Architecture & Heritage Blog

var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-28424377-1']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); Hi! My name is Anne Beeksma and I work with cultural heritage - architecture mostly. Consider this blog my fieldnotes. Any comments or remarks are very much appreciated! Any photographers are explicitly mentioned in the captions, if not the photo's are mine. In that case, the photo's are under a Creative Commons license:

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Brutal beauty: the rich heritage that means these buildings must be saved

With Robin Hood Gardens in danger of being destroyed, it's time to look beyond appearances and recognise its real value.

So awesome. I only know of this estate through British crime series - which makes it evident that this complex has some social stigmas to counteract. 

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Stained glass window in The Grand Hotel in Amsterdam. This hotel is actually the former city hall of Amsterdam, hence worth the visit. By  Richard Roland Holst, around 1926-1928. 

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Back on this blog :) To celebrate, I thought I’d share my favorite pictures from my work in the last three months with you. 

I worked in Rotterdam mostly.

Pictures from (up to down) Rotterdam // Rotterdam // Oslo // Rotterdam // Rotterdam // Oslo. 

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'Bolwoningen' or Sphere Houses in Den Bosch (NL). Photo from 1985. 

Oh the 80's. Future monuments? Part of the Dutch online exhibition about public housing in the Netherlands by the wonderful IISG.

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Central Post Rotterdam

On a sunny day you can get a great view of the Central Post building from Rotterdam central station. It has an impressive facade with beautiful decorations. The most interesting part is the section with all the  different elements that look like windows, but are actually glass-concrete sculptural elements by Louis van Roden. A recent renovation gave it back it's refined and fresh look. Located right in the city centre, this building is embraced by many modern skyscrapers, I love how the building is reflected in a nearby blue glass facade. 

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A nice find yesterday in the archive of the Dutch Institute for Architecture: a sketch by architect Jan Wils of a tropical resort de luxe from the fifties. 

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Got the Knack: Showroom by George Nakashima-

George Nakashima designed and built this showroom, situated on his family compound in Pennsylvania in 1954. In typical Nakashima fashion the showroom is a fusion of East and West, featuring both shaker style hanging pegs and tatami mats. A wealth of natural materials can be found in the house, the fieldstone walls support a wooden beam construction, the floors are all exposed cherry wood and there are shoji screens opening onto the terrace. There is also a Japanese inspired gravel garden and reflecting pool outside. The simple understated but elegant showroom is the perfect backdrop for Nakashima’s furniture.

www.theimportanceofbeingmodernist.com

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This building caught my eye. Not only because it was brightly lit by the Amsterdam sunlight, but because of the use of both concrete elements and brickwork. Currently not in use, this interesting building lies in a part of Amsterdam called Slotermeer. The map dates from 1939 and shows this very structured urban expansion to the west of the city. Slotermeer was the first urban expansion in the Netherlands to be planned this exactly and coherently. After WOII, many urban expansions followed this example. The architecture built along this plan was as innovative as the plan itself was. New methods and structures, such as using a lot of reinforced concrete, inserting many windows, designing new types of apartment blocks and allowing for a lot of 'green' exterior space were put to use. Systematized building, by prefabricating concrete slabs and wall elements outside the building site, was first put to use on a large scale in Slotermeer. 

This architecture isn't as highly valued anymore - it is perceived as monotonous and dull. But a change is arising. Heritage professionals and the Dutch state have recognized the value of this important phase in Dutch architectural history. 

Now, let's look again at this facade. This building has all the features I've described that makes the architecture from this period interesting. But the architect has even gone beyond these aspects. Not only has he used modern building techniques, but he has played with them. By letting the concrete slabs point out of the facade, he's created a playfull rhythm of alternating flat brickwork with transparent windows placed between concrete. Anything but dull if you ask me. 

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I've been researching some Dutch buildings from the forties and what strikes me is how beautiful the sometimes handwritten typography on some designs and sketches is. Here are my two favorites plus a spendid design for a garage by Jan Wils. 

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Metrostation Kraaiennest in Amsterdam Bijlmer. This region of Amsterdam was built as a mass-housing suburb form 1966 onwards. There's a lot of bold lines and structures to be seen. 

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I found a very complete and useful list of the different Interbau buildings in the Hansaviertel. Couldn't keep it to myself. 

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Using info from different datasets, the Guggenheim Lab created a tool to investigate how a ideal city should look like.

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Statue in Treptower Park. 

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Prenzlauer Berg / gentrification / styrofoam

Two weeks ago I moved from Friedrichshain to a little expat appartement at the Fehrbelliner Strasse, a street between Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg. And although the house is just what I need for the summer, the surroundings take some getting used to. 

Prenzlauer Berg is well known as the epicenter of gentrification in Berlin. Child psychologists alternate with yogaschools and coffeebars. Along with the current influx of a new wealthy demographic, come fysical changes in the neighbourhood. In Friedrichshain, a lot of buildings still display a very thick and heavily irregular plastered facade. The plaster is so thick it sometimes looks like mud with gravel in it - an observation supported by the often brownish color of this finish. These facades are not pretty in a very standard sense. Just like most of Berlin honestly. I find this a good thing, because this kind of architecture leaves room to breathe. It's not rigid. 

The architecture in my new street can be called directly the opposite of this architecture. Definitely rigid. The plaster is drilled of the walls, to be replaced by a clean and boring version of a slighty decorated 19th century apartment building. Al the contractors must buy their materials at the same places, because all the details are exactly the same. The steel balconies, the windows, the small wooden (or are they plastic?) frames. Together they create a ongoing facade. 

I almost felt deceived when I looked closer at the facade of my new building, which is undergoing a renovation right now. The working method for the renewal of this facade is undergoing the following steps: first, drilling off the old plaster, then, against the now bare brick wall, the workers place large slaps of styrofoam. These easily modifiable slaps are then being decorated with slits, to make them mimic the look of large slaps of 19th century stone. The slaps are then covered with a thin layer of actual plaster and then painted over. You could put your finger through the weak spots. It just feels so fake.

Here's another detailed shot to show the process (the pink and dotted stuff is the styrofoam):

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There was once a society that believed the future would bring better living conditions to everyone. There were people, utopian thinkers, who thought about the big questions of the city. Today only a feeling remains, half desire, half melancholy, reminiscing of those architects who wanted to live in a better society and who had dreamed of better places. Such an era is now over. Here begins my work.

raumlaborberlin on conceiving a new kind of approach to the texture of the city

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Occult spaces / Joachim Koester

I first read about Joachim Koester years ago in an article accompagnied by depicitions of his photographs of an abandoned abbey in Italy, from the series named 'Morning of the Magicians'. From the 10th of May till the 8th of July the works of the Danish artist will be on display in the MIT List Visual Arts Center, an occasion which made me google these pictures again. They still impose the same power on me. They're both restless and static at the same time. The walls of the abbey show the traces left behind by the occult, sect-like group which occupied the building for some years. They experimented heavily with both sex and drugs with the abbey as the backdrop for their explorations. Paint, scribbled graffiti, occult symbols, all weather-beaten and washed down. Is there such a thing as a definite 'occult atmosphere'? Something comparable (and contradictory) to a sacred atmosphere - the feeling certain spaces definitely evoke in me, such as the Begijnhof Church in Amsterdam. You be the judge.

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