Jaap Bakema Study Centre
Total Space
Total Space explores interdisciplinary exchanges between the fields of architecture, urban planning, anthropology and systems theory. Relatively recent concepts such as ecology and environment are important, as are concepts of networks and megastructures. From the first propositions for networked cities and megastructures in the 1950s and 1960s, up to developments such as smart cities and virtual territories today, the concept of a total, all-encompassing space remains a recurrent motif. The core premise is that architecture and urban planning can be understood as ecological systems. The point of departure becomes interactive networks, rather than discrete objects and domains.
For Bakema, this concept implied an almost cosmological understanding of space. He called this ‘total space’. Among his inspirations were the aesthetic-spatial concepts of the De Stijl movement, as well as the work of thinkers such as Henri Bergson and Ruth Benedict. Bakema regarded it as the task of the architect-urbanist to ensure that people could navigate and appropriate total space in order to render it habitable. Living in a time of ‘growth and change’, it was important to him to allow people to experience this space from the smallest to the largest scale, through a process of ‘total urbanization’.
This relational and ecological understanding of architecture and urban planning meant – and still means – a radical redefinition of these disciplines and their tools in a technological and epistemological, but most of all cultural, sense. In line with early 20th-century avant-gardes, permanence and monumentality are eschewed, while notions of process, growth and chance take centre stage.
Past events
14 November 2019
Variations On A Bird Cage
Giovanni Bellotti and Alessandra Covini of Studio Ossidiana talk about the _Animal Encounters_ installation and their re...
➝ Read more7 March 2019
Open Systems and Total Cities
On Thursday 7 March, Georg Vrachliotis (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) will deliver the final lecture in the discurs...
➝ Read more24 February 2019
Habitat: Pjotr Gonggrijp and Frits Palmboom
In February, the Jaap Bakema Study Centre organises archive conversations with and about the authors of the archive mate...
➝ Read more3 February 2019
Habitat: the Tanthof
In February, the Jaap Bakema Study Centre organises archive conversations with and about the authors of the archive mate...
➝ Read more13 December 2018
Birds of a Feather: From Habitus to Habitat
Hadas Steiner (University at Buffalo, NY) will give a lecture about the history of ecological thinking in architecture a...
➝ Read more1 November 2018
Habitat: Expanding Architecture
In collaboration with TU Delft, the Jaap Bakema Study Centre is organizing a research and archive seminar with Leonardo ...
➝ Read more18 October 2018
Affordances and Architecture
To mark the opening of _Habitat: Expanding Architecture_, a lecture by Erik Rietveld will explore the relationship betwe...
➝ Read more2 November 2015
Total Space research workshop
The Jaap Bakema Study Centre organised the second Total Space research workshop on November 2nd in Het Nieuwe Instituut....
➝ Read moreNews and publications
17 June 2020
Habitat: Ecology Thinking in Architecture
Habitat: Ecology Thinking in Architecture is a new look at ecological thinking and a contribution to its historiography....
➝ Read more8 October 2019
Animal Encounters and the architecture collection
In addition to Studio Ossidiana’s research, Animal Encounters showcases a selection of projects from the National Collec...
➝ Read more26 October 2015
Total Space
Total Space, based on two research workshops organized in 2015, investigates the international dimensions of Structurali...
➝ Read more