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| This is a list of special architectural attractions open to the public - places you might want to go to purely for their archiectural content. They are individual buildings of significant interest which you can enter and enjoy. We are not, however, attempting a comprehensive tourist guide and galleries and the like (with serious architectural content) will be added as a second level of information. The UK is listed first. United Kingsdom / Austria / Belgium / Czech Republic / France / Germany / Italy / Netherlands / Scandinavia / Spain / Switzerland / |
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NETHERLANDS The Amsterdam Architecture Centre () publish an excellent small book called '25 buildings You Should Have Seen' (in Amsterdam, that is). |
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| Gerrit Rietveld | Schroderhuis, 1924 | |
Prins Hendriklaan 50 - Utrecht Tel: (+31) (0)302 362 310 |
The Schroder House is the most important and virtually the only extant example of De Stijl architecture. It is also Rietveld's first building and by far his finest. By all accounts Rietveld's client here, Truus Schroder, was an extra-ordinary person. She, more than most architects of the time, seems to have understood and accepted the notion that a bulding might be more truly funtional if it is in effect rearrangeable. This singular sun-filled space, whose existence may be largely attributable to Mrs Schroder, is ingeniously divisible by folding and sliding partitions into as many as six rooms. (Modern arch in Europe, p271) The house now sits on the end of a later terrace, which utterly transforms its scale and lends it a slightly bizarre quality. | |
| W.M. Dudok | Raadhuis (Town Hall) 1924-1931 | |
Dudokpark 1 - Hilversum (NW from Hilversum on Gravelandsweg; R on Koninginneweg. |
Of all the architects practising in Holland between the wars, none was more prolific nor more generally respected than Dudok. Because he never became deeply involved in the struggles between teh rival stylistic schools, he could profit from their discoveries while avoiding the deffifulties of trying to maintain some theoreticaly 'correct' position. Here, for instance, in his greatest serviving work, Dudok has combined, and wholy assimilated, elements taken from Frank Lloyd Wright, both directlly and via Berlage; from the Amsterdam School; from De Stijl; and, with most subtlety, from Stockholm City Hall. | |
| Hans van der Laan | Vaals benedictine Monastery | |
| bdij St. Benedictusberg
Gastenverblijf |
Van der Laan (190-5-1991) only built four buildings, each of them suberp, each austere and even daunting. The Abdij Sint-Benedictusberg, like his other esigns, is obsessed with number and proportion ('the 'plastic number' was a theory his designs are founded upon) - cerebral, but accompanied by emotive spatial design. But agnostics and others be warned: this comes with serious religion and Gregorian chant as a part of the package. | |
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