Post Box for the Open Society
Online platform for the exchange of ideas and designs on the subject of the open society
Open: A Bakema Celebration
The Dutch entry to La Biennale di Venezia’s 14th International Architectural Exhibition
Posts
Entry: Thursday, July 17, 2014
Submitted by:
Oskar Hansen
Country:
Poland
Category:
Critique
In 1960 Oskar Hansen sent this piece of writing to Jaap Bakema and the Post Box for the Development of the Habitat, which today is held in the collection of Het Nieuwe Instituut. It includes his criticism of and wishes for the right kind of exchange of ideas for a new architecture, that would engage with 'concrete people' allowing them to develop their living environment according to their own needs, to organically arrive at a new balance between the individual and the collective, despite industrialisation, and despite the post-war society dominated by issues of quantity rather than quality. Open Form was his key concept for the new architecture, a processual understanding of design and construction. Because he was never a party member Hansen would be marginalised in Communist Poland, and he would develop his ideas into a practice of radical pedagogy at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. The MACBA in Barcelona has devoted a retrospective to Hansen's work, see for more information here: http://www.macba.cat/en/exhibition-oskar-hansen
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