We all live in Constant's New Babylon

Two major exhibitions honour the work of Constant Nieuwenhuys. Gemeentemuseum Den Haag shows his architectural utopia New Babylon, the Cobra Museum in Amstelveen outlines Constant's development from Cobra to this. We tour the Hague exhibition and explore the legacy of Constant's legendary project. Including some 3d photos.

'Give me New Babylon anyway,' a pop song blares from the speakers. Setting: a human colony on Venus in a future novel by Tonke Dragt. In that future, the earth is built up into a giant city, New Babylon. Dragt derived the name from Constant Nieuwenhuys' famous work, she explicitly[hints] In Towering and Miles Wide she writes as an explanatory footnote: "New Babylon: urban community in Western Europe; the name already appears in Constant's writings and artworks, mid-twentieth century."[/hints].

The comparison doesn't quite hold up: where Dragt's megacity is a dangerous place, devoid of nature and with big brother-like control, Constant actually designed a free, utopian world. A world for people playing, who in the machine age would no longer have to work much, if at all, and would have time for human exchange. A city as magnificent as legendary Babylon with its hanging gardens, but without the Babylonian confusion of tongues from which the city perished.

There are more imitators who 'borrow' Constant's title without taking his ideas too closely. What about the New Babylon residential/shopping complex next to The Hague Central Station? A gigantic tower, not exactly reminiscent of the organically sprawling city Nieuwenhuys had in mind. In the Gemeentemuseum, this proliferation can be seen beautifully on existing maps Constant drew full of plans for New Babylon.

But Constant's influence has been much bigger than a tower and a book. And this is evident not only from the fact that the Gemeentemuseum receives more frequent loan requests for New Babylon than for Mondrian, Picasso, Monet or Van Gogh - incidentally, the successful loan request by the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid was partly behind this exhibition.

Constant's influence is mainly in how familiar many works appear. Whether sketches, painted impressions or scale models, across the board the feeling presents itself: yes, this is how we build nowadays, this is what a modern city looks like. The public buildings then, because for most new housing estates the Vinex formula still applies.

Although.

Adri Duivesteijn, for years alderman for spatial planning in The Hague and Almere, opened the exhibition in The Hague with a personal account. His warm plea for human rather than functional cities was, he argued, mainly inspired by Constant Nieuwenhuys. In both cities where he was administrator, he tried to employ Constant's ideas in creating new living space for people.

New Babylon. To us the freedom offers a broad view. The Gemeentemuseum made the concluding exhibition of the project in 1974 and has owned many works since then. Loosely arranged chronologically, a huge number of studies, buildings and paintings pass by. The original pedestals of some works from 1974 have been reconstructed and four models are brilliantly lit in darkened cabinets. This is how Constant intended it.

But the playful can also be visited: there are reconstructions of the Door labyrinth of the 1974 expo and the Ludicrous staircase, built in 1968 for the Amsterdam Historical Museum. They give visitors the sensation of the flexible city, where function and layout of space can change all the time. Reconstructions can also be found in the Cobra Museum: of A space in colour, developed together with Aldo van Eyck and Lucebert, and of Colour harmony in your home, a collaboration with Gerrit Rietveld.

Everything demonstrates a thorough approach and extensive research. Thus, no fewer than three books will appear: a catalogue of each museum and a new children's art book, Playing in New Babylon.

It is strange to think that Constant closed his project in the 1970s because minds would not be ripe for it. Indeed, the influence of his work on our lives today seems hardly underestimable. Regardless of whether he correctly predicted our times or whether architecture has followed him en masse - we all live in New Babylon.

3d photos:

Check out these 3d photos with red and blue glasses

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