Herman Hertzberger – Diagoon Housing

Early example of experimental works by Hermann Hertzberger, a Dutch Structuralist architect, are the “Diagoon Houses”. Although the dwelling units were originally designed for a larger garden city, only a development containing 8 units was realised in Delft. Adhering to one another in an L shape, the houses surround the gardens and the communal area. Their sequence is incomplete and could be continued endlessly. Reflecting the Modernist slogan of “function follows form”, the building was defined by Hertzberger as a flexible, semi-ready framework. Houses adhering to each other contain two basic shifted units – one of them containing the stairs, the other the kitchen and a bathroom as fixed components. A sequence of half-levels create space for the selected functions, leaving scope for spatial separation and flowing spatial formation. The name Diagoon refers to the diagonal shift of the two volumes. Houses feature two and three storeys, with the car park integrated into the building and the entrance accessible from the street. The daytime and residential rooms are placed on semi-levels. With variability as a key concept in mind, the designer outlined a total of 32 variations, of which a few are presented here for illustration.