Habitat: the TanthofHabitat: the Tanthof

In February, the Jaap Bakema Study Centre organises archive conversations with and about the authors of the archive material that is on show at _Habitat: Expanding Architecture_. On Sunday 3 February, the members of the Tanthof Working Group that were responsible for the Delft expansion Tanthof in the 1970s, Frans Hooykaas, Peter Lüthi, Joost Váhl, Hiwe Groenewolt and Anneloes Groenewolt-van den Berg will share their memories of this process using material from the exhibition.

The Rotterdam office Van den Broek and Bakema made the first design for the Tanthof residential area south of Delft in 1969. The plan provided a core of high-rise slabs along and over a major trunk road towards Rotterdam, with the low-rise neighbourhoods around it. After criticism, the first plan was rejected. The trunk road disappeared, as did the high-rise developments. A broad working group was set up with designers from Van den Broek and Bakema, municipal employees and residents' representatives, including Joost Váhl, Anneloes van de Berg, Hiwe Groenewolt, Frans Hooykaas, Peter Lüthi, Jan Stokla, and Abe Bonnema. This working group developed an entirely new plan. The existing polder landscape did not disappear under a metre-thick layer of sand as was customary in the construction of residential areas in Holland, but it formed the basis for the new design.

_Habitat: Expanding Architecture_ is a research installation which captures a key moment in the history of architecture and urban planning: the tenth CIAM conference at Dubrovnik in 1956. Here the concept 'habitat' was a central theme: a broader understanding of architecture through a new ecological approach viewing architecture less as an autonomous discipline than as part of larger, dynamic whole. Habitat shows work from the archives of Aldo van Eyck, Jaap Bakema and Alison & Peter Smithson, together with more recent work by Pjotr Gonggrijp and Frits Palmboom. The installation serves as a platform for further study and conversation about the meaning of 'habitat' then and now.