AUP Amsterdam, a practical application of CIAM-principles

Ever since the explosive growth of Amsterdam in de nineteenth century the city has almost continually needed to expand. Expansion was often piecemeal. New urban districts were added to the existing urban fabric and connected to it by new roads. These partial expansions are very much a part of the radial city, an urban model where growth is pushed outwards along arterial roads. Some of these district are well known (i.e. Plan-Zuid by Berlage), most however consisted of rather poorly built housing comprising of tenement blocks with small apartments. The spread of regional planning, as part of the ideas of the Garden City Movement, coincided in the Netherlands with the spread of Modernism. The same is true for Belgium, Germany and the Scandinavian countries. The 1903 urban expansion plan for Amsterdam was the first modern regional plan for the capital of the Netherlands.  Firstly the planners looked towards the north where the new IJ-polders were located. In 1910 the four main functions of the city were formulated by Werner Hegemann as housing (wohnen), industrial (arbeiten), leisure (erholung) and transport (verkehr). The regional plan for Amsterdam was mainly focused on new roads, new railways and new industrial areas (harbours included) and less on housing.

A city like Amsterdam could only keep growing by annexing land beyond the city limits. The first such annexation had taken place in 1896, allowing the city to grow westwards and expand in the south and east. The city was quickly filling the new land around it with new housing and factories. At the same time Amsterdam expanded into the IJ by backfilling behind wicker dykes with dredging slush to raise new islands. The turning point came with the annexation of a number of adjoining municipalities (Randgemeenten) in 1921 when Sloten, Watergraafsmeer, Buiksloot, Nieuwendam, Ransdorp and parts of Westzaan, Zaandam, Oostzaan, Diemen, Ouder-Amstel and Nieuwe-Amstel (now Amstelveen) became part of Amsterdam.

The planers estimated that the city would grow to 960,000 inhabitants by 2000 (in reality the figure would be only 731,000) and welcomed the new area as ample space for expanding the city to accommodate these future inhabitants. The municipal planners started the ambitious task of drafting a General Expansion Plan (Algemeen Uitbreidingsplan*) by creating the new Department of Urban Expansion and Development within the Department of Public Works in 1928. They started by compiling data on the future development of the harbour, factories, industrial activity, traffic and demographics.

The AUP was drafted between 1933 and '35 by Cornelis van Eesteren and Theo van Lohuizen. Their plan bears a strong influence of the building experiments -model housing- of the modernist movement (Neues Bauen) in Germany and was to a lesser extent inspired by the Garden City Movement. The AUP was one of the first opportunities to implement the ideas that had been developed within CIAM**. The AUP was an equally great influence on the ideas developed within the CIAM forum.

The AUP projected on present day Amsterdam. Large parts of the plan were executed along the lines of the plan. A big exception is the harbour. The harbour basins and the canal diversion have not been executed in the way that was indicated by the plans. The parks and recreational areas, including allotment gardens are all more or less where they should be according to the plan. The housing was also executed along the lines of the global plan.

The AUP treats Amsterdam as a functional city comprising of four main functions: housing (wonen), commercial (werken) and recreation (recreatie), all woven together by traffic (verkeer). According to Van Eesteren, who was the president of CIAM between 1930 and 1947, the compound parts of the urban environment should be organized in an organic and functional manner, like the organs in a human body. The AUP was a global plan (plan op hoofdlijnen) that gave a projection of the planned expansion as a series of maps, detailed information, commentary notes and a number of themed supplements.

Prior to WW2 only a part of the plan was executed, most was developed during the 1950s. For each functional colour block on the map a detailed urban design had to be made. This resulted in separate plans for Buitenveldert (south), Watergraafsmeer (east), Bos en Lommer (west) and most famously Slotermeer, Slotervaart, Geuzenveld, Overtoomseveld and Osdorp (together the so-called Western Garden Cities). These "garden cities" were morphologically far removed from the original garden cities of Letchworth and Welwyn, but should be seen as a modernist continuation of the ideas of separation of function an planning along lines of communication (transportation) that are indeed central to the ideas of the Garden City Movement.

The AUP lead to  a considerable expansion of the city of Amsterdam with new housing in Buitenveldert (1), Watergraafsmeer (2), Bos en Lommer (3), Slotervaart (4), Overtoomseveld (5), Slotermeer (6), Geuzenveld (7) and Osdorp (8). The regional plan also included an existing lake the Nieuwe Meer (N), as well as a new lake called the Sloterplas (P). On the edge of the latter the Sloterpark (S) was built. Other parks include: Rembrandt Park (R), Beatrix Park (B), Amstel Park (A) and Flevopark (F). The AUP also included two areas outside of the municipal boundaries: the Amsterdamse Bos (9), a large woodland park planted in the 1930 and Schiphol Airport (10) located in the Haarlemmermeerpolder.

All urban quarters developed from the AUP have been designed in a similar vocabulary of repetitive housing units, green belts, large open spaces, a focus on social interaction of the inhabitants, the separation of slow and fast traffic etcetera. Each area has a distinctive street plan. To prevent the soulless succession of rows of houses - all too common in German Siedlungen - the housing strip was transform into a pattern of blocks angled around a central green space (hoven).

*Although the Algemeen Uitbreidingsplan, or AUP, of Amsterdam is very well known because of its direct link with CIAM, two other cities in the Netherlands had such a plan drafted. The AUP-Groot Rotterdam (1928) and AUP-Groot Eindhoven (1930) were actually forerunners to the AUP-Amsterdam (1935). The importance of the regional plans cannot be underestimated as these three cities are now still the economic centres of the Netherlands.

** Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne, abbreviated to CIAM, was founded in 1928 and disbanded in 1959 with the objective of spreading the principles of the Modernist Movement in all the main domains of design (architecture, landscape architecture, urbanism and industrial design).