Onderwijs en wetenschap, Cliostraat 40

English translation

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Description

School complex executed in the New Objectivity style, consisting of a main building situated within the site, an elongated gatehouse and the former headmaster-caretaker dwellings to the right, both set back in relation to the buildings on the Cliostraat, built 1929-'30 to the design of J.Duiker. The main building has four storeys, is flat-roofed and has a diamond-shaped ground plan with low, partly sunken, extension and gymnasium to the right; it is constructed entirely in white-rendered reinforced concrete with clearly visible application of a skeleton structure with square columns and beams and blue-painted steel casement windows over the full width of the classroom wings housed in two vertical bays on either side of the wedge-shaped loggias at the front and of the set-back stairwell at the rear. The diamond-shaped ground plan is repeated in the vertical bays with the classrooms, in the open loggias closed only by steel lattice railings and in the low teacher's room behind the central stairwell. The long facades of the classrooms each contain eight equal window axes and, due to the stepped back corner, do not directly adjoin each other; on the short side at the stairwell four equally wide windows are placed, with the top angled along a line rising from the stairwell that becomes less steep per floor; the remaining windows are straight-topped and all have a vertical three-part division; at the loggias the windows are replaced by glazed doors. The bays are as it were crowned by the frosted glass enclosure, set in blue-painted steel frames, which forms the open-air work space of the flat roof. The set-back stairwell thus projects above it, it has a mansard roof and a facade on the north side which consists almost entirely of glass, divided into four parts over the full facade width by a frame of steel sections with T-profile. The teacher's room each contains 6 windows in the mutually perpendicular facades; the headmaster's room adjoins this to the right at a lower level and is also flat-roofed. The gymnasium is also flat-roofed and provided as far as possible with casement windows in the long facades and with glazed doors in the short end facade; near the columns the top of the windows is angled. The elongated gatehouse is, like the associated former headmaster/caretaker dwellings, executed in the same manner as the main building; it contains on the ground floor a bicycle shed and on the upper floor the kindergarten classroom (originally a sloyd workshop) which is accessible from the courtyard via a very narrow rectangular stairwell which, in contrast to the space constructed entirely in steel and glass with ten vertical sash windows in both long facades, is completely enclosed; the flat roof of the space is supported by four visible steel beams that continue into the window walls and by the concrete extensions on either side, the long facades are furthermore each provided with a low and narrow balcony, with the school name in blue steel letters placed on the lower edge on the street side. The former headmaster/caretaker dwellings have two storeys and are also flat-roofed and provided as far as possible with casement windows, on the front on the ground floor grouped in a series of five and one of two, on the upper floor in a series of eight over the full facade width, on the rear on the ground floor three glazed doors; on the first floor a series of two and a series of four windows and a door, on the second floor a series of eight windows. On the upper floors on both sides a balcony. On the entrance side a nameplate. The former dwellings are accessible via two doors on the gatehouse side. A very characteristic example of New Objectivity architecture, both in general terms because of the application of a deliberately exposed concrete skeleton structure, emphasized by the open loggias and the stepped-back corner in the classroom wings and the deliberate repetition of ground forms - in this case a diamond-shaped ground plan and block-shaped volumes - with comparable spatial use, and in the application of functionalist principles in a school building through the creation of maximum admission of fresh air and light into the working spaces by means of entirely glazed facades with casement windows, open loggias and an enclosure on the flat roof fitted out for lessons. This ideal of fresh air and light in an ordinary school, also expressed in the name of this school, was especially propagated by the Amsterdam physician Sajet as a reaction against the stuffy schools of the time and the open-air schools accessible only to tuberculosis patients; the present school is the first realization of this concept and has frequently served as a source of inspiration for other school buildings, both in the Netherlands and abroad.