OverHolland

This edition of OverHolland pays detailed attention to the province of Noord-Holland to the north of the River IJ and to railways. The focus is on the relationship between spatial arrangements, research and design. Reinout Rutte analyses the development of the Zaanstreek region from the fifteenth to the twenty-first centuries. He reveals the unique morphological features of the first industrial town in the Netherlands. The lack of planning and regulations led to a ‘town of...

This latest issue of OverHolland takes a closer look at architectural designs, to mark two events in autumn 2013: the publication of the research results of the Renewing city renewal project, an initiative by the architecture firm De Nijl in partner­ship with Delft University of Technology’s Faculty of Architecture and the KEI knowledge centre for urban renewal (now part of Platform 31); and the DOGMA 11 Projects + 1 exhibition in a temporary pavilion in the grounds of the...

OverHolland 12/13 opens with an article by the Spanish architect Gabriel Carrascal Aguirre on ‘The space of cartography’ — the subject of his dissertation for the Villard d’Honnecourt International Doctorate in Architecture Ph. D. programme in Venice in 2011. He defends the view that cartography should never be treated as a neutral research instrument, for every map is a well-defined reading of reality and as such can form a link between research and design.

This edition of OverHolland is a good deal thicker than usual, as befits a celebratory issue. The editors have decided to make it a double issue, which at the same time makes clear that the OverHolland series will not end with No. 10. When the series began seven years ago, a contract was signed for the publication of ten issues. The achievement of that goal certainly warrants a celebration — but that is no reason to bring the series to an end. The editors and publishers will...

OverHolland 9 opens with a promising graduation project by Ilmar Hurkxkens, entitled ‘Paradise Regained. The watchman, the sleeper, the dreamer and the city’. Hurkxkens presents his project as ‘a narrative inquiry into the history and future of the dyke as architecture’. As Dutch as you can get — and yet his approach is unusual by Dutch standards. The project took shape at the graduation workshop Territory in Transit, run by two postgraduate students, Filip Geerts and Stefano...

Volume 8 opens with the first section of a study of the organization of design and building practice in the cities of Holland. In this article, the second section of which will appear in the next volume of OverHolland, Gea van Essen and Merlijn Hurx identify a few basic tendencies in the development of design and building practice in the cities of Holland from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Their work fills a gap in contemporary architectural and building history;...

Before you lies the 5x5 Projects for the Dutch City publication, the result of the eponymous research project conducted at the Faculty of Architecture of Delft University of Technology. The 5x5 project aims at investigating the relationship between architectonic interventions and urban transformations in the station areas of five smaller historical cities in the Randstad, the urban agglomeration of Western Holland: Haarlem, Leiden, Gouda, Delft and Dordrecht. The starting point...

In OverHolland 6, much attention is paid to 17th-century Dutch architecture. Although this is a historical subject, the period remains crucial in order to gain a good understanding of the development of the Dutch city and its architectural structure. It is not so much the historical respect of the cultural inheritance of the Golden Age that plays a role here, but more the inevitable physical presence of the design and building production from this phase of development in the...

This issue of OverHolland presents the results of the first part of the research project 5x5 — Projects for the Dutch City, which is being carried out at the Faculty of Architecture of the Delft University of Technology. With ‘Research by Design’, 5x5 intends to research the cohesion between architectonic interventions and urban transformations of the station areas in the five smaller historical cities of Randstad Holland: Delft, Dordrecht, Gouda, Haar-lem, and Leiden....

In the fourth edition of OverHolland, the research into the architectonic makeup of the capital is extended to infrastructural projects. Just like other buildings, infrastructural works also manifest themselves expressly in the city as artefacts with an unmistakable physical and material presence. Bridges, dikes, overpasses and tunnels for cars, trains or subways contribute to the built-up identity of the city just as much as public buildings and residential areas. The projects analysed in...

OverHolland addresses the relationship and interaction between the building and the city in the context of the Dutch urban landscape. To this end, the city is understood in its material manifestation, as an artefact constructed of tangible elements such as buildings and infrastructure. In this approach it is especially the architectural conception of the city as it emerges in various designs for the city, whether implemented or not, that is the empirical object of study and...

OverHolland presents a wealth of architectonic research regarding the typo-morphological study of the city as well as the issue of architectonic interventions in Randstad cities. The first part of this series published in October 2004 explored this issue. The second part, which lies before you, begins with ‘Mapping Randstad Holland’, a study that has literally ‘mapped’ the urbanisation of the Randstad area since 1850. It is the first step in a study that provides insight into the...

OverHolland — Architectural studies for Dutch cities is a series published by the Department of Architecture at the Delft University of Technology. The editors plan to publish two issues a year. The field of architectural research covered by the series includes both typological and morphological urban studies and the question of architectural interventions in the context of Dutch cities.The first issue explores the problems, and reports on the ‘Transformers of the...