Hidden Gems

The hidden travel gems

29 November 2023

The irresistible appeal of Venice’s unique light and architecture

traveljus.com Architecture, Best places to visit, Featured, Hidden Gems, Italy, Traveljus online mag, Venice

The interplay between Venice’s light and architecture creates a magical experience

The irresistible appeal of Venice’s unique light and architecture

One of the main attractions of Venice is light

The cause of my love affair with Venice is that strange, fabulous light. Each moment of the day new effects arise that generate some astonishing illuminations. The endlessly changing beauty of light on the water an its reflections on houses, churches and palaces is part of an interplay that exploits alluring optical effects but is also profoundly mystical. It is when art perfectly complements urban nature. Added by the fact that Venice has remained virtually unchanged for centuries. This urban environment is full of architectural styles and details seen nowhere else in Italy or the world. Even with this kind of visual appeal, let’s not forget that the Doge’s city is a real city, despite the many visitors enjoying the canals, gondolas and cooing pigeons on San Marco Square. It is a tangle of stones and water where normal residents pursue their business like anywhere else in the world.

The rhythm of the lagoon

Most cities are in a constant state of decay and transformation, demolition and rebuilding, but not Venice. In Venice, it seems that familiarity and memory dominate. Venetians hold their past cultural stories tight to themselves. No matter how big the crowds are at the Rialto Bridge, the residents think the city in the lagoon should be theirs. It is a veritable sentiment representative of the loss of a traditional, communal way of life in the face of tourism. The signs of daily life in the lagoon city are slowly draining away. It is no secret that the population of Venice is in steady decline. The number dropped last year below 50,000 for the first time in over 300 years. Residents complain about the lack of affordable housing, the high cost of living in a tourist-driven city, and the loss of businesses that sell essential items. Residents do not want Venice to become unhomely, to lose what was once familiar, safe, and stable. Venice wants to keep on writing her own story according to the rhythm of the lagoon.

Venice is the city of mirages

The cause of our love affair with Venice is that strange, fabulous light. Each moment of the day new effects arise that generate some astonishing illuminations. The endlessly changing beauty of light on the water an its reflections on houses, churches and palaces is part of an interplay that exploits alluring optical effects but is also profoundly mystical. It is when art perfectly complements urban nature. Added by the fact that Venice has remained virtually unchanged for centuries. This urban environment is full of architectural styles and details seen nowhere else in Italy or the world. Even with this kind of visual appeal, let’s not forget that the Doge’s city is a real city, despite the many visitors enjoying the canals, gondolas and cooing pigeons on San Marco Square. It is a tangle of stones and water where normal residents pursue their business like anywhere else in the world.

Tangible reality

There are more reasons to love Venice than the tangible reality of its light. Meeting friends, and locals who live there, to spend time together, laughing, eating and drinking, diminishes the influence of the tourist cliché of bell towers, arched bridges and gondolas. Though many have been seduced by its art, architecture, poetry and beauty, Venice is more than half a tourist trap and half a fairy tale or a library of our collective memory. It invites us to walk. There you are, exploring. Only then you will realise that in this urban labyrinth, water and architecture can be a hundred things at the same time. The truth is that everywhere you go, you will find the endlessly changing beauty of Venetian light. A light that is concrete and tangible through the senses. As a suggestion, read also our article about the unbuilt Venetian hospital project of the famous French architect Le Corbusier. Le Corbusier too recognised that there is no place on earth with such light. But be aware, in Venice nothing is ever quite certain. Enjoy the journey!

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23 November 2023

Van Nelle Rotterdam & the architectural challenge of the ‘ideal factory’

traveljus.com Architecture, Hidden Gems, History, The Netherlands, Traveljus online mag Rotterdam

Van Nelle factory: an icon of 20th-century industrial architecture in Europe & Unesco world heritage site

Van Nelle Rotterdam & the architectural challenge of the ‘ideal factory’

Van Nelle articulates the ‘ideal industrial factory’

On my visits to Rotterdam, the Dutch port city, I was often told that there was one place I should go: the Van Nelle Factory. It is one of the most remarkable icons of industrial architecture in The Netherlands, de facto in the world. It is also a textbook example of the Dutch “Nieuwe Bouwen” or “New Building” representing various modern building styles (1915 to 1960) that focus on functionality combined with aesthetics.

The story of Van Nelle started in 1782 when Johannes van Nelle opened a coffee, tea and tobacco shop at the Leuvehaven in Rotterdam. After the death of the founders, their son continued to run the company until the Van der Leeuw family took over the entire Van Nelle company in 1845. Van Nelle bears witness to the long history of importing, processing and trading tropical products such as coffee and tea through the port of Rotterdam.

Family Van Der Leeuw

Coffee, tea and tobacco became increasingly relevant around the turn of the century, contributing to the success of the family Van Der Leeuw. Using pragmatism as a business tool, the family established worldwide trade contracts and founded their very own coffee and tea plantations in the Dutch West Indies. With business going well, the demand for bigger premises grew. In 1916, CEO Cees van der Leeuw bought a site close to Schie, a waterway between Rotterdam and Schiedam. Van der Leeuw was not your average director. Interested in spirituality, art and architecture, Cees had a good eye for talent. He hired architect Michiel Brinkman as architect for the new Van Nelle. Brinkman, well known for his Spangen “streets in the sky” project, worked in the Dutch modernist tradition. After completing the first sketches, Michiel Brinkman suddenly died in 1925. A successor was found in his son, Johannes Brinkman, who studied at the Delft Technical College. Alongside Johannes a more experienced architect was called for. Leendert van der Vlugt was appointed. This successful collaboration led to the architectural office Brinkman & Van der Vlugt (1925 – 1936).

Nieuwe Bouwen and the 1rst daylight factory in Europe

The van Nelle factory is a textbook example of the so-called “Nieuwe Bouwen” architecture. Van der Leeuw and architects Brinkman and Van der Vlugt wanted to realise the ‘ideal factory’: functional, beautiful and open with characteristic facades of steel and glass and ‘mushroom columns’ made of reinforced concrete. The ‘ideal factory’ showed that Van Nelle cared about the physical and mental well-being of his employees. More daylight provides pleasant working conditions and radiates openness to the outside world. Van Nelle also provided large sanitary facilities in the factory. The workers often experienced poor living conditions and could wash on-site before work. Good hygiene was necessary for production as well. There were slightly more women than men employed and to prevent distraction, there were separate work places and stairs for men and women. The famous Rotterdammer W.H. Gispen designed the chrome work of the notably beautiful stairwells.

The glass palace

Built between 1927 and 1931 the complex consists of three connected factories for coffee, tea and tobacco. Each floor was intended for one step of the processing process: seven for tobacco, five for coffee and three for tea. Each of the processed gods – tobacco, coffee and tea used a separate section of the building and its form and size responded to the processing needs. The idea was to start each process on top of the building. The raw material was brought to a higher floor to go down a floor after each stage of the treatment. This explains the difference in building levels. The tobacco section needed eight treatments, coffee five and tea three levels. The characteristic bridges serve as connecting corridors to transfer products hanging from rails between the factory and the warehouses. After its completion in 1931, the Van Nelle Factory was the most modern factory in the Netherlands. Not surprisingly, because of its gigantic glass facade, the building was soon called “The Glass Palace”.

Unesco World Heritage site

On June 21, 2014, the Van Nelle Factory was awarded a World Heritage site by UNESCO. The Van Nelle Factory is one of those iconic buildings, unique for its time in material and form promoting light, air and space, and far ahead of its time from a social point of view. The inclusion of the Van Nelle Factory on the UNESCO World Heritage List is a recognition of the architectural quality of this modernist peace palace and the ultimate culmination of the repurposing process. The recognition did not come out of the blue but is the result of years of preparatory work by many people from the van Nelle Factory, the municipality of Rotterdam and the Cultural Heritage Agency. The fact that the Van Nelle factory is still in full use as a functional and unusual event location, office complex and museum presents an exciting challenge between ‘conservation’ and ‘use’.

Adress: Van Nelleweg 1, 3044 BC Rotterdam

Website Van Nelle

17 October 2023

What remains of Le Corbusier’s fascinating hospital project in Venice?

traveljus.com Featured, Hidden Gems, History, Italy, Traveljus online mag, Venice

Le Corbusier Venice Hospital project

Venice missed a huge opportunity in the 1960s to include contemporary architecture in its city shape. At the time, the French modernist architect Le Corbusier was invited to build an open-form hospital on three levels in San Giobbe. The idea was to extend the hospital site into the lagoon by building on stilts. Sadly, any hope to see the project completed faded in August 1965, when Le Corbusier died of a heart attack.

What remains of Le Corbusier’s fascinating hospital project in Venice?

A love affair with Venice

I have affection or respect for other cities, but with Venice, it is more: I treasure the architecture of this floating city. Fenced in by the rippling water of the lagoon, Venice has many admirers, including some you would not expect. None other than Swiss-French architect Charles Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, known as Le Corbusier, fell in love with Venice since his first visit in October 1907. Over time, the figurehead of modernism and a critic of many urban developments travelled again and again to the lagoon. Le Corbusier loved the human proportions of the Venetian alleys, the small arteries of the city. For the site in San Giubbe, Le Corbusier’s design strategy is an attempt not to eradicate history, but to translate it into the future, to shape it into something new. Le Corbusier seems to be someone who can transform the events of his own history or knowledge in architectural designs. It take a genius to fit a modernist building into a centuries old urban environment.

Research of urban proportions

Talk about a new hospital in San Giobbe started in 1959. In 1962, Mayor Giovanni Favaretto Fisca contacted Le Corbusier and asked him to be the architect in charge of the project. After some heated public debates, Venice decided on April 20, 1963, to announce a competition for Italian architects and engineers to submit proposals for the hospital project. With no clear winner of the competition, the hot potato arrived again on Le Corbusier’s plate. Le Corbusier moved to Venice for a first survey of the Venetian urban fabric in August 1963 . He calculates the proportions of Venetian streets and squares. The architecture of Venice is clearly horizontal, and the average building height 13.66 metres. There are only a few vertical exceptions, such as the tower of San Marco. Venice is a small city of only 8 km2, comparable to the historic city centre of Amsterdam. Like Amsterdam, buildings lay down on water, held up by stilts. The idea of a building on stilts extending over water, may originate from Le Corbusier’s interest in prehistoric lake dwellings in central Europe.

A horizontal hospital

Based on his research Le Corbusier concluded it was best not to alter the urban city shape, but rather extend it on stilts within the lagoon landscape. The Venice Hospital should not be built vertically, but built as a ‘horizontal hospital.’ In November 1964, a first draft arrived in Venice accompanied by a letter: “A hospital is the house of man. The key is the man, his height, his step, his eye, his hand. That is why the starting point will be his accommodation, the hospital room”. Three main levels were planned. The ground level with general services makes a connection with the city. On this level it is all public access. The second level is for medical care and technology. And the third level serves as the zone for hospitalization, plus a visitor area. The number 4 is leading. 4 rooms are placed side by side to form a so-called “care unit”. 4 care units are grouped together and are served by 4 “calli” or alleys. The route along the alleys, where patients can meet and relax, is organized in a similar way as the alleys of Venice.

Venice, a unique phenomenon

One of the most interesting contributions Le Corbusier made is his reflection on the position of the patient. Forced into his bed, the patient cannot enjoy a view of Venice. In Venice there is this thing called the “transenna”. It is the way buildings, water and light merge into a completely different image. Le Corbusier designed a system of ceilings and windows that capture these variations of natural light in the lagoon. Like this the patient can feel the “transenna” of Venice. Le Corbusier’s hope to see the Venice project completed vanished in August 1965 when he died of a heart attack, 87 years old, swimming below the cliffs at Eileen Grey’s house in Cap Martin, France.

Venice is a totality. It is a unique phenomenon” wrote Le Corbusier once. He saw Venice as a fluid city of human proportion, a city “of total harmony, integral purity and unity of civilization. In its most hidden corners and you will realize that in this urban enterprise one finds, everywhere, tenderness.” It is fitting, perhaps, that his final project was for Venice, the city he came to love so deeply.