Exhibition: ‘Thuis in Plan van Gool’, Museum Amsterdam Noord
Working together with Museum Amsterdam Noord, programmer Laura van Roemburg and with the support of the Architekten Cie., this exhibition in 2023 celebrated the 55-year existence of the housing project Plan van Gool in Amsterdam Noord. Through a series of curated talks, walks and interviews, the exhibition explored themes such as architecture, housing, identity, migration and art of this exquisite example of brutalism, community, socialism and urbanism in Amsterdam Noord.
In 2023, the Plan van Gool housing project in Amsterdam North has been listed to become a municipal monument. This municipal recognition is a sign of respect to the design and to the inhabitants. It protects the project from major exterior changes without permission. And gives residents a sense of pride of place. There is an active group of fans and inhabitant keen to also achieve the project national monumental status, which would further protect the interior design of the project from changes without permission from the state.
The Architect
Frans van Gool was born in Antwerp in 1922. He grew up in post-war Rotterdam between the various new modernist housing developments on reclaimed sand, together with his mother and his brother. He studied civil engineering at secondary technical school. And in order not to have to go to Germany during the war, he found a job as a draftsman at the Municipality of Vlaardingen. There and during the war, he had the idea to apply for a job at a modern architectural firm after the war. Partly inspired by the different places where he had lived with his mother.
After the war, he got a job at van den Broek. Later van den Broek and Bakkema. Among other things, he was involved from start to finish in the design of the Lijnbaan. The first car-free shopping promenade in the world and in the Netherlands. An urban revolution. Instead of shops with houses above on both sides of a traffic street, a car-free street for strolling with delivery streets and residential flats behind it. And nice exposition of store wares, like never experienced before.
After the completion of the Lijnbaan around 1953, Van Gool started working for the Amsterdam Housing Service. He gained a lot of experience with floor plans of houses, and became known for his drawing skills. In 1957, Van Gool, A.N. Oyevaar and H.W.C. Stolle started their own office, which later became Oyevaar Van Gool De Bruijn Architecten.
The vision
In 1962, the Municipality of Amsterdam organized a competition for a large area in Buikslotermeer. Three Architects were asked to participate in the design, Bakema, van Eyck and van Gool. Together, the three architects decided to create a central access point and explore the urban planning possibilities from there. van Gool was inspired by the central opening of Brinkman's gallery complex in Spangen. It was also the first project to implement the Streets in the Sky concept. He also took inspiration from Van Gool Perret's plan of Le Havre, with its human scale and delicate use of mass-produced concrete elements.
It soon became clear that Bakema and van Eyck and van Gool had to make separate plans. Van Gool was determined to make a low-rise plan, while Bakema wanted to create differentiation in housing types, with higher blocks and towers. Gool said that would lead to "damage to his soul". Van Gools' winning masterplan featured L-shaped buildings creating a smaller areas across the large park site. There were 11 low-rise housing buildings each with a garden and various facilities in between.
The result
van Gool thought the anonymity of the facade was most important in defining this project as urban and in contrast to Noord’s large amount of Garden Villages from the 1930s. The first residents attracted to the project were young professionals with children and creative backgrounds. There was a lot of energy to create a community in Plan van Gool.
The house was large by today's standards. Ranging from 60m2 with 1 bedroom to 130m2 in some of the studio homes. There was a lot of freedom and experimentation. Above the boiler rooms, common areas were available for residents to organize their own events.
The Renovation
De Architekten Cie. was approached in 2004 by the responsible housing corporations Eigenhaard, Olympus Wonen and Zomers Buiten to improve the building's energy consumption and social safety. The small sliding windows, blowdown ventilation and outdated energy pipes were adapted to modern specifications with the approval of van Gool.
The open entrances and emergency exits and general maintenance were the second largest renovation theme. And the solution tried to be as unobtrusive as possible. Also with the intention that interventions can be removed if the housing associations later change their mind.
The renovation was completed in 2013 and thanks to invested fans of the design with the original colors of buildings and bridges.
The Maquettes
Two maquettes were produced for the Thuis in Plan van Gool exhibition. An urban model (1:1000) shows the general arrangement, bridge locations and original colours, landscaping and tree plan. An apartment model (1:75) shows the typical section of the housing block, with its second-floor street and ground-floor arcade. The facade is also replicated front and back, showing the “per meter” repetition van Gool created as part of the plan that could be easily mass-produced and endlessly continued.
The Architekten Cie. financed the making of the maquettes for their Legacy collection, and allowed them to be used during the exhibition at the Museum Amsterdam Noord. Thereafter a second exhibition was made in their own office to spread awareness amongst their colleagues of the project’s history and relation to the office legacy projects. For this, we made new plinths to support the two models at eye level, a detail that would have been appreciated by Frans van Gool:
“..our spatial awareness is only possible because of and through the fact that man moves through that space. As a result, it has become possible for him to get a certain overall picture of it - and only after obtaining this can behavior be adjusted to it. In other words: our space experience is inseparable from our own “physicality” - not even from the fact that our eyes cover only a limited field of view and are at a constant height above the ground. The latter in particular is something that is easily overlooked, for example when assessing scale models. To get a correct impression of the building, as it will be seen at eye level, is therefore more difficult and requires more imagination than is usually assumed…”
p.10, F.J. Van Gool, Architectuur Algemene beschouwingen, Wonen in de lage landen, Scheltema & Holkema N.V. brusse N.V. Rotterdam, 1957.