Written by Alexander Tzonis & Liane Lefaivre

黃卿云 譯 Translated by Huang Qingyun

2018年，是阿爾多·凡·艾克（Aldo van Eyck，下文稱“凡·艾克”）（1918～1999）誕辰100周年。在創(chuàng)造性與毀滅性并存的20世紀(jì)——這個前無古人的，甚至可以稱得上重新定義了建筑的時代，凡·艾克無疑是最激勵人心、最詩意盎然的人文主義建筑師之一，其設(shè)計思想及建筑作品從根本上塑造了當(dāng)代人認(rèn)識和理解世界的視角。與20世紀(jì)其他主要建筑師相比，凡·艾克的建筑作品數(shù)量相對較少，但他設(shè)計背后的思索卻宏大而深刻。誠然，人們對他設(shè)計的評價有褒有貶：有的作品因功能不便而被批判，但也不乏設(shè)計表達(dá)一氣呵成、深受使用者喜愛的創(chuàng)作。但直到今天，他的形式語匯和文本語言仍被有意或無意地應(yīng)用于當(dāng)代建筑設(shè)計實踐中，影響持續(xù)而廣泛。

凡·艾克并不拘泥于某種單一的建筑主義或生活方式，他追求多種互補(bǔ)交叉觀點的融合，并將其喻為一捧“彩虹般的花束”。

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凡·艾克的父親是荷蘭人，母親是荷蘭猶太人。他在英國度過了自己大部分的年輕時光。第二次世界大戰(zhàn)期間，他逃離被德軍占領(lǐng)的荷蘭，在瑞士蘇黎世聯(lián)邦技術(shù)學(xué)院（ETH）學(xué)習(xí)建筑，并于1945年順利獲得學(xué)位。同年二戰(zhàn)結(jié)束，曠日持久的戰(zhàn)爭和自一戰(zhàn)后執(zhí)政者的忽視，使戰(zhàn)區(qū)大量民眾流離失所、無家可歸。因此，作為戰(zhàn)后恢復(fù)的第一步，這些地區(qū)展開了大規(guī)模的生產(chǎn)建設(shè)活動。

起初，人們戰(zhàn)后重建與恢復(fù)的決心堅定，但到了20世紀(jì)50年代中期，這種熱情卻逐漸衰退，甚至滋生出一些不滿情緒。當(dāng)時，城市建設(shè)發(fā)展的進(jìn)程是由可量化的“客觀事實”衡量的，例如新建建筑的數(shù)量、規(guī)模、面積等。1971年，西蒙·庫茲涅茨（Simon Kuznets）創(chuàng)造性地將“國內(nèi)生產(chǎn)總值”（GDP）這一概念作為量化國家生活水平的工具，并獲得了當(dāng)年的諾貝爾經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)獎。但他同時警告說，這一數(shù)學(xué)模型并不足以區(qū)分“數(shù)量增長和質(zhì)量提升”之間的差別，“換言之，GDP本身無法為人類帶來幸福，克服困苦”[1]。

彼時，越來越多的人自發(fā)組織抗議游行，呼吁更寬松、非壓迫的社會環(huán)境。剛剛跨出大學(xué)校門的凡·艾克也加入其中。在早期的一篇文章中，他寫道：“（現(xiàn)實中的）貧民窟雖已消失”，但是“精神上的貧民窟仍千瘡百孔”。他當(dāng)時所處的社會環(huán)境很大程度上催生了這些觀點。那時，蘇黎世作為戰(zhàn)爭中立國瑞士的一座城市，匯聚了從歐洲各國流放至此或主動前來的知識分子、先鋒派藝術(shù)家、國家間諜等，是名副其實的各階層、多文化集合體。凡·艾克在這座復(fù)雜而斑斕的國際都會中持續(xù)成長，與不同文化背景的人交往，他自己也曾幾易國籍。

因此，當(dāng)個人思維觀念逐步建立，凡·艾克主觀上渴望尋求多種觀點“協(xié)調(diào)”統(tǒng)一，同時也盡量避免被“還原論”教條所束縛。早在蘇黎世的學(xué)生時代，凡·艾克就接觸到了生于奧地利的以色列哲學(xué)家馬丁·布伯，他的論著給了年輕的凡·艾克極大啟發(fā)。在兩次毀滅性的世界大戰(zhàn)期間，馬丁·布伯研究的是日常生活中的重商主義，這一研究對象也極具毀滅性。他指出，“物”具有“去人性化”的作用，應(yīng)被稱為“它”。正是“它”的存在，破壞了人類之間的關(guān)系，將“我-你”分立，并忽視兩者“之間”（zwischen）的互補(bǔ)與聯(lián)結(jié)，進(jìn)而阻礙了兩者的對話。而探討對話、互補(bǔ)與協(xié)調(diào)間的些微差異，則成為凡·艾克的研究與實踐中至高無上的追求，滲透到他學(xué)術(shù)生涯的各個方面。

圖1：凡·艾克在自宅工作室展示自己的非洲工藝品收藏（亞歷山大·佐尼斯 攝）Fig.1：Aldo van Eyck in his home-studio pointing to his African artifacts collection (photoed by A. Tzonis)

圖2：阿爾多·凡·艾克與漢妮·凡·艾克在自宅工作室（亞歷山大·佐尼斯 攝）Fig.2：Aldo and van Eyck in their home-studio (photoed by A.Tzonis)

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在蘇黎世聯(lián)邦技術(shù)學(xué)院學(xué)習(xí)期間，凡·艾克選擇了畢業(yè)于巴黎美院（PBA）的古典主義學(xué)者拉方斯·拉韋里埃（Alphonse Laverriere）教授作自己的導(dǎo)師。同時，他進(jìn)入由歷史學(xué)家齊格弗里德·吉迪翁（Siegfried Giedion）的妻子卡羅拉·吉迪翁-韋勒克（Carola Giedion-Welcker）創(chuàng)立的社交圈，并在她的引薦下，接觸到當(dāng)時的現(xiàn)代藝術(shù)與藝術(shù)家們。1944～1947年間，凡·艾克用自己的積蓄收藏了一批藝術(shù)作品，其中包括畢加索（Picasso）的雕塑《苦艾酒瓶》（Verre d’Absinthe）和版畫《弗朗哥的夢幻及謊言》（Songe et Mensonge de Franco），讓·阿爾普（Jean Arp）、伊夫·唐吉（Yves Tanguy）、皮特·蒙德里安（Piet Cornelies Mondrian）的畫作，還有一些巴黎先鋒藝術(shù)家的作品、非洲面具及手工藝品等（圖1、圖2）。

1946年，凡·艾克再次回到荷蘭，受雇于阿姆斯特丹公共工程發(fā)展辦公室，成為最著名的現(xiàn)代建筑倡導(dǎo)者之一、戰(zhàn)前國際現(xiàn)代建筑協(xié)會（CIAM）領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人科內(nèi)利斯·范伊斯特倫（Cornelis van Eesteren）麾下的一員。這份工作，使凡·艾克將自己對于建筑的思索及理解應(yīng)用到具體的設(shè)計實踐中。

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科內(nèi)利斯·范伊斯特倫在阿姆斯特丹任職期間，承擔(dān)了這個城市內(nèi)大規(guī)模的重建任務(wù)。誠然，他延續(xù)了戰(zhàn)前的現(xiàn)代建筑與城市規(guī)劃理念，采用自上而下的“整體”規(guī)劃方式，旨在最高效地安置“最大數(shù)量的居民”。但這次，他邀請凡·艾克負(fù)責(zé)為這個龐大居住項目設(shè)計游樂場地，并鼓勵他帶著批判性的視角，對居民的需求作出最自然、靈活和直接的應(yīng)對。

一方面，凡·艾克接受了科內(nèi)利斯·范伊斯特倫合理的整體功能及空間設(shè)計框架。同時，他也私下與“眼鏡蛇派”（CoBRA）等戰(zhàn)后先鋒藝術(shù)團(tuán)體進(jìn)行合作。

最終，凡·艾克選擇在城市中的“遺忘之地”置入游樂場地。如1954年約翰·沃爾克（John Volker）所報道，那些在戰(zhàn)爭中“被道路工程師和拆遷承包商遺棄的孤島”，在凡·艾克眼中，卻是（人類生活的）機(jī)遇?？苾?nèi)利斯·范伊斯特倫委派激進(jìn)主義景觀設(shè)計師杰科芭·米爾德（Jacoba Mudler）協(xié)助凡·艾克的工作，兩人對待設(shè)計的想法不謀而合。

與大多數(shù)戰(zhàn)前的設(shè)計手法不同，凡·艾克沒有使用在遠(yuǎn)離場地的工廠中生產(chǎn)的建筑部件，而是就地、就近取材。這種實用主義的解決方案，在那個“為數(shù)字而建設(shè)”的高產(chǎn)能高消耗的時代，無疑是一條新穎的思路（圖3）。

同“重建”時期不愿遵循抽象的“內(nèi)在錯覺”（薩特原話）指導(dǎo)的新現(xiàn)實主義作家、導(dǎo)演、攝影師等人一樣，凡·艾克也更傾向于關(guān)照現(xiàn)實中的“特定場景”，“讓設(shè)計與真實世界之間既疏離又緊密”。

英國建筑師約翰·沃爾克曾預(yù)言：這些看似“從頭開始”的簡單項目將對城市產(chǎn)生漫長持久的影響，甚至將引導(dǎo)城市主義者推進(jìn)“更廣泛、更復(fù)雜、更社會化同時也更昂貴的城市發(fā)展道路”。

在凡·艾克最長的一篇手稿“兒童、城市和詩歌”中，他把兒童寫作社會忽視與壓迫的受害者。他眼中的“兒童”，是一種全新的社會運(yùn)作模式與生活方式中的主人翁——他們代表著好奇心、夢想與不循規(guī)蹈矩，是虛偽的既有規(guī)則的反抗者，也是無盡創(chuàng)造力的擁有者。在凡·艾克看來，兒童游樂場地的置入并不僅僅是城市重建工作的一部分，也不只是對城市空間的修復(fù)，而且是一種先鋒的態(tài)度，一份旨在改變城市生活方式的“詼諧”宣言。他希望通過創(chuàng)造“我-你”“之間”的交往空間來改造城市，促進(jìn)兩者之間有意思的“對話”。凡·艾克用一個詩意的比喻來解釋這種思想：“一場暴風(fēng)雪后”，城市煥然一新，曾經(jīng)被我們忽視的兒童，“成為城市之王”。

事實上，無論是兒童還是成年人，都愛極了凡·艾克設(shè)計的游樂場地和活動場。到1951年，阿姆斯特丹城內(nèi)已建成的游樂場地不下700余處，其中大部分是為了滿足鄰里空間需求而建造的?，F(xiàn)如今，這些游樂場地幾乎都已不復(fù)存在了。但曾在其中嬉戲過的阿姆斯特丹人會懷念它帶來的快樂——它們?nèi)源嬖谟谶@些人心中。

圖3：阿姆斯特丹游樂場，阿姆斯特丹Fig.3：Aldo van Eyck Amsterdam playground

圖4：1960年荷蘭郵票上的“兒童之家”（1955-1960）Fig.4：Aldo van Eyck Children’s Home, Amsterdam, 1955 -1960. Post stamp, 1960

圖5：“兒童之家”，阿姆斯特丹，1955-1960Fig.5：Aldo van Eyck Children’s Home, Amsterdam, 1955 - 1960

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阿姆斯特丹城市游樂場地設(shè)計的影響是有限的。讓凡·艾克舉世聞名的項目，其實是位于阿姆斯特丹市外的“兒童之家”——一個收留孤兒和破裂家庭兒童的機(jī)構(gòu)。

兒童之家項目在很多方面都與阿姆斯特丹游樂場地相反。游樂場地見縫插針地嵌入擁擠的城市空間，通常是無屋頂?shù)男⌒蜆?gòu)筑物；而兒童之家則是城市郊外空曠的場地中一個帶頂?shù)拇笮投喙δ芫C合體，與其毗鄰的是大型體育館、高速公路和國家機(jī)場。在這樣的場地條件下，甲方要求凡·艾克設(shè)計的建筑能夠填補(bǔ)孩子們生活的空缺，為無家可歸的他們帶去家庭的溫暖與城市的認(rèn)知。

和游樂場地的設(shè)計一樣，在兒童之家中，凡·艾克也嘗試在古典的空間構(gòu)成和反古典的風(fēng)格派體系中尋求協(xié)調(diào)的“對話”，使兩者“完美融合”。為了避免通常大尺度機(jī)構(gòu)類建筑內(nèi)部空間大而無物的通病，他將建筑分解為多個重復(fù)的單體，在網(wǎng)格內(nèi)按照特定模式排布。

這一設(shè)計的靈感來自于凡·艾克在造訪非洲多貢地區(qū)時看到的當(dāng)?shù)刈迦鹤≌河梢粋€個單體地塊拼接交織形成的一片住區(qū)。他在其中看到了個人與社會之間真實而緊密的 “對話”。因此，凡·艾克嘗試通過重復(fù)排列的帶圓頂?shù)慕ㄖ误w來表達(dá)一種“多樣而統(tǒng)一”的氛圍。事實上，圓頂這一開創(chuàng)性的想法并不來自凡·艾克，而是他當(dāng)時的助手喬普·凡·斯特（Joop van Stigt）的點子（圖4、圖5）。

為了適應(yīng)兒童的使用，凡·艾克還調(diào)整了建筑內(nèi)部空間的尺度。

阿姆斯特丹城內(nèi)的游樂場地在使用中并未出現(xiàn)功能性缺陷，但在設(shè)計上充滿“獨(dú)創(chuàng)性”的兒童之家，卻終因拘泥于空間排布的象征意義而（忽略實際使用）成為功能失調(diào)的建筑作品。盡管凡·艾克公開了項目設(shè)計理念，并親自拍攝了他和朋友的孩子們在建筑中玩鬧嬉戲的照片，以期向社會傳遞這一作品的深意，但最終，孤兒院還是被搬離了。

但在這些失敗嘗試的背后，凡·艾克創(chuàng)造性的設(shè)計理念與思想依舊對后人產(chǎn)生了深刻的影響。

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在此后的創(chuàng)作生涯中，積累了更多經(jīng)驗的凡·艾克，仍渴望設(shè)計出能夠同時滿足精神文化需求和實際功能使用的建筑作品。

1965～1966年間，凡·艾克為位于阿納姆的公園設(shè)計了一個花園建筑小品——桑斯比克亭（Sonsbeek）。這座室外帶頂建筑被用以展出中等尺度的雕塑，建筑毗鄰?fù)瑐€公園內(nèi)由亨利·克萊門斯·范·德·費(fèi)爾德（Henry Clemens Van de Velde）設(shè)計的克勒勒-米勒博物館（Kr?ller-Müller museum）(圖6、圖7)。

建筑由平行排列的墻體組成，平面劃分遵循經(jīng)典的三段式原則。通過墻體開口、曲直墻面的共同作用，營造出似無盡延展的路徑、似變幻莫測的流線和一系列連續(xù)的空間轉(zhuǎn)折，使人身處其中卻難辨始終，到不了中心，也找不到歸路。

我們很難去分析這一建筑的功能，因為除了在天空之下展覽雕塑作品這一樸素的功能以外，它似乎再沒有其他值得稱道的功能設(shè)置與排布。但毋庸置疑，我們可以討論這個建筑中的人——無論是建筑師、社會精英、普通民眾、學(xué)者亦或兒童，都可以在這一空間中享受片刻沉思漫步的“哲思之旅”，如同阿方索·保盧奇（Alfonso Paoluccci）筆下前往科隆那“維尼亞”的卡比托爾山的旅程。但和凡·艾克大部分作品一樣，這個設(shè)計仍舊像個政治性工具，而沒有跳脫象征的寓意。在馬丁·布伯的哲學(xué)框架下，除了政治功能，它一無所長。

凡·艾克將這個建筑稱作迷宮。它并不是代達(dá)洛斯建造的那座迷宮，也沒有阿里阿德涅循線殺死囚禁于迷宮中的半人半牛怪獸——這座迷宮是沒有終點的：在思維的無邊曠野中，在路徑糾纏的交結(jié)處，“我”與“你”撞了個滿懷。凡·艾克將這樣的瞬間稱為“靈光一現(xiàn)”（Eureka）或“頓悟”（Aha?。r刻，而通常這兩個詞只出現(xiàn)在自然科學(xué)探索的過程里。的確，這座迷宮正演繹了智慧、創(chuàng)造力、宇宙與社會關(guān)系，還有人類生命本身的意義。

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20世紀(jì)60年代，凡·艾克名聲大噪，許多學(xué)生和年輕建筑師慕名而來與他共事，其中包括喬普·凡·斯特、特奧·鮑士（Theo Bosch）、皮特·布洛姆（Piet Blom）、赫曼·赫茲伯格（Herman Herzberger）等。到了1970年代，城市管理者也開始關(guān)注凡·艾克，請他為城市公共住房建設(shè)建言獻(xiàn)策。他參與設(shè)計了多德雷赫特市和茲沃勒內(nèi)城的公共住房項目，還有位于阿姆斯特丹的五角住宅樓。在繼續(xù)嘗試于古典的空間構(gòu)成和反古典的風(fēng)格派體系中尋求協(xié)調(diào)“對話”的同時，凡·艾克試圖將新的構(gòu)型作為“填充物”整合進(jìn)戰(zhàn)前的城市肌理中。此外，他也嘗試營造介于公共與私密“之間”的空間，為社會交往與對話帶來更多可能。

正當(dāng)凡·艾克的作品呈現(xiàn)出積極的功能組織，并吸引了相當(dāng)數(shù)量的年輕人時，如之前所言，也引來了年輕激進(jìn)分子的政治反對。他們認(rèn)為這種做法與先鋒派、左翼人士和二戰(zhàn)前的新即物主義（Neue Sachlichkeit）建筑師的做法背道而馳，有可能阻礙人類對新生活方式的踐行。

6

圖6：桑斯比克亭，阿納姆，1973-1978Fig.6：Aldo van Eyck Sonsbeek Garden Pavilion, Arnhem,1973-1978

圖7：桑斯比克亭手繪，《Wel Evenwaardig》封面圖Fig.7：Aldo van Eyck, drawing, cover of Wel Evenwaardig,Amsterdam Sonsbeek Garden Pavilion, Arnhem,1973-1978

7

與桑斯比克亭中高度詩意化的思考不同，為單身母親（現(xiàn)在是任一性別的單身家長）和他們的孩子們建造的胡貝圖斯單親宿舍（1973～1978年）則是一個完全“務(wù)實”的實用主義建筑（圖8）。同20世紀(jì)40～50年代設(shè)計阿姆斯特丹游樂場地時一樣，凡·艾克將這個項目看作是對城市用地的“填充”和“增置”。

胡貝圖斯單親宿舍的場地區(qū)位十分有趣。它是普蘭塔區(qū)一排典型的布爾喬亞式聯(lián)排別墅的一部分，同時又臨近許多19世紀(jì)建筑杰作，例如阿姆斯特丹動物園、貝爾拉赫鉆石工人聯(lián)盟等；其一街之隔就是荷蘭舍大劇院。事實上，這片場地上曾經(jīng)矗立的建筑，是塔木德索拉猶太教堂。

在這樣的場地條件下，凡·艾克越發(fā)關(guān)注建筑與阿姆斯特丹地域文脈之間的聯(lián)系，就如同這里的居民最終與生活環(huán)境融為一體。在設(shè)計中，他沒有使用復(fù)雜的幾何排布，也不追求構(gòu)型的協(xié)調(diào)整合。相反，凡·艾克在建筑物表面大面積使用彩色涂刷，使建筑真成了“彩虹般的花束”。他說，對于那些被長期孤立、流離失所的人們而言，這象征著“快樂、感動與積極樂觀”。他也希望通過這種方式，營造出“回家的氛圍”、充滿活力的社區(qū)和自然而然的交流。

項目竣工后不久，新澤西理工學(xué)院決定授予凡·艾克榮譽(yù)學(xué)位。在授予儀式后的演講中，凡·艾克公開展示了這個項目。演講地點離紐瓦克工業(yè)中心“鐵路區(qū)”不遠(yuǎn)，之所以這么稱呼，是因為這個區(qū)域被鐵軌層層包圍。

參與儀式的觀眾包括新憤青時代成長起來的部分國際建筑師，和支持凡·艾克的學(xué)生們。他們將他視為建筑道路的先行者和保持旺盛建筑創(chuàng)造力的代言人。

彼時，戰(zhàn)后重建時期唯物主義設(shè)計師大行其道的時代已經(jīng)翻篇，后現(xiàn)代主義正甚囂塵上。理論家陶醉在建筑自律性中，忽視人類對于功能的根本需求。

因此，當(dāng)凡·艾克沒有提及詩意，而是強(qiáng)調(diào)“對更好功能運(yùn)作的需要”、“這個時代更應(yīng)追求多層次的功能”時，臺下的觀眾都大吃一驚。

8

歐洲太空技術(shù)與研究中心（ESTEC，1984-1989），是位于諾德維克的科研綜合體，被稱為歐洲的NASA。它是凡·艾克建筑生涯最后期的作品之一，也是其最為復(fù)雜的項目之一。建筑包括一個餐廳、一個技術(shù)文件中心和一系列辦公樓。ESTEC的主管馬西莫·特雷拉（Massimo Trella）聘請凡·艾克作為這一建筑綜合體的設(shè)計師。在此次設(shè)計過程中，凡·艾克的妻子漢妮·凡·艾克（Hannie van Eyck）扮演了越發(fā)重要的角色。

凡·艾克并沒有忘記自己對“多層次的功能”的追求。在面對這個龐雜的科研中心設(shè)計時，他既跳脫了傳統(tǒng)的建筑設(shè)計正交網(wǎng)絡(luò)，也沒有像在以往項目中那樣，考慮古典與反古典的融合。他向意大利手法主義擁躉者羅伯特·文丘里（Robert Venturi）學(xué)習(xí)，嘗試設(shè)計一個非線性、多節(jié)點的空間構(gòu)成體系。它在保持空間完整性的同時，加強(qiáng)組團(tuán)多樣性，從而創(chuàng)造更多“我-你”之間的交往空間。

盡管凡·艾克本人不是一個嚴(yán)格意義上的科研工作者——他和代爾夫特理工大學(xué)之間的合同是定期續(xù)簽的，事實上，他也從未在學(xué)校有過一個終身職位——但是他深知科學(xué)界長久以來存在的問題。當(dāng)路易斯 · 康（Louis Kahn）在美國加利福尼亞州拉荷亞與喬納斯·索爾克（Jonas Salk）進(jìn)行關(guān)于索爾克研究所的討論時，這個問題就已被提出。近年來，在世界各地的高精尖技術(shù)研究實驗室中，關(guān)于它的討論也越來越多。

科學(xué)研究者早就意識到，需要一個介于內(nèi)部和外部之間的場所，讓彼此溝通對話?？茖W(xué)家看似都傾向于生活在科幻與想象中，每個人承受著巨大的孤獨(dú)各自為戰(zhàn)，進(jìn)而越來越精細(xì)化、獨(dú)立化。他們研究著互不相關(guān)的理論，像是一個個“封閉”的個體，互相之間缺乏理解與交流。然而，眾所周知，大多數(shù)的奇思妙想都是在跨越知識壁壘的思想碰撞中產(chǎn)生的。當(dāng)科學(xué)（和其他人類學(xué)科一樣）變得高度分化，隨之而來的就是分裂、坍塌與破碎。借用維特根斯坦（Wittgenstein）的比喻，現(xiàn)代科學(xué)越是成功地在人類知識的“郊區(qū)”開荒拓野，我們就越將處在“無知”的危險境地。

事實上，（這種分化）正是凡·艾克在建筑設(shè)計中極力避免的。自阿姆斯特丹游樂場地設(shè)計伊始，在凡·艾克建筑生涯的大部分項目中，無論是追求詩意表達(dá)抑或功能實用，他想呈現(xiàn)出的，始終是那一捧“彩虹般的花束”。

非常榮幸，我們與阿爾多·凡·艾克先生本人有過面對面的學(xué)術(shù)交流。1962年在哈佛大學(xué)，當(dāng)時還在耶魯大學(xué)讀書的亞歷山大·佐尼斯第一次見到了凡·艾克先生。而利亞納·勒費(fèi)夫爾與凡·艾克的第一次見面，則是1985年前后在代爾夫特。1985～1999年間，學(xué)界內(nèi)關(guān)于凡·艾克設(shè)計理論與實踐的討論十分熱烈，其中也涉及對他建筑作品的實際保護(hù)問題。利亞納·勒費(fèi)夫爾和亞歷山大·佐尼斯都曾與凡·艾克先生保持書信交流，討論我們當(dāng)時正在創(chuàng)作的一本書。但遺憾的是，凡·艾克先生未等到這本書出版，就于1999年1月14日離世。同年數(shù)月后，書籍才付梓出版。我們?nèi)送鶃斫涣鞯臅盼募皇珍浽凇秮啔v山大·佐尼斯和利亞納·勒費(fèi)夫爾檔案》一書中。

注釋

[1]1971 年度瑞典中央銀行紀(jì)念諾貝爾經(jīng)濟(jì)科學(xué)獎得主，西蒙 · 庫茲涅茨，諾貝爾獎獲獎演講，1971 年12 月11 日。

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Aldo van Eyck (1918-1999), one of the most inspiring, poetic, and humane architects of the past century, a creative and destructive century that redefined architecture as no other era before. Aldo’s buildings and texts shaped in fundamental ways the way contemporary people look and interpret the world. The number of his projects are relatively few, in comparison to other major XX century architects, but the complexity of the design thinking is vast. Some marked by functional failures some performing remarkably well and beloved by their users. Yet, his visual concepts and their verbal counterparts have been absorbed into contemporary design and continue to have, consciously or intuitively, a universal presence.

Aldo did not stand for any single doctrine of architecture, or life. He chose to offer a synthesis of complementary views, what he called a “rainbow bouquet.”

1

Son of a Dutch father and a Dutch-Jewish mother, Van Eyck spent his early years in England and the war years in Switzerland studying architecture in ETH in Zurich away from occupied Netherlands. He received his diploma 1945, the year the war ended and the year of the beginning of a vast campaign of building for the ‘great number’ of homeless, because of the war and of the years of political neglect, since the 1920s.

The drive to re-construct and construct was massive. However, by the middle of the 1950s, the enthusiasm about the reconstruction waned and there were signs of discontent. Progress was measured by counting‘objective facts’, such as numbers, volume,and size of the new buildings. As Simon Kuznets, the Nobel Prize-winning inventor of the concept of the ‘Gross Domestic Product’which served as the tool that was used to measure a country’s standard of living by calculable facts, warned in 1971, the problem was that his model was not sufficient to distinguish ‘between quantity and quality of growth …’ In other words, it did not have the power to bring about human happiness,to overcome oppression.

Aldo, just out of the university, joined the growing protest in search for a non-oppressive environment. In an early text he wrote ‘the slum has gone’, but ‘behold the slum edging into the spirit’. His opinions emerged out of the most stimulating environment of Zurich at that time. Zurich,a city of neutral Switzerland during the war, became a multilayered hub of exiled or self-exiled intellectuals, Avant Garde artists,scientists, and spies. He thrived in this rich complex cosmopolitan setting himself as someone who had changed countries several times and encountered people of very diverse origins and identity.

Thus, in developing his own individual way of thinking, he searched for ‘reconciling’ diverse points of view and avoiding any reductive dogma. In this he found stimulation and advice in the writings of Martin Buber, an Austrian-born Israeli philosopher,which he discovered in Zurich as a student.Working between two catastrophic world wars and equally destructive commercialism of everyday life, Buber identified the ‘dehumanizing’ effect of ‘objects’, he called them the ‘it’ that destroys human relations, the ‘I and Thou’ rather than acting as the ‘between’ (zwischen)’, ‘where I and you meet’, enabling ‘interhuman’ (das Zwischenmenschliche) dialogue. Dialogue,complementarity, and reconciliation in difference became Aldo’s overriding objective in all aspects of his intellectual life.

2

As a student at the ETH he chose to follow the classicist professor, Alphonse Laverriere, a Paris Beaux Arts graduate. At the same time, he entered the circle of Carola Giedion-Welcker, wife of the historian Siegfried Giedion, who introduced him to modern art and artists, acquiring, between 1944 and 1947, through his own savings, Picasso’s Verre d’Absinthe and Songe et Mensonge de Franco, an Arp, a Tanguy, a Mondrian,and also, like the Avant Garde artists in Paris,African masks and artifacts.(Fig.1, Fig.2)

He applied the same approach to his professional work when he returned to the Netherlands in 1946 employed by the Office for Public Works in Amsterdam under the direction of one of the most prominent proponents of Modern Architecture and a CIAM leader before the war, Cornelis van Eesteren.

3

In his Amsterdam post, Van Eesteren had undertaken the colossal task of reconstruction. True to the vision he had espoused before the war, he applied a top-down “total”planned approach to house ‘the greater number’ most efficiently. Yet, he invited Aldo to follow his critical ideas about ground up, spontaneous, flexible, and direct reaction to the needs of citizens, offering him the responsibility to introduce playgrounds in his vast residential scheme.

Aldo accepted the rational overall programmatic and spatial framework of Van Eesteren while the same time collaborating individually with rebellious art groups such as CoBRA.

He inserted his “playgrounds” in“l(fā)eft-over places” in the voids of sites abandoned during the war. In the words of John Volker reported in 1954, he recruited the ‘formless islands left over by the road engineer and the demolition contractor,’perceiving them as opportunities. Similar ground-up ideas were held independently by Jacoba Mulder a landscape activist planner who was appointed by Van Eesteren also to collaborate with Aldo.

In contrast to most prewar approaches to architecture recommending the use of industrial components produced usually in distant plants,Aldo employed plain, locally available materials found close to the site, in his pragmatic solution demonstrating the idea of alternatives in a mass produced and mass consumed environment‘for the great number.’(Fig.3)

Like the neorealist writers, filmmakers,and photographers of the period of ‘reconstruction’, Aldo rather than following ‘the illusion of immanence’, of abstract formulas,to quote Sartre, reflected on the reality of each given ‘situation’, ‘a(chǎn)lienated but also engaged in the world’.

Volker, an English architect wrote about the long-term implications of these from the‘ground up’ humble projects predicting that they will guide urbanists in ‘more extensive, socially more complex, more expensive developments’.

In his most lengthy manuscript ‘The child,the city, the poet’ Aldo saw the child as a victim of neglect and oppression. For him the ‘child’stood as a hero representing a special approach to life and society, as a champion of curiosity,dreams, chaos, resistance to fake rules, a force of endless creativity. Thus, the playgrounds for him were not only a remedial, work part of the reconstruction program but also avantgarde agents, a“l(fā)udic” manifesto for changing the way of living in the city. He expected them to transform the city bringing in the ‘between’ where ‘I and you meet’ in ludic ‘dialogue.’ He used a poetic metaphor to explain the idea, the way, ‘a(chǎn)fter a heavy snowstorm’, the city is revolutionized the neglected children taking over ‘becoming the Lord of the City’.

Children and adults loved Van Eyck’s playgrounds, or speelplatsen. No fewer than 700 were built in Amsterdam up to 1951,most of them in response to neighborhood demands. Few of these projects still stand.Many Amsterdamers still alive who played in them are nostalgic of the happiness these structures offered them.

4

The reputation of the Amsterdam playgrounds was limited. The project that made van Eyck world famous was the Children’s Home,an institution for orphans or children of broken homes, located outside Amsterdam.

In many respects the Children’s Home was the opposite of the playgrounds. While the Amsterdam playgrounds were small roofless minimal structures occupying crowded interstitial urban voids, the Children’s Home was a large multifunctional complex under one roof located in a vast open area, outside the city’s periphery, its closest neighbors being a stadium, the open highway, and the national airport. It was within this context that van Eyck was asked to fill in the absence in the life of children deprived of a home by offering them a community of homes, and a city.

As with the playgrounds, Aldo tried to compose the plan of the Children’s Home as a dialogue reconciling the classical canon of spatial composition with the anticlassical De Stijl system, ‘joined in a perfect amalgam.’Avoiding the authoritarian effect of large scale of institutional buildings, he conceived a scheme consisting of repetitive individual units united in a cumulative collective pattern.

The idea emerged out of his visit to the Dogon region in Africa where the single homesteads form a remarkable complex of a whole.Aldo saw in the Dogon architecture a genuine,solid ‘dialogue’ between the individual and the social whole. Thus, he tried to give gave to the project a sense of a of ‘unity in multiplicity’ by introducing into the scheme repetitive individual places covered by repetitive domes.In fact, the originF of the ingenious idea of the dome was not his but of his assistant at that time, Joop van Stigt. (Fig.4, Fig.5)

He also adapted the scale of the interior of the building reducing it to the dimensions of the children.

On the other hand, as opposed to the Amsterdam Playgrounds that presented no functional problems, the ‘inventions’ of the Children’s Home remained symbolic gestures that lead to a dysfunctional facility.Despite the publicity of the ideas and the photographs, taken by van Eyck himself featuring his own and his friends’ children trying to demonstrate the virtues of the project,the orphanage moved out of the building.

These failures, however, did not stop the influence of his theoretical concepts and ideas behind their abortive implementation.

5

Later in life, a more experienced Aldo designed and constructed structures which excelled equally as cultural manifestoes and as functional products.

During 1965-1966, Al do designed in the middle of a splendid park in Arnhem a garden pavilion, Sonsbeek, a shelter and a setting for outdoor exhibitions of medium size sculpture,not far from the Kr?ller-Müller museum, a building designed by Henry Clemens Van de Velde in the middle of a splendid park. (Fig.6, Fig.7)

The work is composed by is a series of parallel planes organized within a classical tripartite schema. The walls are penetrated by openings forming an endlessly branching out promenade, a shifting pattern of winding paths, a succession of turnings making hard to find one’s way whether to penetrate to the center, or, from there to reach the exit.

It is strange to talk about the functionality of the project where there appeared to be hardly any serious function to talk about,apart from displaying objects of art under the sky. Without doubt however one can talk about the people - architects and elite and not elite public, senior academics and children - that equally enjoyed using the structure for meditative walking, to ‘philosophize,’as Alfonso Paolucci wrote in his account of his visit to Colonna’s vigna on the Capitoline Hill. But as with most of van Eyck’s oeuvre, it is also a project for action and play an allegory and an instrument about politics, in the sense Martin Buber’s philosophical texts functioned as a political program.

Aldo talked about the project as a labyrinth, but there is no terminal point here, a labyrinth with no Minotaur, Daedalus, or Ariadne’s thread. What one discovers in the wilderness of one’s mind, in the knot of the paths, is the coming face to face with the other. Aldo called that the effect of ‘eurika’ or ‘a(chǎn)ha!’ a term usually applied to scientific discoveries. Indeed, the labyrinth is synonymous with intelligence, creativity, the dialogical social cosmos, human life itself.

The reputation of van Eyck increased considerably during the 1960s attracting students and young architects to work with him among them,Joop van Stigt, Theo Bosch, Piet Blom, and Herman Herzberger but he also attracted in the 1970s administrators eager to have him contribute in the sector of public housing as in the case of housing in Dordrecht, in the inner city Zwolle, and in the Pentagon in Amsterdam. While continuing his formal spatial explorations trying to reconcile classical and anticlassical-De Stijl canons, he also tried to integrate the new structures as ‘infill’ to the pre-existing,pre-war regional urban tissue. In addition, he also tried to generate ‘in-between’ private and public places for social dialogue.

While functionally positive, appealing to a considerable number of young people, as we said, the approach met also with political opposition from young radicals who found it obstructing the search for realistic new ways of life as the Avant Garde, left wing, pre-WWII Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) architects did.

7

In contrast to the highly ‘poetic’ character of the Sonsbeek pavilion, the Hubertus home (1973-1978) for single mothers (now for single parents of either sex) and their children, is a ‘pragmatic’facility. (Fig.8) As in the case of the Amsterdam playgrounds of the 1940s-1950s, Van Eyck designed it as an “incremental”, “in fill”,

The building stands in one of the most interesting districts of Amsterdam. It is part of a row of typical bourgeois town houses in Plantage,an area associated with 19thcentury architectural masterpieces such as the Amsterdam Zoo, Berlage’s Diamond Workers Union and theaters such as the Hollandse Schouwburg, just across the street from Hubertus. The site itself of the project was once occupied by the Talmud Thora Synagogue.

Aldo, became particularly concerned with making the building to belong to the ‘regional’ Amsterdam context, like its inhabitants to become part of the same milieu. He did not apply any of the complex geometrical juxtapositions and shape reconciliations. Instead, he extensively used color, laying over the structure of the building a polychromic “rainbow bouquet”, in his words an “icon of joy, affection,and optimism” for the aliened and displaced, creating what he called a “sense of homecoming”, fresh community, and emergent dialogue.

Van Eyck, invited to be given an honorary degree,presented the project in a speech given soon after its completion at the New Jersey Institute of Technology,- not far from the Iron-bound area, in the heart of the slam in the industrial neighborhood of Newark, named so because it is bounded by rail-tracks.

The audience consisted of well-established international architects of the new angry young men generation and students who applauded Van Eyck as their precursor an ally, and as a spokesman of the sustained living consciousness of architecture.

From the point of view of the architectural audience, this was the time of post-modern narcissistic ideologues of the autonomy of architecture who disregarded human functional needs, very different from the audience of the ‘materialistic’ designers of the times of reconstruction that Van Eyck confronted in the post war years of reconstruction.

Van Eyck surprised the audience by talking not about poetry but about the ‘need of better functioning,’ the need for function being ‘on more levels this time.’

8

ESTEC, (1984～1989), a research complex located Noordwijck, the Europe’s equivalent of NASA,was one of the last projects of Aldo and perhaps one of the most complicated. The facility contained a restaurant, a technical documentation center, and a series of office towers. Aldo was hired by the director of ESTEC, Massimo Trella. Hannie van Eyck, Aldo’wife, came to play increasingly an equal role in the design process.

Without forgetting his plea for ‘function on more levels’, Aldo, departed in this sophisticated research center from the orthogonal coordinates building systems, classical or anti-classical he used in his previous projects. Like Robert Venturi, a rigorous student of Italian Mannerism, he tried to experiment with a complex non-rectilinear, eleven-point, spatial coordination system that did not permit the compartmentalization of the place while enhancing the diversity groupings and the I and You of human community.

Although he was not a typical academic— his contract with the Delft University of Technology had to be renewed periodically and he was never offered a permanent post, — Van Eyck understood the deep problems of a scientific community. The question had already been identified by Louis Kahn and Jonas Salk in their discussions about the Salk Institute, in La Jolla in California, and it is increasingly discussed today in leading, cutting edge technology research laboratories.

Scientists have long realized the need for a place that can sustain a dialogue internal and external to the society of research. Because scientists appear to have the tendency to live in a world of fantasy and dream, pursuing their problems privately and often in extreme isolation producing in this manner increasingly differentiated, specialized, ‘incommensurable’ theories, closed ‘objects’, making mutual intelligibility and communication impossible.Yet, it is well known that most new ideas spring by leaping over knowledge barriers, not by solidifying them. When science, like any other human endeavor,becomes a highly divided, it becomes divisive, when it becomes shattered it shatters in turn. To borrow Wittgenstein’s metaphor, the more scientists succeed erecting elegant isolated ‘suburbs’ of knowledge, the more they run the danger to turn the City of Knowledge it into a slum.

圖8：胡貝圖斯單親宿舍，阿姆斯特丹，1973-1978Fig.8：Aldo van Eyck Hubertus Home, Amsterdam 1973 -1978

This is exactly what Aldo tried to prevent to happen through architectural means he applied in his Amsterdam playgrounds and through most of his poetic or pragmatic projects offering as alternative a“rainbow bouquet.”

(Footnotes to come)

We were very privileged to have met in person Aldo van Eyck and share ideas with him. Alex met him first at Harvard, while a student at Yale in 1962, Liane,in Delft in at around 1985. During the second part of the 1980s and the 1990s contributed a number of articles on Aldo and his projects involving theoretical but also practical problems of conservation of his buildings.Both Liane and Alex met and exchanged letters with him about a book they were preparing. Unfortunately,Aldo never saw the book published. He died 14 January 1999. The book was published a few months later,1999. The documents of their exchanges are deposited in the Tzonis and Lefaivre Archive.

Note

[1]The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1971. Simon Kuznets, ‘Prize Lecture to the memory of Alfred Nobel’, December 11, 1971.