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Figure 3. General plan of the Spangen polder showing Justus van Effenstraat project plan at left (inside box), surrounded by projects
designed by J. J. P. Oud. Plan dated 1939. Note Ouds project, Witte Dorp in Oud-Mathensee to the left, and his repetitive blocks,
Tusschendijken bottom, center. Also note the Van Nelle Factory at the top by Brinkman and Van der Vlugt (1925).
Figure 6. Site plan prepared by Brinkman for Justus van Effenstraat (1918). The bath and laundry block are at the center with
adjacent shops on the ground floor. The gallery on the second floor connects all the parts and was originally accessed by seven
stairs and one elevator.
ESOTERIC ABSTRACTION
It is, then, contact with human will which represents the
subject for Michiel Brinkman; it is this subject that cannot
be made objective, nor autonomous, nor denied by
abstraction.
In February 1921, J.J.P. Oud gave a lecture to the
Rotterdam Opbouw group in which he established
himself not only as a significant contributor to De Stijl,
but also as a strict proponent of functionalism.26 Oud
had corresponded with Piet Mondrian beginning in
January 1920, and the two engaged in a debate on the
differing roles, attachments, and results of art and
architecture. They agreed on one thing: that purity
through neo-plasticism was the goal of both disciplines.
This created an simplistic similarity in the operations
involved in creating both painting and building.
However, in a letter to Oud begun in the summer of 1925,
Mondrian describes an important principle of their search,
". . . an essay on the subject must be banished from
art.27
Interview with Ms. J.M.B. de Bruijn-Minnes, March 1995, one of the first residents of Justus van Effenstraat.
Rob Dettingmeijer, The fight for a well built city, Het Nieuwe Bouwen in Rotterdam, 1920-1960 (Delft, 1982), 28-29. The Burgdorfer
Report of 1912 outlines the classification of various occupant groups and the different methods of assessing housing plans according to three
general categories: Able-bodied workers; Less able-bodied persons; and Physically unfit persons. It goes beyond the scope of this paper to
undertake an analysis of how these categories were defined and the strategies and priorities devised, but the increasingly scientific definition of
housing needs was an important component of new objectivity.
4
H.P. Berlage, A. Keppler, W. Kromhout and J. Wils, Arbeiderswoningen in Nederland (Rotterdam, 1921).
Gezelligheid is exclusively Dutch and without direct translation into English. It signifies not being dependent upon a group, and is subjective,
describing ones personal feelings. Similarly, it should not be confused with gezellschap (Dutch) or Gesellschaft (German), or gemeenschap
(Dutch) or Gemeinschaft (German). While treatises abound on the German usage, for the purposes of this essay the Dutch implies distinctions of
size, intent, and internal/external implication. Acknowledgment is given to Rianne Verhoef for detailed explanation of these qualities as well as
Ms. J.M.B. de Bruijn-Minnes for confirming their overt use at Justus van Effenstraat.
6
Following the Census of 1900 and the Housing Act of 1902, the plan for Spangen provided by de Jongh in 1903 presents the opportunity to relate
the debate from the expansion plan for Amsterdam South to the very different context of Rotterdam. The pattern described relating streets to
perimeter block housing originates in the presentations made by H.P. Berlage in 1883 and 1894, Amsterdam and Venetie. Schets in verband met
de tegenwoordige veranderingen van Amsterdam, Bouwkundig Weekblad 3, no. 34 (1883): 217-219; and Bouwkunst en impressionisme,
Architectura 2, no. 22 (1894): 109-110. While derived from Sitte (1889) and Stubben (1890), it is the work of A.E. Brinkman, Platz und
Monument als Kunstlerisches Formproblem (Berlin, 1908), which articulates the planning basis used in the Spangen district in Rotterdam. For a
review of this history in Rotterdam see, L.J.C.J. van Ravesteyn, Rotterdam in de negentiende eeuw (Rotterdam, 1924).
7
J.P. Bakema, A house for 270 families in Spangen, Forum 15 (1960-61): 194-195.
Ibid., 195.
Handelingen van den Gemeenteraad van Rotterdam (17 February 1916), 211-215.
10
11
Woningbouw Spangen, Justus van Effenblok, Rotterdam Kunststichting 115, pt. 3 (1991).
12
13 Private correspondence between Berlage and A.B. de Zeeuw, 16 October 1918, contained in the archives at the Netherlands Architecture
Institute, Rotterdam. Further correspondence between Berlage and de Zeeuw continues on 22 and 23 December 1919; and with Meischke &
Schmidt on 3 November 1919.
14
H. Searing, Berlage and Housing, the most significant modern building type, in H.P. Berlage: 1856 -1934 (Bussum, 1975), 165.
15
Het Hofplein te Rotterdam, De Bouwereld 21, no. 19 (10 May 1922): 146-148.
16
J.J.P. Oud, Gemeentelijke Volkswoningen, Polder Spangen, Rotterdam, Bouwkundig Weekblad. 41, no. 37 (11 September 1920): 219-222
17
J. P. Baeten and K. Schomaker, Michiel Brinkman: 1873- 1925, Bibliografieen en oeuvrelijsten van Nederlandse architecten en
stedebouwkundigen (Rotterdam, 1995): 10-12.
18
Volkswoningbouw Te Rotterdam in Den Polder Spangen, Architect M. Brinkman, Bouwkundig Weekblad 41, no. 8 (1920): 45-50.
19
20
De Theosofische Beweging 1, no. 1 (1 January 1905) and vol. 16, no. 2 (February 1920).
21 K.P.C. de Bazel was also nominated and finally chosen. Mondrian was, perhaps, not chosen because of his rejected article (his first and only)
for this journal. See De Theosofische Beweging 12, no. 1 (1916).
K.P.C. de Bazel and J.L.M. Lauweriks became members of the Theosophical Society in Amsterdam on 31 May 1894, and published woodcuts in
1894-95 in Licht en Waarheid .
23
F. Kauffmann, Kees van der Leeuw, Wiederhall 14: Leen van der Vlugt, ed. E. Adriaansz, J. Molenaar, and J. Meuwissen (Amsterdam,
1993).
24
25
26
J.J.P. Oud, Bouwkundig Weekblad 42, no. 21 (11 June 1921): 159.
27 H. Holzman and M. S. James, After De Stijl: 1924-38, Purely Abstract Art (1926), in The New ArtThe New Life: The Collected Writings
of Piet Mondrian (Boston, 1986), 198.
28 A. Faivre, Book One: Approaches to Western Esoteric Currents; Part One, II B: Some Key Concepts; Theosophy, in Access to Western
Esotericism (Albany, 1994).
29
The ideas of absolute and abstract are further explained by Henri Lefebvre in two books: Critique of Everyday Life, translated by John Moore
(New York, 1991), originally published as Critique de la vie quotidienne (Paris, 1947); and The Production of Space, translated by Donald
Nicholson-Smith (Cambridge, 1991), originally published as Production de lespace (Paris, 1974). Lefebvre presents a dependent relationship
between relative (real) and absolute (apparent) knowledge. While Lefebvre acknowledges that natural and social space comes into being by being
inhabited by a higher reality, he distinguishes absolute from abstract space. Absolute space, religious and poltical in character, was a product of
the bonds of consanguinity, soil and language, but out of it evolved a space which was relativized and historical. Abstract space functions
objectally, as a set of things/signs and their formal relationships: glass and stone, concrete and steel, angles and curves, full and empty. Formal
and quantitative, it erases distinctions. . . Lefebvre, The Production of Space , 48-49.
30
S. Schama, An Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (Berkeley, 1988); and, in his review of the
1995 Mondrian exhibition. He notes, . . . the struggle between matter and spirit (Carnival and Lent); between the local and the universal; between
the parochial flatlands of the Low Countries and the cultural imperialism of Paris; between the humanism of Erasmus and the mortifications of
Calvin, The New Yorker (9 October 1995).
31
R. Scruton, Expression and Abstraction, The Aesthetics of Architecture (Princeton, 1979), 205.