Do it Yourself

• There was no mistaking what the girl in a train somewhere in the Netherlands was saying to her boyfriend on the other end of the mobile phone line. ‘I don’t have time to think about my country or about politics. I think about myself. I think about taking risks. I think about enjoying myself. Most older people are so attached to old values. They belong to the “what if” generation and we belong to the “why not” generation.’ This one-sided conversation is an example of the trend towards ‘individualization’, of a growing aversion to organized collectivity in whatever form, be it churches, political parties, or even architecture. Contemporary Dutch society is all about what the sociologist Ulrich Beck calls the ‘do-it-yourself (DIY) biography’. It is about how you, as an individual, can shape your own life, including all the risks this entails, now that Nanny State has hauled in most of its safety nets.Government in the Netherlands no longer believes in its public task. It is busy selling off its collective interest to the private sector. Seventy per cent of housing construction is now in the hands of one corporation which in turn is financed by a single bank. Private initiative is celebrated as a triumph over the monotony of bureaucratic intervention. Individual prosperity is the be-all and the end-all. Long live market forces! The retreating government gives each individual their freedom back. The result is a boundless landscape of DIY initiatives. Everyone tinkers with their own DIY biography. Every individual has become his or her own brand.What today’s householders worry about is the price of their stock market shares, the value of their home, or whether it looks good, what kind of car they drive, what they are able to do in their spare time, whether they can walk the streets in safety and how they can shape their career. Weeding one’s own garden is much more important nowadays than worrying about other people. In the new suburb and the new city, public space appears to play a negligible role. You park your car behind a fence on your own territory. Householders are afraid of everything unknown that might jeopardize their possessions, their private freedom. Public space is transformed into a private domain where all the neighbours are ‘your type of people’ and from which ‘others’ are excluded. The countryside is turning into a golf course dotted with eclectic castles and modern villas while urban public space is increasingly dominated by the particular interests of privately owned shops, businesses and the tourist industry.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Konst -- Arkitektur (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts -- Architecture (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

architecture in the netherlands

middleclass

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