Herman Hertzberger - Shaping Freedom: Architecture 1959-2025

272pp., Maas Lawrence

A new book by Dutch architect Herman Hertzberger. Even if it is not ‘the complete oeuvre’, Shaping freedom offers a comprehensive overview of the work of Hertzberger since 1959. The new texts he has written for this book are complemented by key fragments from his earlier publications. A wealth of images presents his architecture and inspirations.

Shaping Freedom is as much about making architecture as it is about world-making. The Dutch architect never considered his works as stand-alone objects, but rather as parts of webs of connections on different scales. In this collection of texts, photographs, drawings, his own work, and architecture and art by others, all of these layers come together to form a universe of inspirations, ideas, and solutions – in Hertzberger’s words, his ‘musée imaginaire’. Edited by Suzanne Mulder and Hans Ibelings, the book is written and compiled by Hertzberger himself and features an essay by Thomas Hertzberger.