In 1901, the city government of Amsterdam passed the Woningwet (“Housing Act”). Greenlighting the long-awaited demolition of the city’s privately owned slums, the act earmarked funds for local cooperatives to construct more sound, spacious, hygienic, and aesthetically pleasing spaces.
Many of these neighborhoods — including Transvaalbuurt, Rivierenbuurt, and De Pijp — still exist. But while they currently rank among the city’s most expensive real estate, they were originally built to house the working poor. Their designers belonged to the Amsterdam School, an architectural movement that arose during the 1910s. Inspired by both German Expressionism and socialist literature, its proponents wished to put their profession — historically reserved for commissions from the rich and powerful — in service of the lower classes, tending to their material needs with improved living conditions, and their spiritual needs through designs pleasing to the eye.
In theory, these two objectives were of equal, indeed inseparable, importance. But in practice, the latter often took priority. As a result, much of Amsterdam’s working class in the early twentieth century lived in housing that, though considered works of art — and, more importantly, offered at an affordable, subsidized rate — failed to meet some of their most basic demands.
But if the Amsterdam School’s experiments were a failure in their own time, they paved the way for different, more successful housing projects in the future. They also make for an underappreciated case study for present-day architects and urban planners conscious of working-class needs, in the Netherlands and elsewhere.
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Auteur: Tim Brinkhof
