6 Buildings You'll Want to Visit in the Netherlands

Café de Unie has sometimes been dismissed as “facade architecture” for its eye-catching design that more closely resembles a Piet Mondrian painting than a building. Red, blue, and yellow dominate a three-dimensional geometric graphic design meant to attract passersby into the café. It is typical of the De Stijl movement of which Mondrian, Jacobus Johannes Pieter Oud, and Gerrit Rietveld were the main proponents. A utopian movement, it advocated pure abstraction and a reduction to essential form and color. The movement was holistic and spanned art, architecture, and furniture design. The facade of Café de Unie, with its graphic lettering, is quite close in format to the cover of the seminal De Stijl journal, the publication created by painter Theo van Doesburg to propagate the movement’s theories.

The café was designed by Oud, who was influenced by the esteemed architect Hendrik Petrus Berlage as well as his friendship with van Doesburg, though he developed a formal vocabulary of his own. The commission for Café de Unie came from the Rotterdam Housing Authority, for which Oud was Municipal Housing Architect between 1918 and 1933.

Café de Unie is now located on Mauritsweg, near Rotterdam Central Station. It was originally built in 1925 as a temporary fix to fill a site on the Calandplein between two 19th-century buildings, and it survived only 15 years before it was bombed during World War II. But in 1985 the café was reconstructed 1,640 feet (500 m) from its original site. (Kathy Batista)

The Van Nelle Factory is an icon of Dutch Modernist architecture. It is well-loved within the Netherlands, but lesser known outside of the country. A number of architects, none of whom became household names, worked on the project.

The buildings in the scheme are constructed from reinforced concrete, steel, and glass, all materials emblematic of the International Style. The main group of buildings includes a stunning curved office block; an eight-floor factory building with a circular reception room, which is a magnificent example of the curtain wall system; a shed-roofed, five-story warehouse; an L-shaped garage; and a boilerhouse with a profiled chimney. Van Nelle’s signature element is a system of glazed, elevated transport bridges that cross diagonally over the street, allowing workers to move easily between the various buildings.

The factory, completed in 1931, was designed to refine and pack coffee, tea, and tobacco, and the architects made a thorough analysis of its functions. The system was designed to manage raw products that enter at the top of the buildings and move down a floor after each stage of processing. Also important in the design was improving the social aspects of working in a factory, and outdoor sporting and leisure facilities were included for the workers. These are still in existence, although the assembly and production lines have been taken over by office space.

One of the best ways to experience the Van Nelle Factory is by train. Leaving or entering Rotterdam Central Station on the main line between Amsterdam and Rotterdam, there is a commanding, but brief, view of the factory. The distinctive “Van Nelle” lettering on top of one of the buildings is illuminated at night. (Kathy Batista)

The Berlage Institute is one of the most prestigious architecture schools in the world, named for the great Dutch architect H.P. Berlage. Some of the best-known architects practicing today have participated in the Berlage’s two-year postgraduate program. With its cutting-edge character and dynamic dean, one would expect it to be housed in a temple to avant-garde architecture. It is, however, housed in a sober historic building that was designed originally as a Spaarbankl (savings bank) by legendary Dutch architect Jacobus Johannes Pieter Oud in the late 1940s. One of Oud’s later buildings, it represents a departure from his earlier forays into Neo-Plasticism. As a proponent of De Stijl, Oud argued for simplicity of form and the use of primary colors. Here one sees a more restrained palette indicative of Oud’s postwar style: the use of white brick is reminiscent of his hero Berlage and symbolizes a more subtle architecture. The facade is symmetrical and restrained with a central entrance with glass-brick curved walls. Inside, the floor plan is rational and conventional. Oud was considered one of the great Modernist architects, alongside Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, and Le Corbusier, although he has not received the recognition afforded to his Modernist colleagues. (Kathy Batista)

The city of Rotterdam commissioned architect Piet Blom to design these houses, which are located above a pedestrian bridge across a public square from Rotterdam’s Blaak station. The station’s circular glass projectile roof resembles a flying saucer ready to take off, and Blom’s scheme of 38 cubic houses and commercial shops continues this extraterrestrial theme. His houses are tilted at a 45-degree angle and raised from ground level by hexagonal pole structures. Blom conceptualized each cubic block as a tree, creating an “abstract forest” of tree houses.

The idea for the houses originated in the 1970s when Blom built another set in Helmond. The cubes in Rotterdam are constructed with concrete floors and a basic wood frame. Although from the outside it appears the interiors must slope, that is, of course, not the case. Yellow zinc panels cover the cubes to give them a more attractive, albeit somewhat eccentric, appearance. The cubes contain domestic living areas: a lower section, which is triangular in shape; a middle level with sleeping areas and a bathroom; and a top level containing either an extra bedroom or living area, which is also triangular in shape. The apex of this triangle contains a pyramid of windows that give spectacular views onto the river and across the city. The concrete poles contain staircases that lead to the apartments, as well as providing storage space.

Blom’s Cubic Houses, completed in 1984, have become such a phenomenon that a show house was opened to visitors. (Kathy Batista)

For many years after his graduation, the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas was regarded as an influential theorist whose projects were likely to remain unbuilt. This scheme for a large art-exhibition space in the city of his birth proved his designs were not only exciting intellectual propositions, but also functional and buildable. As with all Koolhaas projects, the context—the sociopolitical and cultural conditions, as well as the physical properties of the terrain—and peculiar conditions of the site are the starting points for the design. With the Kunsthal, the starting point was a steeply sloping site and an existing access road, now incorporated into the building. In response to these conditions, the Kunsthal steps down from the high point of the site in a series of large flexible exhibition spaces linked by concrete ramps. Outside, the building is finished in rough, cast concrete appropriate for this harsh, urban setting, and large printed graphics of the type found on road signs. The building’s interior is characterized by hard surfaces, more usually associated with outdoor elements, and bold graphics. The Kunsthal, completed in 1992, has proved to be a popular and successful environment for showing contemporary art. Meanwhile, Koolhaas and his practice, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, have progressed from medium-scale projects such as this to number among the world’s most sought-after architects. (Marcus Field)

The Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) plays an important functional and symbolic role: it preserves and documents Dutch architectural and urban planning history, serving as a research center for local and international designers, members of the architecture community, and the general public. Situated on the northern edge of the Museum Park in Rotterdam, Jo Coenen’s imposing structure, opened in 1993, is an integral element of the cultural center of the city.

Coenen, an internationally renowned practitioner, also designed the Amsterdam Public Library and became chief government architect for the Netherlands. His scheme for the NAI consisted of four distinct elements: a central reception hall with entrances from the north and south; a glass box suspended in an exoskeletal frame; a brick-faced exhibition hall; and a curved wing clad in corrugated steel, resting on concrete columns. These disparate elements are held together by a glass transport house containing a central staircase and lifts. The NAI also contributes to the urban fabric of the square: a public pedestrian route through the central hall connects Museum Park to a major traffic artery. (Kathy Batista)