The Transformed Sternet

With its collection, the NAi (Netherlands Architecture Institute) aims to focus more on the recent history of Dutch architecture. Along these lines the so-called ‘Sternet’ seemed to stand out as a typical example of a recent (post-war) monument. In the late seventies and early eighties, the PTT (Dutch postal services) established twelve enormous sorting offices located near to Dutch railway stations. These offices formed the so-called ‘Sternet’, a network for postal distribution by rail. They were previously part of a system spread out across the Netherlands yet linked by the network, their locations and their building typologies. In 1992 the PTT stopped transporting post by rail, which resulted in the abandonment of these industrial premises. The NAi commissioned three design agencies, SeARCH, United Architects and One Architecture, to create designs that would determine a new purpose for the buildings.

In addition to these three designs, SKOR set up a plan for three art projects for which the artists Gerard Holthuis, Barbara Visser and Sean Snyder were approached. This was done in consultation with the NAi Sternet study group. The debate regarding contemporary urban heritage benefits not only from discussing the (historical) facts but also from stirring one’s imagination when it comes to 1970s and 1980s architecture, which is, in itself, not naturally assumed of great value. The topics of the artists’ discussion were not only the actual buildings, their typologies, their locations near the railway line, the Sternet network comprising its twelve offices, their relation to their surroundings, their utility value in the past, present and future, their imminent disappearance etc. but also the actual phrasing of the NAi’s questions. The works of art that were, at that time, commissioned by the PTT and specifically placed in these buildings, were also included in the debate.

In addition to the architects’ designs and the artists’ projects that resulted in a number of permanent works, the project also included a series of public round table discussions and an exhibition in Rotterdam’s NAi in the summer of 2004.
For their July/August edition, the magazine ‘De Architect’ (‘The Architect’) published a supplement about the ‘Sternet’.

The exhibition’s first afternoon debate took place on 25 September 2004 and focused on: ‘Discarded heritage? In search of a new approach to conservation’

Barbara Visser

In a letter addressed to the 29 architects and visual artists who were involved in the realization of one or more of the Sternet offices, Barbara Visser writes that a statement on her behalf concerning the Sternet may be considered presumptuous or even offensive by the architects and artists who are still living and who originally worked on the project.

To them Visser poses the following question: ‘If you had the opportunity to alter, improve, completely redo, delete or add something to what you designed for these offices, what would that be?’
Although the question was meant to be philosophical, the architects and artists took it and responded to it in a literal fashion. Their letters mainly contained the messages ‘what’s done is done’ and ‘life goes on’. Along with the disappearance of the function of these offices, it also seems that the architects’ own relevance may have diminished.

Gerard Holthuis

In April and May of 2004 filmmaker Gerard Holthuis travelled by train to all the Sternet stations. He did not make an actual film but, rather, searched for the possible premises on which to base one. In doing so he did not allow himself to be influenced by the facts surrounding the sorting offices. Instead he made an instinctive investigated the buildings and allowed himself to be inspired by them and their surroundings. In short, he gave his imagination free rein.

Sean Snyder – Skopje herrezen (Skopje resurrected)

In search of an appealing parallel to STERNET, Sean Snyder ended up in Skopje (Macedonia). In the seventies after Skopje was disastrously hit by an earthquake in the late sixties, the United Nations initiated a large-scale restructuring of the city. This was based on Kenzo Tange’s master plan. The central railway station that, in Tange’s design was to function as the beating heart of the city and its infrastructure, resulted in a miscalculation that matches the failure of Sternet. Nowadays there is only one train – the train that rides between Belgrado to Skopje - that passes through the station. The sorting office located under the station, seems to have become the beating heart of the city instead. Can this inversion of the Sternet situation perhaps provide answers or add new questions to the Sternet debate?