Le strategie del rivestimento nell'architettura olandese contemporanea : Neutelings Riedijk Architecten, UNstudio, Wiel Arets

The thesis wants to analyze "the strategies of wrapping in Dutch contemporary architecture" and wants to re-define, in a systematic way, some aspects that have not been investigated by those publications and authors that, since the beginning of the '90s until today, have spoken about the recent development of the architectural culture in the Netherlands. In the previous decade an idea stratified itself of a Dutch architecture as a collective and identity phenomenon, linked to a programmatic and conceptual approach, in which the differences have been, for propaganda reasons or simply editorial, leveled to only one adjective – "Dutch" – that has hidden all the specificities of the approaches of the offices. At the base of this collective vision, were the actions of some institutions, such as NAI, and of some critiques, such as Bart Lootsma and Aaron Betsky, that have, for years, promoted the idea of "superdutch", i.e. the way of thinking architecture that was common and shared by the characters of the architectural scene of those years. This attitude, if on one side it helped to create the myth of the Dutch architecture of the '90s and of its main characters (OMA, West8, MVRDV, NOX, Neutelings Riedijk, UNstudio, Arets, Jo Coenen, Koen van Velsen, Klaus en Kaan, Mecanoo), on the other it dimmed the differences between them. During the '90s architecture was associated to certain themes – the programmatic component, the artificiality of the landscape, the flexibility, the architecture of concept and the urban programming –, that have become dominant, especially in foreign magazines. This even though, towards the end of the '80s, before the "Dutch Touch" started, the same Dutch architects that would take advantage of the economic situation and the propagandistic approach of the Nai, showed profound differences. The difference was partly due to their academic background and to the local sphere they came from. This reality has never been analyzed properly. The reason for this historical void is that, in the years between 1988 and 1992, the offices collected in this thesis were dealing with their first buildings (that, particular detail, will be scarcely documented by critiques and by the authors themselves in their monographies). The boom would arrive only a couple of years later, accompanied and, shall we say, conditioned, by a uniforming critic interpretation. The thesis wants show those differences, retracing the architectural career of some of the offices of that generation. The belonging to that generation has been considered more as an anagraphic aspect rather that due to common aims: the idea of breaking down the selection to three architects professionally born in those years was useful to give a more objective interpretation. The subject of the thesis does not concern only rediscovering the existing differences between the architects born in those years, but has to do, especially, with a topic that has been surprisingly removed from the analysis