Habitat: Expanding Architecture

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.

Image: Jaap Bakema (left), Peter Smithson and Jacqueline Tyrwhitt discuss the MARS Group contribution during the Dubrovnik conference, 1956. Photographer unknown. Collection Het Nieuwe Instituut, TTEN f5