ABSTRACT
The Open Society and what it stands for are key to understanding how the idea of a welfare state developed from working-class relief in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century to the comprehensive, political undertaking that affected all walks of life after the Second World War. All-inclusive aspect of the Open Society as guaranteed by a neutral state apparatus paired with a new individual freedom based on egalitarianism created irresolvable contradictory conditions for the architects who sought to build for the Open Society. The Netherlands provided some of the most radical experiments in architecture, all under the banner of the welfare state. Post-war Netherlands and the Team 10 discourse serves as a backdrop to discuss the contributions made by Dutch structuralism, especially the Kasbah housing project of Aldo van Eyck's most famous student, the 'ludic' architect Piet Blom. Piet Blom, too, is said to have been critical of the whole undertaking.
