The story of another way of drawing. Structuralist architectural drawings in Het Speelhuis by Piet Blom

Abstract

Dutch Structuralism was an influential tendency in post-war Dutch architecture and urban design. Structuralist designs and buildings are made up of repetitive elements that can in theory be adjusted in both size and function. They take social relations as their starting point and have the potential to promote interaction between the buildings’ users. The way structuralist architects like Aldo van Eyck, Piet Blom and Herman Hertzberger drew broke with the tradition of previous generations. They adopted new forms of representation, the most striking being the so-called spreektekeningen (drawings annotated with speech bubbles), hybrid drawings and brightly coloured grids. This article explains the significance of these drawings by relating them to architectural education at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture in the mid 1950s and through analysis of the design method, the role of the drawing in the design process and the way the drawings were perceived. It will become clear that they were the result both of a specific design method and of the ambition to enable the architectural design to communicate with society in a new way. ‘The story of another way of drawing’ can be traced back to a deliberate deviation from the Dutch government’s bureaucratic regulations, which were designed to foster an efficient building process aimed at the rapid alleviation of the housing shortage. The grids and patterns, the bright colours and speech-bubble drawings were intended to present a different picture from traditional housing designs and can be interpreted as an alternative to that bureaucratic and pragmatic building practice. Although much has been written about the emergence and importance of Dutch Structuralism, the role and significance of these new forms of representation have not previously been studied.

The different style of drawing is evident in Piet Blom’s design for Het Speelhuis en Woningenwoud in Helmond (1972–1978), which is the focus of this article. In the design file for this mixed cultural and residential project, the structuralist drawing appears in various forms and functions and during different phases of the design process. It is, as it were, a sampler of the new visualization methods. More particularly, in these drawings of Het Speelhuis scheme, Piet Blom combined two extremes of architectural representation: a mathematically designed order and an intuitive and subjective architectural impression. The mathematical drawings based on a geometric system were for Blom a means of getting a grip on the complex spatial designs he envisaged. He then supplemented his abstract patterns and grids with speech-bubble drawings and collages. In so doing Blom entered a different world – that of an individual desire, struggle, communality and sensibility – aimed at communicating his design in a more human and accessible manner.