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.