Defeating Public Enemy Number One: Mediating Housing in the Netherlands: Fid-Bau Portal

Defeating Public Enemy Number One: Mediating Housing in the Netherlands

Bervoets, Liesbeth

To solve the ongoing problem of housing shortages following the Second World War, European countries opted for high volumes of inexpensive modernist building boxes. The efforts to modernize the building industry resulted in a form of modernist domestic architecture, often characterized as an overly technocratic enterprise and a mere shadow of Europe's prewar modernist ambitions. Taking the Dutch case as its point of departure, this article disputes the prevailing view of housing production as purely state-driven, technocratic in character, and oriented toward economies of scale. Although public housing bureaucracies turned central planning, standardization, and normalization into the key features of the reconstruction era, the perspective changes if one considers the countervailing role of mediators such as architects and other civil actors. While unraveling how initial support for the government's push for industrial housing turned into the coordinated opposition of professional spokespersons and interest groups, this article highlights the way in which civil agents dealt with the housing bureaucracy and succeeded in improving housing standards and building requirements. In contrast with the standard view in Dutch historiography, this article describes how civil society protagonists employed coordinated action with mutual consultation and compromise. Women's organizations and architects adjusted to this manner of governance and policy making, preventing the state from monopolizing and leveling mass housing, like in the Soviet Union. The multiple initiatives of Willem van Tijen and his colleagues are presented as examples of the postwar dedication to the issue of public housing.