Disclosing Architecture: 18 Stories of Heritage and InnovationDisclosing Architecture: 18 Stories of Heritage and Innovation

Text Mirenne Zijlstra, Huub Breuer, Zoë van Zijderveld, Shannen van Akkeren and Lara Garé

In 1852, the architect Pierre Cuypers founded Cuypers and Stoltzenberg, a workshop for ecclesiastical art, together with François Stoltzenberg, a textile manufacturer and dealer in ecclesiastical supplies. In 1892, his partner left and Cuypers continued the business together with his son Jos Cuypers under the name Cuypers & Co. Pierre Cuypers had an ideal in mind with the workshop: he wanted to return to artisanal production, following the example of the medieval masons’ lodges.

The workshop mainly designed and produced traditional, handcrafted building elements: ironwork, stained-glass windows, sculptures, murals and furniture. The archives of Cuypers & Co contain a large number of splendid, detailed sketches for these, in watercolour and ink. Unfortunately, it is no longer possible to identify the projects for which most of the drawings were made.

But if the detailed designs are brilliant, the working drawings are actually just as interesting. Stains, traces of paint, cut-outs, holes, remnants of gold leaf and folds show that these drawings were used, sometimes several times. The workers used them on the building site. These traces bring the pieces to life. For example, there are stencils with decorative patterns that show layers of paint in different colours and even have bird droppings on them. This begs the question: why would these pieces, bird droppings and all, have been preserved? Not because they have ‘presentation’ qualities. Perhaps simply because they could be reused in the future?

Such working drawings are worth preserving and managing. In the past, the (art) historical and administrative value of the drawing played a decisive role in the conservation assessment. A detailed drawing of an ornament was given more attention than the working drawings. Times have changed and more attention is now paid to the architect’s working process. The Disclosing Architecture project guidelines for conservation therefore focus on all aspects – presentation drawings and working drawings.

Architect Liem Bwan Tjie was born in 1891 in the Dutch East Indies to a Chinese family. He studied in the Netherlands and later in Paris and Peking. Due to civil war, chaos and corruption, he returned to the Dutch East Indies in 1926, where he began working as an independent architect in 1930. Initially, he designed mainly houses for Chinese families, but after the Japanese occupation (1942 - 1945) and the war of independence in 1949, he was increasingly entrusted with public projects. In 1965, he moved to the Netherlands with his wife and two daughters to escape the growing unrest in Indonesia. He died there the following year.

Under the auspices of Disclosing Architecture, Liem Bwan Tjie’s archive has been treated under the theme of ‘colonial archives’, with the aim of making the archives of non-Western architects more accessible. It is a small archive that has proved highly interesting to work with for a number of reasons. It contains very beautiful drawings, but also many works in poor condition. In addition, many projects were mixed up, which made it a puzzle to sort everything out again. The most remarkable thing was that one of the curators had just happened to contact the descendants of Liem Bwan Tjie. They told us that the architect and his family had fled Indonesia in the night without telling anyone, leaving his archive behind. The archive, now managed by the Nieuwe Instituut, was sent to the Netherlands piece by piece in the post. This story made us see the many cracks, damaged edges and crumbling drawings in a new light.

Interior designer Nel Verschuuren (1943-2016) studied at the St. Joost School of Art and Design in Breda. In 1968, together with Kho Liang Ie and Tinus van de Kerkhof, she founded the agency Kho Liang le Associates. Her most important commission was the design and redevelopment of Schiphol Airport, an ever-changing environment. She worked on this project from 1968 to 2006. The archive therefore consists of a variety of designs that have been implemented and that many people will have unconsciously passed on their way to their holiday destination. For example, the pictograms used at Schiphol, which no one thinks much about, but whose distinctive style stands out when you look at the archive.

Above all, it’s a colourful archive. The collages that Verschuuren made for the lounges and restaurants have often not been restored, because they were in such good condition. About 4,600 drawings from this archive have been restored, most of them large technical drawings. Before the start of Disclosing Architecture, these were stored rolled up, damaging the edges of the drawings, which is now a major problem. For reasons of space, ease of consultation and better conservation, it is preferable to store drawings flat in folders. This was not possible in this case, however, as the drawings are larger than the largest folder. The drawings were therefore rolled up again. The disadvantage of rolled drawings is that they are difficult to flatten, even if they are to be consulted.

Many drawings are also accented by colourful adhesive foils. These self-adhesive foils in red, blue or pink make a drawing easier to read. However, they can bleed through to other drawings and the adhesive layer can run. Then the drawings stick together and can be damaged when consulting them. For this reason, a transparent sheet of utoplex paper was placed between each drawing with foil and the next drawing, so that the drawings stick to the utoplex sheet and not to another drawing.

Johannes Lauweriks (1864-1932) grew up in a family of architects. His father was the head of the sculpture workshop in the Cuypers-Stolzenberg studio. When Cuypers and his family moved to Amsterdam, the Lauweriks family moved with them and the two families lived in the same building. After completing his training, Lauweriks also started working in Cuypers’ office. It was there that he met his future partner, Karel de Bazel.

Nieuwe Instituut has more than 1150 drawings by Lauweriks, including designs for architecture, furniture, decorative arts and typography. Particularly noteworthy is the number of drawings (almost 100) that are part of his educational and study trips. Streets in cities in the Netherlands, France, England and Denmark are sketched from life, drawn in pencil (graphite) and then often coloured in watercolour. After his apprenticeship, Lauweriks worked in an abstract geometric style. This is clearly reflected in his many furniture designs and woodcuts. In terms of architecture, his oeuvre shows great diversity, ranging from country houses and nursing homes to exhibition spaces and (funeral) monuments.

Lauweriks’ archive is in exceptionally good condition. Minimal restoration has been carried out. In particular, the larger calque drawings (of about 100 x 70 cm) had some tears and damaged edges. With this archive, it was particularly important to separate the different techniques and formats, using a utoplex sheet for watercolour or large areas of graphite to prevent printing on the other drawings.

For us, Lauweriks’ archive is a true artist’s archive, one that shows the creative and artistic side of architecture. The drawings are not just a medium or a tool for the architect. They are real works of art.

The archive of the landscape architect and urban planner Alle Hosper (1943-1997) is dominated by expressive sketches and design drawings in almost fluorescent colours. Hosper, who grew up in Soest, began his studies at the Agricultural College in Wageningen in 1961. He developed as a landscape architect at a time when a functionalist style was leading the way. He was influenced by predecessors such as Wim Boer, Mien Ruys and Hans Warnau. However, Hosper developed a more exuberant formal language alongside the more austere style of the post-war garden and landscape designers. His designs are therefore both sober and poetic.

These two conflicting characterisations can be seen in the design drawings in Hosper’s archive. Expressive, colourful pencil drawings alternate with more schematic, austere pen drawings. But in the design process, his colourful, expressive sketches seem to take the lead. This is one of the reasons why his archive is so striking. Most of the archives that have been discussed consist mainly of technical drawings and sketchy tracings that, although they are sketches, still have a somewhat rigid character. Hosper’s archive, on the other hand, contains bright colours and many expressive sketches with an almost impulsive character. However, a more sober character is expressed in the archive’s more schematic maps and detailed designs.

In terms of materiality, Hosper’s archive consists mainly of pencil drawings on tracings, where it is important that protective sheets of transparent utoplex are inserted between the drawings. This prevents the pencil from rubbing off on other drawings. The archive also contains some (photo)copies. In some cases, the tracings and copies are attached to each other as a kind of collage, which means that the protocol of ‘separate techniques’ we use is not always applicable.