Although the Netherlands had remained
"neutral" during WW1, the effects of the conflict fought on its borders
was felt throughout the country. The effects of war were indirect and mostly
immaterial, although the conflict lead to a high demand for housing, especially
in the cities. Between 1919 and 1921 and enormous house building campaign was
instigated by central government The capital city of Amsterdam took some 6% of
the investments. In 1921, however, a housing shortage of 13% remained. In the
beginning house building was executed by housing associations, that had been
created in 1901. From 1921 the rules were changed to speed up house building by
making grants and premiums available to private house builders. The ideal was
to let people build a house for their family, but the premiums mainly
benefitted construction firms and investors.
Amsterdam combated the housing needs by developing new
garden villages on the outskirts of the existing urban fabric and strongly
directed their planning and development -even if the initiative lay with others
(i.e. housing associations, housing cooperatives and building firms). These garden villages were mainly built north
of the Y: Tuindorp Oostzaan, Tuindorp Nieuwendam, Tuindorp Buiksloterham,
Tuindorp Volewijk and Tuindorp Buiksloot. Only one was developed in the
Watergraafsmeer, a polder (drained in 1629) that had been incorporated into
Amsterdam in 1921. The name Watergraafsmeer translates as the lake on the
artificial (dug!) watercourse and relates to long straight stretch of the present-day
river Amstel, basically a canal linking the original river that flowed east with
an inlet on the Y.
At the time the Watergraafsmeer was annexed by the
city of Amsterdam the oval polder contained some houses and the Nieuwe
Oosterbegraafplaats, a large cemetery. The first urbanisation plan (1907) was
drawn up along the lines of Amsterdam-South as designed by Berlage. This plan
was incorporated into the regional plan for Amsterdam. Realisation of the plan
started in 1921 with development of the Watergraafsmeer garden village.
This Tuindorp Watergraafsmeer is situated east of the
cemetery south of the central road that cut through the polder. As a result of
the lack of skilled brick layers, the high wages of builders and the high price
of traditional building materials (bricks) it was decided to make this project
an experiment in construction in concrete. Hence the colloquial name for the
garden village, Betondorp, which translates as "concrete village".
Although Betondorp was pioneering, the first examples of construction in
concrete can be found in Tuindorp Oostzaan.
The 1921 plan comprised of a large garden village
around a central square with shops and amenities. The layout by Gratema and
Versteeg was distinctly Unwinesque in approach. The new suburban satellite was
planned with some 2000 houses of which 900 would be built in concrete. The rest
would be built using brick and were designed in a typical idiom referencing
vernacular architecture. Versteeg was also the architect of these brick houses.
Betondorp is most noted for its concrete building in a
decorative style that references New Objectivity in its treatment of the
building mass and the rhythmic placement of windows and doors. All buildings
were erected under supervision of the municipal structural engineer A. F.
Bakhoven jr. The two most important
architects that are responsible for the distinct style of the buildings are
J.B. van Loghem and D. Greiner. The first concrete housing was occupied by
1924. In 1929 all building work was finished. Later it emerged that some
buildings were of substandard construction and were plagued by leaks. These
buildings were torn down in 1954 after the addition of wooden cladding proved
unable to remedy the problems. The building were replaced by some meagrely
executed blocks.
The current garden village Watergraafsmeer shows a
typical layout. It is located adjacent to the cemetery Nieuwe
Oosterbegraafplaats (1). A wide canal forms the partition between the two. It
is connected to the Middenweg (2) the central axis of this polder. At the heart
of the garden village a large garden square is located (3) called Brink. All
the shops are still located around this central public space with a garden
court for the elderly (h) between a social club (c) and a library (L) on one
side. The impressive school (s) was
located off another square. The substandard housing (4) has been replaced but
is shown here in outline. There were no churches planned in this new community,
however two were built (indicated by k) directly after WW2.
Watergraafsmeer garden village is interesting as it
shows how an Unwinesque approach to designing public and private space and the
use of accents in the spatial entity of such a housing area work irrespective
of the style of architecture chosen. Grey boxes with flat roofs work equally
well as vernacular architecture. Batadorp in Best is another clear example of
this!
No comments:
Post a Comment