THE DUDOK COLLECTION OF ARCHITECTURAL PLANS AND
DRAWINGS OF THE CITY OF HILVERSUM
City of Hilversum and Regional Archives Gooi- en Vechtstreek, The Netherlands
on 35 mm microfilm
Illustration: The Town Hall of Hilversum by W.M. Dudok
(photo courtesy of the City of Hilversum)
Background
Willem Marinus Dudok was born in Amsterdam on 6 July 1884. He went to cadet school at Alkmaar and then to the Royal Military Academy at Breda in 1902. He was fascinated by architecture although he never formally trained as a civilian architect. He was eventually able to join the Royal Engineers as a lieutenant and worked on building fortifications around Amsterdam. He left military service in 1913 and went to work as an architect in Leiden where he was deputy director of Public Works. In 1915 he was appointed director of Public Works in Hilversum at the age of 30 and town architect in 1927. He was to work over 40 years for this city, which at the time was undergoing a rapid transition from small rural town into a bustling regional hub that is now the home of the Dutch broadcasting industry. Hilversum as a "garden city" largely took shape under his direction.
Work
As early as 1916 he was designing low cost social housing and in 1918 he developed the first of many plans for the town’s expansion including new residential quarters. He also designed many school buildings for the city, including the Dr. H. Bavinck school (1921) and the Vondel school (1928). He became internationally famous for Hilversum’s town hall, built in 1928-1930 based on plans first conceived in 1924.
Outside Hilversum he is known for, among others, the Netherlands students’ house in the Cité universitaire of Paris (1926-1938), The "Bijenkorf" department store in Rotterdam (1929, destroyed in World War II), the Garden Theatre and Light-house Cinema in Calcutta (1936), the "Erasmus house" office building and restaurant in Rotterdam (1939), the Municipal theatre in Utrecht (1941), the headquarters of the Royal Dutch Steelworks (Hoogovens) at Velsen (1948) and a series of Esso service stations (1953).
As a town planner he worked on various reconstruction and extension schemes not only for Hilversum, but also for other Dutch towns such as The Hague, Velsen, Wassenaar and Zwolle and built residential quarters in Naarden, Amsterdam and Eindhoven.
He received many honors, including the Royal Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects (1935) and Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects (1955). He died in Hilversum in 1974.
Style
Stylistically speaking his work can be associated with the Amsterdam School by its stress on individual expression, but also with the De Stijl group through its use of geometric form. He enjoyed friendly contacts with the older and internationally famous Dutch architect Berlage. His work always served the public interest and did not indulge personal whims. He occupied a middle position in the pre-World War II debate between functionalists and more traditional architects. Lewis Mumford said of him: "The work of W.M. Dudok stands out as one of the most solid achievements of the last generation of architecture. This is not a ‘Program Architecture’ whose form and meaning lie mainly in the manifesto that accompanies it: Dudok’s buildings speak for themselves." (Quoted in Willem M. Dudok, Hilversum, 2nd ed. 1955, p. 55).
The collection
The collection presented here on 35 mm microfilm contains approximately 9,000 architectural plans and drawings, including floor plans, façades, cross-sections and detailed technical drawings, made by Dudok himself or under his supervision during his long tenure as director of Public Works and city architect of Hilversum. Among the objects represented are:
— the town hall with all preliminary projects (1915-1922, 1924-1930)
— many schools, including the well-known Fabritius school (1925) and Snellius school (1930)
— 25 residential complexes, plans dating from 1915-1950
— the sport park with two grandstands, the Crailoo swimming pool (1927) and two bath houses
— the Noorder cemetery
— various municipal office buildings, the slaughterhouse, and transformer buildings (1916-1947)
— embellishments for streets and public places, a viaduct (1928)
— a library and kiosks
It is the largest and most complete collection of his work anywhere (the microfilm edition includes drawings from the collection on loan to the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam) and is consulted frequently by architects and town planners and by scholars interested in the history of twentieth-century architecture and urban development. Its publication in microform will greatly facilitate research in these fields internationally.