It has been a while since Dutch archi­tec­ture has needed a make-​over. You can also read the autumn 2005 issue of OASE (link) titled: After the Party:

Half-​consciously, but not explic­itly, the ‘young’ Dutch archi­tec­ture [of the 90ies - ed.] reflected the silent con­sen­sus of the enlight­ened neo-​liberalism of the period. Con­flicts of inter­est were not resolved, but lacon­i­cally pre­sented. The com­pli­ca­tions of build­ing and the shoddy stan­dards of the indus­tries involved were not avoided, but dis­played with hardly dis­guised plea­sure. Whereas ear­lier gen­er­a­tions of archi­tects had tried to find bal­ances between vested and public inter­ests, or – in the ‘critical’ 1970s had for­mu­lated alter­na­tives to the dom­i­nant cul­ture, the Super­Dutch archi­tec­ture was prag­matic, self-​confident and fright­en­ingly con­tem­po­rary. The provoca­tive state­ment was an impor­tant style figure, but its direc­tion remained unclear.

Four years of eco­nomic decline and a suc­ces­sion of pop­ulist and Christian-​conservative pol­i­tics have brought the post-​ideological party of the 1990s to an end. Debates on immi­gra­tion and the common values of a sec­u­larised soci­ety have acquired a sharp edge; appeals against polit­i­cal and other ‘elites’ have become com­mon­place state­ments on the hymn sheets of a new class of rulers who emerged from the pop­ulist revolt that trans­formed the coun­try, like others in West­ern Europe, after the mil­len­nium. The pri­vati­sa­tion of the public sphere – a process that started in the eco­nomic crisis in the 1980s and con­tin­ued with­out much protest – has accel­er­ated. Cut­ting sub­si­dies for cul­tural insti­tu­tions and wil­fully dis­man­tling the system of regional plan­ning, this new regime offers a clear vision of a soci­ety that has shaken off what was left of the arrange­ments of post-​war col­lec­tive plan­ning and cul­tural pol­i­tics, replac­ing it with the dis­ci­pli­nary force of the market.

So Dutch archi­tec­ture will pre­sum­ably join the rest of the tech­nol­ogy world with a sym­po­sium sched­uled for Novem­ber, launch­ing this new theme: Archi­tec­ture 2.0? Clearly it stems from the O’Reilly Media term Web 2.0 – which is now passé. So Archi­tec­ture is trying one more time to jump on the band­wagon of a hype, but unfor­tu­nately arriv­ing late. The web­site announc­ing the con­fer­ence is very Web 1.0, too: a static, non-​community ori­ented and non-​database driven site for starters. But more impor­tantly – will the con­fer­ence address these issues – com­mu­ni­ties, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, bottom-​up plan­ning struc­tures, open-​source architecture?

The con­fer­ence par­tic­i­pants is a nice list of NL Archi­tec­tuur 1.0 favs: Wiel Arets, Ben van Berkel, Francine Houben, Rem Kool­haas, Winy Maas and Willem Jan Neutel­ings. The mod­er­a­tor is Ole Bouman, while Ivo Opstel­ten and Mels Crouwel will also make open­ing and clos­ing com­ments respec­tively. This raises the ques­tion then, who is the next gen­er­a­tion of Dutch archi­tects, or for­eign archi­tects oper­at­ing in the Nether­lands? Or is archi­tec­ture ver­sion 2.0 the same archi­tects as 1.0 but with some new tricks?

With the sub­ti­tle, The Des­tiny of Archi­tec­ture, and almost no expla­na­tion of the theme, we don’t really know what to expect, other than many grand ideas, per­haps great, per­haps not. But if you’re up for a con­fer­ence, hope­fully you have 350 euros (excl. BTW) to burn, because this is an expen­sive one. Oth­er­wise, if you’re stu­dent, it’s nearly free at 20 euros (incl. BTW).