A Postmodern Mendini in Amsterdam

Frans Haks’ Forgotten Interior

Abstract

In October 2018 officials from the Amsterdam Monuments and Archaeology department (MA) made a surprising discovery in a listed building at 41 Recht Boomssloot in Amsterdam. On the ground floor they encountered a relatively unknown interior designed by the Italian architect-designer Alessandro Mendini (1931-2019) dating from 2001. The building was the former home of Frans Haks (1938-2006), who moved into the house in 1996 at the end of his directorship of the Groninger Museum, together with his partner Johan Ambaum (1931-2018). Mendini redesigned the ground floor and extended it with a conservatory at the rear. Here Haks lived in the midst of his collection of contemporary art. Ambaum lived on the first floor surrounded by his nineteenth-century artworks.

In January 2018, after the death of Ambaum, the last occupant, the apartment came into the possession of the Rijksmuseum via the Stichting het Rijksmuseum Fonds. Ambaum had designated this fund as his sole heir with the aim of supporting the acquisition of nineteenth- and twentieth-century applied art and crafts for the Rijksmuseum’s collection. Any part of the legacy that did not strengthen the museum’s collection was to be sold for the benefit of the fund. This was the case with the apartment, which was subsequently sold. Because the building in which the apartment is located is heritage-listed because of the gable end (monument number 646), the new owner’s rebuilding plans had to be submitted to the MA. When its officials unexpectedly discovered the Mendini interior during their inspection of the building in October 2018, those plans were rejected.

On 26 February 2019 – eight days after Mendini’s death – the apartment was revisited, this time in the company of the conservator of twentieth-century art and the senior conservator of furniture at  the Rijksmuseum, and the senior specialist in historical interiors at the Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed (Cultural Heritage Agency). The aim was to carry out an evaluation with regard to adaptive reuse. The interior was assigned a high heritage value on account of the structure, the spatial effect, the use of colour and materials, and its rarity. This second visit and the lack of knowledge about the interior prompted the research that gave rise to this article.

Based on a literature review, archival research and oral history, this article sketches the history of the interior and establishes its importance. A brief introduction of the client, Haks, the designer, Mendini and their relationship is followed by an analysis of the colourful interior, including the design considerations.
The interior design was required to provide a fitting decor for Haks’ art and design collection. It also had to be theatrical, in keeping with Haks’ exuberant lifestyle. The hyper-awareness of the artificial character, the exaggeration as style statement in the use of bright colours and forms, the glamour and the irony, lend the interior a self-aware neo-kitsch playfulness, better characterized as Camp. Lastly, the interior belongs to the historically interesting interior design of the post-1965 period.