# Bunker 599 + 603 by Rietveld Landscape

After Interaction Between the Elements, here is another project by Rietveld Landscape I wanted to publish. Bunker 599 + 603 is the story of a Matta Clarkian cut in the middle of a bunker on the Dutch coast. The most massive and close architecture thus becomes permeable and proposes to the viewer, a three dimensional section of this mass of concrete.

Here is the official text related to the project:

Bunker 599 + 603

This project lays bare two secrets of the New Dutch Waterline (NDW), a military line of defence in use from 1815 until 1940 protecting the cities of Muiden, Utrecht, Vreeswijk and Gorinchem by means of intentional flooding.

A seemingly indestructible bunker with monumental status is sliced open. The design thereby opens up the minuscule interior of one of NDW’s 700 bunkers, the insides of which are normally cut off from view completely. In addition, a long wooden boardwalk cuts through the extremely heavy construction. It leads visitors to a flooded area and to the footpaths of the adjacent natural reserve. The pier and the piles supporting it remind them that the water surrounding them is not caused by e.g. the removal of sand but rather is a shallow water plain characteristic of the inundations in times of war.

The sliced up bunker forms a publicly accessible attraction for visitors of the NDW. It is moreover visible from the A2 highway and can thus also be seen by tens of thousand of passers-by each day. The project is part of the overall strategy of Rietveld Landscape | Atelier de Lyon to make this unique part of Dutch history accessible and tangible for a wide variety of visitors.

# (UN)WALL /// Bunker Archeology by Paul Virilio

In his Bunker Archeology (1975), Paul Virilio establishes an inventory of bunker typologies and tries to determine what the essence of those militaries architecture might be.
The plans and sections inserted in the book illustrate spaces which are not anymore framed by walls as usual but rather spaces within the walls. The interior space is thus felt like tunnels and cavities inside a concrete mass, the wall itself.
However those walls have an important characteristics which is that they are not anchored in the ground, allowing themselves to slightly move whenever a bombshell explode nearby.
You can also read the two articles (here and here) we already released on boiteaoutils and the one written by Geoff Manaugh for BLDGBLOG.

# The Oblique Function by Claude Parent and Paul Virilio

Sometimes I like to revisit the classics ! The Oblique Function was first developed in the 60's by Architecture Principe (Claude Parent & Paul Virilio) and since then is still the main element of Parent's architecture (see previous article).
The idea was to tilt the ground in order to revolutionize the old paradigm of the vertical wall. In fact, being inclined, the wall becomes experiencable and so are the cities imagined by the two French architects. The oblique is fundamentally interested in how a body physically experience a space. The slope implies an effort to climb up and a speed to climb down; this way the body cannot abstract itself from the space and feel the degrees of inclination.
Parent and Virilio associated this research with their bunker archeology (see previous article) in order to design the Church Sainte Bernadette in Nevers (France) that I should probably include in a near future article...
Claude Parent demonstrated the quality of the oblique for the French Pavilion at the 1970 Venice Biennale as I already wrote in a former article.

# Another brick in Israel's wall

The world will soon count one more wall embodying the tension between nations and refusal of otherness. Israel is continuing to build its own bunker and now decided to build a wall (oh sorry a security barrier) on the Egypt border to "ensure the Jewish and democratic character of the state of Israel" said Benjamin Netanyahu.
Once again Israel represents what the future will be like for the Western world if nothing change until then...and in the same regard Jerusalem is the western city of the future.

Read the article from the Telegraph, Al Jazeera or Liberation

# SEA /// Atlantikwall

Atlantikwall/ mur de l'Atlantique/ Atlantic wall was the german sea side protection from allied attack from 1941 to 1945.( more here )

Following I'll show you some of the amazing concrete bunkers/blochaus that have been built by the german Army to protect the coast from Norway to France.
Today most of this buildings are crumbling into parts, or sinking in the beach sand...
-I made a special SEA thematic selection with only sinking bunkers.

More here, here and here
The best book ever about those bunkers is famous Bunker archeology of Paul Virilio.

the map of the Atlantic wall

# Architecture Principe N°7 Claude Parent / Paul Virilio

Bunker Archeology
by Paul Virilio (1958)

Phénomènes d'un moment dramatique de l'histoire contemporaine, dix mille monuments disparaissent. Dépouillés de leurs fonctions, échappés au contexte de l'actualité, ces ouvrages laissent deviner en eux la présence d'une signification inconnue.
Par une démarche d'archéologue, j'ai cherché dans cet univers souterrain l'une des figures secrètes de notre temps.
Le plan du blockhaus rappelle étrangement celui des temples aztèques, sa dissimulation l'apparente aussi aux mastabas, aux nécropoles étrusques, mais ce qui dans la forme pyramidale ou circulaire des monuments anciens évoquait un signé sacré, une image cosmique, est ici implicite comme involontaire.
La géométrie n'est plus aussi affirmative, elle est érodée, usée. L'angle n'est plus droit, mais déprimé, pour échapper à toute saisie, la masse n'est plus fondée dans le sol, mais centrée en elle même, indépendante, capable de mouvement et d'articulation. Cette architecture flotte à la surface d'une terre qui a perdu de sa matérialité. En approchant sur une plage d'un de ces monolithes, il m'apparaît d'une manière presque animale, carcasse vide, abandonnée, basculée, dans le sable, comme la mue d'une espèce disparue. Lorsque j'y pénètre, une pesanteur singulière m'oppresse, l'épaisseur des parois m'est sensible, c'est une seconde enveloppe physiologique, amplifiant certains sens, protégeant les mouvements. Ici, pas de fenêtres pour éclairer l'intérieur, l'embrasure n'éclaire que l'extérieur, mais avec la précision d'un phare.
Dans cet appareil à survivre, la vie n'est pas neutre. C'est un effort pour devenir plus subtil, plus essentiel.
Vestiges banals, ces ouvrages ont pris la simple consistance de talus que seule la difficulté de démolition protège encore. Etonnants exemples de cécité d'une époque sur elle même, ces travaux primitifs annonçant une nouvelle architecture fondée non plus sur les proportions physiques de l'homme, mais sur ses facultés psychiques, un urbanisme où l'analyse élémentaire de la réalité sociale enfin dépassé, l'habitat pourrait se combiner intimement aux possibilités secrètes des individus.

I don't really have time to translate the entire text (if somebody would like to do it...I'll take it !) so I'll just translate one interesting paragraph:

This geometry is not anymore that affirmative [compared to mastabas], it is eroded, shabby. Angle is not anymore right, but depressed, to escape from any capture, mass is not anymore founded in the ground, but centred to itself, independent, able to movement and articulation. This architecture floats at the surface of an earth which has lost its materiality. Approaching on a beach to one of these monoliths, it appears to me almost as an animal, empty carcass, abandoned, shift in the sand like a disappeared specie’s slough. When I penetrate into it, a singular heaviness oppresses me, walls’ thickness acts on me, it is a second physiological skin, increasing some senses, protecting movements. Here, no windows to light the inside, threshold only light the outside, but with a light house’s precision.

# Bunker suisses par Leo Fabrizio

Qui a cru que la Suisse était un pays pacifique ? Bon vous me direz Si vis pacem para bellum et effectivement...
En tout cas c'est une approche littérale et pour le moins intéressante du camouflage et mimétisme en architecture