ALDO VAN EYCK'S UTOPIAN DISIPLINE

An Enriched Reality

Aldo van Eyck (1918–1999), the focus of this and the following chapter, told his utopian architectural stories in three principal ways: written presentation of his vision, emblematic expression of it and various attempts to realize it with buildings. Van Eyck’s essay ‘Steps Toward a Configurative Discipline’ (1962) was a compelling textual expression of his story; the Amsterdam Orphanage (1957–1960) was among his most convincing constructed expressions of it, and the Otterlo Circles (1959) was an exemplary emblem of it. In each, van Eyck transcribed an increasingly enriched expression of his utopian vision for a new dynamic reality. ‘Steps Toward a Configurative Discipline’ stands as van Eyck’s most comprehensive statement of his architectural principles.2 It was an attempt to elaborate on a systematic working method, a configurative discipline, which, according to van Eyck, would entail exploration of dynamic complexity that could be organized fugally to maintain a comprehensive whole. He argued that his new theory and practice of architecture would deliver more compassionate human habitats than orthodox modern architecture could ever hope to deliver.

The essay is primarily a theoretical statement motivated by van Eyck’s effort to draw principles out of his then recently completed and occupied Amsterdam Orphanage building. While the structure could aptly illustrate the intent of the essay, no illustrations of it, or of any building, were included with its original publication. Nor did van Eyck refer directly to his building in the essay text. Without illustrations to direct or limit their understanding of his intentions, sympathetic readers have had to interpret his words according to their own imagination. Van Eyck’s statement was a plea for enrichment of contemporary practice, rather than justification of one style over another: he wanted to let his words stand on their own without colouring a reader’s sense of them. The message of ‘Towards a Configurative Discipline’ is generative rather than prescriptive; van Eyck was arguing for a shift in mentality, not a particular outcome. Van Eyck wanted to evolve a way of thinking about architecture and urbanism that would be as widely applicable as it was free of any suggestion that constructed results should look a particular way. The record of his practice bears this out. Although he never abandoned the vision presented in his essay, the buildings he produced during the next four decades were never simplistic stylistic restatements of the discipline he proposed. What he demanded, though, is that buildings act in certain ways, which stands out as the utopian message of ‘Steps Toward a Configurative Discipline’.

Whole Parts

Unification of elements into a complex and legible larger whole, at all scales ranging from an individual building to an entire city, was the main objective of van Eyck’s configurative discipline. . Accordingly, rather than getting lost, individual elements constitute a whole in which they remain intelligible as articulated forms in themselves. Practicing a configurative discipline would, van Eyck believed, make buildings and cities into comprehensible patterns, offering welcoming places for the human occasions they shelter. On the other hand, richly textured patterns and reciprocity among parts would make buildings and urban environments into what van Eyck called counterforms, forms that are complementary to human complexity and interrelatedness because they can receive and contain existence in all its contradictory depth. Bodies and buildings are unities harmonized from diversity (not simply a synthesis of it). In both, individuality is identifiable through a relation to a collective. Modern buildings are unique wholes made from extensible parts; analogously, an embodied person can elaborate his or her uniqueness only as a member of a collective.

Relativity

 The understanding is a theory based on the hypothesis that all motion is relative, suggesting that understanding is always relational rather than absolute. Relativity theory states that although light has a constant velocity, there is no observable absolute motion, only relative motion. Accordingly, time is relative. In light of the importance of relativity for van Eyck, is crucial to emphasize that relativity is not relativism. Because relativity proposes a reality made up of interdependent relations, it is ultimately a theory of unity. Relativism, on the other hand, is a vision of atomized reality.

Reciprocity

According to van Eyck, the interdependent relations of relativity form a web of reciprocal associations. In certain respects, reciprocity describes relativity and by extension, the kind of interdependent relations a configured architecture facilitates. Reciprocity is primarily a condition of mutuality understandable as a back and forth relation. Accordingly, inside and outside have an equivalent rather than an opposed value. Even so, they are not the same. Reciprocity is a mutual action characterized by a balanced give and take. For a building ‘to breathe both in and out (as we do)’, as van Eyck demanded, its organization would need to be in accord with the balanced give and take of reciprocity. Van Eyck argued that as a coequality of parts, reciprocity can make the lived realm comprehensible and full, legible because articulation of each part, including rooms and houses (but not only these), would establish a web of determined relations.
Twinphenomena

Van Eyck’s notion of reciprocity, although it suggests reconciliation of split phenomena, has little to do with Robert Venturi’s notion of complexity and contradiction which presents twinphenomena binarily as a display of irreconcilable oppositions. Reconciliation of twinphenomena, though, does  not  subsume individual parts into a new, fully unified entity. Rather, twinphenomena suggests the coexistence of individual parts conventionally characterized as split phenomena, associated as elements of a richer whole. This application of the principles of relativity to a method, such as a configurative discipline, depends on the particular situation of their individual elaboration. Twinphenomena are counterparts coexisting in reciprocal relation to one another, which is why van Eyck believed they could rejoin abstractly split phenomena such as inside and outside.

Inbetween

A human habitat, van Eyck argued, ought to provide for fundamental human ambivalence by reconciling twinphenomena in an inbetween realm. By doing so, buildings and cities could become counterforms to ambivalence among other individual and social conditions. Examination of van Eyck’s work reveals just how much in-between places preoccupied him. Van Eyck’s plea, it is worth noting, was no call for buildings to look like people. Rather, he wanted his buildings (buildings and cities generally) to be biomorphic, not anthropomorphic: the latter suggests that a building is humanlike, that it looks human. On the other hand, the former suggests that a building be lifelike, a place where it is good to live.

Right-size

By reconciling rather than resolving twinphenomena, the in-between realm encourages an approach in which each part is clearly articulated as equal but different. In turn, articulation of each part of a whole and the whole itself requires that each part be given what van Eyck named right-size, a condition arrived at by considering parts in terms of themselves and reciprocally with all other parts of any given whole. Van Eyck’s interpretation of relativity as a universal principle was crucial for his conceptualization of right-size, which is not so much a question of absolute scale as it is a concern for the ‘right or correct effect of size’.