Dutch Architect Advocate Of Integrated Cities

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30234, 12 September 1963, Page 16

Dutch Architect Advocate Of Integrated Cities

Cities should be multi-coloured things, and instead of being segmented areas they should be allowed to transfuse, said Mr Aldo van Eyck, the internationaNy-known Dutch architect, in Christchurch last evening. Such a master transfusion demanded far greater sensitivity on the part of the planner, he added. As a result of speculation and a tendency to regard the city as the handmaiden of industry, people had desired suburbia, which tended to make life anaemic., Such a transfusion as he. advocated would take a great deal of planning, he said.

From what he had seen of Christchurch. Mr van Eyck said, he considered it a more concentrated city than Auckland. Christchurch he found slightly Victorian English yet provincial, sweet, and charming which Auckland gave a grim impression of a city both directly and indirectly abusing and devouring the natural surroundings. There was more of a European feeling about Christchurch, he said. Auckland seemed more affected by the influence of America. Mr van Eyck said he considered the New Zealander’s desire to have a quarter-acre plot, house, and garden from a human point of view a reasonable individual aspiration. "But what is being done (by the urban spread) does not take into account the ultimate size of the city.” By moving far out from the heart of a city into suburbia one could lose the feeling of belonging to a community.

He said that in Holland, to have one’s own house, etc., could be a kind of status-con-ferring device. "In New Zealand you , have a fairly socially integrated society, so perhaps you don’t have this same motive,” he added. Living in Flats

Told that many New Zealanders did not like living in flats, Mr van Eyck said they were right in doing so. as ail forms of flats as they were known today were in human terms obsolete. He felt that a complete reinvestigation of the way people could live together in groups should be undertaken. Too often cities were seen economically, as a form of machine. A city should be viewed from the emotional point bf view. If a city was looked at in this way then, he said, it was not far from the Greek definition of a city as a meeting-place. The only way to shake hands with Nature was to produce an integrated, multicoloured city, said Mr van Eyck. Of architecture, he said that what particularly interested him was the context within which a building was conceived. He thought there must be many New Zealand architects who wondered how what they were building contributed to a larger, planned thing, and were left with the feeling that they were contributing a solo.’ A citv was. of course, a vast accretion of solos. But it had to be like an orchestra in which all the instruments made individual noises yet complemented each other.

Mr van Eyck said that people know to consult a doctor and not a quack. So. they should acknowledge specialist planners and architects, although. he added, no man could shake solutions to such difficult problems out of his sleeve. He could try, plan, and experiment, but not alone. He needed others, and if he had their interest and support then there could be a dialogue. “Has A Heart” Mr van Eyck was glad to find Christchurch. unlike Auckland, had a heart. “But I have to discover if the centre of the city lives.” he sadd. “I don't know if the New Zealander . needs a centre. ’ ’ He believed that man

wonted to aspire towards a city, because it afforded the largest hierarchy of human aspirations. “I’m a great

lover of the metropolis.” he said, “but society doesn’t know how to make them, how to fashion an urban environment so that you can enjoy all the things in it. Our century is bad at fashioning environments.”

The prerequisites were all here in New Zealand—a'wellintegrated and affluent society. Now New Zealand should get on with the job. Auckland was disappointing in this respect, because it

was devouring the countryside so that there remaoned neither real city nor real coun'ryrt de. Frank Lloyd WngtK’s “broad acres" concept was a particularly American idea derived from the tranecendenialusts who regarded cities as someth,.ng evil, the result of industrialisation Their cry had been "Back to Nature," but one could not get millions of urban people to go back to Nature.

Ideally, said Mr van Eo’ck. bouses and land within the urban precincts should not be subjects of speculation. In Holland and Sweden it was not possible to speculate in urban land, which could only be leased for prescribed pu: - poses.

But, he said, he did not want to over-emphasise the need for greater density in the cities, because that could convey purely quantitative density The real need was for greater intensity of urban life.

"We should be able to live in and know all the part* of the city.” said Mr van Eyck. "The whole city should be comprehensible, and that needs sensitive planning—not just administrative planning but creative pfenning “