Kees Christiaanse (born 1953,Amsterdam) is anarchitect andurban planner from theNetherlands. After working withRem Koolhaas, he started two firms,KCAP (Kees Christiaanse Architects & Planners, inRotterdam) in 1989 andArchitects and Planners (ASTOC, inCologne) in 1990, where he was a partner till 2002. Christiaanse has "tackled some of the highest profile urban design schemes in the Netherlands, hosting buildings by" the finestDutch and several international architects.[1]
Christiaanse worked withRem Koolhaas' architecture firm,OMA, where he was made a partner in 1983 at the age of 30,[1] and worked for the firm until 1989. After OMA, he founded Kees Christiaanse Architects and Planners (KCAP, inRotterdam, 1989) and ASTOC Architects and Planners (inCologne, 1990);[2] he worked with ASTOC until 2002. He was also artistic director of the Dutch Building Department from 1993 to 1996.[1] From 1996 to 2003 he was a professor of architecture and urban planning atTechnische Universität Berlin, and is now the Chair of Architecture and Urbanism in the Institute for Urban Design atETH inZürich.[3][4]
Two monographs on Christiaanse's work have been published, and an exhibition of the work done by his firms, "The City as Loft," was held atDeSingel inAntwerp in 2003.[5] He is known for his urban planning work and "has quietly become the power behind the throne of Dutch architecture."[1] He now lives and works in Zurich.
Christiaanse was the curator of the 4th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, and takes on large-scale projects such as the development of neglected areas for the2012 Summer Olympics.[6] His latest project is the design of a masterplan for an "engineering campus" (or "science park") in theBavarian city ofAugsburg, a 70-acre (280,000 m2) project for which the state government (Freistaat Bayern) and the city are contributing 60 million Euros.[7][8]
Of particular interest to Christiaanse is the modern city, especially its openness or lack thereof. His designs as well as his public statements propagate the idea of "mixed communities," as he explained in an interview, to counteract the modern move toward gated communities and to increase different kinds of interactions among citizens. Such interactions, and the social control that comes along with it, also increase security, a concern in many European lower-income neighborhoods. The buildings to be built in such new neighborhoods Christiaanse calls "socializing machines."[9] The metaphor Christiaanse often uses, of the city as a tree, is borrowed from architect and urban theoristChristopher Alexander, whose 1965 essay "A City Is Not A Tree" had suggested that cities grow like trees at their peril, with branches only connected to each other via the trunk. Alexander's fear, Christiaanse suggests, has become real, according to a keynote speech he delivered at the Holcim Forum 2007 for theHolcim Foundation,[10] which is the key to his lament that "The city becomes a tree [the urban landscape becomes a forest of trees]."[11] In a presentation given to theUrban Age South America Conference, December 2008, he gave some characteristics of the openness he wants cities to encourage in order to prevent this segmentation. Cities should be (or have):
Urban plan for Vinex location Schuytgraaf,Arnhem (1998)[22]
Urban plan for Lelystad South area of the Flevoland Vinex (1999)
Winning proposal in 1999 forHafenCity inHamburg, one of the largest European rebuilding projects of the 21st century[23]
"Vexierbild," three buildings in Hamburg Holzhafen, first building finished 2003 ("Vexierbild" translates as "impossible object"—the buildings suggest the earlier warehouses and by virtue of their open architecture allow an observer to see through to them to the city)[24]
^See "summary of keynote speech," "From Trees to Networks," at"Kees Christiaanse". Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction. 2007. Archived fromthe original on 2008-09-18. Retrieved2009-01-30.
Campus and the City. Urban Design for the Knowledge Society. Kerstin Hoeger, Kees Christiaanse (eds.) Zuerich: gta publishers; 2007.ISBN978-3-85676-218-6.
Urban Reports. Urban strategies and visions in mid-sized cities in a local and global context. Nicola Schüller, Petra Wollenberg and Kees Christiaanse (eds.) Zuerich: gta publishers; 2009.ISBN978-3-85676-228-5.
Open City. Designing Coexistence. Tim Rieniets, Jennifer Sigler, Kees Christiaanse (eds.) Amsterdam: SUN architecture; 2009.ISBN978-90-8506-783-2.
