Tuesday 1 June

 

Expert Meetings [included in conference fee]

Open to Iconic Houses Members and recurring Friends of Iconic Houses 

9:00am-6:00pm Location Het Nieuwe Instituut, Museumpark 25 Rotterdam

Expert Meeting I - Sustainable Conservation of Modernist Houses

In response to the current climate crisis, Modern house owners are increasingly pursuing energy-saving measures. Sustainable conservation, often relying on tailor-made technical solutions to maintain architectural integrity, is an opportunity to prepare a building for the years to come. So where to start? While larger investments such as solar panels, heat installations, insulation and special building materials require extensive planning and funds, owners can save considerable energy through small steps such as more energy-efficient heating systems, draught strips and curtains or shutters. The case studies in this session present ways to make historic houses more sustainable.

• Balancing Energy Efficiency with Heritage Conservation: Lessons from the Field

Chandler McCoy manages the Conserving Modern Architecture Initiative at the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles.

The need to improve energy performance in our existing buildings is more urgent now than ever before. However, this is a complicated matter when it comes to modern heritage. Architecture from the modern era is often characterized by large amounts of glazing (often thin curtain wall enclosures), flat roofs, and direct access to the outdoors. These are very significant features whose removal or alteration would result in significant loss of architectural integrity, but these are the very things that are usually targeted first when energy improvements are being planned. In this lecture, McCoy will draw lessons from recently completed case studies that demonstrate how improving energy efficiency can be successfully balanced with protection of modern heritage buildings to conserve both heritage values and energy use.
 

• Lectures 2, 3 and 4 (TBC)

Speakers names, speaker role, company, organization and abstracts will follow soon.

 

12:30pm        LUNCH on site at Het Nieuwe Café by individual arrangement

 

Expert Meeting II - Modern Heritage Homes after 1965  

Younger examples of architectural heritage can be particularly vulnerable, as they usually lack official protection – or even recognition. Luckily, there is a growing consensus that this more recent heritage is worth preserving. The Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, for example, has started the ‘Verkenning Post 65’ project to map the rich heritage dating from the period after 1965, and to explore how it relates to contemporary requirements including sustainability. A wide range of speakers from government organizations, private associations and local municipal heritage offices present case studies that illuminate the dilemmas decision makers encounter concerning young monuments.

• Pioneering Preservation Strategies

Niek Smit works as an architectural historian at Vereniging Hendrick de Keyser, the historic houses association of The Netherlands. 
The Hendrick de Keyser association, a more than 100-years-old private initiative, aims to preserve the architectural heritage of The Netherlands by acquiring, conserving, restoring and finding suitable uses for historic and architecturally important houses. It owns a diverse collection of historic properties. Perhaps less well known is its fine collection of 20th-century houses, with iconic designs by Rietveld, Duiker, Van Ravesteyn, Bonnema and Van Schijndel. To find sustainable longterm uses for newly acquired properties, among which is an experimental polyester house from the 1970s in poor condition, the association has developed a range of tested as well as innovative strategies, which will be explored in this presentation.

• Conserving British Post-War Houses

Catherine Croft is Director of the C20 Society, which campaigns for the preservation of architecture post-1914 in the UK.  
As yet, all four Iconic Houses members in the UK are interwar buildings (three of them from the 1930s). No post-war houses are regularly open to the public, although C20 Society tours sell out rapidly and Open House weekend visits generate long queues. 
It has been twenty years since C20 Society published its Post-war Houses journal, complete with an extensive gazetteer.  Subsequently many examples have been listed, and one is now owned by Landmark Trust and available for holiday rentals. 
What are the barriers to the creation of more house museums and what properties might future visitors be able to visit?  How likely is this to represent an accurate picture of post-war domestic design in the UK?
The presentation will look at architect Max Neufeld’s 1964 home in Fitzrovia, London and the Rogers House in Wimbledon, 1968-70, by Richard and Su Rogers, plus examples which have been lost or remain at risk.

• Alessandro Mendini's interior for the house of museum director Frans Haks 

Eva de Bruijne is a young heritage professional. She graduated in 2019 cum laude from the Masters Architectural History and Monument Care at the University of Utrecht. For her thesis Eva has analyzed a domestic interior - that was discovered in October 2018 and was until then virtually unknown - designed by Alessandro Mendini around 1997 and executed beween 2000-2001 in a monumental canal house in Amsterdam. After graduating she has been working as freelance interior and design historian on various projects specializing in interior, domestic culture and arts and crafts from the 19th and 20th century. 

• Lecture 4 (TBC)

Speakers names, speaker role, company, organization and abstracts will follow soon. 

 

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