Mastering the city - exhibition on 20th-century urban development in Northern Europe

Architectural Review, The, Feb, 1998 by Raymund Ryan

The important task of directing the growth of modern cities is almost impossible to represent in a coherent and visually attractive exhibition. There is so much data to process, so broad a spectrum of interests and opinions, and so often the daft imposition of stylistic criteria, that planners might almost be forgiven for ignoring contemporary discussion and their own professional history. But not quite.

Currently at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi), 'Mastering The City' presents an interestingly chosen history of North European urban planning in the twentieth century. It's essentially a survey, and as such does not affect the inclusiveness of a blockbuster. It presents themes, artefacts and nuggets of information in order to understand a greater whole. Curated by Koos Bosma and funded at least in part by the Van Eesteren-Fluck & Van Lohuizen Foundation, the exhibition tells the story of 24 specific urban plans from Letchworth (1903) and Garnier's Cite Industrielle (1904) to Milton Keynes (1970) and Aimere (1977) in the former Zuider Zee. It then turns to prospects for Berlin, the Paris Basin, the Ruhr and Holland's own Randstad. These latter examples are, of course, less traditional cities than urban conglomerations.

The curatorial strategy succeeds because of its catholicity. Included are city plans from the Beaux Arts (World Centre of Communication, 1912) to International Style Modernism (La Ville Radieuse), from totalitarian Classicism (pre- and post-war Berlin) to the would-be Structuralist freedoms of Yona Friedman's Ville Spatiale of 1959. You don't feel lectured or forced to follow some ideological line. Rather, you can go back and forth from one distinctive proposal to another. 'Mastering the City' is particularly innovative in finding proposals, some implemented, from behind the former Iron Curtain (Kracow, Kiev, Moscow, Warsaw). With original drawings recovered or restored for this event, the organizational effort must in part have resembled a detective story.

The installation is designed by the Viennese architect Boris Podrecca and is a reminder that planning is directly connected to the physical plan. There are three primary constituents: a large opaque globe, an array of vertical screens for each of the 24 plans (Podrecca calls these the Trojan Horses), and a long raised horizontal surface for the contemporary condition. The globe contains a tiered cinema like a small theatre and introduces the history and purpose of planners. On axis with its exit, Podrecca has placed a tiny early drawing of van Eesteren (1997 was his centenary year) which connects to a small detour of a table with mementoes of CIAM, 12 of van Eesteren's own drawings, and a wonderful photograph of the Amsterdam planner pointing back into the NAi hall.

The Trojan Horses are set out like market stalls. To one side are contemporary videos and ahead some very large works, including a rescued drawing of Perret's for Le Havre. The long dais has an enormous model of Berlin circa 2005 and a contiguous glass floor into which satellite photographs, models and some statistical information on the immediate future have been set. On the wall behind are images and more videos of the real situation (children playing, jets, traffic jams). The visitor can then ascend Podrecca's globe to find the extremely weighty catalogue and survey the entire scene.

'Mastering The City' affirms the profession of planning and allows the lay visitor to understand many often inaccessible issues. Being Dutch, it's aware of new problems of scale and landscape. Under the glass floor, Schiphol looks as big as Rotterdam. There perhaps is the great theme of the immediate future.

Mastering The City - North European City Planning 1900-2000 is at the Netherlands Architecture Institute, Rotterdam, from 18 December 1997 until 5 April 1998. An accompanying catalogue (published by NAi/EFL Publishers, 484pp, Dfl 165) is available in both Dutch and English editions.