Spaarndammerplantsoen
Why is it significant?
Stand in the middle of the little park and turn slowly, all the way round. On three sides the brick walls do things brick is not supposed to do: they bulge, they ripple, they step forward and back, and the windows are cut into dozens of tiny panes like a ship's cabin.
Key Facts
| Place | Spaarndammerplantsoen |
|---|---|
| Address | Spaarndammerplantsoen, 1013 Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.38980, 4.87550 |
| Part of Walk | Red Brick Dreams: Amsterdam School, Het Schip & the Western Islands |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand in the middle of the little park and turn slowly, all the way round. On three sides the brick walls do things brick is not supposed to do: they bulge, they ripple, they step forward and back, and the windows are cut into dozens of tiny panes like a ship's cabin.
All three blocks around this square were designed by one man, Michel de Klerk. He was born in 1884 into a poor Jewish family in Amsterdam, the youngest of a very large brood, and he left school early to work as a draughtsman in the office of the architect Eduard Cuypers. No university, no grand tour of Italy. Just an extraordinary hand and a head full of ships, farmhouses and Scandinavian brickwork.
The first block, on the south side, was begun in 1913 for a private builder, Klaas Hille. Hille was a businessman, not a reformer, but he gave de Klerk astonishing freedom, and the young architect used it to the last brick. Look at how the courses change direction, how some bricks stand upright, how a roof drops low like a thatched farmhouse and then a corner shoots upward. The second block followed, and then the third, the most famous of all, which you will see in a moment.
Critics needed a name for this new style, and in 1916 the architect Jan Gratama gave it one: the Amsterdam School. It was never a school with classrooms. It was a loose band of young designers, de Klerk, Piet Kramer and others, who believed that housing for dockworkers and their families should be as expressive as a cathedral. Their opponents thought it wasteful and theatrical. Their admirers saw it as social idealism made out of clay.
The sad part is how short the story was. De Klerk died in 1923, only thirty-nine years old, and many of his ideas died with him as the style grew tamer. Walk to the pointed end of the block to the north-west, where a strange tower rises over the rooftops.