Water is everywhere in the Netherlands: it pours from the sky and grips cities, piercing them with canals. The country is famous for its chilly, very humid weather, but it makes it easier to understand the traditional and modern architectural solutions of Amsterdam, from which our short trip to Holland began.
The center of Amsterdam is almost untouched by modern buildings: it has retained the atmosphere of a northern city of the Middle Ages. The image of the Dutch capital is complemented by tall and slender townspeople who ride exclusively on bicycles. The speed of movement of cyclists and the complete lack of control over their movement terrify even a visiting resident of the metropolis. The appearance of the Dutch corresponds to the historical appearance of Amsterdam: laconic forms, strict details, restrained colors. In many houses, the famous tradition of not covering the windows with curtains and curtains has been preserved: it allows the scenes of the streets to penetrate into the houses and, conversely, home life - to splash out of the rooms. Interiors that you can accidentally spy on while walking can serve as ideal illustrations for IKEA catalogs.
Our walk around the city began from the southern part - the area of museums. The building of the Vincent van Gogh Museum was erected by Gerrit Rietveld in 1973. It is a composition of parallelepipeds of various sizes with different scale divisions. Its internal space is organized vertically: the axis is a staircase, around which the halls are located. The entire exposition occupies 4 floors. On the underground level there is a passage to the exhibition wing, which opened in 1999: built according to the project of Kisho Kurokawa, it became the "calling card" of the entire museum.
A few meters from the buildings containing the works of van Gogh, there is the Stedelejk Museum, built in 1895 by the architect A. V. Weismann in the neo-Renaissance style is the largest museum of modern art and design in the Netherlands, although its name only translates as "urban".
Particular attention is drawn to its 2012 building by the Benthem Crouwel bureau: now it houses the largest collection of works by Kazimir Malevich outside the former USSR. Locals call this building a "bathtub", and indeed, this is the first association that the building evokes. It is a huge white volume, raised above the ground by the glass first floor, which houses the main entrance to the museum and the bookstore.
The bewilderment is caused by the gigantic removal of the roof at the level of the eaves of the historic Stedelejk building, but it dissipates as soon as the usual downpour for the city begins. All passers-by flock under this canopy, and the platform in front of the entrance begins to work as a public space no less efficiently than the interior of the museum.
Our search for modern architecture in Amsterdam continued in the opposite, northern part of the city. Behind the Central Station building there is a view of the recently built cinema museum - the EYE Film Institute, the work of the Austrian bureau Delugan Meissl, in the new Overhauks district. This important redevelopment of the northern shore of Lake Ey is located at the base of the tower of Shell's former headquarters. Clad in white aluminum panels, a somewhat foreign object with an eye-symbol "looks" at the viewer from the other side.
The building is erected on a glass plinth, which houses offices, a cinema, private rental rooms and exhibition space. The broken interior space is completely subordinated to the shape of the shell. The entrance is located on the ground floor at the end of a staircase with a simple wooden deck. This flooring runs along the building, organizing a large balcony-terrace, reaches the "arena", and then descends through the building like a bridge.
In the "arena" - the heart of the film institute - there is a bar-restaurant; it is separated from the outer terrace by a huge stained-glass window, and the staircase rising from there serves as an amphitheater. At several points, the grandstand staircase permeates the entrances to the corridors leading to the cinema halls, which emphasizes the dynamics of the huge space of the "arena".
However, getting to the EYE Museum was not easy at all. Since the nearest bridge was only a few kilometers away, we decided to use water transport. Hurriedly jumping on a ferry going in the wrong direction, instead of the opposite bank, we ended up in the western part of the city.
The mistake turned into luck - we were able to see the new districts of Amsterdam from the Hey side. And the main success was the meeting with the legendary residential building Silodam built in 2002 by the MVRDV workshop. The imitation of stacked shipping containers accurately conveys the atmosphere of the surrounding port, and the building fits seamlessly into the environment. Different scales and rhythms of the windows of each block play a role here, as well as colors that are more familiar to an industrial landscape than to a residential complex.
The next day of the trip was devoted to the main purpose of the entire trip - Delft, namely, its famous architecture department of the Technical University (TU Delft). Having settled down behind a young man with a tube at the ready, we entered the building of the institute. Our slightly miserable sight after a long journey, together with an immediately noticeable complete lack of understanding of what was happening, attracted the attention of a Dutchman passing by, who accompanied us to the reception desk. It was decorated in the form of a small house, painted in the style of Delft porcelain. The girl working there said that while we were waiting for the employees of the international department, the entire building was at our disposal: access to any premises of the institute was open. Such friendliness surprised us somewhat - especially in comparison with the strictest admission regime in our universities.
In the corridors of the first floor, models of masterpieces of world architecture are exhibited, where a detailed model of Melnikov's house in section takes pride of place. The two largest rooms of the faculty are located in the closed courtyards of the building. One of them is a model workshop with an area of about 1000 m2. Huge rooms for working with metal, plastic and wood are separated from the common space. All kinds of tools are located in these zones, from circular saws in the carpentry workshop to a 3D printer in the corresponding department. In the open common area, students, together with teachers, glue layouts.
Another courtyard serves as a multifunctional public space. It hosts project exhibitions, lectures and other events. In the center there is an orange grandstand staircase, The Why Factory, created according to the MVRDV project. Below it, at different levels, there are small rooms with tables - a convenient workspace.
During our visit, an exhibition of graduation projects was held in this courtyard. Unfortunately, expectations to see something radically new and inaccessible to us today did not come true. But the quality of the layouts and the elaboration of structural details was difficult not to appreciate. Therefore, the greatest envy, of course, was caused by the architectural store in the building of the faculty: the variety of types of wire, plexiglass and metal tubes of all possible diameters, profiles of different scales and materials delighted us.
The conversation with the employees of the international department ended with their democratic advice: to communicate with students about the training system right in the corridor, simply by asking them about it. And yet we managed to find out something about the study course for a master's degree from official sources. Upon admission, the student chooses one of 10 areas, among which are “non-residential buildings”, “interiors”, “non-standard and interactive architecture”, “cities of the future”, “restoration, modification, intervention and transformation”, “design and politics”. The curriculum is designed for 2 years and includes, in addition to design, the study of structures, history of architecture, lectures on architectural design. But the distinctive feature of studying at the Faculty of Architecture at TU Delft is, of course, not conceptual thinking, but a thorough knowledge of the technical side of design and construction.
Our journey ended with a trip to Rotterdam, the description of which requires a separate story. You can feel the unique atmosphere of Dutch cities from the first minutes of your stay there, and architectural experiments inspire with their courage and power of execution.
