Ben Van Berkel: Mobile Forces/Mobile Krafte

This book presents for the first time in an extensive and detailed fashion the buildings of Ben van Berkel, a young Dutch architect who, together with his partner, Maarten Bos, has made a name for himself in Holland. As examples of his works, we can cite designs for the Erasmus Bridge across the Riewe Maas in Rotterdam, the Piet Hein Tunnel in Amsterdam, the housing projects in Sloten and Amersfoort, office buildings, urban plans for the renovation of the central area in Amsterdam's Eastern Harbors, and finally his designs for Rotterdam's Theater Square. Gerrit Confurius provides the following comments on the architect: Ben van Berkel's works are pronouncedly modem, in fact current. His theme is the process of transformation to which the city is subjected. From this emerges the question of how the architect can exercise his influence on this process and whether the architecture can really still create interrelationships and generate meaning. His projects are based in areas which are subject to extensive redevelopment or on the border between intact older complexes and zones which can be potentially changed. The projects are all put to the test and they deal with structures whose forms will be assured for a long time and which aim at signaling and influencing development Ben van Berkel occupies the strategic points, the 'crossing points', as he calls them, to which other will have to orient themselves. The interventions must have the power to place in a new light what already exists and to engender hierarchies. They must radiate in life and in their surroundings. Ben van Berkel possesses this power.