To the origins
The small island of Schockland is home to no fewer than 160 archaeological sites, including astonishing remains of prehistoric occupation (dykes, artificial mounds...) bearing witness to man's millennia-long struggle against the waters. The Romans fortified the left bank of the Rhine. This Limes of Lower Germania includes the remains of legionary camps, forts, towers, roads, cemeteries, temples, canals and aqueducts. In the Middle Ages, the first religious buildings bore the hallmarks of the Mosan Romanesque style, which can be recognized by the importance of their forebodies and the presence of a western massing. This style evolved with the addition of a western bell-tower and a triforium (gallery around the central nave). The basilicas of Saint-Servais and Notre-Dame in Maastricht are the finest examples. The Rolduc monastery complex is also a fine example of this Romanesque style, and its church impresses with its trefoil plan, testifying to the evolution of a more decorative style. The flamboyance of the decor is characteristic of the Brabant Gothic style. Inspired by the French Gothic style, it can be recognized by its vertical momentum, the order and clarity of its lines, its 3-vessel naves, 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 Edam's Grote Kerk, the superb ribbed cedar vaulting of Haarlem's Sainte-Bavon Cathedral and the octagonal tower of Middelburg's Premonstratensian Abbey are magnificent examples of this Gothic style. This style also became more civilized as the towns grew. Middelburg's town hall, with its lace-sculpted main façade, is one of the most beautiful in the country. Middelburg is also a fine example of a fortified town. 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 responsible for building and maintaining dikes and canals. A costly responsibility, but one that gave them a say in community decisions! At this time, marshes began to be drained by means of hollow pivot mills, whose pyramid-shaped base also served as living quarters.
Golden Age
The Dutch Renaissance can be recognized by the play of curves and the polychrome stone and brick facades adorned with pilasters, columns and obelisks. Amsterdam's 3 great Protestant temples (Noorderkerk, Westerkerk and Zuiderkerk), designed by Hendrick de Keyser, are fine examples, as are Haarlem's Town Hall and Meat Market. Take a look at the ox heads and grotesques adorning its façade. The same kind of functional decoration can be found in guild houses, whose gables become symbols of identification. On the island of Ameland, ship captains' houses can be recognized by the brick cords arranged in a herringbone pattern on the façade, while in Middelburg, harquebusiers adorned their gables with cannonballs! Simple, stepped, bell-shaped, flat-topped, collar-shaped, ornamented with sculptures... the gable is the focus of attention.
In the 17th century, Amsterdam underwent unprecedented urban and hydraulic planning. The aim was to extend the city by draining marshy land through canals in concentric arcs. Narrow plots of land were created (offset by houses that were often very deep), brick and sandstone were used, and facades were divided into 3 bays... the city controlled everything, and this dirigisme gave rise to a city of astonishing architectural coherence. You may have noticed that many of these houses have sloping facades. This makes the house appear larger and protects the decorative woodwork from the rain, but the main reason for the slope is that the houses are built on stilts, which the wood ends up playing on! The Royal Palace, which rests on 13,659 stilts, was designed by Jacob van Campen, a master of Dutch classicism who also designed the Mauritshuis in The Hague. It was also during this period that the hofjes, or private hospices for the poor, were developed. Haarlem boasts 19 of these complexes, made up of small houses arranged around a courtyard. Similar to the beguinages of which Amsterdam is a fine example. This period also saw the evolution of military architecture, strongly influenced by the theories of Vauban, as at Naarden, where you can admire the double row of 12-pointed star fortifications and 6 bastions. The seventeenth century also saw the invention of windmills with pivoting caps, allowing them to vary their orientation according to wind direction. They can be recognized by their brick base, octagonal wooden body and thatched roof. The Beemster Polder is another fascinating example of water management. It was entirely laid out according to a rationalized geometric plan, and has preserved its plot layout, roads and villages intact.
18th-19th centuries
In the 18th century, travelling merchants settled down, which explains the period's immoderate taste for interior decoration, populated by earthenware and ceramics. The great architect of the period was Daniel Marot, an exiled French Huguenot, who is credited with disseminating the Louis XV style, combining comfort, functionality and exuberant decoration, which can be seen as much in the furniture as in the exterior railings and transoms. In the 19th century, military architecture underwent profound changes with the creation of the New Dutch Water Line and the Amsterdam Defense Line, comprising a network of forts, dikes, locks, pumping stations and, above all, temporary flooding zones designed to slow down the enemy. Architecturally, the 19th century was initially eclectic, with 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 styles, and was responsible for the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. This period was also marked by new urban planning ideas. The Netherlands developed what came to be known as 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 inhabitants were housed in dormitory structures and large centralized farms. By the mid-19th century, some 11,000 people were living in these "colonies". At the same time, The Hague was the focus of an entirely different kind of urban planning. Elevated to the status of capital of the United Provinces, the city's canals were filled in and replaced by wide, straight avenues. Finally, the 19th century was also marked by the development of industrial architecture, a symbol of prosperity. With large brick factories resembling neo-Gothic castles, markets and market halls with elegant metal structures, and the first attempts at workers' housing estates such as Agneta Park in Delft, with its 70 houses arranged around an English garden, the industrial revolution took on a wide variety of forms.
In praise of modernity
Hendrik Petrus Berlage, the father of Dutch modern architecture, rejected decorative historicism for the unadorned simplicity of traditional brick construction. The Amsterdam Stock Exchange Hall, for example, features a compact, vaulted brick load-bearing structure into which a steel frame is inserted - an astonishing blend of tradition and modernity. Brick is the material of choice for the Amsterdam School. The movement's flagship building is the Maison de la Navigation, designed by Johann Melchior van der Mey, Michel de Klerk and Pieter Kramer. The reinforced concrete structure is clad with a facade of brick and terracotta, worked into the most exotic shapes. Here, architecture, with its inventiveness and expressionism, is treated like 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 shapes and motifs, from triangles to trapezoids to arches, ruling out any form of monotony. De Klerk then teamed up with Pieter Kramer to design the De Dageraad housing estate. With their cubic buildings, undulating shapes, brick sculptures and chromatic use of different materials, the two architects created an airy, light-filled habitat punctuated by an infinite variety of architectural forms. Robert van't Hoff, on the other hand, was inspired by the theories and achievements of Frank Lloyd Wright and designed the Huis ter Heide villa, a reinforced concrete construction with cubic volumes and clear lines, dominated by the horizontality of banded windows. Van't Hoff would 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 language of form, free from ornament. The first concrete application of the movement was not a building, but a piece of furniture! Gerrit Thomas Rietveld's famous Blue and Red Chair. Rietveld is also responsible for the Rietveld-Schröderhuis in Utrecht. Flat roof terraces, interpenetrating walls extending beyond intersecting angles, cantilevered structures, removable partitions to allow a free plan... the innovations are numerous. The De Stijl movement also took an interest in social housing, as illustrated by J.J.P. Oud's project in Hoek van Holland. The monotony of aligned housing is broken by yellow plinths, red flights of steps, blue doors and elegantly curved balconies. Unfortunately, the De Stijl movement's achievements were costly and impractical to implement, and were soon replaced by steel, glass and concrete functionalism. Industrial architecture also underwent a revival, as illustrated by the Van Nelle complex of factories with glass and steel facades based on the curtain wall principle, and light-filled, open-plan interiors.
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, architect Van Traa drew up the "Rotterdam for the future" plan, dividing the city into different sectors and functions, with the center devoted to concrete banking and administrative towers, and the suburbs to large residential developments, all linked by major automobile arteries. A paragon of modernity at the time, this plan gradually became the focus of criticism, leading to the revival of the 1970s. The port city was transformed into an architectural laboratory, home to the wildest projects, including those of the unclassifiable Piet Blom. He was responsible for the forest of tree houses overlooking Blaak boulevard, the casbah-like marina and the pencil-shaped tower! Rotterdam is also the birthplace of Rem Koolhaas, winner of the prestigious Pritzker Prize, the Nobel Prize for architecture. His architecture is characterized by the free, functional organization of space and the use of technological innovations in the creative process. In Rotterdam, he designed the Kunsthal, and more recently the De Rotterdam, a veritable vertical city which, at 150 m, is the tallest building in the country. The city's other major tower, rising from the World Port Center, is the work of Norman Foster.
The Hague, too, is an astonishing city. In 1978, Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid worked together on the extension to the Parliament building, while a few years later, Richard Meier designed a town hall all in white with banded windows. More recently, Jean Nouvel designed the headquarters of the European Patent Office, Europe's slimmest and largest glass-and-steel office building. Since the 1980s, other great names in architecture have made their mark in the country, including Alessandro Mendini, Philippe Starck and Coop Himmelb(l)au, who designed the Groningen Museum, an astonishing bric-a-brac of curved steel, artificial stone, wood and concrete; and 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 hull designed by Renzo Piano; ING House, an astonishing metal creature perched on 16 slender legs; the extension to the Stedelijk Museum, nicknamed "the bathtub", designed by Mels Crouwel; the astonishing steel cube of the Muziekgebouw; and, of course, floating districts such as Waterbuurt on the island of Steigereiland, made entirely of non-polluting materials!
Vernacular architecture
Wood, brick, thatch, reed and tiles are the materials of choice in vernacular architecture. In the Netherlands, there are almost as many types of farmhouses as there are owners! The farmhouses of Friesland, with their raised roofs ending in pyramids, are a must-see. In the province of Groningen and in Friesland, there are also so-called "neck-head-trunk" farmhouses. The dwelling house (head) is connected by a narrower section (neck) to the larger farmhouse (trunk). In the central part of the country, trusses are frequently found. The framework is supported by pillars that form 3 naves, as in hall churches. In the Twente region, some farmhouses still feature fine examples of checkerboard half-timbering. The farmhouses of the Drenthe region can be recognized by their elongated shape and imposing 4-sided thatched roofs that reach almost to the ground. In Limburg, farm buildings are organized around a large central courtyard enclosed by an imposing porte cochère. Brabant farmhouses, on the other hand, are distinguished by their long facades punctuated by 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. You can recognize them by their tarred walls (tar protects wood from salt water) and frames outlined in white paint. The same is true of the small houses in the villages of Zaan, whose gables are topped with a wooden ornament known as a Makelaar. The village of Zaanse Schans has even been transformed into an open-air museum! Other surprising little houses are those on the Marken peninsula, recognizable by their masonry first floor, handsome wooden upper floor and external staircase. Some are still tar-black, while others are brightly painted.
