Acquisition and inventory Alberts and Van Huut archive
In 2011, Het Nieuwe Instituut established the first contact with architect Max van Huut about the donation of the archives of the architectural firm Alberts and Van Huut. Now, four years later, the acquisition and inventory of this archive is completed, enriching the collection of Het Nieuwe Instituut with 120 linear meters of archive, consisting of photographs, drawings and models. With their design for the NMB bank in Amsterdam-Zuidoost (1983), Alberts and Van Huut gained instant recognition and popularity with a wide audience. The agency represents an anthroposophic and organic approach to building, a human-centered architectural movement. A topical issue, underlining the relevance of the vision of this agency today.
22 June 2015
The first building projects date from 1963, the year in which Ton Alberts (1927-1999) founded the architectural firm. From 1975 onwards, he was assisted by Max van Huut (Batavia, former Dutch East Indies, 1947). In 1987, the two architects became partners in the new agency Alberts and Van Huut. Together with the head office of the Gasunie in Groningen, the NMB headquarters is regarded as an icon of organic building in the Netherlands. It is an expressionist brick building, in which forms are inspired by functional and physical benefits. A sloping wall is not a sign of a formal desire, but ensures no sound echoes back to the facades on the other side of the street. The role of the architect is that of a humble mediator of 'life energy', but as one of the few insiders in the matter, the architect also becomes a 'healer' of sorts.
The human scale
There was a growing conviction that love and devotion created buildings that would benefit both its users and the environment. Buildings with warm colors, lots of brick, whimsical, organic shapes and crooked walls. According to Alberts, buildings with rectangular shapes would make the people residing within hard, angular, insensitive and rational. People would feel more comfortable and were thought to be much freer and friendlier in buildings with shapes derived from nature, focusing on experience. In the vision of the agency, man and his well-being were the starting point and the optimal merging of landscape, urban design and architecture the goal. The human scale should be tangible and visible within the design.
Digitalization
This vision is reflected in the archive and particularly in the design drawings, which show beautiful pastels, multiple perspectives, details and beautiful sketches. The organic building movement did not find much support and the archive is therefore a unique feature of the collection of Het Nieuwe Instituut. The design drawings are now available for research at the Study Centre of Het Nieuwe Instituut. A proposal for digitalization has been presented alongside the inventory of the archive. This digitization has already started and the documents from the archive will become accessible online in the course of 2015.