Wederopbouw

Tijdens de wederopbouw kwamen tuinbouwgebieden onder druk door de snelle verstedelijking en behoefte aan natuur en recreatie. De overheid nam daarom maatregelen om de tuinbouw te beschermen. Deze vonden hun ruimtelijke uitwerking in streekplannen. In dit artikel worden twee streekplannen met elkaar vergeleken, van het Westland (1965) en de Bollenstreek (1964). Wat zijn de verschillen en de overeenkomsten, en welke invloed hebben de plannen gehad op de ruimtelijke ontwikkeling van de streek?

In de afgelopen jaren is veel onderzoek gedaan naar de wederopbouw, onder meer door de Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed: het herstel van beschadigde binnensteden, de bouw van nieuwe wijken en de herverkaveling van landbouwgebieden. Daarbij is echter weinig aandacht besteed aan de wederopbouw van de tuinbouw, terwijl die een belangrijk onderdeel was – en is – van de landbouwsector in Nederland. In de Nota Ruimte uit 2004 werden vijf tuinbouwgebieden als greenport aangewezen. Hiermee gaf de rijksoverheid aan dat zij deze gebieden van nationaal en internationaal belang acht en hun ontwikkeling wil stimuleren. Sinds enkele decennia is de tuinbouw door organisatorische en technologische ontwikkelingen niet meer afhankelijk van zijn vestigingslocatie en kan dus overal in Nederland worden bedreven. In de jaren 1950 was dat anders, de teelt was gebonden aan daarvoor geschikte gronden en door de concentratie van tuinbouwbedrijven en daaraan gerelateerde ondernemingen in een bepaald gebied was er sprake van een zeker centrumvoordeel.

The article (in Dutch) argues the necessity to assess the significance of post-war architecture in the Netherlands in general and in the town of Bussum in particular. The article was first published in the 2012 Annual Report of Bussum’s Architectural Review Committee.

The government-architect Gijsbert Friedhoff (1892-1970) left an important mark on the architecture of the Dutch state after World War II, when large parts of The Netherlands had to be rebuilt. The works of this period, known as the post-war reconstruction architecture (1946-1965), are at the moment seriously threatened by developments in building and city planning.

The crucial problem is that most of the post-war reconstruction architecture is too young to be protected by the Historic Buildings and Ancient Monuments Act 1988, which applies a terminus ante quem of minimal 50 years. This means that during the next decennium buildings of a high quality Standard in architecture, siting and decoration inevitably will disappear, unless cities and provinces will take their responsibility by making their own rules for the keeping of valuable specimens of postwar architecture and city planning.

The works of Friedhoff are a touchstone in this process. His former offices for the ministry of Education, Arts and Sciences (Onderwijs, Kunsten en Wetenschappen) (1953) in the Hague are being demolished at this very moment, whereas in Oostburg (Zeeland) his District-court (Kantongerecht) (1953) is threatened by plans of the very municipality that once requested the central government to build it. The council of Oostburg wants to use the spot to construct a mall. This is all the more regrettable because of the great quality of Friedhoff’s designs.

Raised in the tradition of the Delft school (Delftse school) Friedhoff combined a solid craftmanship with traditional motifs to suggest dignity and decorum, which his tutor, professor Henri Evers characterised as 'the morality of a building'. His buildings are expressive by the grouping of masses as well as lucid by their ground plan, in which he tried to accomplish a 'climax' by the sequence and the form of the various spaces. His idea was to set an example for state-architecture, which appealed to the public by expressing the values of the community and the government.

Friedhoff was able to carry out this programm to its full extent by calling in the assistance of interior decorators and designers of furniture, sculpture, armatures, glass-stained-windows, graffiti, mosaics and murals. In this he proved to be a true heir of the Dutch tradition of Cuypers and Berlage, who also created an appealing impression in their buildings by exploiting the visual and symbolic possibilities of architectural elements in combination with the decorative and applied arts. Both the in- and exterior of a building contained in their view a message in stone.

One can only hope that the call of tradition will reach politicians and administrators in time to create new chances for the post-war reconstruction.

'I struggle and overcome' is the device of the coat of arms of the province of Zeeland, and refers to its ever-continuous struggle with the sea.

Hugh Maaskant (1907-1977) was a staunchly modernist architect who, with several others, personifies the reconstruction effort of the Netherlands after the Second World War. Maaskant was a self-made man, and to this day he is associated with bigness; his out-of scale architecture and penchant for expressive concrete structures truly befitted his larger-than-life persona.
Provoost is part of Crimson Architectural Historians, a collective based in Rotterdam. Crimson’s stance to architectural history is activist and operative. One of the stated aims of the book is to take the work of Maaskant ‘from the dated politicised critique that obscured it’ and to restore it to its rightful place in the history of Dutch modernism.
Although Maaskant did not regard himself to be overly political, that may not be said of his work. As late as 1993 the heavy-handed monumentality of some of Maaskant’s late-modern buildings was typified by Joseph Buch as ‘rather dubious’. In answer to these critiques Provoost borrows the term ‘consensual modernist’ from Sarah
Williams Goldhagen to indicate that Maaskant rallied behind the existing political and economic systems, in this case parliamentary democracy and capitalism, as a way to achieve social betterment and positive personal transformation.

This book sketches the organisations, people, plans and logistics behind the reconstruction of a part of the Netherlands that was liberated by the Allied Forces in the autumn of 1944.

The (Dutch) publication was written and published in conjunction with the exhibition Andermaal herrezen. Aspecten van de wederopbouw van West Zeeuwsch-Vlaanderen to commemorate 50 years Dutch liberation after World War II.