuous change without losing unity or identity, defined as adaptability. This qualitative aspect of Hertzberger’s architecture is only attainable if the structuralist differentiation between synchronic and diachronic dimension is considered. Otherwise, adaptability as it was conceived by Hertzberger, would remain unintelligible27. Research on architecture adaptability, materialized and exemplified through Centraal Beheer, takes the methodological analysis of the structures presented by Claude Lévi-Strauss as starting point. The method presented by Lévi-Strauss considers a certain group of elements as a structure or an interrelations system when the analysis from a double perspective or dimension is feasible. These two dimensions are opposite and complementary, and their different nature corresponds to the different time referent under which the group of elements is considered28. The structure is presented as an arrangement of stable laws and relations in a certain moment under a synchronic analysis. While under a diachronic analysis, the structure is presented as a changeable arrangement throughout time, as the result of the individual’s action. The reciprocal nature of both dimensions can be proved by the fact that the stable arrangement resulting from synchronic analysis has its origin in a process of collective assimilation of the different individual interpretations conducted throughout time. Analogously, the variation throughout time requires a stable group of laws and relations at every given moment of which individuals could make their interpretations29. Taking language as a reference and considering the researches of Lévi-Strauss and the linguists Ferdinand de Saussure, Roman Jakobson and Noam Chomsky, Hertzberger conducts a transposition of the structuralism fundamental principles to the architectural discipline30. For this, he uses the terms warp and weft31. The warp refers to the set of elements that comprise the building, the physical form, to which a series of uses, an internal group of relations and meanings, are associated at a certain moment. The weft refers to all the interpretations that the different users make of the physical form throughout time, which can be materialized in a previously considered or in some unexpected uses of space. Warp and weft form part of the structure, they are equivalent and each one is based on the other. The warp, the way structure is materialized from a synchronic point of view, has its origin in the collective assimilation of the different uses that users make of the space throughout time. The weft, the form that the structure acquires under a diachronic point of view, needs of a stable set of relations and meanings at every given moment which allows the development of spatial interpretation. In one of his main articles, Hertzberger refers to this diachronic dimension the following way: “The process of change must always present itself to us as a permanent condition, and so variability must be seen for itself as a constant factor that has a decisive effect on the implication of every form”32. The structure in Centraal Beheer is presented, under a synchronic analysis, as the arrangement of elements, uses and meanings associated to the physical form, what is defined as the warp. It is comprised by the matrix of towers, the double traffic layout, the spatial relations between elements, the built object associated uses at a certain moment, etc. Under a diachronic analysis, the structure in Centraal Beheer is materialized as the succession of particular interpretations that the users make of the physical form, what is defined as the weft; it is made up by all the uses, expected or unexpected, that users made, make and will make of the left space. In the 1969 sketch (figure 11), we can appreciate how this double dimension vertebrates the building design. In what seems to represent an analysis of the circulations, we notice that the various elements that comprise the warp are naked: the pillars, glass walls, towers, aerial connections or vertical cores for circulations, which determine the activities that are going to be developed there. At a smaller scale, Hertzberger represents a fictitious state of occupancy where he anticipates that some workplaces are restricted to the cantilevered areas while others possess a larger surface and incorporate specific furniture, like counters or huge meeting tables. This is part of the weft and it is possible not only because the warp makes it feasible but also because it is determined by it. After analysing the application of the structuralism methodological principles to the architectural discipline, we should now examine how the warp and weft empower Centraal Beheer as a support-space. Both Centraal Beheer and the previous design proposals for the town halls of Valkenswaard and Amsterdam (figure 12) come from a project strategy that considers this double antagonistic dimension which depends on the time referent. The warp in all of these projects is designed following the model of an ideal urban layout applied since the very beginning of the building’s compositional system sketches33, which likens the architectural project to a city’s foundation. Taking an orthogonal reticule as a basis, Hertzberger leaned on divisions into four sectors delimited by four axes, which he did not align to provide some dynamism. This resource had already been used before by Bakema in his Plan Kennemerland (figure 13). The main difference is that Bakema directly implements this motif at an urban scale, whereas Hertzberger uses it at a smaller scale, trying to dissolve the boundaries between city and building. Far from been a contemporary practice, the division of the city into four sectors is one of the most ancient, aesthetic resources. Rykwert highlights, for example, p.44 p.47 p.51 PROYECTO, PROGRESO, ARQUITECTURAN19_ARQUITECTURA Y ESPACIO-SOPORTE R. MERINO DEL RÍO; J. GRIJALBA BENGOETXEA. “Centraal Beheer: los límites del estructuralismo...”. Proyecto, Progreso, Arquitectura. November 2018. Universidad de Sevilla. ISSN 2171–6897 / ISSNe 2173–1616 – RECEIVED 2018–01–31 / ACCEPTED 2018–07–18 CC BY-NC-ND – DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12795/ppa.2018.i19.02 R. MERINO DEL RÍO; J. GRIJALBA BENGOETXEA. “Centraal Beheer: los límites del estructuralismo...”. Proyecto, Progreso, Arquitectura. November 2018. Universidad de Sevilla. ISSN 2171–6897 / ISSNe 2173–1616 – RECEIVED 2018–01–31 / ACCEPTED 2018–07–18 CC BY-NC-ND – DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12795/ppa.2018.i19.02 the rite of the templum used by the Roman civilization to establish the axes that articulate the town in four parts, and certain Indian settlements that follow the same pattern. Rykwert concludes that the presence of common town-setting features comes from the man’s conception of the world which is expressed in his environment arrangement. We can therefore deduce that this aesthetic resource is precisely one of the simpler and more primitive representations of the cosmos. In Centraal Beheer he relies on this spatial organization of the city (figure 14) because of its simplicity in terms of reading and comprehension, which allows the user to focus on assimilating the weft’s changes. The weft, understood as the set of uses and interpretations that occurs over time, is also denoted in the city, since one of the characteristics of the urban milieu —considered a support-space— is its ability to accommodate multiple interpretations and modifications without altering its essence. The weft, which emerges from the individuals’ activity, provides the inner space with the necessary quality to be interpreted as a continuously changing urban landscape34. Hertzberger pays attention to the design of the weft in numerous intermediate stages although he recognises its ephemeral condition linked to the employees’ needs. The way he distributes the departments and collective facilities in the ground floor (figure 15) using light partitions and furniture that lean on the existing elements, making it difficult to recognise the warp, which, however, unifies and determines the entire project. Given the isotropy of the warp, which is designed as a succession of equivalent elements, it is due to the anisotropic weft that the users can position themselves. It is true, though, that the continuous modification of the weft owing to the rest of employees’ intervention makes the references previously established by a user become obsolete, and thus, he is forced to be conscious of the non-stop changes produced while he moves around. CONCLUSIONS The initial hypothesis of a possible interpretation of Centraal Beheer as a support-space, where situationist dérive and psychogeography are pertinently applicable, is demonstrated based on two of the main investigations developed by Herman Hertzberger: the study of the dual phenomenon and the application of the structuralist epistemological principles to architecture. This allows us to undertake the elucidation from two complementary perspectives, which, in turn, revolve around the two key factors to define any support-space. Firstly, we have the anthropological point of view which takes the dual phenomenon as basis for the re-definition of human being’s nature, and allows us to analyse the active role of the user in the configuration of the surroundings and the displacements influence over his psyche. And secondly, we have the compositional point of view which applies the structuralist principles to architecture, and reconstructs the strategy followed by Hertzberger to endow Centraal Beheer with the needed adaptability to cope with the internal dynamics. All this is only possible because the effect of passing time has been regarded from the very first phases of the design. On account of all this, Centraal Beheer can, not only be seen as a product influenced by the coetaneous artistic and cultural trends, but also as an example of support-space that itself contributed to the counterculture of the sixties decade. The materialization of Centraal Beheer supposed a great achievement, since in a short period of time the space was accepted and colonised by employees and users. It set a precedent for designing office buildings and, nowadays, given certain regressive attitudes, this example still remains a paradigm of the customizable work landscapes. Nevertheless, the long period of obsolescence as the building fell into disuse, together with the continuing threats of demolition, lead us to wonder to which point the support-space model is appropriate for our current society despite the so many favourable critics it received in the past. Although the model and its implications are still effective, a different context limits its use from the one it was conceived for in the sixties. Amadeo Ramos Carranza and Rosa María Añón Abajas acknowledge that it is complicated for architecture to find a comparable response since “from the mid-80s, a process of economic liberation began that determined its objective of achieving a global society. A situation where minorities […] would have still less means of expressing themselves”35. In Centraal Beheer, the different alterations of warp, from the enlargement of 1990 to the recent proposal for reusing the building as dwellings, have progressively diminished its initial capacity for social transformation, which originally characterized its design. Hertzberger, when questioned about this, seems to be unaware of the exact reason why his building was abandoned. Given that one of the building’s main values is its polyvalency, he prefers to be optimistic and highlight that the re-adaptation of its use allows him to “show and assess to which point his idea was valuable”36, making no reference to the progressive loss of its social function. In contrast to the response given by the figure of the support-space in view of the demands of society in the sixties, the role of architects has currently been inverted. Through architecture, through its greater accessibility and simplicity, the attempts at using space should be modified searching for a new relation with the environment and our peers based on exploration and experimentation. 1. BERGEIJK, Herman van. Herman Hertzberger. Basel-Boston-Berlin: Birkhäuser Verlag, 1997, pp. 50-59. 2. GRANÉS, Carlos. El puño invisible. Madrid: Taurus, 2012. 3. The work of Henri Lefebvre, who stands out among the French literature produced in this regard, provided the theoretical basis for the articulation of great part of the manifestoes of these groups. LEFEBVRE, Henri. Critique of Everyday Life Volume II: Foundations for a Sociology of the Everyday. Translated by John MOORE, prologue by Michel TREBITSCH. London-New York: Verso, 2002 [1961], p. xxi. Jean-Paul Sartre offers, from an existentialist perspective, a chronicle of the raising and disappearance of these neo-anarchist groups in the sixties. SARTRE, Jean-Paul. Critique of Dialectical Reason Volume I: Theory of Practical Ensembles. London-New York: Verso, 2004 [1960]. 4. TEERDS, Hans; HABRAKEN, John; HAVIK, Klaske. Define and Let Go. An Interview with John Habraken. Productive Uncertainty. In: OASE, 2011, n.º 85, pp. 8-10. ISSN 0169- 6238. 5. WARK, McKenzie. The Beach beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist Internacional. London-New York: Verso, 2011. 6. LEFEBVRE, Henri. Critique of Everyday Life Volume I: Introduction. Translated by John MOORE, prologue by Michel TREBITSCH. London-New York: Verso, 1991 [1958], p. xxvii. MULLER, Sheila. Dutch Art: An Encyclopedia. New York-London: Routledge, 2011, p. 68. 7. Van Eyck intimately collaborated with Constant in the preparation of several exhibitions, as the International Experimental Art exhibition hosted by Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1949, when the last one still formed part of the Dutch Experimental Group and CoBra, MAYORAL CAMPA, Esther. Pensamientos compartidos. Aldo van Eyck, el grupo COBRA, y el arte. In: Proyecto, progreso, arquitectura. Seville: Editorial Universidad de Sevilla, 2014, n.º 11, p. 70. ISSN 2171-6897. 8. HERTZBERGER, Herman. Editorial. In: Forum, 1960-1, n.º 1, pp. 1-2. ISSN 0015-8372. 9. COVERLEY, Merlin. Psychogeography. Harpenden: Pocket Essentials, 2010, p. 93. 10. For Situationist International, the evolution of society to a model in which creativity plays the major role instead of work is essential. Constant appropriates the terminology created by Johan Huizinga in his written work Homo Ludens to refer to this new social model as ludic society. 11. Homo ludens, which could be translated as “the man who plays”, appears as opposed to homo faber, which would be translated as “the man who works” which is a main feature of the utilitarian society. 12. Constant affirmed: “New Babylon is a vast labyrinth. Each space is temporary, nothing is recognisable, and nothing can serve to orientate oneself”. CONSTANT. New Babylon. In: Randstad. Driemaandelijks, 1962, n.° 2, pp. 127-138. 13. CONSTANT. New Babylon. Den Haag: Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, 1974. 14. Quote extracted from the lecture given by Herman Hertzberger on the 6th of October 2016 at the Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels [consulted on the 15th of June 2018]. Available on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjOevccMMeo. 15. The various sketches and photographs have been directly compiled by the author in different research visits in 2014, 2016 and 2017 to Herman Hertzberger’s Archive, which is part of the Rijksarchief voor Nederlandse Architectuur en Stedenbouw collection. 16. Statements made by Herman Hertzberger to the author in his office HH architectuurstudio in Amsterdam during an interview on the 2nd of December 2013. 17. RODRÍGUEZ PRADA, Víctor. La generación del estructuralismo holandés a través de sus maquetas. El caso de Herman Hertzberger. 1958-1968. In: Proyecto, progreso, arquitectura. Seville: Editorial Universidad de Sevilla, 2016, n.° 15, p. 101. ISSN 2171-6897. 18. RISSELADA, Max; HEUVEL, Dirk van den. Team 10: 1953-1981, In Search of a Utopia of the Present. Rotterdam: NAi, 2005. 19. BADCOCK, Christopher Robert; LÉVI-STRAUSS, Claude. The Ecumenical Anthropologist. Solutions to Some Persistent Problems in Theoretical Sociology Found in the Works of Claude Lévi-Strauss. In: The British Journal of Sociology, 1975, vol. 26, n.° 2, pp. 158-159. ISSN 0007-1315. 20. In relation to this double dimension, Van Eyck wrote in 1950: “Collectivity […] is not a moral asset but a primary phenomenon parallel and no less primary than the phenomenon of individuality”. EYCK, Aldo van; LIGTELIJN, Vincent; STRAUVEN, Francis. Collected Articles and Other Writings 1947-1998. Amsterdam: SUN, 2008, pp. 48-50. 21. Hertzberger maintains: “By dictating to people collectively were they are to put their tables and beds, we [architects] ourselves are the cause of the standardization. This collective coagulation of individual freedom of movement has connected every place […] according to preconceived intention”. At an urban scale, he opposes the homogeneity of the areas characteristic of the functional model since the movements through the city are then conditioned and have a preconceived intention. HERTZBERGER, Herman. Flexibiliteit en Polyvalentie. In: Forum, 1962, n.° 3, p. 118. ISSN 0015-8372. 22. HERTZBERGER, Herman. Identiteit. In: Forum, 1967, n.° 7, pp. 17-18. ISSN 0015-8372. 23. RYKWERT, Joseph. The Idea of a Town. In: Forum, 1963, n.° 3, p. 129. ISSN 0015-8372. 24. EYCK, Aldo van. Editorial. In: Forum, 1963, n.° 3, p. 98. ISSN 0015-8372. 25. Richard Sennett writes: “It is necessary to increase certain kinds of disorder in the city life so that man can evolve to the total maturity”. SENNETT, Richard. The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity and City Life. New York: Knopf, 1970. 26. Rykwert stated that the maze dances have a “double function —apotropaic and regenerative—. Apotropaic in that it both contained the menace enclosed and also exclude outside attack; regenerative in that the inwinding and outwinding of the cord which the dancers carried was assimilated to the umbilical cord and to the skin-shedding snake”. RYKWERT, op. cit. supra, note 23, p. 134. 27. The assertion maintained is aligned with Tom Avermaete’s position when he states that: “in the field of architecture structuralism was about defining fundamental principles that had the power to install some quality in the built environment”. HEUVEL, Dirk van den, ed.; FRAUSTO, Salomon, ed. Open Structures: An Introductory Dossier on Dutch Structuralism. In: Volume (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 2013, vol. 35, n.º 1, p. 68. ISSN 1574-9401. 28. LÉVI-STRAUSS, Claude. Structural Anthropology. New York: Basic Books, 1963, p. 209. 29. LÉVI-STRAUSS, Claude. The Scope of Anthropology. In: Current Anthropology, 1966, vol. 7, n.º 2, p. 117. ISSN 0011-3204. 30. MERINO DEL RÍO, Rebeca; GRIJALBA BENGOETXEA, Julio. Sobre la contribución de Herman Hertzberger a la corriente del estructuralismo holandés. In: Constelaciones. Madrid: Fundación Universitaria San Pablo CEU, 2018, n.º 6, pp. 33-47. ISSN 2340-177X. 31. Hertzberger appropriates the terms warp and weft (urdimbre and trama in Spanish). The employment of these categories is applied to other projects, as the one for the Free University of Berlin, designed by Candilis, Josic and Woods, because of their capacity for synthetizing the complementary nature of the patterns that they comprise. DOMINGO CALABUIG, Débora; CASTELLANOS GÓMEZ, Raúl. Urdimbre y trama: el caso de la Universidad Libre de Berlín. In: Proyecto, progreso, arquitectura. Seville: Editorial Universidad de Sevilla, 2011, n.º 4, p. 42. ISSN 2171-6897. 32. HERTZBERGER, Herman. De Wederkerigheid van Vorm en Programma. In: Forum, 1967, n.º 7, p. 16. ISSN 0015-8372. 33. MERINO DEL RÍO, Rebeca; GRIJALBA BENGOETXEA, Julio; GRIJALBA BENGOETXEA, Alberto. Paisajes urbanos. El edificio como una ciudad. Centraal Beheer. In: ZARCH. Zaragoza: Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza, 2016, n.º 7, p. 148. ISSN 2341-0531. 34. Constant, in relation to an equivalent process that would happen in New Babylon, stated: “The activity of the occupants of a space is an integral part of the ambiance that, being static, becomes dynamic […] an immense social space that is forever other”. CONSTANT, op. cit. supra, note 13. 35. RAMOS CARRANZA, Amadeo; AÑÓN ABAJAS, Rosa María. Contracultura, acciones y arquitectura. In: Proyecto, progreso, arquitectura. Seville: Editorial Universidad de Sevilla, 2018, n.º 18, pp. 12-15. ISSN 2171-6897. 36. Statements by Herman Hertzberger during an interview conducted by the author in his office HH architectuurstudio in Amsterdam on the 16th of November 2016. This interview is part of the activities developed in the funded research break at Delft University of Technology in 2016. p.52 p.53 p.54