Centraal Beheer: The limits of structuralism in the configuration of a support-space

Abstract

In 1968, Herman Hertzberger starts the project for Centraal Beheer inspired by the artistic and cultural trends in the sixties. It is in this context that the support-space concept, strongly linked to the idea of the traditional city, arises as a framework able to bear diverse interpretations throughout time and catalyst for the everyday relationships between the individual and the surroundings. Centraal Beheer is considered an example of a support-space building, up to the extent that the project's strategy of reproducing the traditional city habitability conditions implies a greater user involvement in the space configuration while it is subject to a clear distinction between the architectural form and the sequence of events. Centraal Beheer's functioning is assessed through the application of the dérive technique and psychogeography, which was initially conceived by Situationist International to rediscover the urban "milieu" as a support-space in which the time factor and the leading role of the user are also determinantal. This article aims to demonstrate how Herman Hertzberger's structuralist background allows us to understand the urban replica of Centraal Beheer as a support-space from an anthropological and epistemological perspective. It is by means of a collection of texts, pictures, and unpublished sketches, that the hypothesis is demonstrated in a cross-sectional study nourished by coetaneous researches into fields such as architecture, art, linguistics or sociology.