Woonhuis, Bildtsestraat 28

English translation

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Description

Introduction

Triple DWELLING forming part of a COMPLEX of 70 MIDDLE-CLASS DWELLINGS, realised in 1919-1921 in Interbellum style for the Coöperatieve Vereniging Woningbouw (Housing Cooperative Association) to a design by Doeke Meintema. 17 large dwellings of two storeys with shallow hipped roofs at Harlingerstraatweg 45 to 73 and Marssumerstraat 1 and 2 and 53 small dwellings of one storey with high, broken hipped roofs at Marssumerstraat 4 to 18 and 3 to 9, Franekerstraat 68 to 74, Menaldumerstraat 2 to 18, Bildtsestraat 7 to 25 and 14 to 32 and Engelumerstraat 1 to 15.

Architect Doeke Meintema advocated simplicity in architecture; his buildings were meant to evoke an image from which one could read how the functional spaces related to each other and were also meant to show how they were built and which building materials had been used. He called his buildings just a tiny bit of art. Following a commemorative exhibition after his death, it was written: "It is precisely the unpretentious, the rejection of fashionable trends, the appreciation of its own, sturdy character, that makes Meintema's work so attractive".

The complex of 70 dwellings is woven lively into the urban design of the larger whole of the district. The characteristic architecture of both the large and small dwellings and the lively articulation in staggered blocks of two and four dwellings and some longer stretches nonetheless provide a strong architectural and spatial coherence. This lively grouping with small front gardens of varying depth on streets with broad profiles for that time evokes somewhat the atmosphere of a garden city. During renovation at the end of the nineteen seventies, the original layout of the dwellings was modernised without the arrangement suffering much. The new external doors and window divisions were given a different form at that time, as a result of which the rhythm of windows and door lights no longer correspond.

Description

EXTERIOR: The housing block forms part of a group of 53 dwellings on Marssumerstraat, Franekerstraat, Menaldumerstraat, Bildtsestraat and Engelumerstraat of one storey with large, broken roofs. The groups of dwellings are staggered in relation to each other. The dwellings are built on rectangular floor plans, whereby two are combined in one block and the third, number 32, set far back, but is nevertheless built adjoining. They possess detached storage sheds of one storey, built of brick and provided with small hipped roofs with tiles. The walls are laid with light mixed red brick in Flemish bond without recessed pointing. The header courses for relief of door and windows are drawn through to a slightly projecting course over full width and depth. The original doors were replaced during renovation in 1978 by doors, also with four-pane lights, but with different proportions; within the frames low, four-part fanlights. The dwellings are opened further on the ground floor with (renovated) double six-pane windows. In free-standing gable walls a six-pane window. The rear gable opened with glazed doors with glazing bars and a rear (kitchen) door with a narrow vertical window. All dwellings have high broken roofs where the lower roof panels are slightly hollow curved. The roofs are provided with zinc gutters. Each dwelling has a substantial gable end on the front and rear slope, provided with a double four-pane window with a wooden gable top and a saddle roof with overhang.

INTERIOR: The dwellings originally had on the ground floor an arrangement of passage combined with staircase; behind this the kitchen and beside it the rooms en suite and under the roof three, relatively small bedrooms. The suite structure has been removed in virtually all dwellings to create one large living room. The interior appointments with, among other things, panelled doors are otherwise extremely simple. The interiors fall outside the protection. Furthermore, during renovation some further improvements were made. The canopies that existed behind the kitchen were removed.

VALUATION

The triple middle-class dwelling is as an element of the complex of 70 dwellings of general historical, architectural historical, architectural and urban design importance

- as a relatively early example of cooperative construction of middle-class dwellings just before the financial turning point in public housing;

- because of the important place the complex of dwellings occupies in the oeuvre of the prominent architect Doeke Meintema;

- because of the externally virtually intact (except for doors and windows) Interbellum style based on a restrained and new architecture no longer referring to historical styles, whereby this type of dwelling is characterised by the remarkable broken roof;

- because of the lively grouping of the dwellings, whereby the architect with block-wise, but also coupled staggerings in the streets with already broad profiles and especially at the corners suggested so much space that a garden-city-like result was achieved, an image that was further shaped by the demarcations with privet hedges.