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Chapter 12

BOSCHPLAN

AMSTERDAM

VERKl ARtNG

vrHl S,7 H

RljWH


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T he A msterdam Bos: Th e M odern Public Park and the

Construc tion of Collective Experience

Anita Berrizbeita

T he urban park has been traditionally understood as the place tha t mit igates the

deb ilitating effects o f congested urb an life. Th is m itigation is typically achieved

by tr an sposin g certa in characte ri stics o f th e ru ra l and n atu ra l en v ir on m en t in to

the city, estab lishing the par k from th e outset as the citys cou nterp art. In P ub

lic Parks and the En largem ent of Tow ns, Frederick Law O lmsted proposed

that extensive woods ought to surround the park, deep enough to completely

shut o ut the city from o ur landscapes and so achieve the greatest possible con

trast with the restraining and co nfining condit ions of the tow n. ' Th us, as a

place to es cape from th e ov erra tionaii za tion o f th e rou tine operations o f th e

modern metropolis, the park offers the opportunity to restore and protect theindividuals subjective and spiritual iife against the impersonal forces that sur

r o u n d t h e m .

T he ninete enth -cen tury pu blic park was largely conceived as bourgeois ter

ritory. This was a place where the individual could exercise the intellectual and

social freedom s afforded by liberal political tho ug ht. T h e very forms o f the p ark

suppo rted the pu rsuit and cult ivat ion o f individualism: its natural ist ic com posi

tion oflay ered, tran sp are nt spaces op en to a m ultiplicity of readings, its aestheti-

cized representat ion o f nature, an d i ts conceptual d istance from the city around

it. For the most part, individuals engaged in the passive, reflective contempla

t ion o f scenery, enjoying m om ents of q uiet sol i tude tha t served to restore a sense

of self. T hu s, a lthou gh a public space, the experience o f the pa rk was essentially

private , dom estic an d sec lu ded*in n a tu re . N estl ed w it h in a m etr opo lis d o m i

nated by stand ardizat ion, the public park o f the 1800s marked a disjunction

betw een ev ery day u rb an life and aesth etic prac tice s, betw een a society th a t was

ruled by mass produ ction and i ts modes o f cultural thinking inheri ted from

eighteenth-century Enl ightenm ent culture.

In w hat follows, I present a m om ent in the history of the public park wh en

this disjunction ceases to exist, when there is no longer an antithetical


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relationship between the idea of the park an d the idea of the city. T he Bos Park,

an 875-hectare forest-park built in Amsterdam between 1929 and the 1950s,

breaks w ith the traditio n of th e nin ete enth -c entu ry bo urgeo is park (Fig. 1). Its

designers, the architect Cornelis Van Eesteren and the landscape architect

Jacopa Mulder, adopted a program of productivism proposing landscape

architectural design as technique (or a set of techniques) rather th an as inspired

aesthetic creation. Moreover, they made the productive program for the park

explicitly visible in its physical form, con necting it to the processes of the ind us

trialized city aro un d it.

Recon ccptualizing the relationship between the park and the city necessar ily results in fun dam en tal aesthetic and social shifts that both recover an d tran s

form the traditions of the u rban park. It also restructures the relationship

be tween the perce iving subjec t and the park itself (the ob ject), and between the

object and its creator. Th is is a materialist interpretation of the m odern public

par k th at looks for signi ficat ion not in an aesthet ic idea! achieved th ro ugh

mimetic representation bu t in the relationships amo ng modes o f material pro

duction and evolving social and political structures.^ This view moves from an

emphasis on aesthetic experience as an isolated, abstract, and autonomousinstance in individual experience to one in which those experiences are funda

me ntally rooted in the realities of m od ern life.1

The Bos Park

In 1929, when the city council o f Am sterdam approved the be ginning of the Bos

Park project, Cornelis Van Eesteren and Jacopa M ulder had two precedents to

consider: the picturesque park, represented at that time by Olmsted and the

English examples, and the vol/(sparJ(s {peoples parks) built in Germany during

the first two decades o f this century. Van Eesteren and M uide r traveled to En g

land an d G erm any to study examples of each type. Th ey also had the recom

me ndations o f the exceptional report produced by the Boschplan Com mittee,

which included images of landscapes that were desirable models for the Bos

Park.6Thesc were a swimming facility in Hanover, Germany, a playground in

Berlin, a forest in Breda, and anoth er in the H ague. T hese pictures suggested a

rem arkab le synthesis oftw o as yet un pa ired landscape types: the athletic facility

w ith the native fo rest.1

Even before the park was finished, it was lauded as a remarkable innova

tion. Th e au thor o f an article published in theJo urna l o f the Royal Institu te o f

British Architects in 1938, seven years after construc tion be gan, openly ad m itted


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The Amsterdam Bos

the impossibility of naming the style of the park. It is described as

ne ithe r... Beaux A rts.. .nor even the gen uine English landscape style ...and theroads, rivers and canals do not run in snaky lines, returning on themselves in

formally informal curves of tiresome and un natu ral symm etry. Th ere is also

no trace of the new G erm an form s.... " Th e a utho r goes only so far as to say that

the scale o f the meado ws rem ind him of a Repton ian landscap e and that the

landscape forms the link between the various com pon ent pa rts __All these are

pla in ly [my emphasis] Jinked tog ether by long stretches of meadow of irregular

conto ur and generally happy pro portions .'1

It is interesting tha t the critic was no t able to describe the park acco rding to

established stylistic categories. Clearly, the appearance of this new park was

qu ite different from tha t of its predecessors. Inde ed, Van Ee stere ns and M ul

de rs concep tion o f the design an d c ons truction o f the park as a process rather

than as an aesthetictzcd composition demanded that a critic understand its

value less in terms of how it looks and more in terms of how it works. It is

prec ise ly th is conceptu al sh ift from co mpos ition o f form to process of p ro duc

tion tha t negates" the traditional idea of the pub lic park and conne cts the pa rk to

the city by pre senting it as just ano ther o f the city's m ultiple productive o pera

tions. Ultimately, this shift in the con ceptua lization of landscape redefined the

psycho logica l space of the park as one th at is n ot private and subjec tive but civic

and p ublic.

Bu ilt unde r the aegis of une m ploy m ent relief, the Bos Park was constructed

entirely by men and horses, with little or no aid from machinery.'0Nevertheless,

the adop tion o f a series of rational design an d con struction tec hniqu es mea nt

that there was a high degree of instrum entahza tion o f natural processes com

m ensurate to that o f any other industrial procedure; the conceptualization of

processes, such as dra in age and p la n t g ro wth , as product ive en tities al lowed the

park to be co nceived as a site of p ro duction.

T he first operation en tailed dism antling the existing structure of orthogonal

dikes and rectilinear drainage channels (Fig- 2). These had been laid 50 meters

apart and compartmentalized the site into a series of rectangular agricultural

fields typical of the D utch polder land scape.11O ne dike was retained the park

boundary at the Sch in kelpold er in ord er to pro tect the site fro m surface

drainage from the so uthw est.12Th e elim ination o f the original grid of dikes and

channe ls was followed by sm oothing o ut the terrain. T his was necessary because

the polders th at cons titute the site were formed an d de -pe ate d1 at different

times between 1858 and 1925, meaning that their elevations varied (Fig. 3)


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Reg ularizing t he topograp hy allowed the r estoration o f a con

tiguous ground plane on the site, uninterrupted by channels

and earthen walls.

Th e second operation dealt with the man agem ent of water

on the site, wh ich averages 4,5 meters below sea level. T h e

establishment o f a forest rendered the windm ill techniq ue for

elim inatin g excess water from the site ineffective. More im po r

tantly, programming the site as a forest required a concept for

drainin g the soils that would allow for the plan ting and growth

of a new forest. Thus, a massive drainage operation involving

two separate systems was und er

taken. The first system com

pr ise d a networ k o f pipes laid

be tw ee n 1,5 and 2 meters below

grade. This system continu

ously lowers the w ater table and

thu s enables the roots o f the for

est trees to develop, The second

system comprised a series of

canals evenly dispersed across

the site. Thes e canals gradually convey the wa ter to the north east corne r of the

site, where a sluice pu m p releases it into a lake, the N ieuw e Meer. T he nu m er

ous watercourses visible on the site are nothing other than an efficient drainage

system.

T he third operation involved the ado ption of a plan ting system for the con

struction of the forest. Th e designers used a well-established practice of ind us

trial forestry tha t is entirely dep end ent o n a process of vegetational succession.

Randomly distributed in a grid, two forest types were planted; a provisional

pio neer fores t o f fas t-grow ing alders , willows, po plars, an d bi rch, an d a p erm a

ne nt forest of the slower-grow ing ash, maple, oak, and beech (Fig. 4). In add i

tion to helping further drain the site through evapotranspiration, the pioneer

forest provided the necessary shelter tor the seedlings of the p erm ane nt forest,

Fig. 2 (top). Plan of existing conditions. Source: Rapport van de Coirirmssie voor tie t Boscbplan

{Amsterdam, 1931),

Fig, 3 (bottom ). Site sect ion. Source: Rapport van de Cotnmissie voor tie t Boschplan (Amsterdam,

1931).


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The Amsterdam Bos

wh ich requ ire shade du ring their initial years. After fifteen years

ofg row th, the pio nee r forest, wit:h the exc eption o f the alder, wascut down, allowing the established permanent forest to grow.

The remaining alder was pollarded to produce a horizontal

bra nchin g habit and prov ide shade on the fores t floor to preven t

understory growth.

Finally, the landscape elements were distributed across the

site in a spatial structure that is nonhierarchical, open-ended,

and reiterative. Forest, open lawns, and water are distributed

evenly across the site in a mosaic-like pattern that is more accu

rately described as a fabric. O f the

total 2,23.5 acres, 775 are devoted to

woodlands, 625 acres to open lawns,

and 835 roads and water.'4 T ha t is,

they exist in a more or less 1:1:1 rela

tionsh ip with each other.15 Th is even

but in te rm in gle d dis tr ib ution o fl and-

scape conditions recalls the spatial dis

tribution in De Stijl paintings, which

typically give equal weight to all ele

men ts o f the p aintin g while filling the spacc of the canvas evenly all the way to

its edges.,fl Similarly, at the Bos Park, the forest, lawns, and watercourses spread

across the site all the way to its perimeter. There is no spatial differentiation

betw ee n a cente r an d an edge condit ion on th e site, reflec ting the continuity of

the ground plane (Fig. 5).

T hre e areas of the site were treated differently tha n the overall strategy

described above. Th e so uthe rn third of the B uitendijksche Buitenvc.ldersche

po lder , w hic h is adjacent to de nsely popula te d neig hborh oods, was devoted to

game courts. T he north ern edge of the site, along the Nieu we Meer, and the

southea stern co rner of the site, kno wn as the Poel, were existing wetlands that

the committee feit should not be forested. It would have been too costly to alter

the soil and drain th e water in these areas; in add ition, their ecological value, as

Fig. 4 (top). Planting diagram. Source: Alan Ruff, Holland and the Ecological Landscapes (Man

chester: Department of Town and Country Planning, University of Manchester, 1979).

Fig. 5 {bottom). Diagram showing the distribution of landscape elements. Drawn by Mitch Rasor.


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192

well as their beauty, was recognized as an aspect of the site to be preserved, espe

cially given its imm ediate vicinity to the city. T he com mittee also suggested the

pre se rv at io n o f several of th e ex is ting fa rms on th e site. Pre sently , on e o f th ese

remains nea r the ma rshland to the north, by the Nieuw e Meer. Over the fabric

of woodland, w ater, and open lawns were sup erimposed the exceptions to the

system: the rowing course, die sailing pond, and th e bobsleigh hill, formed with

the fill obtained from diggin g for the w ater bodies on the site.

T h u s , although the con struction of the park was systematic, it is evident

that existing and new conditions were overlaid upon, or embedded into, the

overall system. T his is less an indicatio n of a concer n for the geniu s of the

pla ce , which deriv es from a visual an d an ex pe rien tial in te rp re ta tion o f th e site,

and m ore of an interest in objectifying the landscape as living m atter and in

intensifying the raw m ateriality of the varying co ndition s of die site: the soft,

spong y forest floor, its cycles and scents; the irreversible w etness o f the marsh-

but not of th e fie lds; an d th e sense o f sky an d w ea th er th at is fundam enta l to

D utch landscapes.

Previous, traditional construction techniques in landscape architecture

were subsumed und er the stylistic intentions of the designer. Th e production o f a

scene that had integrity as a visual compo sition was of utm ost im portanc e. From

the sim plest technical innovatio ns, such as the ha -h a,iJ to the most elaborate

schemes of water control, the p icturesque landscape was underlaid w ith m yriad

works of engineering, silently and secretly contributing to the prod uction of an

aesthetically naturalized view. Similarly, Frederick Law Olmsted resisted the

introduction o f program and utility into his parks and, when it became

inevitable, program was folded into the internal, auton om ous necessities of his

aesthetic, picturesque agenda. P rogram, he argued, diminished the co ntem pla

tive function o f the park an d im poverish ed its spiritual value for the individ ual.!S

Conceiving landscape as program, or ascribing functional value to park

land, is the first radical break from a pictorial concep tualiza tion of landscape.

But in its inception in the G erm an volfysparfys of the first decades o f the twe ntieth

century, functionalism did not provide the freedom from established rules of

composition in landscape that, say, architectural functionalism allowed for

bui ld in gs . I n Lebe re ght M igge s an d M art in W ag ner s/ agendparkon the Pichel-

swarder peninsula in Berlin, for instance, the plan is organized in a traditional

mann er: aro und a central axis for m arching youth formations, with a symm etri

cal distribution of program on either side, such as open lawns for military exer

cises. Wagn ers radical con tributio n, thou gh, was to elimin ate the tradition al


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The Amsterdam Bos

conceptual distance between work and leisure by incorporating both in equal

terms: as productive, fun ctional aspects of the city. For him , the he alth benefitsthat parks provide for people had an economic value akin to capital generated

by oth er p roduct ive funct ions o f the city.*0T his in te rp re ta tion o f pa rk land in the

city was later adopted by C lAM s 1928 Declaration o f La Sarrax and again in its

1933 Cha rter o f Athens.11However, wh ile reconcep tuaSizing a land scape strictly

in terms o f its function al value displaced the prevalence o f scenic approaches to

design, it had n ot yet provided new tec hniqu es o f design and construction.

Th ere were no new technologies in nature, so to speak, only new ways ofpu tting

nature to use.

in its provision of a dense program ma tic plan (rowing, canoeing, water ski-

ing, speedboating, equestrian sports, cycling, trails, winter sports, and court

games such as hockey, football, and cricket), the Bos Park is clearly the offspring

of the G erman volktspari{, but it represents a break with that tradition in its

expression o f the landscape as functio ning biological matenal. The strategy at

Bos Park concretizes the differences amo ng die elem ents in terms of the specific

contribu tion o f each to the overall ecological structure of the landscape, and

among their functions (water for drainage, for example, is expressed differently

than water for sports). Th is c onstitutes, in effect, a division o f labor, und erstood

in its widest sense to include the division of production, the differentiation of

work processes and s pe cializ atio n.D rain ag e, forest production, and the open

lawns are highly specialized operations, carrying out objectively prescribed

tasks that enable h um an use of the site: drainage for reclamation, forest lor wind

pro tect ion, and open lawns for play.

Th e d ifferentiation o f landscape types is also carried thro ugh to the pro

gram. T ho se aspects of the pro gram th at require specific dimensions, such as

game courts, are not blended into the form of the forest. On

the contrary, they are densely laid out, exten ding the organiza- ...... ,....

tion of the adjacent neighborhood into the park. Th e 2-kilo- ' ' '

meter rowing course (originally 72 meters wide, expanded to

92 meters in 1964), on the no rth o f the site, is sited perp endi

cular to the direction o f drainage flow, imm ediately distin

guishin g itself functionally from the o ther water bodies on the * ,, *

site (Fig. 6). Likew ise, park bu ildings, trad itionally rustic in ? I

Fig. 6. Bos Baan study. Cornells Van Eesteren and jacopa Mulder, 1930.

Source: Rapport van de Commissie voo rhet Bo schplan (Amsterdam, 1931).


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order to blend i n with nat ur e, are here mad e o f concrete, steel, and glass. All

elements are shown to be simply w hat is demand ed technically of them . Th eir

function resides primarily in their material properties rather than in any aes

thetic value or quality.

Perhaps the most meaningfu l break that the Bos Park makes with the picto

rial traditio n is, then, the p ropo sition th at design itself is the esta blish m ent of a

wording method, a system of operation s inform ed by scientific analysis (hyd rol

ogy, forestry, social sciences) a nd aimed toward concrete applicatio ns (reclam a

tion, shelter, recreation). W hat is significant here is tha t the workin g metho d

and the technical means themselves are unveiled and incorporated into the final

appe aranc e of the park, giving it its artistic logic and m eaning. Co m position as a

passive practice is re jected in favor o f co nst ru ct io n as an active pro cess /5 T he

pa rk is the re su lt o f the co nd itions o f its own mak ing.

Landscape as System of Production

In traditional mim esis, mea ning is generated by isolating some aspect of the

world and expressing that reality in the art object by m anipu lating the c onven

tions of the m edium . But w hen the impulse of the work is not about rep resenta

tion of outside reality b ut the articulation o f its system of production, the work

induces w hat M ichel Fou cault called a cond ition o f exteriority. By this he

mean t that the perceiving subject does not focus on discerning a hidden co ntent

manifested in the work but, instead, his or her attention is directed toward the

external conditions o f its existence. T he m eanin g o f the work, norm ally lodged

in an aestheticized, m imetic represe ntation o f a previously und erstood reality, is

now relocated to the ou tside, in the nexus of relationships that derive from the

process an d system o f pro duction.

I draw five im plications from this relocation o f m eanin g from object-as-rep-

resentation to object-as-system-of-production:

Loss o f Form. T he distribution of forest, open lawn, and water in an all-over pat

tern that fills the space o f the site results in a loss o f form tha t is, in a loss of

figuration o f the voids (open lawns) against the mass (forest).26Instead, there is a

superimposition of four systems-woodland, lawns, water, and elements that

equally contribute to and reiterate the spatial experience. No layer is subordi

nate to the others; each is coopted to have equa l presence in the landscape.

M ultip le Meanings. An other formal implication is the absence of spatial narr a

tives (as at Rous ham , for instance) and o f processional spaces tha t may cu lm i


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The Amsterdam Bos

nate in a monumental climax (such as the sequence from the Mali to the

Rambie in Central Park). Instead, the visitor moves from area to area with

the im pression of' never having quite arrived. Th e p ark is understood

throu gh the accum ulation o f reiterative experiences in time an d space. T his

spatial strategy impedes the possibility of aesthetic contemplation from a

distance and of a private, personal engag em ent with the park.

Anti-Aes thetic, As a corollary to this, the p ark does no t fall into any o f the ae s

thetic categories of landscape we know ; it is neither beautiful nor pictur

esque nor sublime {Figs. 7, 8, 9). It resiscs all attempts at aesthetic

categorization-a radical conceptual shift in itself, given the pervasive bur

den o f having to be beau tiful tha t has historically been placed on land

scape. Instead, the park asks to be understood as a transcription into form of

a program that has been determ ined according to a set of scientific and social

criteria.

Reciprocity o f Par/? and City. The park is stripped of metaphorical content

and spiritual intention. It is demystified. The emphasis on materiality and

the unveiling of the technical means of construction eliminate the transcen

dental in the p ark and inv alidate the conceptual separateness of the park

from the city. Rather than being presented as isolated and protected from

technology and capitalism and, in tur n, offering the individual shelter from

these forces, the par k is understood as one of many productive entities

within the metropolis. Like the subway system or the stock exchange, the

park is a piece of a system th at co ntr ibutes to an d str ives for m axim um p ro

ductive efficiency. In its multip licity of func tions , organ ized rationally

according to function and prod uction, the park is akin to an overlay of activ

ities of the city. It no long er stands against the w orld bu t is one wo rldly thin g

among others .27

Index. Because m eanin g does not depend on the p ark as a symbol for a refer

ent bu t on the congru ence of the system o f construction and existing stan

dards o f produ ction in society at large, the park is not a fully resolved object.

Fig. 7 (top). View of parkforest interior. Photograph by Kate Orff.

Fig. 8 (m idd le). Vsew of park meadow. Photograph by Kate Orff.

Fig. 9 (bottom ). View of park canal, Photograph by Kate Orff.


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Anita Berrizbeita

Instead, it operates as an index. As Rosalind Krauss notes, indexes work differ

ently from symbols in th at they relate to their referent along an axis of physical

relationships. The y are the m arks or traces of a particular cause, and that cause

is the th ing to which they refer, the object they signify Into the category of index,

we would place physical traces (like footprints), medical symptoms "u As an

index, the park becomes a trace of a specific proce dure rath er than a com pleted,

static, totalized object. Thu s, the presence o f the forest points to the co ntin u

ously lowered water table, the trees themselves to ongoing succession, and the

hill, an atypical land form in this landsc ape, to the m assive digging op erations

that were necessary to cons truct the watercourses and the lake. These are regis

tration marks, records on the site of those procedures an d modes o f production

used for the pa rks cons truction.-As a result, the enga gem ent of the su bject with

the park is not predicated on the aesthetic com preh ensio n o f its forms but on

thinking through the processes that are at work beh ind those forms.

Object/Subject^

A reconce ptualiza tion of the landsc ape object is, by necessity, accomp anied by a

reco ncep tualization of the subject with which it is engaged. Mo re specifically,

the ren unciation of formal composition in favor of an em phasis on the system of

pro duct io n induc es a chan ge in the relatio ns be tw ee n the de sign er an d the w ork

and between the perceiving subject and the park.

At the core of a materialist critique of social relations un de r capitalism, the

theory of comm odity reification provides a framework for und erstan ding the

transformations in the concep tualization o f objects during modernism. Reifica

tion is a process through which human activities become diminished as a resuit

of their analysis and frag men tation into rational com pon ents, conceived solely

as a dialectic of means a nd end s. According to Fredric Jam eson, w hat is im po r

tant about reification is that its instrumentality foregrounds the organization of

the mea ns themselves over any particu lar aesthetic end .11 Seen thro ug h this

framework, the elements o fthe Bos Park landscape are not invested with qu ali

tative values in themselves b ut only insofar as they can be used.5' In other

words, the differentiation and specialization of procedures at the Bos Park

transformed each landscape element into a means to a particular end , and they

are therefore stripped o f subjective value. Th e park is thus tran sform ed into a

system o f prod uction tha t is inherently re prod ucible in any given context.

Moreover, because the system of pro duc tion prevails as the basis for design

and for achieving signification, the de signers role is transform ed into one in


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The Amsterdam Bos

which they set in m otion the processes that will comp lete the cons truction of the

park. In the case o f th e Bos Park, Van Ees te rcn and M uld er relinquished control

of the final form to processes of succession and hydrology. As a result, the park

bears few, if any, traces o f the subjectivi ties of the designer, resisting the appea r

ance of having been m anipu lated or m ediated by a particular artistic personality.i(

T he fundam ental shifts in the conceptualization of the park explained ear

lier and, no less imp ortant, in the role of the designers, are suppo rted by changes

in the con ceptualiza tion o f the perceiving subject. Wh o is, then, the subject that

the m odern park seeks to address P

A democratic social agenda motivated the Bos Park project from its incep

tion and appeared frequently in the Bos Park Committees report, which states

that the park is intended for the proletariat in its new emancipated status.'"*

Most notably, the removal o f the dikes is explained iti ideological terms: leveling

the site releases it from the tyranny of the rectilinear dike structure , which makes

people w alk in st ra ight, confined lines. A site o f continuous ground, not d is con

nected by the dikes earthe n walls, allows the indiv idual to roam freely throu gh

out an d across the site. M ove m ent is here endowed with signification because it

represents social mobility and the em ancip ation of classes from old social and

religious bonds as a result o fth e rise of capital. Th e pairing o f this kind of loose

but system atic spat ial str uctu re with a sh ift away from mim etic repre se nta tion

suggests that m eanin g in the park is no longer conting ent on the passive con tem

pla tion ofscenery h u to n the co nstruction of open soc ial practices.

T he pam phlet published on the occasion of the opening of the park reiter

ates these shifts.15O n its cover is depicted an array o f activities offered at the park

and no sense of its physical appea rance at ail. At the bo ttom of the cover, an

assembly line of men, trees and shovels in hand, reiterate the forest as construc

tion. N ot sho wn is the introspective, m editating subject of the traditional park.

Inside the pamphlet, sketches show individuals engaged in various forms of

social exchange and physical activity. T h e park is prese nted as a place where the

indiv idual ca n sha re in collective public life.

T he re is not, however, a com plete rejection of con tem plation in the park.

T he pam phlet features several sketches, drawn by M ulder herself of what seem

to be views of the wetlands from the forest edge, suggesting the possibility of

contemplation and solitude in the park. Van Eesteren and Mulder describe the

pre dic am ent o f th e m odern subject, one w ho is fo rm ed as much by an in stinct

for cultivating individuality as by the req uisites o f the n ew collective nature of

m ode m life ^Th e Bos Park proposes the em ancipation of private individuals by


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Anita Berrizbeita

giving them a pubiic role. It intro duc es the possibility of new forms of shared

civic life in the park , where the private in dividual exists in a dialectical rela tion

ship with the social. Here, one may reconcile his or her existence as individual

subject with the larger collective, shifting from one to the other, existing within

and yet retaining the possibility of making purposeful in terventions in society at

large. It is in ac com plishin g this shift in the status o f the land scape vis-a-vis the

subject that the Bos Park can be un derstood as a negation o f the picturesque

park tr ad it io n an d o f its associated ideas o f rep re senta tion, o f auth ori al m edia '

tion, and o f the pa rka s auratic, transcende ntal space.7

Landscape as Process

Landscape as process is one of the paradigm s o f postmod ern practice in land

scape architecture, supported by theories of phenom enology and hermeneutics,

among others. These theories, as well as the landscapes they inspire, value once

again the individu al over the collective. In landscap e, these values are expressed

thro ugh a system of op en-e nde d design t ha t is also largely based on setting up a

biolog ica l process , suc h as ero sion by w in d or water, o r p la n t succession, and let

ting the process, through time, show its effect on the site, constructing its land

scape. Desvigne and Dalnoky in France and Hargreaves Associates in the

Un ited States are two of several practices th at take on this agenda in their work.

How is the idea of landscape as process different in contemporary practice than

it was m ore than sixty years ago, at the time of the construction of the Bos Park,

wh en practitioners such as Van Eesteren an d M ulder also took a stand against

pictor ia lis m?

Th e difference can be found at the level of representation.56 Tim e an d

process , an d th eir co ro llary o f op en -e nded nes s, are take n on as th e subject m at

ter o f these practices. Yet, specifically in th e w ork of Harg reave s Associates,

process is a lign ed with an aesthe tic an d expressive ag en da th at does not ent irely

originate in the biological and the p rogram matic bu t in the formal. Hargreaves

sculpts and manipulates form until it achieves congruence with a predeter

m ined m eanin g, such as invoking aeolian forces on the land ." In its inception,

the w ork is concerned w ith form for the sake of form, at least to the extent that

this represents ecological processes. This representational agenda reintroduces

subjective values and narratives into the work and recovers the subjective, indi

vidual vision of landscape. In terms of relations betw een subject and object,

then, this work is closer to the n ineceenth-century ideal o f the urb an park than

the pro ject for the Bos Park.


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At the Bos Park, the idea of process derives its meaning specifically as it

relates to prod uction. T hu s, whereas tim e and process are often invoked as aes

thetic dimensions of landscape in con temp orary practice, they were more tech

nical and material dim ensions o f landscape a t the Bos Park. Process at Bos was

unde rstood as techniqu e, as a way of un ders tand ing and a rticulating a project in

terms of its material determinants. This emphasis on those physical aspects of

constructing urban landscape that had remained secondary in the realm of

eighteenth- and nineteenth-cen tury landscape aesthetics became, for the m od

ernis t vang uard, a strategy to expan d the polem ic beyond representation and to

focus on ques tions o f the collective reception of the work , to address a newly

constituted mass culture/9In other words, a logistical concern for process as a

way of objectifying the m aterial in landscape, stripping it of narrative and

mimesis, can be construed as a mechanism for pursuing the collective and

enh anc ing shared social relations. U nlike the aes thetid zatio n of process during

postm oder nism , invok ed to engage subjectivity, the Bos Park redi rects atten tion

beyond the indiv id ual su bjec t an d toward those processes th at underg ird m od

ern life, that generate the social conditions o f its making.

T he work of con temporary D utch designers OM A/Rem Koolhaas and West

8/Adriaan Geuze continues to engage process and materiality in landscape in

the same conceptual way that Van Eesteren and Mulder did for the Bos Park.

Their proposals are strategies specific to site and program rather than designs

tha t are the pro duc t of formal, aestheticixed visions.41 Rut, unlike b land func

tionalism, where the logistics of a project come across as habitual, unex amine d

aspects of a site, Koolhaas and G euze redirect the rational dem ands of a project

toward a creative end. Logistical issues such as zoning and program become

driving forces for innovation an d tran sform ation in design. In the ir work, land

scape emerges as a m atrix or fram ewo rk for development, as living material in

the fun ctional sense, as site o f produ ction, as structu ral tissue tha t supports

often contradictory programs, and as a territory that is indistinguishable from

the city. Signification in these works is found in the ir modes o f pro duc tion, esp e

cially those th at deal creatively w ith the ide ntities, lives, and necessities of indi

vidu als p articipa ting in collective hie.*'

Notes1 Fre der ic k La w O lms te d , Pub li c Par ks a nd t he E n la rge me nt o f T ow ns (1871),

repr inted in D onald W orker ' sAm er ican E nvir onm en ta li sm ( N e w a r k : J oh n W i le y &

Sons, 1973), 111-132.


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Anita Berrizbeita

200

3 For a description of the private natu re of the early public park, see Rich ard Senne tt,

The Fall o fPu bl ic Man (N ew 'fork: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), especially cha pter 4, Pub-

He Roles," 64-88.

4 See Um berto Barbaro, Materialism and Art, inMarxis m a nd A n : Writing s in Aesthe t

ics and Criticism, eds, Bexel Lang and Forrest Williams (New York: David McKay,

1972), 161 176. See also La ng and W illiam s introd uctio n to the book.

5 In form ulatin g this view and others in this essay, I am particularly indeb ted to K,

Michael Mays's Modernism an d the Po sth um an ist Su bje ct (Cam bridge, Mass.: M IT

Press, 1992).

6 Ra pp or t van de Co mmtssie voor he t Bosch pla n Am ste rd am (Amsterdam, 1931). The

com mittee was established in January 1929 and produced its report more than two

years later, in M ay 1931. Th e list o f consul tan ts contrib uting to the r epo rt is extensive,

and included subcommittees on hygiene, sports and relaxation, soil, and flora and

fauna, among others, and experts on bathing and swimming installations. There is

also extensive discussion in this report abo ut the significance of the parks. Th is docu men t is available from the D epa rtme nt of Public Works in Am sterdam. C laudia

Swan, P h.D., translated this doc um ent for the author.

7 Although all forests in H olland are ma n-m ade, the D utch have a tradition of forest

ma king that is at least five centuries long. By native forests I me an those tha t are com

po se d of species th a t ex ist ed in the N eth erl an ds be fo re th e waters o f th e A tlant ic rose.

See IR.T.WL Schchcma, "H olland s Man-M ade Forests, in Am er ican Forests 50

(November 1944): 540-541.

8 Th e Am sterdam Bosc hplan, inJo ur na l o f the Roy al Inst itut e o f Bri tish A rchitects 45,

scries III (May 1938):681-689. See also Anton io Cerd en a, Attre zza ture verdi di

Amsterdam, Casabella 277 (July 1963): 34-49. An exc ellentd escr iption o f the politi

cal and legal events that led to the approva l of the project is Sergio Polan o, Th e Bos

Park, Amsterdam, and Urban D evelopment in Ho lland, in The Architecture o f West

ern Cardens, eds. GeorgesTeyssot and M onique Mosser (Cam bridge, Mass.: M IT

Press, 1992): 507-509. Fo r this paper, I derived mo st of my info rma tion directly from

th e Ra pport van de Com mtss ie m a rk e t B oschpla n A m ster da m , whe rein a great deal of

site analysis and technical information appears.

9 O n negation: it is comm only held that the emergence o f new ways of conc eptualizing

objects (their role in society as well as their appearance) is prompted by a reaction

against the norm . W he n a society can no long er justify the inevitability of its artistic

prac tic es , ne w and m ore adeq uate on es ar ise from a cri tique of th e in st itutions th a t

had thu s far provided the social base for those practices. In mo dern ism, this critique is

called \hc practice o f negation. W hat the m odernist vanguard repudiated were two

fundam ental assum ptions about the institution of art that had becom e entrenche d innineteen th-cen tury bourgeois society. First was the assum ption th at there is an in di

vidual auth or w ho is the originator of meaning, w ho engages in the activity of design

intending to inscribe in its forms his or her own subjectivities. Second was the belief

that the perceiving subject enters the realm o f the wo rk seeking a space apart from life

in which the mind is free to develop its own subjectivities, free to make tts own con

nections. See T.J. Clark, More on the D ifferences Between C omra de G reenbe rg and

Ourselves, in Mod ernism and Mod er ni ty , eds. Benjam in H .D . Bochloh, Serge

Gilbaut, and David Solkin (Halifax; University ofN ova Scotia Press, 1983). Ind us tri

alized ma ss prod uction , already a fact of life by the end o f the n ine teen th ce ntury, lay

at the core of the mo dernist critique of bourgeois art. Th e m ass-produce d object,

devoid of traces of authorship, o f claim to un iquene ss, and , therefore, of aura, naked

of any repre sentational cloak that m ight hide its genesis in repetitive, standa rdized,

mec hanized production presents itself to the v anguard artist as the locus for the cri

tique o f the auratic wo rk of art. To engage in an aesthetic practice that used tech


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The Amsterdam Bos

nique s and objects of mass produ ction was, therefore, to engage in a practice of nega

tion. Note: I use the term modernism to refer to those changes in the conceptualiza

tion of objects that occurred at the be ginn ing of the twen tieth cen tury as a result of a

skepticism tha t developed abo ut the na ture o f represen tation in art. I adapt: this defi

ni t ion f rom T ) . Cla rk, The Painting o fM odem L if e (Princeton, N.J. : Pr inceton U ni

versity Press, 1984), 10.

10 Ge rr ie Andela, T he Pub lic Park in the Netherlan ds,jo urna l o f Ga rden His to ry 1,

no. 4 (October-December 1981): 391.

1] Like the majority of land in the N ethe rland s, the site of the Bos Park lies several

meters below sea level. Historically, the Dutch have dealt with this condition by

buil d in g pold ers , ex te nsive tracts of lo w la nd th a t are re cl aim ed fr om th e se a an d

rem ain protected from it by dikes. W indm ills convey the water that collects in the

channels within the enclosed lands uphill to sea level in order to drain the polder

fields.

12 G rou nd w ater was estimated to be 60 -70 centimeters highe r southw est of the

Sehinkeipolder due to heavy rains and w inds coming from the southwest .

S3 To dep eat is to remove the diick layer of peat from the surface o f the terrain. At the

Bos Park site, this layer was abo ut 50 centim eters deep before the conv ersion o f the

site to polders. Because p eat is highly acidic and retains water, remov ing it was neces

sary to improve d rainage o f the soil and reduce its acidity in o rder to cultivate it for

agriculture. Aiso contribu ting to the irregularity of the terrain w ere peat ridges

caused by pu shin g arou nd the peat layer and leaving it piled at the edges of fields.

14 H el Amsterda mse Bos: The A m ster dam Forest Pari{(Public Parks Service Gu ide), 48.

15 See A lan Ruff,H olland a nd the E co logica l La ndscapes (Manchester , Englan d: Dep art-

m en tofT ow n and C ou ntry Planning , Universi ty of Manchester, 1979), 10.

16 Co rneiis Van Eesteren joine d De StijJ in the 1923 and collabo rated with Van Does-

burg on m any pro je cts. A lthough cl early th is is not a pla n th a t reca lls th e form o f D c

Stiji painting s or architecture, the strategy of distribu ting elemen ts in a nonh ierarchi-

cal way throu gh ou t space is one tha t Van Eesteren m ust have der ived from his work

with De Stijl.

17 A ha-ha is a physical bou ndary, such as a ditch or a retaining wall, between two p rop

erties designed in such a way that it is concealed from within, making the landscape

seem physically continuous.

18 Alexander von Ho ffman , Of Greater Lasting Con sequ ence : Frederick Law Olm

sted and the Fate ofF rank lin Park, Boston j ou r n a l o f the Society o fArc hi tectur al H is

torians 47, no. 4: 339-350.

19 Marco De M ichelis, Th e Red and the Green: P ark and City in Weimar Germ any,

Lo tu s Intern ation al30 (1981): 111.

20 Ludovica Scarpa, Qu antifying Parkland: The S tandards of Ha ppine ss in Social-

Dem ocratic Berl in,"Lo tu s Int er national30 (1981): 119-122,

21 Van Eesteren was president of C1AM from 1930 to 1947.

22 Geo rg Simm el, Th e division of labou r as the cause of the divergence of subjective

and objective culture , in The Philosophy o fM one y (1900), t.rans. Tom Bottom ore and

David Frisby (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), 453-463.

23 I borrow this formulation from Ben jamin Bu chlohs descr iption of the Soviet avant-

gardes concern forjd k tu ra , the mechanical quality, the materiality, and the

anonym ity of the painter ly procedu re, in From Faktura to Factography, October:

Th e First Decade, 1976 -198 6, eds. Ann ette Michelson, el al . (Camb ridge, Mass.: M IT

Press, 1987), 81.

24 Michel Foucault, The D iscourse on Lang uage (1971); repr inted in The Archaeol

ogy o fKnow le dge (New York: Pantheon, 1972), 229.

25 Hays, Mod ernism , 154-160.


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Anita Berrizbeita

26 Yves Alain Bois, Piet Mondr ian, 18721944 (Boston: Little, Brown , 1994). I borrowed

this term from Boiss description o fM on dria ns work.

27 Hays,Modern ism, 172.

28 Rosalind Krauss, Notes on the Index: Seventies Art in America," in October: The

First Decade, 1976-1 986, cds. An nette Michelson et al. (Cam bridge, Mass.: M IT

Press, 1987), 4.

29 Ibid.

30 Subjectrefers to individual as well as collective consciousness. The term is inherently

equivocal because the two seemingly contradictory meanings depend on each other.

Th e ind ividual s elf is always unde rstood within the context o f a larger ideological or

institutional framework. Conversely, a gene ralized conccpt ofth e subject would su p

pr es s di(Terences th at dis tinguis h an in div id ual from other s, di fferen ce s th a t consti

tute a vital aspect of social practices. Object refers to the artifacts o f cultu re, the ir

formal organization, as well as the forces that produce them. Because those forces are

manipulated by the subject , both concepts are mutually dependent and exist in a

202 dialectical relationship with each other. See Th eo do r W Ado rno, Su bject and

Object, in The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, cds. Andrew Arato and Eike Geb-

hart (New York: Con tinu um , 1982), 497- 569.

31 Fredric Jameso n, Reification and U topia in Mass C uitu re/'m SocialText I (1979):

130-148.

32 Ibid.

33 Th e distance that develops between the object and its prod ucer as a result of the divi

sion ot labor is explained by Georg Simm cl: Wh eneve r our energies do not produce

som ething w hole as a reflection of the total personality, then the pro per relationship

betwee n su bj ec t and ob ject is m is s in g __Th e interna! nature of ou r achievement is

bound up w ith pa rts o f achievem en ts ac co m plished by other s w hic h are a nec essa rypart of a tota lity, but it do cs no t re fe r b ac k to its p ro d u ce r. . ..It s m ean in g is n o t de riv ed

from the m ind of the prod ucer b ut from its relationships with products o f a different

orig in.. ..Th e significance of the p rodu ct is thus to be sou ght neith er in the reflection

of a subjectivity nor in the reflex of a creative spirit, but it is to be found only in the

objective achievem ent tha t leads away from the su bjec t.. ..Th e broad ening of con

sum ption . . .is depe nde nt upo n the g rowth o f objective culture, since the more objec

tive and impersonal an object the better it is suited to more people __Such

consu m able m aterial, in order to be acceptable and enjoyable to a very large num ber

of individuals, ca nno t be designed for subjective differentiation of taste, wh ile on the

other han d on ly the m ost extreme differentiation of produ ction is able to produce the

objects cheaply and abun dan tly enou gh in order to satisfy the dem and for them . Th epattern o f co nsum ption is th us a bridge bet w ee n th e ob jecti vi ty o f c ult ure an d th e

division of labour . Excerpted from 'T h e Division of Labo ur as the Cause o fDiver-

gence Between Objective and Subjective Culture in The Philosophy o f Money,

454-455.

34 Th ere are m any references regarding the app ropriate uses ofthe p ark vis-a-vis society,

especially in part two o f the report, titled G eneral S ignificance o fthe Bosch p lan. In

addition to the need for extensive kinds o f prog ram, the com m ittee clearly stated that

for the new parks visual consumption is not enough." Ra pp ort van Co mtniss ie v oo r

het Boschplan A m sterdam , 9.

35 Bosch -Plan . Ten toom te lling (Amsterdam : Public Works Dep artm ent, 1937).

36 In Th e Metropolis and M ental Life, Geo rg Sirnmej guides us throu gh the histori

cal development o f this condit ion. Th e eighteenth-century b elief in l iberty and

equality was corollary to tha t in an in divid uals freedom o f mov emen t in social and

intellectual relationships. Another ideal arose in the nineteenth century through the

econom ic division o f labor, in which individuals liberated from historical bonds n ow

wished to distinguish themselves from one an othe r. T h e division ot labor, central to


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The Amsterdam Bos

all capitalist production , causes, on die one han d, the dissolution o f the individua l as

free and autonom ous and, on the other, the em ergence of a kind of individual ism that

arises out of a need to assert on es uniquen ess am id the vast ma chine o f the m etropo

lis. Simmel even proposes that the metropolis ought to provide the arena where the

struggle between individualism and collectivity may be played out. See Georg Sim-

mcl, The Metropolis and Mental Life (1904); reprinted in Th e Sociology o f Georg

Simmel , trans. an d ed. K urt W olfF(N ew York: Free Press, 1964), 423.

37 Au ra is defined by W alter Ben jam in as a distance that exists between the wo rk of art

and the perceiving subject as a result o f the authen ticity value placed on the object

bec au se o f its un iq u en ess in th e w or ld . A ura is d ra in ed from th e ob ject th rou g h its

mechanical reproduction and through the processes of advertising it , displaying it ,

and fixing a price for its consum ption. Sec Walter Ben jam in, Th e W ork of Art in the

Age of M echanical R eprodu ction" (1935); repr int in Il lu m in ations , ed. H an na h

Arend t (N ew York: Schocken, 1969), 217-251. Aura in terms o f the landsc ape can

also be thou gh t of as a distance betwe en the p erceiving subject and the landscape.

Although it is possible to argue that no two landscapes can be identical (anil that

therefore all landscapes are auratic), un ique nes s may no t be a sufficient cond ition for

the definition o f an aura tic landscape. Rather, it needs be furthe r qualified in m ore

specific term s, as a function o f the landsca pes contrast w ith its context, whe ther

ph ysica l (i.e., C entr a! park ve rsus th e city aro un d it) , o r ec olog ical (an endangere d

ecosystem), or cultura l (the H ud son River Valley of the ium inist painters, w hich does

not exis t any more), which renders that landscape in some way unique and t ran scen

denta l, im bued w ith mysticism. My po int is that when processes of mass produ ction

arc applied to the ma king o f landscape a nd mad e visible in their form, they also

remove the po ssibility of aura from those landscap es and, therefore, restructu re rela

tions between the perceiving subject and the landscape.38 Re presentation is generally taken to me an the construction of a resemblance of a pre

viously existing reality in a wo rk of art. I assum e the re is repre senta tion in all forms of

aesthetic produ ction, including in mode rnism, and thus I bracket the term as mimetic

representation. By this I mean one that specifically seeks to reproduce another land

scape, such as an existing naturalistic scene.

39 SeeProcess: Ar ch ite ctur e 128:Hargreav es: Lan dsca pe Works (January, 1996).

40 In this sense, the Bos Park differentiates itself from projects o f the mo re recent ecolog

ical mo vem ent, the advocates of which focus their energies on the am elioration o f an

external environment rather than on representational and social concerns. Sec James

Corner, Ecology and Landscape as Agents of Creativity, Ec olog ical Design an d

Plan ning , eds. George Thom pson and Frederick Steiner (New York: John Wiley &

Sons, 1997), 80-108.

41 For instance, the plan ting strategy of Ko olhaass proposal for the Parc de la Villetie

recalls the forest man age m en t attitude em ployed at Bos Park.

42 See Ba rt L oo tsm as essay Synth etic Re gion aliza tion in this collection.

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