archaeologica hereditas · of samos abbey (galicia, spain) estefanía lópez salas 213 landscape...

ARCHAEOLOGICAHEREDITAS

Monographs of the Institute of Archaeology of the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in WarsawVolume published in cooperation with the Institute of Art History of the University of Warsaw

Warsaw 2017

10Preventive conservation of the human environment 6.Architecture as an element of the landscape

edited by Weronika Kobylińska-Bunsch, Zbigniew Kobyliński and Louis Daniel Nebelsick

Archaeologica HereditasWorks of the Institute of Archaeology of the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński in Warsaw

Editorial Board:Editor-in-chief: Zbigniew Kobyliński

Members of the Board: Tadeusz Gołgowski, Jacek Lech, Przemysław UrbańczykSecretary of the Board: Magdalena Żurek

Editorial Board’s address:1/2 Wóycickiego St., Building 23, PL 01-938 Warsaw, Poland

tel. +48 22 569 68 17, e-mail: [email protected]

Technical editing and proofreading: Zbigniew KobylińskiLayout: Bartłomiej Gruszka

Cover design: Katja Niklas and Ula Zalejska-SmoleńLinguistic consultation: Louis Daniel Nebelsick and Wojciech Brzeziński

Cover picture: part of the imperial garden Summer Palace in Beijing, China; photo by Weronika Kobylińska-Bunsch

Publication recommended for print by Professors Martin Gojda and Andrzej Pieńkos

© Copyright by Fundacja Res Publica Multiethnica, Warszawa 2017 and Instytut Archeologii Uniwersytetu Kardynała Stefana Wyszyńskiego, Warszawa 2017

ISBN 978-83-946496-4-7ISBN 978-83-948352-2-4

ISSN 2451-0521

Publisher:Res Publica Multiethnica Foundation

44 Cypryjska St.PL 02-761 Warsaw, Poland

http://res-publica-multiethnica.pl/

CONTENTS

ArchAeologicAHereditas 10

5 Preface Weronika Kobylińska-Bunsch, Zbigniew Kobyliński and Louis Daniel Nebelsick

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7 Environmental preventive conservation Andrzej Tomaszewski

11 The idea of preventive conservation of human environment Zbigniew Kobyliński and Weronika Kobylińska-Bunsch

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15 Preventive conservation of the human environment: architecture as an element of the landscape Lazare Eloundou Assomo

17 The role of the architecture in the creation, enhancement and preservation of cultural landscapes Stefano De Caro

21 World Heritage SITES for DIALOGUE: heritage for intercultural dialogue, through travel, “Life Beyond Tourism” Paolo Del Bianco

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23 Role of cultural sustainability of a tribe in developing a timeless cultural landscape: a case study of the Apatani tribe Barsha Amarendra, Bishnu Tamuli and Amarendra Kumar Das

37 The corporate and cultural: honoring the monumental in Kansas City, Missouri Cynthia M. Ammerman

47 Damaged landscape of ancient Palmyra and its recovery Marek Barański

57 The art of (architectural) reconstruction at archaeological sites in situ within the context of cultural landscapes Ewa M. Charowska

73 Lessons from landscape, landscape archetypes Urszula Forczek-Brataniec, Ana Luengo and Tony Williams

83 The city for people – the image of post-industrial sites in modern city Joanna Gruszczyńska

95 Sustainability by management: a comparative policy study of the World Heritage cities of Amsterdam, Edinburgh and Querétaro Eva Gutscoven, Ana Pereira Roders and Koen Van Balen

105 Polychromy in architecture as a manifestation of the link between man and environment Tetiana Kazantseva

119 Capturing architecture – the poetic vision of cultural heritage in the inter-war Polish pictorial photography Weronika Kobylińska-Bunsch

127 Landscape with ruins: preservation and presentation of archaeological relics of architecture Zbigniew Kobyliński

153 Educating architects: the problem with agricultural buildings Diederik de Koning

163 Historic gardens and climate change. Conclusions and perspectives Heiner Krellig

177 The monastic landscape – carrier of memory and potential catalyst in conservation and adaptive reuse processes of material and imma-terial heritage Karen Lens and Nikolaas Vande Keere

187 The missing landscape of Yuanmingyuan: preservation and revitalisation of a Chinese imperial garden Mingqian Liu

195 Seeking the traces of a former mon--astic landscape in the vicinity of Samos Abbey (Galicia, Spain) Estefanía López Salas

213 Landscape and national identity in Portugal Fernando Magalhães

225 The city that penetrates the sky Romano Martini and Cristiano Luchetti

231 Siting penal heritage: a history of Wellington’s prison landscape Christine McCarthy

243 Phantom heritage: Thingstätten and “sacred” landscapes of the Third Reich Louis Daniel Nebelsick

265 21st Century Garden with exhibition pavilion in Royal Łazienki Museum in Warsaw Ewa Paszkiewicz

283 The meanings of ruins for the history of the cultural landscape on the example of the remains of the castle complex at Wyszyna Kamil Rabiega

303 Dissolving materiality: ruins and plant relicts in the landscape parks by Denis McClair in Volhynia Petro Rychkov and Nataliya Lushnikova

323 Memory of the landscape: revela-tion through architecture and built environment at the Çamalti Saltern Işılay Tiarnagh Sheridan

333 Pre-Hispanic walkscapes in Medellín, Colombia Juan Alejandro Saldarriaga Sierra

345 The invisible and endangered land-scape: the case of the margins of the Cascavel Stream in Goiânia, Brazil Carinna Soares de Sousa and Almir Francisco Reis

361 Diamond mines shaping the South African landscapes Aleksandra Stępniewska

369 (Un)wanted heritage in the cityscape – arguments for destruc-tion or reuse. The case of the city of Kaunas Ingrida Veliutė

379 The Nordic Pavilion projects at the 2016 Venice Biennale. Scandinavian approach to architectural landscape Anna Wiśnicka

389 Architecture in the cultural land--scape of the Prądnik Valley Dominik Ziarkowski

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403 Notes on authors

Educating architects: the problem with agricultural buildings

Diederik de Koning

ArchAeologicAHereditas 10153–162

It has proven1 difficult for architects to engage them-selves effectively with the design of agricultural build-ings in the various cultural landscapes of post-war Eu-rope. On the one hand, the many traditional farm types that helped shape the appearance of agricultural land required no design intervention as their forms crystal-lised through time instead. Farms were built based on habits and traditions that varied regionally. Its knowledge was passed on from one generation to the next. On the other hand, industrial developments in agriculture and its building industry have now made these culturally rich farms obsolete as they cannot efficiently host con-temporary agricultural activities. The industrial building culture developed itself rapidly after the Second World War and is in continuous evolution. The construction of industrial farms is led by economics, leaving little room for architectural design in relation to its surrounding cultural landscape. Consequently, new architectural designs of agricultural buildings and rural settlements have become curiosa within the discipline of architec-ture, and only occasionally are these efforts addressed as part of the architecture discourse.2 Farm designs have become more of an engineering challenge instead, based on knowledge gained by the agricultural sciences. The architecture debate in Germany and Austria during the second half of the 20th century, however, seems to have been somewhat of an exception to this. Driven by a po-litical ambition to protect the appearance of the country-side in Austria3 and Germany4, and following a tradition of questioning the design of farms5, new institutes were formed at various architecture faculties. This paper uses the Institut für landwirtschaftliches Bauen und ländliches

1 Considering the sizable amount of farms that are continuously be-ing built by construction companies without direct intervention of an architect.

2 Only a few journal editions were devoted to the topic through the years, mostly in Germany and Switzerland. More recently, “Archi-tectural Design” released an issue in 2016 on Designing the rural, but hardly any concrete examples are discussed in this journal.

3 Bartussek 2002: 7.4 Meissner 2015: 18.5 See for example the work of Werner Cords-Parchim and Walter

Wickop. Perhaps this particular interest into the farm and country-side evolved out of German National Romanticism.

Siedlungswesen (Institute of Agricultural Architecture and Land Settlement) at Graz University of Technology6 as an example of one such academic institute, to explain how the education of architecture students on the topic has been tackled methodologically. We speak here in the past tense, as hardly any – if any at all – such institute still exists today. By revealing these particular methods, we may be able to revive the topic at architecture facul-ties in Europe today.

The lack of knowledge among practicing architects about both traditional farms and industrial farms could cause problems for the conservation of agricultural herit-age at large, as farms often had a very specific place in its landscape.7 While older farms as part of agricultural heri-tage can be protected and renovated, the construction of new agricultural structures forms is an entirely different challenge. This raises the question whether the value of agricultural heritage lies in the collection of individual buildings alone, or rather in the cultural landscapes that were actively shaped by a specific culture of farming and farm building. We are left with a dilemma: should we emphasise the protection of each of these individual farms alone, or should we rather emphasise the protec-tion of the larger cultural landscapes that surround – and include – these farms? For architects specifically, the first challenge is more straight-forward and includes the res-toration and renovation of traditional farms. On the one hand, many farms throughout Europe are adapted and transformed into houses, for instance, keeping the (exte-rior) appearance of the building intact while disregarding its original agricultural function. The second challenge, on the other hand, includes the careful construction of new buildings in relationship to their surrounding agri-cultural heritage, thus more specifically addressing the continuous function of farming as part of a rural way of life. The topic re-emerged during the second half of the 20th century, although a gap in knowledge resulted after the Second World War due to the rejection of the na-tional romantic connotations of the topic with Blut und

6 Technically still called Graz University of Applied Sciences or Fach-hochschule Graz then.

7 Schnitzer 1983: 148.

154 ArchAeologicA Hereditas • 10

Diederik de Koning

Boden ideology.8 The design question required an archi-tectural understanding of both the traditional building culture of the past and the industrial building culture of the present. It is the combination of these two fields of expertise that formed the core of the research done at architectural institutes such as the Institute of Agricul-tural Architecture and Land Settlement at Graz University of Technology. Rather than merely trying to protect the spatial charm of the countryside, architecture professors in Germany and Austria intended to actively engage in designing new buildings in order to offer realistic solu-tions that considered the rich traditional building culture present in agricultural communities.9

Framework

The hypothesis put forward in this paper is that cultural landscapes containing objects of agricultural heritage can be preserved by actively designing new buildings that are economical and useful, while at the same time evolving from the traditional building culture that is under threat. If this hypothesis were to hold true, then this opens up possibilities for the architecture community in particu-lar – parallel to work done by conservationists and arche-ologists – to engage in the active protection of cultural landscapes. In this proposition, the word “landscape” is used consciously. Unfortunately, the word has a wide variety of meanings – especially between different dis-ciplines – so a clear understanding of the hypothesis would require further definition. Four meanings seem to be widely accepted: first of all, the word landscape seems to be used these days to define a sphere of com-mon socio-cultural characteristics that – contrary to what we may expect – may not be defined by a piece of land per se. For example, a cultural landscape may refer to the collection of cultural activities held at museums, galleries, libraries, and other such public buildings. The preservation of a cultural landscape would thus imply the preservation of the cultural activities rather than the spatial context in which these activities take place. Al-ternatively, the word „landscape” may be used to define a spatial condition that is homogeneous and has its very own particular qualities. In this example, a cultural land-scape may thus refer to a region in which certain forms of farming emerge due to particular soil and climate con-ditions. This merging of natural and human influences in a piece of land is the definition that UNESCO uses to de-fine a cultural landscape. Contrary to the first definition, this use of the word landscape implies that a region can be differentiated by its particular spatial characteristics instead. A third definition of the word landscape is the particular view on such a piece of land, as portrayed, for instance, in landscape paintings. A landscape would thus

8 Peters 1983: 98.9 Schoch 1977: 37.

refer to a particular scene that one can witness while being physically present as a subject. This meaning can be traced back to Petrarca’s trip to the top of the Mont Ventoux in France in 1336. Supposedly, he was the first European to climb a mountain with the sole purpose of enjoying the wide-stretched view on the surrounding landscape.10 This definition of landscape became popular in the English language with the rise of landscape paint-ings in the 16th century. There is, however, a fourth defi-nition of the word landscape that predates this meaning by centuries. During the early middle-ages, the original Anglo-Germanic word landskipe or landscaef11 was used to refer to a particular piece of natural land that had been transformed into arable land. In other words, the word landscape could be used to define the active al-teration of (new) land for agricultural purposes, such as the poldering of land in the Netherlands. It is the latter definition of the word that is used in this paper, albeit under the term cultural landscape to avoid confusion. Not only does the word imply that a cultural landscape is an active project that requires continuous effort, it also implies that agricultural buildings – as a reflection of this effort – are crucial to understanding a wider building cul-ture. With the term „natural landscape”12 we will from here on refer to the prior condition as found, before set-tlers transformed it into a cultural landscape.

This agricultural transformation from a natural piece of land to a cultural landscape can be further explained with the example of the „Valley Section.” As this pa-per was written for an inter-disciplinary conference in memory of a man who had a broad range of expertise, it seems only appropriate to refer here to the work of a like-minded thinker. That is: the Scottish geographer, biologist, and town planner Sir Patrick Geddes (1854 – 1932). Over a hundred years ago, he first developed his influential idea of the Valley Section based on observa-tions he made along the river Tay in Scotland (Fig. 1). Geddes’ idea13 of the Valley Section is revealed clearly in a detailed illustration that may be attributed to both his son Arthur Geddes and his son-in-law Frank Mears.14 The Valley Section shows how our culture of inhabiting land evolves from the resources that a natural landscape has to offer. Mountains supply us with stones and min-erals when extracted and processed; forests supply us with wood when cut and sawn into timber; meadows supply us with pasture for cattle to graze on as we give them shelter; plains near the river supply us with fertile soil for farming when plowed, and rivers supply us with sweet water and fish when caught in nets. From moun-tain top to river, each zone thus requires specific tools to make use of its natural resources. Each zone and instru-

10 Lemaire 2010: 17.11 Jackson 1984: 5.12 Strictly speaking, this is a contradiction in terms.13 Geddes 1925: 398.14 This is an educated guess of Grant Buttars from the Centre for

Research Collections of the University of Edinburgh.

155Preventive conservation of the human environment 6 • architecture as an element of the landscape

Diederik de Koning Educating architects: the problem with agricultural buildings

ment in turn offers materials that can be used for the construction of buildings that are necessary to sustain a culture or way of life. Just as a fisherman requires a net and a boat to catch his fish, so also does a farmer require a set of buildings that are instrumental to the cultivation of land. Through many generations, settlers transform a pre-existing natural landscape into what we now refer to as a cultural landscape or Kulturlandschaft.

Agricultural buildings are of particular interest as their small-scale „design” solutions are later used for other structures as well. When new buildings have to be con-structed that have no agriculture purpose, their initial form is often derived from an existing farm type. In other words: the cultural influence of agricultural practices on the spatial environment is larger than merely the design of its farms. This building culture has a big effect on how village-patterns continuously evolve on a larger scale. Rather than being designed by architects, their forms crystallise through generations of tinkering and pass-ing on accumulated knowledge. While better known as „vernacular architecture” or as „architecture without architects”15, this evolutionary building practice has also been referred to as „Anonymes Bauen”16 or anonymous building. The term is rather elegant, as it suggests that architects can engage in the design of anonymous build-ings as well, as long as their authorship is not forced upon it. The preference of an individual is thus taken out of the equation and replaced with meaning that reflects a broader culture and is shared by a collective. Across Eu-rope, there are numerous examples of anonymous build-ings that uniquely mark their surrounding cultural land-scapes. One agricultural example is the typical hayrack called Harpfe in Austria and Kozolec in Slovenia. These structures have a relatively simple function: they protect cereals, corn, or hay from rainfall and wet soil, and let the collected crops dry in the wind. We can find many variations of this type throughout Austria and Slovenia. These range from a simple stick in the ground to double parallel hayracks with a roof and full of ornamentation. The dimensions of these structures are predetermined by conventions that appear very architectural: for some, the proportions and angles of the hayrack’s roof and height are defined almost mathematically.17 As the types were defined by the particular region they were built in, all that was left for the family’s individual expression was the ornamentation of the wood. The structures are so intertwined with local tradition and their surround-ing cultural landscape that it is no coincidence then, that the storing of straw occasionally went hand-in-hand with various folklore costumes made of cereals or hay in such regions as well.

Industrial innovations in agriculture, however, started to compete with traditional types such as the hayrack as

15 Rudofsky 1965: preface.16 Windbrechtinger-Ketterer 1995: 80.17 Juvanec 2012: 73.

they offered a far more practical alternative.18 The cut-ting, drying, and storing hay simply does not require such a physical structure anymore. Most of the hayracks have consequently become obsolete, unless they are used for a different purpose altogether. Without use and main-tenance, these wooden structures are prone to decay and are therefore declining in number. In those regions where the hayracks used to be an integral part of the agricultural community, the question arises if and how to protect these buildings from being lost. They are after all the marking stones of a specific cultural landscape. The preservation of a single building is very much within our capabilities. The preservation of the building type as a recurring object within the cultural landscape, howev-er, is a completely different challenge. As it is the varia-tion of these buildings as a whole that reflects a cultural practice, one cannot single out a single structure with the aim of preserving the entire traditional landscape. At the same time, it is simply too costly to preserve all these hayracks as long as they offer no practical use to those who maintain them. Occasionally, this deadlock is solved by rebuilding key examples of agricultural building types in one location that is open to the public. All over Europe there are open air museums where people can learn about the wide variety of farms and farm struc-tures. Some, like in Stübing in Austria, are the result of years of extraordinary investment requiring a long-term vision.19 Next to the farms present on the site initially, many buildings exhibited now in this valley were bought elsewhere, dismantled, and rebuilt on site. A similar open-air museum exists for the various Kozolec in Slo-venia as well.20 These solutions, however, focus on the building as object of heritage rather than the cultural landscape they once marked. The buildings are uprooted from their original environment and displaced, thus by-passing the hypothesis put forward in this paper.

The particular context of Germany and Austria

The initial challenge in such a situation still remains: to use architectural design that makes use of industrial in-novations while considering the demands of existing rural communities. The new global building industry is often considered to be disruptive to the landscape.21 In response, a group of architects in post-war Germany and Austria have actively tried to reconcile the anonymous building culture with the globalised building industry when designing for agricultural communities. They val-ued the wide variety of building types and way of life in

18 Sotriffer 1978: 22.19 See for instance: Pöttler 1992.20 The Dežela kozolcev Šentrupert/Land of Hayracks open-air mu-

seum in Šentrupert, Slovenia, covers 2.5 ha and showcases 19 hayracks.

21 Simons 1987: 2.


Diederik de Koning

the countryside, but also knew that the building culture had to be modernised in order for agricultural commu-nities to move forward. Their contributions to architec-tural education may well have been more influential than the individual projects they realised. As the anonymous building culture is not passed on from parent to child anymore, these architect-educators intended to pass on the knowledge they accumulated from teacher to stu-dent instead. Since the turn of the century, however, this academic engagement seems to have come to a halt and consequently a large body of knowledge is at risk of be-ing lost. Hardly any academic architecture institute still exists today that is solely committed to this effort. After architect Franz Riepl retired in 2000 as professor from the Institute of Agricultural Architecture and Land Set-tlement in Graz, Paulhans Peters considered this loss of attention for the topic problematic. Reflecting on Riepl’s work, he wrote: „But one question remained unan-swered in Graz: who is to pass on the necessary specialist knowledge to students about designing the agricultural buildings that will be needed there in the future?”.22

This question did not remain unanswered in Graz alone: the rise and gradual disappearance of an archi-tectural institute in Graz devoted to the topic of agricul-tural buildings and rural settlements is emblematic for aca demia in both Austria and Germany. One of the last remaining examples was that of the chair of Planen und Bauen im ländlichen Raum (freely translated: Planning and building in rural environments) at the Technical University of Munich, when professor Matthias Reichenbach-Klinke passed away in 2008.23 The overview presented (Fig. 2) gives us the possibility to put the specific case of Graz in a larger context, showing some of the key locations where architect-educators were still very much engaged with building up knowledge on the topic as part of architec-ture faculties. The developments in these two countries

22 Peters 2006: 17.23 Meissner 2015: 20.

were relatively similar24 and the architect-educators work-ing in these countries were occasionally in contact with each other.25 We could thus argue that an international discourse was more or less established here on the topic.

From 1980 until 2000, professor and architect Franz Riepl was the head of the Institute of Agricultural Archi-tecture and Land Settlement, founded in late 1969 at the Faculty of Architecture of what is now Graz University of Technology. Both the topical research and teaching methods developed under him are exemplary for the rise and fall of the architectural discourse in post-war Aus-tria and Germany. In one way or the other, each of the architect-educators specialised himself within the larger debate. What they shared, however, was that many of these professors were tied to a particular region in prox-imity to their home university. This made it possible to set up a network between architecture faculties, agri-culture institutions, and municipalities. In each of these cases the professors offered their expertise to villages on how to develop their cultural landscapes further. For example, professor Erich Kulke from the Technical University of Braunschweig was, among other things, devoted to the protection of a type of circle-shaped vil-lage found nearby Wendland. Together with his students, Kulke worked on the conservation and development of the village of Lübeln (Fig. 3). One of the results was the transformation of a farmhouse into a community cen-ter.26 Besides being an architect and professor at the uni-versity, he was also the head of the building department of the Landwirtschaftskammer (Agricultural Chamber of Commerce) in Hannover.27 Other professors were de-voted to a particular building type rather than a village pattern. For instance, professor Ulrich Schnitzer from the Technical University of Karlsruhe was, next to his passion for designing stables, engaged in traditional farmhouses

24 Although the East German institutes functioned very differently due to the socialist agenda.

25 Guldager 1977: 20. 26 Kulke 1973: 8.27 Grube and Johannsen (eds) 1977: 111.

Fig. 1. Patrick Geddes’ Valley Section illustrated by his son Arthur Geddes and/or Frank Mears (source: Centre for Research Collections at University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh)



Fig. 2. Selection of institutes acting in Ger-many and Austria on the topic of Agricultural Architecture and Land Settlement: Braun-schweig – Erich Kulke, Landwirtschaftliche Baukunde; Dresden – Werner Cords-Parchim, Landwirtschaftliches Bau- und Siedlung-swesen; Graz – Hinrich Bielenberg and Franz Riepl, Landwirtschaftliches Bau- und ländliches Siedlungswesen; Hannover – Wilhelm Landzet-tel, Ländliche Bau- und Siedlungswesen; Karlsruhe – Ulrich Schnitzer, Planen und Bauen im ländlichen Raum; Leipzig – Manfred Berger, Landwirtschaftliches Bauen; Munich – Helmut Gebhard, Entwerfen und ländliches Bauwesen; Stuttgart – Detlev Simons, Ländliche Siedlung-splanung; Vienna – Alfons Dworsky, Ländliches Bauwesen (designed by D. de Koning)

found in the Black Forest. He explored ways of adapting these anonymous buildings to a more modern way of life. He restored and renovated several of these farm-houses, helped setup competitions for architects on the topic, and built contemporary variations of this type as well.28 By surveying the many variations of anonymous buildings in these regions, the architect-educators raised an understanding of a particular building culture in order to propose new design solutions. Some of these propos-als included social housing on a larger scale. For example, Helmut Gebhard from the Technical University of Munich worked with his students on the expansion of the nearby village of Hirblingen around 1980.29 The prototypical na-ture of traditional farmhouses here resulted in a particu-lar village structure. Modern housing designs were devel-oped that had a similar prototypical nature, even though they were not intended to be used as farms themselves.

The case of Graz

One thing most of the professors were engaged in, was the careful surveying and consequent understanding of the anonymous building culture. Helmut Gebhard would, for instance, collaborate on a book series on farmhouses

28 Schnitzer 2001: 30.29 Gebhard 1981: foreword.

in Bavaria.30 They used this understanding to question how the building culture could evolve further, while tak-ing into account the globalising building industry of the time. Unlike the more artistic projects that were typi-cally done with students in urban contexts in that time, the resulting building designs and regional plans were relatively modest in nature. This was typical also for the work done at the Institute of Agricultural Building and Rural Settlement at Graz University of Technology. During the 1980s and 1990s, professor Franz Riepl’s design ap-proach contrasted that of the artistic architectural style of the Grazer Schule (Grazer School), which became in-ternationally recognised during the 1970s. In parallel, architecture students may generally have been more excited by the nurturing of their “inner creativity” than by the studying of anonymous buildings. Cultural land-scapes seemed to offer less freedom for radical designs. Consequently, the strict approach taken by Riepl was not always favored at the time, which perhaps gave him the nickname Rüpl (freely translated: Bully).31 But, in hind-sight, it is precisely this sensible approach to designing for the countryside that made both the education and work done by Riepl so effective.

30 Seven editions were published under the title series Bauernhäus-er in Bayern. Similar series on regional farmhouse types exist for other countries as well.

31 Based on conversation with Helmut Hoffman, assistant of Bielen-berg, 17.10.2016.


Diederik de Koning

His predecessor, professor Hinrich Bielenberg, was even more humble about architectural form–if not indif-ferent to it.32 Although he had practiced as an architect33, he focused his attention in Graz primarily on animal well-being and the protection of the natural environment. Key aspects of his work involved optimising conditions for a proper indoor living environment for animals, which could also increase productivity of the farm34, and the use of natural materials for the structures involved.35 On behalf of the institute, he helped farmers from the surrounding area to build well-functioning farms that si-multaneously respected the well-being of their farm ani-mals. His designs may appear conservative, but they did include high-tech ventilation solutions and were based on a prefabricated concrete structure.36 Uniquely, this concrete framework allowed the farmers to finish some parts of the buildings themselves using local wood. Other work, such as the construction of wooden trusses, was a more specialist task left to carpenters (Fig. 4).

32 Based on conversation with Helmut Hoffman, assistant of Bielen-berg, 17.10.2016.

33 Bielenberg 1963: 170.34 Bielenberg 1963: 156.35 See for instance the farm he built for the family Steiner in St. Geor-

gen ob Judenburg, Austria.36 Technical drawings can be found in the archive of Graz University

of Technology.

While farming played a role in the lives of both Riepl and Bielenberg (both came from farming families), Riepl considered the farm merely a part of a much larger cul-tural landscape to be studied.37 This becomes particularly clear when we look at the work he did with students in a course on Land Settlement or Ländliche Siedlungswes-en. This was one of the key courses given at the insti-tute. Others were the course on Agricultural Architecture (Landwirtschaftliches Bauen) and Settlement Planning in Rural Environments (Dorpsplanung). During an impres-sive twenty years, Riepl would focus (almost) each year on a different village in Austria for his course on Land Settlement. The work done by the students has been carefully documented. The combination of all these years of research (Fig. 5) offers insights on how architectural education could be structured today on the topic of ag-ricultural building and rural settlement.

Riepl’s approach to the course was both thorough and methodological. The seminars done on the villages of Döllach38 and St. Roman39 in the Spring of 1985 and 1986 are excellent examples of this approach. In advance, meetings were held to define concrete design tasks to-

37 Based on conversation with Peter Pretterhofer and Joan Carlos Gomez, assistants of Riepl, 04.10.2016.

38 Riepl 1985.39 Riepl 1986.

Fig. 3. Erich Kulke with his students in front of house number 2 of the village of Lübeln, 1970 (source: Rundlingverein, Wendland)



Fig. 4. Hinrich Bielenberg at the building site during the construction of the wooden trusses (source: Archive of Graz University of Technology)

gether with the local municipality and representatives of other organisations such as the chamber of commerce and the spatial planning department of the state.40 Based on the exchange of information, the institute defined zones of interest. Some of these zones were extremely small in scale, such as the hamlet of Weilers Ranach near Döllach. The roughly sixty students who applied to the course were invited for a three-day “excursion” to the site. These three days, however, were not taken leisure-ly. Students were asked to bring measuring equipment, drawing tools, and a camera to make a thorough inven-tory of the assigned location with its buildings. Groups of students worked on cataloging the built environment meticulously. The combined effort of the students result-ed in a detailed plan that occasionally reveals the interior of the buildings as well. This can be seen in the inventory made for the old village of St. Roman. The resulting map of the village seems to suggest that, in a village, people were still very much accustomed to meeting each other in their homes as part of the public environment: much like Giambattista Nolli´s map of Rome, the outlines of the interior spaces of the buildings were drawn rather than representing the buildings as black blocks (Fig. 6).

Back in Graz, a model maker turned the inventory into a physical model of the region. Having understood the condition of the village, students developed various architectural proposals for the spatial challenges set by the municipality, such as: barn adaptations, renovations of courtyard farmhouses, or new housing developments. Together with the model, these realistic design propos-als were presented to the municipality in the form of an open exhibition. A cost estimation was occasionally made for the interventions as well, giving the beneficiar-ies an incentive to follow-up on the designs. Consequent-ly, some of the smaller proposals have been realised as

40 Information on the process is based on letters, notes, and docu-ments that can be found in the archive of Graz University of Tech-nology.

a result, although a proper documentation of these cases does not exist. There were, however, also spin-off pro-jects that are worth mentioning. The method followed by Riepl resulted in a network of contacts between the various villages and the Institute of Agricultural Architec-ture and Land Settlement. This ultimately resulted in the realisation of various more sizable projects, developed at the institute. An example of this is the housing project in Sinabelkirchen, realised six years after the seminar held for that village.

The approach followed by Riepl can be considered successful as he managed to contribute to these vil-lages by realizing substantial projects. Regardless of the designs themselves, the mere fact that he was able to implement ideas based on the knowledge gained shows how he was able to overcome the misconception that there is no space left for an architect when building for everyday life in the countryside.41 Although Riepl did not put focus on the design of farms themselves, the course on Agricultural Architecture was still taught to students during his professorship. It is interesting to point out two farms that Riepl did realize with his own office: the first is the Finsterwalderhof built for the structural engineer Ul-rich Finsterwalder near Munich, Germany, in 1972.42 The second is the redesign of the Dambachmayrhof built in Kematen, Austria, a few years later. While the first farm is much more of an industrial and modernist farm complex, and contrary to what one may expect, Riepl considered it a pleasure to redesign the fortified farm in Kematen in a much more traditional way. Looking back at the process in 2008, however, he pointed out that the adaptation of such a traditional farm type would not be feasible any-more due to the increase of farming scale these days.43 This observation is critical, as it implies that older types are abandoned in favour of new agricultural buildings

41 Acedaño, Pichler and Pretterhofer 2013: 4.42 Riepl 1972: 524–527.43 Meder 2008: 35.


Diederik de Koning

Fig. 5. Villages visited for the Land Settlement cause led by Franz Riepl in Graz: (1) 1980/81: Lieboch, Styria; (2) 1981/82: Sat-tendorf, Carinthia; (3) 1982/83: Sinabelkirchen, Styria; (4) 1983/84: Turracher Höhe, Styria/Carinthia; (5) 1984/85: Döllach, Styria; (6) 1985/86: St. Roman, Upper Austria; (7) 1986/87: St. Roman, Upper Austria; (8) 1987/88: Sinabelkirchen, Styria; (9) 1988/89: Villach, Carinthia; (10) 1989/90: St. Peter am Kammersberg, Styria; (11) 1990/91: Seiersberg, Styria; (12) 1991/92: Goldegg am Pongau, Salzburg; (13) 1992/93: Bad Kleinkirchheim, Carinthia; (14) 1993/94: Judenburg, Styria; (15) 1994/95: Bad Zell, Upper Aus-tria; (16) 1995/96: Bad Gleichenberg, Styria; (17) 1996/97: Berg bei Rohrbach, Upper Austria; (18) 1997/98: Perg, Upper Austria; (19) 1998/99: St. Wolfgang, Upper Austria; (20) 1999/00: Gallneukirchen, Upper Austria

Fig. 6. Detail of the survey done by the students of Franz Riepl during the Land Settlement seminar on St. Roman (source: unpublished report stored in the library of the Institute of Architecture and Landscape)

elsewhere. Focusing merely on protecting our agricul-tural heritage may be a costly endeavor that ignores new developments that threaten the cultural landscape at large. In order to design new and practical farms, how-ever, one needs to have a proper understanding of their inner workings. Bielenberg, Riepl’s predecessor, solved

this problem by designing a series of farms that were based on new semi-industrial standardised types (agri-cultural architecture). This approach, on the other hand, ignored the larger impact of housing developments in villages (land settlement) that Riepl was interested in as well as part of a bigger picture.



Conclusions

Riepl’s seminar on land settlement seemed to connect the dots well at the time, and his projects are in some ways similar to work done at other such institutes. There are connections to be made between Franz Riepl’s aca-demic work in Graz and Helmut Gebhard’s academic work in Munich, for instance. Riepl may have been aware of Gebhard’s work as they both had their architect´s of-fices in Munich, Germany, and in his lectures, he referred to student work done under Gebhard as well. This shared approach bridged the gap well between practice and aca-demic research. In both cases, however, the institutes’ interest in agricultural buildings and the countryside fad-ed when their professors retired. In Graz, the institute’s name was changed to Regionales Bauwesen (Regional Architecture) in 2000 and to Architektur und Landschaft (Architecture and Landscape) in 2006. In a similar way, the institute’s name in Munich changed to Sustainable Urbanism in 2010. This raises the question why the topic came to a halt, and why it is not taught and researched as intensely anymore at architecture faculties today.

A few plausible reasons for this can be put forward. First of all, the regional character of the topic meant that material produced in the post-war era was written solely in the native language. Hardly any information is available in English, hampering the establishment of a larger international discourse. That the international discourse discussed in this paper was limited to Ger-many, Austria, and to some extent Switzerland, can be thus be explained. Secondly, each of the numerous cul-tural landscapes in Europe is highly unique. This means that it is difficult to apply knowledge gained in one place to another, as its context may be entirely different. The specialist knowledge of the wide range of traditional building types remained local knowledge as well. Conse-quently, students in Austria learned about the Austrian farmhouse types, while students in Germany learned about Germany farmhouse types. After all, these were most likely the conditions the graduated students would be facing later. Thirdly, architects seem to find it difficult to react to either the (beautiful) anonymous architecture that once was, or the (monotonous) industrial building industry that dominates the landscape. There is little

room left for design. As a consequence, architects seem to opt for a “laissez-faire” attitude regarding the topic, generally focusing attention on less complex commis-sions in the countryside such as the design of new villas. Finally, universities are orienting themselves more and more on international conditions. For instance, the In-stitute of Architecture and Landscape of Graz University of Technology has in recent years decided to investigate more exotic places such as Sao Paolo, Istanbul, and the African desert instead. In parallel, it seems that archi-tecture faculties have gradually focused their attention more on the city as object of study. It seems no coinci-dence then, that the institutes changed direction around the year 2008, for that is the year that marked the first time that more people lived in cities that in the country-side globally.

Recommendations

We could argue, however, that the topic is again relevant today, albeit in a slightly different way. The industrial farming types that appeared in the countryside during the second half of the 20th century as a consequence of industrial innovations evolved so rapidly, that it must have been tough for architects to catch up. Farms gradu-ally increased in size, which would make every new farm outdated relatively quickly. Consequently also, attempts to adapt older farm types to new developments proved unsustainable. Now that new agricultural building types have settled somewhat in their development, we could grab this opportunity to attempt to understand them as new anonymous buildings that are an integral part of the cultural landscape as well. In each region, the knowledge of traditional building culture – rather than the build-ings themselves – may be used to make variations on these more generic industrial buildings. Perhaps a new challenge will emerge: rather than updating the old, ar-chitects may have to add culture to the new. For such a challenge, we can learn from the academic body of knowledge that was once built up at the institutes men-tioned in this paper. Key texts may have to translated to English and key projects may have to be analysed in order to finally build up an international discourse on the topic.


Diederik de Koning

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Notes on authors

ArchAeologicAHereditas 10403–404

Barsha Amarendra – BA, architect; Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur, India.

Cynthia Ammerman – historian and preservation strate-gist; director of the Polis: Cultural Planning, LLC in Kansas City, Missouri, and of the Cass County Historical Society in Harrisonville, Missouri, USA.

Lazare Eloundou Assomo – Deputy Director of UNESCO’s World Heritage Center, Paris, France.

Marek Barański – Dr eng., architect, conservator of histo-ric monuments; Kielce University of Technology, Faculty of Building Engineering and Architecture, Kielce, Poland.

Ewa M. Charowska – Dr eng., architect, historian and historic preservationist; independent scholar working in Toronto, Canada.

Paolo Del Bianco – President of the Romualdo Del Bian-co Foundation, Florence, Italy.

Stefano De Caro – Dr, archaeologist; Director-General of ICCROM, former Director-General of Antiquities with the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, Rome, Italy.

Urszula Forczek-Brataniec – Dr; lecturer at Cracow Uni-versity of Technology, Cracow, Poland. Secretary General of the European Region of the International Federation of Landscape Architects.

Joanna Gruszczyńska – MSc. Eng. Arch., architect; doc-toral student at the Warsaw University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture, Warsaw, Poland.

Eva Gutscoven – MSc; architect and conservator working in Belgium.

Tetiana Kazantseva – Dr, Associate Professor; Depart-ment of Design and Architecture Basics, Institute of Architecture, Lviv Polytechnic National University, Lviv, Ukraine.

Weronika Kobylińska-Bunsch – MA, art historian; doc-toral student at the Institute of Art History, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland.

Zbigniew Kobyliński – Professor Dr habil., archaeologist and manager of cultural heritage; director of the Institu-te of Archaeology of the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński Uni-versity in Warsaw, Poland.

Diederik de Koning – MA, architect and environmental and infractructural planner; PhD candidate at the Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Borders and Territories Research Gro-up, Delft, the Netherlands.

Heiner Krellig – Dr, art historian, independent scholar, working in Berlin, Germany and Venice, Italy.

Amarendra Kumar Das – Professor; Department of De-sign, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, India.

Karen Lens – MA, architect; doctoral student at Hasselt University, Belgium.

Mingqian Liu – MA, historian of art and architecture; PhD student at the Department of Architecture, Texas A&M University, USA.

Estefanía López Salas – Dr, architect and restorator; Professor at the School of Architecture, University of A Coruña, Spain.

Cristiano Luchetti – Assistant Professor; American Uni-versity of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.

Ana Luengo – MA, MSc, PhD, landscape architect; former President of the European Region of the International Federation of Landscape Architects –IFLA EUROPE.

Nataliya Lushnikova – Dr Eng., Associate Professor; Na-tional University of Water and Environmental Engineering, Institute of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Department of Architecture and Environmental Design, Rivne, Ukraine.

404

Notes on authors

ArchAeologicA Hereditas • 10

Fernando Magalhães – PhD, anthropologist; Interdisci-plinary Venter of Social Sciences (CICS.NOVA), Polytech-nic Institute of Leiria’s School of Education and Social Sciences, Leiria, Portugal.

Romano Martini – PhD, theoretician of law and politics; Adjunct Professor at Niccolo Cusano University, Rome, Italy.

Christine McCarthy – PhD, architect and art historian; senior lecturer at the Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand.

Louis Daniel Nebelsick – Dr habil., archaeologist; Profes-sor at the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in War-saw, Poland.

Ewa Paszkiewicz – MA; main scenographer at The Royal Łazienki Museum in Warsaw.

Ana Pereira Roders – Dr, architect and urban planner; Associate Professor in Heritage and Sustainability at the Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands.

Kamil Rabiega – MA, archaeologist; PhD student in the Institute of Archaeology, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński Uni-versity in Warsaw, Poland.

Almir Francisco Reis – Dr, urban planner; Professor at the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Florianópolis, Brazil.

Petro Rychkov – Dr, architect; Professor at the Lublin University of Technology, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Department of Conservation of Built Heritage, Lublin, Poland.

Juan Alejandro Saldarriaga Sierra – Dr, cultural geogra-pher; teacher at the Faculty of Architecture of the Natio-nal University of Colombia in Medellin, Colombia.

Carinna Soares de Sousa – BA, architect and urban de-signer; MA student in urban planning at the Federal Uni-versity of Santa Catarina in Florianópolis, Brazil.

Aleksandra Stępniewska – MA student of architecture at the University of Social Sciences in Warsaw, Poland.

Bishnu Tamuli – Doctoral student at the Department of Design, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, India.

Işılay Tiarnagh Sheridan – BA, MSc, architect; research assistant at the İzmir Institute of Technology in Faculty of Architecture, Izmir, Turkey.

Andrzej Tomaszewski (1934-2010) – Professor dr habil., historian of art and culture, architect, urban planner, in-vestigator of Medieval architecture and art; director of ICCROM (1988-1992), General Conservator of Poland (1995-1999).

Koen Van Balen – Professor at the Catholic University of Leuven and director of the Raymond Lemaire Internatio-nal Centre for Conservation, Belgium.

Nikolaas Vande Keere – MA, civil engineer architect; Professor in charge of the design studio of the Interna-tional Master of Interior Architecture on Adaptive Reuse at the Hasselt University, Belgium.

Ingrida Veliutė – Dr; lecturer at the Vytautas Magnus University Faculty of Arts and member of ICOMOS Lithu-ania.

Tony Williams – former President of the Irish Landscape Institute and President of The European Region of the International Federation of Landscape Architects.

Anna Wiśnicka – Dr, design historian; teacher at the In-stitute of Art History of the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw, Poland.

Dominik Ziarkowski – Dr, art historian; Cracow Universi-ty of Economics. Chair of Tourism, Cracow, Poland.

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