Betondorp is a garden village in Amsterdam Oost, constructed between 1923 – 1927 during a period of intensive house building across the city in which thousands of homes were constructed by cooperatives, associations and the city council.
It is part of the larger Tuindorp Watergraafsmeer garden village which consists of two distinctive areas. One half is Baksteendorp; vernacular with red bricks and terracotta tiles on pitched roofs. The other is Betondorp; made of concrete with flat roofs and modernist design.
Betondorp was built for the Amsterdam municipal council (de Amsterdamse gemeenteraad). Baksteendorp was built for the Eigen Haard and Algemene Woningbau Vereening (AWV) workers’ housing societies.
It is a slightly odd aesthetic juxtaposition but I think it works because both parts of the estate suggest quality of build and strength of design. When in doubt, it is sometimes best to be bold and exude confidence. Betondorp does this well.
The context for the building was the Housing Act of 1901, the Wonigwet, which became law in 1902. This legislation set out provisions for the building of housing by associations, cooperatives and municipal authorities.
Loans were provided by the state on a low interest, long term basis. In Amsterdam the city council acted as the guarantor of the loans and provided a layer of planning, aesthetic and building codes and guidelines and a governance framework.
A housing association could not simply take a loan and do what it wanted. There was a system of governance by which approvals were needed for build quality, building codes, public health requirements, space standards and aesthetics. This encouraged societies to work with architects from the beginning of the development and planning process to help ensure proposals were in an acceptable form.
The development of a nation wide house building programme was ruptured by the First World War and its aftermath. Although the Netherlands remained neutral, there were significant disruptions to the provision of labour and materials and large increases in costs. However, from 1919 onwards, despite the difficulties, thousands of homes were built.
Reform or Revolution?
There was a great deal of change between the implementation of the Wonigwet in 1902 and the proposals for Betondorp which began to be discussed in the early 1920s.
Revolutions, the collapse of empires and the spread of workers’ councils increased militant attitudes amongst many workers. No one involved in house building, municipal planning, architectural design, political organisations and trade unions could be unaware of these great political changes.
If Tsars and Kaisers could be overthrown then why couldn’t more housing be built to end the shortages?
Revolutionary pressure from below and reforming intentions from above combined to promote house building on a large scale. It is estimated that across the Netherlands from the early 1900s until 1940 over a million homes were built (the population rose from 5 million in 1900 to 8.8 million in 1940).
One question that is constantly raised, and has been debated for decades, is how to house the workers on the lowest wages? One answer might be to pay the workers higher wages; but reform minded politicians would argue that’s beyond their remit.
In general, the reformist politicians believed in a gradual, evolutionary road to socialism; incremental, and controlled in a particular way. Part of their focus on house building was an attempt to reduce the pressure of more militant demands; look, they were suggesting, reforms can work, we are delivering housing, eduction and health care; ‘this is the way forward, not Bolshevism’.
In some ways it was an attempt by the reformists to reduce the workers militancy and to negate more left-wing challenges to their political positions. But it also caught the reformist socialists in a tension they could not break free form and contradictions they could not resolve.
To work within the capitalist system meant compromise with the interests of capital. This would always mean that resources would be limited and there would be pressures to reduce space standards, labour costs and the quality of materials.
That said, a great deal of the housing which was built across Amsterdam is an impressive legacy of housing provision and a testament to what reforms can achieve. And it continues to illustrate what can be achieved when socialists of a range of tendencies can find common ground to work together.
An important element of this was that social democratic councillors, socialist and communist architects, planners and militant workers who fought for this housing started from basic socialistic positions and principles rather than sectarian agendas.
Those starting points were fundamental in how the housing was planned, designed and developed and in how the reforms were achieved.
Starting principles included the provision of air, light, space and greenery. That the housing would be well built, of good quality and artistically designed. Shops, services, clinics, schools, libraries, play areas, kindergartens and more would be provided.
Perhaps several sections of the left could unite around this approach….but could they agree about the use of concrete?
Concrete positions
Betondorp was developed as an experiment in concrete forms and new building techniques and this approach generated tensions and disputes both on the left and among the city council and the building unions.
Concrete was a relatively new material at the time. It had been used by the Romans, and even earlier, but was not used on a mass-scale within the industrial-capitalist world until the 1890s.
In 1892 the French builder and engineer François Hennebique patented a reinforced-concrete building system. First a reinforced concrete building in Paris, then a bridge, then a grain silo.
The technique spread rapidly and within a decade over 7,000 buildings had been constructed this way. If it worked for office blocks and industrial buildings could it work for housing?
At Betondorp ten separate approaches were used and carefully analysed. These included the use of concrete blocks based on the Isotherem, Winget and Olbertz systems and using poured concrete based on the Kossel, Non-Plus, Korrelbeton and Bims Beton Bouw (BBB) systems.
Prefabrication was also used, as developed by the Hunkermöller and Bron systems.
A steel frame system known as Dornloco, developed by the Dorman Long & Co steel producer based in Redcar was also tested. This proved the most costly and prone to structural problems.
These were not just experiments in materials. The socialist democratic politicians and council officials considered that the use of concrete might be a way to reduce costs, control labour and speed up the construction process.
It was deemed that using concrete could enable the replacement of the skilled labour of bricklayers and other construction workers with lower skilled general labour which would reduce the wages bill. Furthermore, bricklayers and existing construction workers were considered too militant and too well organised.
They were increasingly influenced by syndicalist and communist ideas (of the Bolshevik ‘smash-the-state’ variety). Concrete, so some thought, might be a way of creating tough buildings with a softer workforce which could be more easily managed.
People
There was a great deal of integration between socialist politicians, trade union leaders and officials of the Amsterdam council. Arie Keppler was a member of the SDAP and the Director of Housing. Floor Wibaut was a well known and popular social democrat and from 1914 to 1927, the Alderman for Housing in the city.
While a layer of building workers associated with the edges of the revolutionary left most trade unionists were influenced by reformist (and other) ideas.
Han van Loghem one of the main architects of the estate was known as ‘the red architect’. He was an active communist, influenced and supportive of the Russian Revolution, the version led by Lenin and Trotsky.
In 1919 he had been one of the founders of the League of Revolutionary Socialist Intellectuals, along with Henriette Roland Holst and Clara Wichmann. He spent the two years from 1926 to 1928 working in the Soviet Union.
Dick Greiner who acted as the lead architect on the project was also a socialist. As well as designing some of the housing he also designed the library building.
Fré Cohen one of the key designers of the Amsterdam school, moved to the estate with her family around 1925.
Design
The ideas of the Garden City Movement influenced the overall design and layout; in particular the principles of air, light, space, greenery and build quality as outlined above. Starting with these principles was a markedly different approach from starting with design aesthetics (‘must be gothic’, ‘must be modernism’ and so on).
Having said that, although the starting point the above principles, the design was taken seriously and it is nicely done. The buildings have a solid look about them which suits the use of concrete.
Square windows, flat roofs, low rise height, the occasional tower, Mondrian inspired doors and here and there a strange and enigmatic sculpture by Hildo Krop (also a communist). It all comes together in a bold art-deco modernism and although eight different architects worked on the project there is a strong unity across the estate.
The estate has a distinctive village green centre with benches and play equipment. The brick sculpture with the number ’14’ is to commemorate the footballer Johan Cruyff who grew up here.
When first built, there was a library (now a community centre), shops, a school (now apartments), housing for the elderly and a kindergarten (still in use). There were 900 homes in total.
Houses have front and back gardens and there is a great deal of open green space around the estate, except on the edge where it is joined to Baksteendorp.
This spatial luxury ensures the buildings work in cooperation with the natural environment.
Living quality
There is anecdotal evidence that the housing was liked by its first residents and that it is still liked today. I spoke to a couple of people in the street who live there and they were complimentary of the homes, and of the layout and the atmosphere of the estate.
They liked that it was green, spacious and peaceful; all ambitions of the original principles. I also spoke to a couple of community workers who kindly showed me around the community centre. It was busy in there with a lot of people doing arts and crafts activities and a lot of people just dropping in for a chat or something to eat or both.
After one busy afternoon of field trip study I stopped to ask a woman with a crutch for directions. She had the same profile as the singer Gilliam Welch. Perhaps she is a cousin. She chatted with me for a while and then she smiled and winked at me and ended our conversation with, ‘have fun!’.
What is housing if it is not lived in by people of good cheer?
I am indebted to the work of Helen Searing on the housing of Amsterdam. Please see her article Betondorp Amsterdam’s Concrete Garden Suburb for more detail.
This can be found on JSTOR. If you don’t already have a free account, just sign up for one. There are several other articles by Helen Searing on JSTOR which are worth reading.
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