I first came across the work of Aldo Van Eyck, a Dutch architect (1918-1999), when the Sandberg Institute held its 2015 graduate student final exhibition in Van Eyck's then unused Amsterdam City Orphanage (built in 1960). The space intrigued me to learn more about his work and ideas.
Van Eyck was a post war architect, who thought many architects of his era were lacking “the human element”. He thought of the orphanage as a small city, saying “a house must be like a small city if it’s to be a real house, a city like a large house if it’s to be a real city” (https://www.archdaily.com/151566/ad-classics-amsterdam-orphanage-aldo-van-eyck).
Part of his idea behind the orphanage, was breaking down hierarchy (you can easily tie this to the Dutch valuing of egalitarianism with its own interesting history). You can see this is the decentralized layout.
It was slated for demolition in the eighties, but a campaign to save it was successful. It has recently been remodelled. Our Social Design trip was able to gain access while it was in the remodeling stage (2017) and some images of our exploration of the space being restored are included below. The company restoring it said it had been purchased to be used by an American company.
"If society today is not able or willing to build cities for citizens (children), on what ground do we deem it a society?"
Aldo Van Eyck
Van Eyck also created playgrounds all over post-war Amsterdam. While the majority of them have been demolished or replaced, 17 still survive. I am lucky enough to be staying two blocks from one this summer. The Rijks Museum has two of his structures on their grounds, and they also exist in Westerpark and Vondelpark. Vondelpark still has his hexagonal cement climbing structure, which I have tested and is a personal favorite. They are very heavily in use primarily by children, but I have seen several adults play as well.
I found a great book on his playgrounds compiled by Denisa Kollarová and Anna van Lingen (who call their collaborative research Seventeen Playgrounds) (links below) who lament that there are fewer playgrounds that leave creative space for the children using them:
“There are so many architects, artists and thinkers of the past who have proven that a playground can be much more than just generic plastic structures placed randomly, constructed by simply flipping through the pages of play equipment catalogues. One of them is Aldo van Eyck, who designed a large number of public playgrounds for the city of Amsterdam. His playgrounds are something that all children growing up in Amsterdam in the ‘50s, 60’s and 70’s are familiar with. They played in the concrete sandpits, hung upside down on the tumbling bars or invented games in the igloo shaped climbing frames. Van Eyck’s playgrounds were a recognisable aspect of the city and at a certain moment there were over seven hundred different playgrounds throughout Amsterdam.”
The playgrounds went from over 700+ to only 17 currently.
This is why I feel honored to live near one.
Images of various Van Eyck playgrounds, and quote of Aldo VE
I struggled with whether or not Van Eyck fit in this blog or not, and many would argue with the aesthetics of cement mid-century architecture as being humanist, but his ideas certainly were focused on the needs of children in a post war Amsterdam.
Another name for social design is “human centered design”, with the needs of humans coming before the needs of architects, designers, or financiers. My colleague Ted Munter of Molly School (http://www.mollyschool.com) , and formerly of CSW, always describes Amsterdam as being “human scaled”, meaning built for the humans that live there vs. the corporate, financial , or governmental needs. It is a palpable quality here, one I would love to see involved more in conversations about design, quality of life, and even politics back home; on both a micro and macro scale.
Design can reflect being kind.
truth and gentle deeds (CSW unofficial motto)
Links to Seventeen Playgrounds website, maps of Van Eyck playgrounds, their instagram of playgrounds all over the world, and their book.
Another good article on the playgrounds:
https://goric.com/designer-profile-aldo-van-eyck-playground-every-neighborhood/
Great interactive map of Zeedijk, where you can do a tour and learn the history of a plot of land that was one a monastery, then a Van Eyck playground, and now part of Amsterdam's Chinatown
http://hhvds.com
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