Municipal Dreams travels abroad for the first time this week, thanks to this fascinating account by Ben Austwick of pioneering social housing in Amsterdam. A follow-up post will appear next week. You can read Ben’s other writings on art and architecture at his blog: http://doilum.blogspot.co.uk/
The Amsterdam School is a little celebrated offshoot of German Expressionist architecture, active for a short period between 1910 and 1925 but nevertheless defining large areas of the city’s inner suburbs. While its municipal buildings offer little in the way of innovation, the period coincided with an extraordinary boom in early social housing and its communal ideals laid blueprints for the modernist estates of the twentieth century.
Het Schip © Ben Austwick
Expressionist architecture followed the romantic ideals of the neo-Gothic and even the neo-Medieval, merged with the new shapes and forms of the modern movement. The most famous examples are probably Gaudi’s Barcelona Cathedral and Mendelsohn’s Einstein…
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Old School Garden 