Herman Hertzberger

This five-volume slipcased series gathers Hertzberger's sketches, reflections and ideas into an incomparable source for every architecture aficionadoDutch architect Herman Hertzberger (born 1932) never goes anywhere without one of his black, unlined notebooks close to hand. Each tiny detail is immortalized in a note, reflection or sketch. He plays with words and searches for the right forms while drawing, reflecting in words and pictures on anything that strikes him, including tragic events such as 9/11 and the Covid-19 pandemic. Apart from his many landscape drawings, readers will also recognize the initial ideas for some of his projects, including the YKK dormitory in Kurobe, Japan, and Tivoli Vredenburg in Utrecht. At over 1,200 pages total, this five-volume slipcased set reproduces Hertzberger's notebooks from 1998 to 2024. Alongside these facsimiles are essays by architectural historian Herman van Bergeijk, guiding the reader through Hertzberger's various ideas, concepts and forms.

Award-winning Dutch architect Herman Hertzberger (born 1932) is one of the most important and critically influential figures in international architecture of the past half-century. He has consistently championed a fundamentally humanist modern architecture, rooted in its place and history, while simultaneously opening up new possibilities for dwelling. Today Hertzberger is rightly regarded as the world's foremost designer of schools, a building type he has almost singlehandedly redefined, and his innovative and fundamentally humane workplaces constitute some of the most compelling contemporary reinterpretations of this type of building. In this volume, acclaimed author and practicing architect Robert McCarter examines Hertzberger's most important architectural works through an analysis of the architect's design process and guiding ideas, particularly as these reflect Hertzberger's engagement with the modernist tradition, architectural history, urban space and the human experience of architecture.