To the origins
The small island of Schockland is home to no less than 160 archaeological sites, including astonishing vestiges of prehistoric occupation (dykes, artificial mounds, etc.) that bear witness to the thousand-year battle waged by man against the waters. The Romans fortified the left bank of the Rhine. This Limes of Lower Germania is composed of the remains of legionary camps, forts, towers, roads, cemeteries, temples, canals and aqueducts. In the Middle Ages, the first religious buildings bear the mark of the Mosan Romanesque style, which can be recognized by the importance of their forebodies and the presence of a western massif. Then this style evolved with the addition of a western bell tower and a triforium (gallery around the central vessel). The basilicas of Saint-Servais and Notre-Dame de Maastricht are the most beautiful representatives of this style. The monastic complex of Rolduc is also a very beautiful witness of this Romanesque style, and its church impresses by its trefoil plan testifying to the evolution of a style which becomes more decorative. A flamboyance of the decoration which characterizes the Brabant gothic. Inspired by the French gothic style, it is recognizable by its vertical momentum, the order and clarity of its lines, its naves with three vessels, its choir surrounded by an ambulatory from which radiating chapels emanate and the persistence of a western tower-porch. The polychrome stained glass windows of the Grote Kerk in Edam, the superb ribbed vault in cedar wood of the Saint Bavo Cathedral in Haarlem and the octagonal tower of the Premonstratensian Abbey in Middelburg are magnificent witnesses of this Gothic style. A style that also became civil with the development of the municipalities. The town hall of Middelburg with its lace-like main façade is one of the most beautiful in the country. Middelburg is also a very good example of a walled city. Water management was also a major concern in the Middle Ages and conditioned the very functioning of society, with the creation of the Waterschappen, associations of landowners in charge of the construction and maintenance of dikes and canals. This was a costly task, but one that gave them a say in the decisions taken for the community! At that time, the draining of the marshes began to be done with the help of hollow pivot mills, whose pyramid-shaped base also served as a living quarters.
Golden Age
The Dutch Renaissance can be recognized by the play of curves and the polychromy of the stone and brick facades decorated with pilasters, columns and obelisks. The three great Protestant temples of Amsterdam (Noorderkerk, Westerkerk and Zuiderkerk), designed by Hendrick de Keyser, are fine examples, as are the town hall and the Haarlem Meat Market. Look at the ox heads and grotesques adorning its façade. A decoration at the service of the function that can be found in the guild houses whose gables become symbols of identification. On the island of Ameland, the houses of ship captains can be recognized by the brick cords arranged in a herringbone pattern on the façade, while in Middelburg, the harquebusiers decorated their gables with cannonballs! Simple, stepped, bell-shaped, flattened point, collar-shaped, decorated with sculptures..., the gable is at the heart of all attentions.
In the 17th century, Amsterdam was the subject of unprecedented urban and water planning. The aim was to extend the city by draining the marshy lands through concentrically arched canals. The creation of narrow plots (compensated by houses that were often very deep), the use of brick and sandstone, the division of the facade into 3 bays... the city controlled everything and, from this dirigisme, a city with an astonishing architectural coherence was born. You may have noticed that many of these houses have sloping facades. This slope makes the house appear larger and protects the decorative woodwork from the rain, but the main reason for the slope is that these houses rest on stilts, which the wood ends up playing on! The Royal Palace, which rests on 13,659 stilts, is the work of Jacob van Campen, a master of Dutch classicism, to whom we also owe the Mauritshuis in The Hague. It was also during this period that the hofjes or private hospices for the poorest people were developed. Haarlem has 19 of these complexes composed of small houses organized around a courtyard. This organization is similar to that of the beguinages of which Amsterdam has a fine example. This period is also the one of the evolution of military architecture, strongly marked by the influence of Vauban's theories, as in Naarden, where one can admire the double row of fortifications in a 12-pointed star and 6 bastions. This 17th century is also the century of the invention of mills with a pivoting cap allowing to vary the orientation according to the wind direction. They can be recognized by their brick base, their octagonal wooden body and their thatched roof. The Beemster Polder is another fascinating example of this water management. It has been entirely laid out according to a rationalized geometrical plan and has kept its parceling out, roads and villages intact.18th-19th centuries
In the 18th century, the travelling merchants settled down, which explains the immoderate taste of the period for interior decorations, filled with earthenware and ceramics. The great architect of the period was Daniel Marot, a French Huguenot in exile, who was responsible for the diffusion of a Louis XV style, combining comfort, functionality and exuberance of decoration, which can be seen in the furniture as well as in the grills and exterior transoms. In the 19th century, military architecture was profoundly changed with the creation of the New Dutch Water Line and the Amsterdam Defense Line, consisting of a network of forts, dykes, locks, pumping stations and above all temporary flooding zones designed to slow down the enemy. In terms of architecture, the 19th century was initially eclectic with a systematic recourse to the canons of the past. One of the great architects of the period was Pierre Cuypers, who was very fond of neo-Renaissance and neo-Baroque, and who was responsible for the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. This period was also marked by new urbanistic reflections. The Netherlands developed what was called the Colonies of Beneficence. The aim was to reduce urban poverty by establishing agricultural colonies in remote areas. These could be so-called free colonies, as in Frederiksoord, where small farms were built by families; or so-called forced colonies, as in Veenhuizen, where the inhabitants were housed in dormitory structures and large centralized farms. In the middle of the nineteenth century, nearly 11,000 people lived in these "colonies. The Hague was at that time the object of a different kind of urban planning. As the capital of the United Provinces, the city's canals were filled in and replaced by large straight avenues. Finally, the 19th century was also marked by the development of industrial architecture, a symbol of prosperity. Large brick factories with the appearance of neo-Gothic castles, markets and halls with elegant metal structures, and the first attempts at workers' housing estates like the Agneta Park district in Delft with its 70 houses organized around an English garden... the industrial revolution took on the most varied forms.
In praise of modernity
Hendrik Petrus Berlage, the father of Dutch modern architecture, rejected decorative historicism and was inspired by the unadorned simplicity of traditional brick buildings. The Amsterdam Stock Exchange Hall, for example, consists of a compact, vaulted brick supporting structure into which a steel frame is inserted, an astonishing blend of tradition and modernity. Brick is the material favored by the Amsterdam School. The flagship building of the movement is the House of Navigation, designed by Johann Melchior van der Mey, Michel de Klerk and Pieter Kramer. The reinforced concrete structure is covered with a facade made of brick and terracotta, worked in the most exotic forms. The architecture, all inventiveness and expressionism, is here treated as a sculpture. The Amsterdam School was also interested in social housing. Michel de Klerk designed the Het Schip, which is distinguished by its combination of expressionist window patterns and shapes, from triangles to trapezoids to arches, thus excluding any form of monotony. De Klerk then teamed up with Pieter Kramer to design the working-class city De Dageraad. Cubic buildings, undulating forms, brick sculptures, chromaticism of the various materials..., the two architects create an airy and luminous habitat punctuated by an infinity of architectural forms. Robert van't Hoff, on the other hand, was inspired by the theories and achievements of Frank Lloyd Wright and created the villa of Huis ter Heide, a reinforced concrete construction with cubic volumes and clear lines, dominated by the horizontality of the windows in bands. Van't Hoff will eventually join the second great movement of the period: De Stijl. Inspired by the clear geometry of Wright's buildings and Mondrian's painting, the De Stijl movement was based on an abstract, rational and unadorned language of forms. The first concrete application of the movement was not a building, but a piece of furniture! It is the famous Blue and Red Chair by Gerrit Thomas Rietveld. Rietveld is also responsible for the Rietveld-Schröderhuis in Utrecht. Flat roofs, interlocking walls that extend beyond the corners of the building, cantilevered structures, removable partitions to allow for a free plan..., the innovations are numerous. The De Stijl movement was also interested in the question of social housing, as shown by the project of J.J.P. Oud in Hoek van Holland. The monotonous alignment of the dwellings is broken by yellow plinths, red flights of steps, blue doors and elegantly curved balconies. Unfortunately, the achievements of the De Stijl movement were expensive and impractical to implement and were soon replaced by a functionalism of steel, glass and concrete. Industrial architecture was also being renewed, as evidenced by the Van Nelle complex of factories with glass and steel facades using the curtain wall principle and evolving interior spaces bathed in light.
Contemporary architecture
Rotterdam is the Dutch city that best illustrates the evolution of contemporary architecture. After the war, the city was completely destroyed. In 1946, the architect Van Traa imagined the plan "Rotterdam for the future" breaking down the city into different sectors and functions, the center being devoted to the concrete towers of banks and administrations, and the peripheries hosting the large residential complexes, all of which were connected by major automobile arteries. A paragon of modernity at the time, this plan progressively concentrated all the criticisms, which led to the revival of the 1970s. The port city was then transformed into an architectural laboratory welcoming the craziest projects, including those of the unclassifiable Piet Blom. It is to him that we owe the forest of tree houses overhanging Blaak Boulevard, the marina that looks like a casbah, and the tower in the shape of a pencil! Rotterdam is also the birthplace of Rem Koolhaas, holder of the prestigious Pritzker Prize, the Nobel Prize for architecture. Free and functional organization of space and the use of technological innovations in the creative process characterize his architecture. In Rotterdam, he designed the Kunsthal
, and more recently the De Rotterdam, a true vertical city which, at 150 m, is the tallest building in the country. The other major tower in the city, rising from the World Port Center, is the work of Norman Foster. The Hague is also an amazing city. In 1978, Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid worked together on the extension of the Parliament building, while a few years later Richard Meier designed a city hall in white with banded windows. More recently, Jean Nouvel designed the headquarters of the European Patent Office, the slimmest and largest glass and steel office building in Europe. Since the 1980s, other great names in architecture have made their mark in the country, such as Alessandro Mendini, Philippe Starck and Coop Himmelb(l)au, who designed the Groningen Museum, an astonishingly curved jumble of steel, artificial stone, wood and concrete; or Aldo Rossi, who designed the BonnefantenMuseum in Maastricht, with its domed metal tower. Amsterdam is not to be outdone with NEMO, the Science Museum with its giant green shell designed by Renzo Piano; the ING House, an astonishing metal creature perched on 16 slender legs; the extension of the Stedelijk Museum, nicknamed "the bathtub", designed by Mels Crouwel; the astonishing steel cube of the Muziekgebouw; and, of course, the floating quarters, such as that of the Waterbuurt on the island of Steigereiland, made entirely of non-polluting materials!Vernacular architecture
Wood, brick, thatch, reed and tiles are the preferred materials in vernacular architecture. In the Netherlands, there are almost as many types of farms as there are owners! The farmhouses of Friesland, with their raised roofs ending in a pyramid, are a must-see. In Groningen and Friesland, there are also the so-called "neck-head-trunk" farms. The dwelling house (head) is connected by a narrower part (neck) to the large farmhouse (trunk). In the center of the country, we frequently find truss-halls. The frame is supported by pillars that form three naves, as in the hall-churches. In the Twente region, some farmhouses still have beautiful examples of half-timbering. The farmhouses of the Drenthe region can be recognized by their elongated shape and their imposing thatched roofs that reach almost to the ground. In Limburg, the farm buildings are organized around a large central courtyard closed by an imposing carriage gate. The Brabant farms are distinguished by their long facade with several doors opening onto the street. In contrast to all these rather compact forms, the Zeeland farmhouse is characterized by isolated buildings of which the wooden barn is the flagship building. It can be recognized by its tarred walls (the tar protects the wood from salt water) and its frames outlined in white paint. This is also true of the small houses in the villages of the Zaan, where the gable is topped with a wooden ornament called a Makelaar. The village of Zaanse Schans has even been turned into an open-air museum! Other amazing little houses are those of the Marken peninsula, which can be recognized by their masonry first floor, their beautiful wooden floor and their outside staircase. Some still have the black of the tar, others are painted in bright colors.
