Artist Research 4 : Michel de Klerk

The founder of the Amsterdam school of architecture, which emphasised individualism, imagination, and picturesqueness in its architectural design, Michel de Klerk was born on November 24, 1884, in Amsterdam. He was a draftsman who subsequently went to study in Scandinavia before coming back to Amsterdam. His Hille Building, constructed in 1911, is regarded as the first instance of the Amsterdam school. The Eigen Haard Estates (1917–1921), his most significant achievement, exhibit the amusing and warm humanity of de Klerk's design as well as his sensitivity to the charm of the Dutch heritage of folk architecture.

The Eigen Haard home development, commonly known as Het Schip, will not seem very contemporary to many people. Its stability and firmness do, in fact, suggest older, more conventional architectural styles. However, Michel de Klerk constructed it between 1917 and 1920 with a number of concepts that tried to fundamentally alter how people lived, and this stability was meant to counteract the uprootedness and flux brought on by contemporary living. 

Eigen Haard Housing, Amsterdam

The innovative mixed-use programme of the brick expressionist building includes 102 working-class apartments with 12 separate street entrances, a community centre, and a post office. As I can see that the building's shape is viewed as a single architectural sculpture made primarily of brick. The rhythm, texture, size, and colour of the structure vary as inside functions change, making these changes noticeable. Numerous white-framed orthogonal and trapezoidal window styles give the facades life, and the numerous plane variations in the façade produce shadow lines that draw attention to the horizontality of the building. Each elevation has a unique look depending on the angle at which it is seen since each elevation is made to adapt to the context it encounters. Especially with its flawlessly curved exteriors, the structure's shape is a representation of the ship's contours.

De Klerk's departure from the history of contemporary architecture is explained by the expressionist and anticlassical position of his work. From Karl Friedrich Shinkel's Berlin, which was constructed using the traditional layered orders of column and beam, through Hendrik P. Berlinge's masonry arcade and practical pure skeleton architecture, which was powerfully embodied in the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, modernism can be traced back in its origins. Like Bruno Taut in Berlin, De Klerk's alternative Modern Expressionism was barely mentioned in passing in modernist treatises. De Klerk's work were only recently reexamined in the 1980s to uncover evidence of a dynamic modern urbanism that valued local circumstances, context, and expressive urban form in addition to a parallel stream of anticlassical Modern architecture.

References:

Michel de Klerk (2023) Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Michel-de-Klerk (Accessed: April 26, 2023).

(2023) Biography. Available at: http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/DE%20KLERK/biography.html (Accessed: April 26, 2023).

House of the week: Eigen Haard housing by Michel de Klerk, Amsterdam: Journal (2013) The Modern House. Available at: https://www.themodernhouse.com/journal/house-of-the-week-eigen-haard-housing-by-michel-de-klerk-amsterdam/ (Accessed: April 26, 2023).

Khalate, R. (2021) Expressionist architecture: An individual statement, RTF | Rethinking The Future. Available at: https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/2021/03/12/a3595-expressionist-architecture-an-individual-statement/ (Accessed: April 23, 2023).