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The Power of Expertise
The ambivalence in Eco’s poetics of the open work offers a possibility to reconcile the conflicting relation between order and chaos, authority and individual expression, design and contingency. These relations are particularly relevant in the context of design processes with citizens’ participation, where the power relations between author and addressee acquire a prominent status. In this context, design experts can play a key role in supporting social inclusion and mediation, circumventing the anxiety, discomfort and tension, that threaten the everydayness of ordinary people in the face of ambivalence and contingency.
The entwined relation between ambivalence, contingency and the role of the expert was insightfully explored by Zigmunt Bauman, in his Modernity and Ambivalence, published in 1993. In this book, Bauman argues that in modernity’s battle of order against chaos in worldly affairs, its project of a rational-universal world would know of no contingency and no ambivalence (Til, 2009)6. In fact, he goes on stating, “the residents of the house of modernity had been continuously trained to feel at home under conditions of necessity and to feel unhappy at the face of contingency”. Bauman further stresses that contingency “was that state of discomfort and anxiety from which one needed to escape by making oneself into a binding norm and thus doing away with difference” (Bauman, 1993, p. 233).
Despite the strong ideological apparatus that supported the project of modernity, it failed to eradicate ambivalence and contingency. It promoted, however, a noticeable displacement of ambivalence from the public realm to the private sphere. In fact, as Bauman puts it, with modernity’s drive to transfer ambivalence from the public to the private realm, experts became key figures in the mediation between the social and the personal. To overcome the anxiety caused on the individual by ambivalence, the expert becomes someone on whom we could truly trust, “one that combined the person’s capacity to understand with the power of science to make the right decisions” (Bauman, 1993, p. 199). The importance of the expert, as Bauman claims, is not so much related with his or her actual qualities or skills but how they are perceived by the recipients of the services. “The expert is, so to speak, a condensation of the diffuse need of trustworthy — because supra-individual — sanction of individuality”. And he goes on pointing out that
“As an interpreter and mediator, the expert spans the otherwise distant worlds of the objective and the subjective. He bridges the gap between guarantees of being in the right (which can only be social) and making the choices that one wants (which can only be personal). In the ambivalence of his skills he is, so to speak, resonant with the ambivalent condition of his client”. (Bauman, 1993, p. 199)
Writing in the early 1990s, Bauman brings about a fundamental reconceptualization of the expert as someone that performs a liberating role. Bauman’s work is, I would contend, essential to create a new intellectual framework for a reassessment of the experiences with citizens’ participation in design processes developed in the 1970s and 1980s.
In the next section of this article, I will discuss further the role of the architect in the design decision-making process. I will examine the plan for the deelgebied 5 and the project of the Punt en Komma housing complex, both part of the urban renewal of the Schilderswijk district in the Dutch city of The Hague, as a case study to explore the extent to which meaningful communication can help the architect to perform as a social mediator.
PART 2 THE URBAN RENEWAL OF THE HAGUE IN THE 1980’s
Housing Beyond Standards
The Schilderwijk district was created in the second half of the nineteenth century as a result of a speculative development to accommodate the flux of rural migration to The Hague, the political capital of The Netherlands. Since then, the area evolved to become a densely populated melting pot of people arriving from different parts of the country, where the street was the only space for social interaction. All these factors, however, fostered a strong social cohesion and an inescapable social control. In the mid-1960s, urban design strategies inspired by the principles of the functional city and by welfare state policies, both by then pervasive in the Western world, were used in the urban renewal plan for the Schilderswijk district. The plan Van Gris naar Groen (From Grey to Green), an epitome of what Tzonis and Lefaivre considered the architecture of the welfare state, was designed to rebuild the area with high-rise slabs and an urban layout inspired in the principles of the Athens Charter. The population, however, opposed the modernist plan, and a period of uncertainty unfolded, with the policy makers avoiding negotiations for an alternative urban renewal strategy. The latent conflict between the dwellers and the politicians triggered a process of dilapidation of the neighbourhood. Consequently, a great deal of the residents ran away, moving to other areas. They were replaced by different streams of foreign migrant influx. In the 1970s, the houses left vacant by the older residents were mainly occupied by migrant workers from southern Europe, Turkey and Morocco, and by Surinamese who fled the former Dutch colony after its independence in 1975. This sudden change in the demographics of the neighbourhood contributed to a noticeable transformation in its social relations, creating a progressive loss of mutual contact and social control. As a social worker engaged with the Schilderswijk’s community put it, “because of the different languages and cultures mutual contacts were limited. Because there was no understanding of each way of life, there was less social control” (Boasson, 1988, p. 19)7.
While the district kept its pre-World War II character as a melting pot of newly arrived working class residents, a fundamental change happened. Now, emerged a cultural mix, which hindered the blossoming of spontaneous social interaction. From the mid-1970s until the early 1980s, this conjuncture created a process of fragmentation of the district’s social cohesion, and fostered social unrest.
The urban renewal of the district became thus a political priority for the municipality of The Hague. To cope with the growing social unrest created by the urban renewal policies, the Municipality appointed in 1980 Adri Duivesteijn, a young social activist against the urban renewal policies of the 1960s and 1970s, as alderman for spatial planning and urban renewal. After four years of many political successes and some drawbacks in his new capacity, Duivesteijn keenly promoted citizens’ participation in the urban renewal of the Schilderswijk, the most problematic district of The Hague. He invested a great deal of the material and human resources of his department in preparing the bureaucratic apparatus to support the participatory process. He realised, however, that he was still missing an important element in the process: the designer. It was then, when in April 1984 he visited the Portuguese city of Porto, that he met the architect Álvaro Siza. In Porto, Duivesteijn visited Siza’s social housing projects developed in the mid-1970s, which had been developed with citizens’ participation in the design process. His appraisal of Siza’s work, personal and disciplinary approach triggered him to invite the Portuguese architect to develop a plan for the deelgebied 5, an area included in the urban renewal of the Schilderswijk district. Siza eventually accepted Duivesteijn’s invitation.
When Siza arrived at the Schilderswijk district, in July 1984, the urban renewal of the district was already in motion, with some new housing ensembles already under development. He could still see and experience, however, the district’s distinct nineteenth century urban fabric and how it generated a particular spatial system and atmosphere. When Siza first visited the Schilderswijk, in 1984, the urban morphology of the district was still characterized by a very dense fabric of long streets delimited by continuous façades, chiefly made of the speculative housing type developed in the late nineteenth century. This experience would eventually be influential for the further development of his plan and projects for the area.
Over the next months, Siza revised an existing plan for the area designed by city’s urban design department. His revision of the plan was fundamentally nurtured by his sensibility to the urban morphology of the Schilderswijk neighbourhood, first and foremost in the role played by the street profile to define the area’s character and atmosphere. Siza was critical about some options of the preliminary plan for the deelgebied 5 designed by the municipality’s technicians, especially the widespread demolitions planned and the disregard for the morphological characteristics of the existing urban fabric. In effect, Siza had already criticized this typical token of the architecture of the welfare state in previous urban renewal projects, where he showed his opposition to the tabula rasa approach (Mota, 2014, pp. 779–808)8. In The Hague, he confirmed this, arguing “I do not believe one should break down everything just because you think that you can create something better”. And he went on arguing that “it is important to have references, the old is also the support for what you create anew. If we want to deliver something with high quality, we cannot start from the zero”. Moreover, he went further contending, “if we tear down everything, we throw away the physical identification of the district’s soul” (Boasson, 1988, p. 25). Following these lines, Siza revised the municipality plan to maintain as many buildings as possible. Siza showed also a keen interest in preserving some of the districts vernacular social and spatial practices, as well as building techniques and materialization9. Curiously enough, the residents, the developer, and even some technicians involved in the process, disregarded widely the preservation of existing buildings and vernacular references. This was seen as a reactionary attitude, an old-fashioned approach, and a conservative outlook10.
Siza’s initial exchanges with the stakeholders involved in the urban renewal of the Schilderswijk were contentious. He visited the houses of local residents, and met with several technicians, social workers, and representatives of the local housing corporation. Despite some initial resistance to his ideas and an intense negotiation, Siza managed to show to all the stakeholders his genuine interest in the upgrading of the district’s living conditions. Eventually the plan for the deelgebied 5 was approved. However, the participatory process during the development of the plan did not engage most of the residents. This would change radically when the discussions moved to the scale of the building, and especially to the discussions on the dwellings’ floor plan layout. Duivesteijn and the municipality of The Hague were aware of the importance of the spatial organisation of the dwelling unit for a successful urban renewal operation. Considering the difficulties experienced by laymen in understanding technical drawings, many urban renewal operations in the Netherlands during the 1980s adopted an efficient instrument to promote meaningful communication between technicians and the dwellers in housing design: The Spatial Development Laboratory (Ruimtelijk Ontwikkelings Laboratorium, ROL).
A Laboratory for Meaningful Communication in Design Decision-Making
The history of the use of the ROL in design decision-making processes is inextricably linked with the paradigm shift in urban renewal programmes in the Netherlands. Following the shortcomings of the welfare state architecture in the late 1960s, the Dutch governmental and municipal authorities decided to involve the population in the debate on housing. Inspired by this new approach to housing policies, in the early 1970s a group of architects decided to plan an exhibition of the new housing estates to be built in Amsterdam, showing 1:1 models of the “houses of the future”11. This exhibition was meant to become the background against which a permanent debate on housing would ensue. Though the exhibition was never implemented, Amsterdam’s municipal office for housing took advantage of the idea of creating a system to build quickly and inexpensively full-scale models of the apartments designed for their new social housing estates.
The system was based on plywood modular components with chipboard frame. The modular system used components varying in series of 10 cm from the 10 x 10x 10 cm basic unit to the 60 x 40 x 20 cm main unit. The system was assembled with plastic pipes inserted in the holes opened on the top and bottom of the wooden modules. The models built with this system could integrate window frames and doors, as well as furniture and household appliances to create a more realistic experience of the tested dwelling unit, and an objective feedback from the future dwellers on its characteristics. The ROL became a success among the institutional stakeholders interested in social housing.
Soon most of the major cities in The Netherlands would have their own ROL and use it to involve the residents in the design decision-making process (Dinesen, 1982, p. 306). As the Danish scholar Cort Ross Dinesen put it, the models built in the ROLs served two purposes: as a simulation of the dwelling and as a method of communication with users” (Dinesen, 1982, p. 307). Using this system, the architect’s design becomes more tangible and thus enhances residents’ feedback grounded on a concrete spatial experience, with an open attitude where everybody can express their outlook and opinion on the layout of the dwellings, and contribute to fine-tune the project.
Following the lead of Amsterdam, the department of urban renewal at The Hague’s municipality also created a ROL which eventually was used to discuss and develop the layout of the dwellings for the two housing blocks that Siza was commissioned to design in the deelgebied 5, which eventually became known as Punt en Komma.
Accommodating Differences
On 24 January 1985, Álvaro Siza and several technicians involved in the Punt en Komma project travelled to the ROL to meet with the group Bouwen in 5, an association of residents in Schilderwijk’s deelgebied 5. The goal of the working day at the ROL was to assess the qualities and problems of a floor plan for a housing complex located in the Rembrandtstraat, elsewhere in the Schilderswijk district, developed earlier by the housing corporation’s-Gravenhage, the client of Punt en Komma.
In the introduction to the meeting, Siza highlighted the need to understand the way people live as the basis for a research aimed at improving it. Considering the demographics of the neighbourhood, Siza duly noted the absence of foreign residents in the meeting, and stressed the importance of receiving contributions from all the different groups of residents in the deelgebied 5. “The aim is to develop a plan that can be suitable for both Dutch and foreign residents,” Siza claimed12. Many critiques and suggestions were made after experiencing the full-scale mock-up of the dwelling unit. The accessibility to the kitchen, the rigidity of the partitions, the mix of sleeping and living areas, and the area and structure of the distribution areas were the most noticed remarks.
After this working session at the ROL, the participants made a summary of requirements, to be taken into account by Siza in the development of the project. Then, using his own critical assessment of the residents’ review on the unit tested at the ROL workshop, Siza developed a layout proposal for the Punt en Komma dwellings. There were conspicuous changes to the initial layout tested at the ROL, first and foremost the introduction of a clear distribution area and a better differentiation between the public areas (kitchen and living room) and the private areas (bedrooms and toilet). The layout developed by Siza placed on the street side a larger living room with a semi-open kitchen next to it, while the bedrooms were placed facing the courtyard of the building. These two main areas were articulated by a system of double distribution in U shape, divided by a closet, and connecting all partitions.
Following up on these initial contacts, in March 1985, the group Bouwen in 5 issued a list of principles they believed essential for a smooth relation between the different stakeholders13. Among these principles, the issue of the communication between the architect and the residents was also addressed. They suggested “the architects should, as far as possible, use spatial methods of representation: isometrics, perspective drawings, models, photomontages and so on”14. In effect, on 22 April 1985, the same group, together with other associations of deelgebied 5 residents, distributed a document with the title Bewonersparticipatie: Nu en in de toekomst (Residents’ participation: Now and in the future), where they presented several requirements for an effective and fruitful participation of the residents in the design decision-making process. Among these requirements, the ROL workshops were considered an important component of a design process aimed at “building a home and not just a house”15.
Hence, over the following months several working days were organized at the ROL to discuss the floor plan of the dwellings. On 11 July 1985, a working day with eleven Turkish residents was held in the ROL housed in the Faculty of Architecture at Delft University of Technology16. In the meeting’s introduction delivered by Jacques Poot, the residents’ expert, he emphasized the importance of having the foreign residents involved in the process, as they represent approximately half of the population living in the deelgebied 5. However, as Siza had remarked some months earlier, Poot also contended that it “must be kept in mind that the houses should be suitable for all populations, and not specifically for foreign residents”17. The report of the assessment made by the Turkish residents underlines their good acceptance of the dwelling layout, especially the flexibility of the plan, and the clear separation between living and sleeping areas, as well as their position in the building: the living room on the street side and the bedrooms on the courtyard side. The surface area of some partitions was criticized as well as the location of the kitchen and bathroom appliances. In the written account of this working day at the ROL, the author of the report noted it was remarkable the detailed appraisals to the plan made by the Turkish residents. Despite this process was something completely new to them, the report stated they showed interest as if it was their own home already. The importance of having a full-scale model instead of drawings was seen as instrumental, and the conclusion was thus clear: “working in this way is therefore very valuable”.
On 6 September, 1985, the members of the project’s bouwteam (construction team) visited The Hague’s municipal ROL, in Scheveningen, and changed on the spot some parts of the model of the typical ground floor dwelling of the Punt en Komma buildings, which had been discussed in the bouwteam’s meeting held on the previous day. On the next day, 7 September, the neighbourhood office de Hoefeiser (The Horseshoe) organized a visit to the ROL with residents of the deelgebied 5 to experience and discuss the full-scale mock-up of the dwelling. About thirty residents were present, among which half were immigrants, all male, and mostly of Turkish origin. This was a fundamental test to check the extent to which Siza’s initial goal of designing a dwelling able to accommodate different cultural backgrounds had been successfully accomplished or not.
There was a broad appraisal on the general layout of the dwelling but the participants in the workshop also made critical remarks. The group of immigrant residents, predominantly Muslims, suggested the living room and the entrance hallway should be bigger. The sliding door to the master bedroom was criticized and they proposed the toilet should be placed closer to the entrance and distant from the living room. The review of the group of native Dutch residents mentioned mostly the same, except the criticism on the sliding door to the master bedroom. The critique on the position of the balconies was also unanimous. Both groups agreed that it would be better to have the balcony facing the street next to the living room or next to the kitchen/dining room. Siza agreed to review the plan in order to increase the area of the living room and the entrance hallway but argued the position of the balconies facing the courtyard side was a better solution. To support the latter decision Siza argued that the balconies facing the courtyard would yield more privacy, less noise, odours, and nuisances and would offer the possibility to dry the laundry and even prepare food18. Eventually, whenever structurally possible and conceptually plausible, the final layout of the dwellings accommodated most of the feedback of the residents. According to Dorien Boasson, “this way of working gave residents the opportunity to think actively about the plan, and to make reasoned changes to it.” Further, she argues, with this initiative “the involvement in the construction plan has significantly increased” (Boasson, 1988)19.
In fact, as mentioned above, the final version of the dwelling’s layout designed by Siza, would be noticeably based on the decisions made in the ROL workshop with the participants. An important development was the introduction of sliding doors to allow several possibilities of spatial articulation between the kitchen, the living room and the hallway. This flexibility was instrumental to create a layout that could accommodate the different lifestyles of the future users, as well as their diverse cultural, religious and even ethnic background. To be sure, Siza contends that he struggled to avoid a culture-specific solution in the design of the dwellings, as that would increase the latent ethnic tension. The Schilderswijk, Siza claimed, “is a very interesting, fascinating milieu. But there are here and there signs of racism. It’s just difficult that all these people blend together so suddenly. It takes time to emerge from it a great community. Hence, conflicts are inevitable” (Franke & Wensch, 1990, p. 1490). Siza identifies in this potential conflictive setting a major disciplinary challenge: How to design houses that are suitable for families with such different cultural backgrounds and diverse lifestyles? From his experience with participatory meetings in the Schilderswijk, Siza reports:
When I talked with the Dutch, they said: ‘Muslims are terrible, they hang curtains on the windows. One thinks about that, and then you hear: ‘Dutch families are terrible, they have such small bathrooms, and facing directly to the hall; we want large bathrooms in the bedroom area’. For them it is (a religious) tradition, to withdraw for washing. The whole point was to design apartments where all of them could meet these requirements. This led to lengthy discussions with stake-holders; (…) We ended up with innovative dwellings; well, not innovative, but the special thing about them is that there is a double distribution, which can be divided by sliding doors, and give greater privacy from the bedroom area to the living room (Franke & Wensch, 1990, p. 1490).
In 1994, six years after finishing the construction of the Punt en Komma buildings, Siza gave an interview to Ruud Ridderhof where he pointed out his design strategy to tackle the problem of accommodating cultural heterogeneity. In Punt en Komma “we had expressly tried not to build special homes (for that was one of the ideas: to build special homes for Muslims)” (Ridderhof, 1994, pp. 40-41) However, Siza understood this discrimination would not work. “It was a very bad idea; the houses had to be the same, we had to find a house that satisfied everyone”, he declared. This strategy proved to be fruitful. “Ultimately,” Siza explains, “the consequence was that the elements added to the interior — such as the extra central space with sliding doors — were very well accepted by Dutch families”.
