Beurs van Berlage

The Beurs van Berlage, a former building of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, was built at the end of the 19th century according to the plans of the Dutch architect Hendrik Petrus Berlage. It was declared a Rijksmonument.

Design history and classification

The municipality of Amsterdam wrote in 1884 a competition for the construction of a stock exchange building on a newly reclaimed land on the Damrak. The occasion was the economic revival and the fact that the then existing market by Jan David Zocher from 1848 had become dilapidated.

Hendrik Petrus Berlage took together with his former partner Theodore Sanders part in the competition and was able to count to five participants who were allowed to revise their plans for a second template. However, there was none of the five designs for execution.

1894, the council had the architect Adriaan Willem Weissman ( 1858-1923 ) to develop a plan for the conversion of Zocher exchange. This plan served as the basis for another Berlage design. Due to the influence of urban Assistant for Public Affairs Willem Treub he was able to realize this design without any major obstacles.

A clear stylistic classification of the stock market is difficult - although there are features of Historicism and Art Nouveau to find, but the building is mostly seen as the beginning of modern construction in the Netherlands, from which further developed, among others, the Amsterdam School.

The stock market, which held Berlage himself not for his best construction, developed after initial criticism ( " anti- architecture", " brick shed "), a national monument, a myth that should outshine the other oeuvre of the "Exchange builder ".

Functions

In the design of the stock market stood for the idea of ​​a Berlage building, the arts, culture, economy and society under one roof brings in the foreground - but the purpose of the exchange was of course the trade. The building housed the goods and grain exchange, but also a telegraph office, a cafe, several meeting rooms, a post office, a caretaker's house, a police station and a civil office. The insurance market and the currency trading Later on in the rooms of the Commodity Exchange in addition accommodated.

When in 1961 the Instituut voor Industriële Vormgeving the building was referring to the emigration of the exchanges began. As a last option ceased trading. 1986 applied the Berlage Stock Exchange for the accommodation of the Netherlands Architecture Institute, which, however, was housed in a new building in Rotterdam. Since then, the stock market is in the hands of the foundation " De Beurs van Berlage ", who settled in the southern part. The northern part is mainly used as an office building since 1987 by the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra. The former premises of grain and stock exchange can also be found as a rehearsal and concert space use.

Architecture

Basics

The Amsterdam Stock Exchange illustrates Berlage then considers a contemporary architecture that should not affect by consuming historistisches decor, but by simplicity and harmonious grouping of the masses. Berlage wanted to revive the simple beauty of traditional for the Netherlands typical brick masonry. This was also a political statement: The mighty walls of brick are reflected in Berlage's eyes democratic co resist, in which the individual orients not much - in the community is the force. He also advocated a rational design process starting from the inner spatial structure and this will also open read on the exterior. Berlage was hoping to combine practicality, economy and artistic level with each other in this way.

Exterior

Can be exemplified read On the south side of the stock market and the resulting design drawings for them that sought by Berlage simplicity and flatness could be achieved only in the course of a gradual end reduction process. First still evident historicist elements were gradually simplified and reduced, projecting components more and more integrated into the surface. The desired flatness is finally so consistently, even radically implemented that the gutters are the most important plastic loosening of the wall surface. Wall openings appear like cut out of the brick, and the tower has been transformed from a rather picturesque element to large block-like.

The western front of the stock exchange, directly by the wide Damrak, the main railway station and Dam joins is constructed almost symmetrical and cooperates with the highlighted middle part and the even rows of windows than most traditional side of the building.

The northern short side of the market shows most clearly the rational, the exterior progressing from the interior design practice Berlage. Although quite short, it has significant differences between high and low as well as open and closed batches. This is clearly working spaces of various widths, stairways and heating ducts, and even an open court draw from. The traditional idea of ​​a single facade, behind which hides the internal spatial structure is broken here radically.

In the east, the outline of the building follows the road in order to optimally exploit the irregular cut plot. The forced departure from the ideal of the rectangular floor plan is not obscured by Berlage. That behind the inclined wall are partially rectangular rooms, shows up outside by different deep recessed window.

Affairs

The plan of the stock market shows that it consists of numerous smaller spaces that a monastery similarly grouped around three large open spaces. The latter are no yards, but the halls of the securities, commodities, grain and Schifferbörse. Artistic centerpiece of the complex is the large hall of the commodity market, the other two trading floors appear next as variations. In addition to the careful combination of different colors and finishes, the severity of the unclad brick walls determines the effect of the room. Decorative details, galleries and arcades form no ground floor supernatants, but are completely recessed in the wall surface or cut out of her. Only a few elements are different from the general flatness. So divide the stone runs of the roof -bearing iron ribs, reminded their visibility in contemporary industrial buildings, the area. The wall masses are here as on the exterior also the defining feature of the architecture. Nevertheless, there is a large trading floor a noticeable tension between closed walls and sections in which the surface is broken.

The initially mentioned, expectation generated by the plan, for the three trading floors it were patios, deserves renewed consideration: in fact, one has the feeling to step outside one of the entrances torwegartigen when entering the halls. Contributing to the incidence of light from above, the exterior appropriate treatment of the walls and the sudden widening of the space into a kind of Italian piazza. Berlage generates memories of historical models, without quoting directly. The historical references are rather highly abstracted. The space -like design of the trading floors is less surprising than it seems at first: Berlage here follows the Dutch tradition, shops - the air in defiance - under to make the open sky. The predecessors of the Stock Exchange Berlage were available for this tradition.

Decoration

When designing the Exchange Berlage stayed on a close interaction of decor and design - many items should be useful mesh and form a whole. Decorative elements had to emphasize the task, beauty and sense of structure for Berlage. You should to integrate fully into the wall surface. The principle of the " Gesamtkunstwerk " following HP Berlage commissioned the poet Albert Verwey, an iconographic program design for the equipment. There emerged two parts: one tells of Amsterdam as a major trading city - the other, more important part is a classless society in which money plays no role.

Among other things can be seen:

• Still images on the outskirts of Gijsbrecht van Aemstel, Jan Pieterszoon Coen and Hugo de Groot and keystones with pictures of fishing, commerce, and the hunting of Lambertus Zijl
• Tile panels with illustrations of past, present and future by Jan Toorop
• Decorative motifs into brick walls constructed in the form similar to a tapestry
• A terracotta relief of the development of man from Lambertus Zijl
• Various verses of Albert Verwey
• Ceramic friezes on labor toorop
• Leaded by Antoon Derkinderen
• Features of the meeting rooms by Joseph Mendes da Costa

Berlage himself designed, among others, fencing, lighting and furniture for the building.

Others

In 1999, the Berlage Stock Exchange was set up by the Union Internationale des Architectes on the list of the 1000 most important buildings of the 20th century.