Inaugural Speeches and Other Studies in the Built Environment

In this booklet, the architectural theorist and Professor at York University Abidin Kusno discusses two lectures given by two influential professors in the former Dutch colony of Indonesia. The first one, ‘The aesthetics of architecture and the art of the moderns’, was given by C. Wolff Schoemaker in 1930. The second, entitled ‘Towards an Indonesian Architecture’, was delivered by Vincent Van Romondt in 1954. Schoemaker and Van Romondt held different views on the challenges of architecture...

Throughout his career, Herman van Bergeijk built his own unique expertise on the Dutch 19th and early 20th century architectural history. He has become an inspiration for scholars in the Netherlands, Europe and beyond. The extraordinary response of colleagues when asked to contribute a chapter in this Festschrift stands as an example of Herman’s widespread influence. Invitations for keynotes and lectures or courses keep reaching him, and he will continue to teach and write. He has an open...

Who were Le Corbusier’s photographers?  The question is seldom asked yet is germane to under­standing the architect’s work. Le Corbusier used photography to promote modern architecture in ways no others did.  He directed the photography of his buildings, selected the images that he liked, cropped them, abstracted them, and placed them on the pages of his many books.  He mediated the medium of photography mani­pulating visual facts in an era when “the camera never lied”....

Though unalike in personality, functionalist architects Johannes Hendrik (Jo) van den Broek (1898-1978) and Jacob Berend (Jaap) Bakema (1914-1981) were inextricably bound up with each other both as partners in their Rotterdam office, Van den Broek and Bakema Architects, and as professors at the Technical College of Delft. [Fig. 1] Each represents a type of Dutch functionalism. Van den Broek was one of the founders of Nieuwe Bouwen, the modernist movement in Dutch architecture and...

In 2002, Gunawan Tjahjono opened his inaugural speech at University of Indonesia with a reference to Vincent Van Romondt, the last remaining Dutch tutor of architecture in Indonesia, who had pioneered an approach that challenged Indonesians to think about the relationship between architecture and ‘nationbuilding’. Since independence, the topic of ‘towards an Indonesian architecture,’ has received various interpretations, with numerous references to Van Romondt. Josef Prijotomo, one of the...

This small booklet contains the inaugural speeches of Th. K. van Lohuizen and Cor van Eesteren on their appointments as professors at the Technical College of Delft. The texts provide novel insights into their respective teaching programs, and appear here for the first time in English. An analytical reflection on their work by the architectural historian Herman van Bergeijk introduces them.