KORRIE BESEMS

A Contrived Past

The current urban landscape in the Netherlands, the land of an unbroken modernist tradition in architecture, is more and more derived from Neo-Traditional architecture, emulating cutesy windmills and 16th-century canal houses, or even Tuscan villages and ante-bellum American plantations. In these astute photographs, Korrie Besems presents a book of social commentary, documenting this new/old urban landscape. Besems realizes that familiar, old-fashioned styles may make people comfortable in a time of unsettling change, but she also shows how out-of-place these anachronistic styles are in the Dutch landscape. Featured are excellent essays on how Neo-Traditionalism can be interpreted as a popular revolt against the Supermodernism of contemporary Dutch elite architecture.

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