Hendrik Petrus Berlage

Architect, Netherlands
Hendrik Petrus Berlage was one of the most significant European architects before
World War I. Often considered the father of modern architecture in the Netherlands,
Berlage greatly influenced a generation of architects that included J.J.P.Oud, Gerrit
Rietveld, and Mies van der Rohe. His work is known for its transition from 19th-century
historicism to new styles and theories of modern architecture. While his early designs
were revivalist Dutch Renaissance, in the 1890s Berlage rejected historicism to
experiment instead with stylistically innovative forms. Often considered a rationalist,
Berlage was similarly noted for his restrained use of ornament and his insistence that the
exterior of a building express its interior, functional design. Berlage was a pioneer in the
development of 20th-century architecture, and many of his buildings are Dutch cultural
landmarks.
Berlage’s career falls into three periods: 1878 to 1903, his early work through the
completion of the Amsterdam Exchange; 1903 to 1919, his mature period through the
termination of his work for the Kröller-Müller family; and his late work from 1920 to
1934, when he turns to Cubist forms. Berlage received his formal architectural training at
the Zürich Polytechnic. After extensive travels, he began working in the Amsterdam
office of Theo Sanders. When Sanders retired in 1889, Berlage opened an independent
office. His first major commission was the purely historicist De Algemeene office
building in Amsterdam. His experiments with restrained, stylized historical forms
culminated in the Amsterdam Exchange. The five successive Exchange designs (1884–
98) show Berlage’s transformation from historicism to modernism. Beginning as a Dutch
Renaissance palace, the Exchange became an original design, reinterpreting, abstracting,
and subjecting historical forms to new ideas about proportion and materials. The
Exchange uses a proportional grid of triangular prisms that harmonizes and unifies the
exterior. In conception, it drew on history as well, as Berlage sought to adapt a native
form for 20th-century use. The first exchanges in the Low Countries had been open
courtyards. Berlage kept that basic idea with glass-roofed trading halls surrounded by
brick arcades.
After 1913 Berlage became “house architect” for the wealthy Kröller-Müller family
and designed several innovative buildings, including the Holland House in London and
St. Hubertus near Otterlo. The London building code required that Berlage cover Holland
House’s steel frame. He chose terra-cotta plates to fill the space and frame the windows.
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Inside, movable walls divided the office space. Both were innovations. St. Hubertus was
an extravagant hunting lodge; its plan takes the form of stylized antlers in reference to the
story of St. Hubertus and the stag. The monumental conception has been linked to
Wright’s designs.
After 1920 Berlage’s work began to favor geometry even more vigorously. The best
examples of this are the First Church of Christ, Scientist, and the Municipal Museum,
both in The Hague. Both buildings are assemblages of cubic prisms in which geometry
replaces historical quotations. Another late work is the Amstel Bridge, designed as part of
his plan for Amsterdam South. The bridge was a joint effort between Berlage and the city
engineer’s office and was praised by contemporaries as a socially productive
collaboration between state and artist promising cooperation for the future. It combines a
decorated bridge with park space for water recreation.
Both 19th-century theorists and 20th-century innovators influenced Berlage. He drew
inspiration from Gottfried Semper and Viollet-le-Duc, who admired the organic harmony
and holistic creativity of great architecture of the past but who also criticized the cut-andpaste
pattern-book copying that had come to dominate 19th-century architecture.
Similarly, Berlage argued that the architect should shape useful spaces rather than
decorate facades. In his view, a building should express its function from the interior
outward rather than allow surface details to dictate room arrangement. Through lectures
and essays describing his American travels, Berlage was the first major European
architect to publicly declare his interest in the American innovations of Louis Sullivan
and Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright’s work particularly affected Berlage, confirming the
path toward geometric architecture that he had already begun.
Berlage is thus an excellent example of an architect negotiating between the ancients
and the moderns. He was interested in developing a newer architectural vocabulary in
step with the 20th century while also retaining links to the historical past. His best-known
works are modern but based in traditional forms. After 1890 he began to decorate his
buildings with geometric, stylized historical motifs. Preferring simple materials to
imitations and noting that “genuine plaster is better than false marble” (Over stijl in bouw - en meubelkunst, 1904), he
liked to use materials in accordance with their natural features. Conversely, he disliked
bentwood and the plaster concealment of structural elements, as the exposed iron
supports in the trading rooms of the Amsterdam Exchange demonstrate. Berlage was
especially fond of brick, a material traditionally associated with Dutch architecture. He
retained this link to the past, but he used brick in unorthodox ways, particularly by
exposing it as an interior wall element in residences, for example, the Villa Henny (1898)
in The Hague. Brick gave mass, strength, and an organic pattern to architectural designs
that were intrinsic to the material, not an applied ornament.
Berlage believed that the architect had a social responsibility to improve
living conditions. Consequently, beginning around 1900, his interests
expanded to include city planning as a means of social amelioration,
resulting in expansion plans for several Dutch cities, of which only the
plan for South Amsterdam (1915–17) was implemented. Social concerns
affected Berlage’s interior design as well, which is known for its
geometric focus.
He explicitly avoided the vegetative forms popular with
Art Nouveau designers, such as Victor Horta and Henri van de Velde in Belgium, and he was a
founder of the anti-Art Nouveau reform design store ‘t Binnenhuis (the Interior). He was
interested in higher aesthetic standards for ordinary objects such as furniture, carpets,
books, dishes, and wall coverings and made many designs. His work influenced De Stijl
designers, although there was periodic hostility between Berlage and leading figures
associated with De Stijl.