Flaneur/Flaneuse's Home and Articulation in the Netherlands

Abstract

This article focuses on the experience of walking, cycling, the emotional experience of mobility and (in)visibility in urban space in rhizomatic urban spaces in different cities in the Netherlands by an architect flaneur/flaneuse, presented in an autoethnographic interpretation. The flaneur/flaneuse interprets the urban narrative and lived space through direct encounters and experimentation with everyday practices. This subjective experience leads to questions on the kinds of articulation that rhizomatic cities and architecture weave for the flaneur/flaneuse and architecture. How does a contemporary flaneur/flaneuse locate him/her being in an urban space in this era? Can a flaneur/flaneuse, today, set down roots in a home environment emotionally? How does contemporary architecture embed its dwellers or temporary perceivers in this era? As in Rilke's experience of a single lighted house, mentioned by Bachelard, are we confronting more solitary houses in urban space that remind us of our isolatedness and separatedness as a contemporary flaneur/flaneuse? Where does the warmth of the house/home start, when we have already started living in a world of designed narratives of housing policies? Therefore, the research highlights the experimentality of Dutch architecture based on the author's personal experience with urbanism in Utrecht, Rotterdam, Delft, and Amsterdam.