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(via img-p24rsh-grafisch_thumb840.jpg (840×566))

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(via The Sordid Saga of Eileen Gray's Iconic E-1027 House)

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(via Huis Sonneveld | Het Nieuwe Instituut)

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Sonneveld House has a steel skeletal structure and concrete floors, enabling it to dispense with loadbearing walls, thus allowing the spaces to be divided with greater freedom. Walls were used only to separate spaces. To create optimal openness and flexibility, on this floor the architects opted to divide the spaces with sliding panels and curtains rather than fixed walls. In this way it was possible for the living room to stretch across the entire length of the house. The bands of windows running the full length of the building admitted a sea of light.

Open and flexible | Huis Sonneveld

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(via Open and flexible | Huis Sonneveld)

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(via Light without shadows | Huis Sonneveld)

‘More light in the home’ was the advice that architects heard from all sides from the 1920s. The familiar gloom of most interiors was to make way for abundant, indirect light. Indirect light was especially popular with architects because it did not create shadows. Brinkman & Van der Vlugt also wholeheartedly embraced this idea. They worked together with Gispen, who had a large range of lamps with specially developed GISO glass, which ensured diffuse lighting. In his series of Giso lamps of the 1930s, Gispen placed the emphasis on the quality of the light produced: the milky glass reduced glare and created a diffuse, overall light.

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(via Le Corbusier's five points | Huis Sonneveld)

LE CORBUSIER'S FIVE POINTS

Sonneveld House adheres not only to the principles of Functionalism but also to the five points that Le Corbusier formulated in his book Vers une architecture (1921).

Les pilotis: the core of the building stands on columns, free from the ground.

Le toit-jardin: balconies and roof terraces form the transition between inside and outside.  

Le plan libre: the skeletal structure creates an open floor plan without loadbearing walls.

La façade libre: the façades are not loadbearing and are a kind of ‘curtain’.

La fenêtre en longeur: horizontal windows, preferably running the whole length of the façade.

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Functionalism emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century and had its heyday in the interwar years. Sonneveld House, built between 1929 and 1933, is one of the best-preserved private houses in this style in the Netherlands.  Light, air and space were important qualities for Functionalist architects. They strove to create a healthy living environment with abundant fresh air and sunlight for their buildings’ residents and users. The building’s function and the needs of the residents were more important to these architects than the building’s monumentality. They designed efficient and hygienic buildings using modern techniques and materials such as steel and concrete. Functional floor plans with freely divided spaces gave the buildings an open and light appearance, which was reinforced by balconies and terraces. Their buildings contrasted greatly with traditional, closed houses and apartment blocks.

Dutch functionalism | Sonneveld House

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Sonneveld House is one of the best-preserved houses in the Dutch Functionalist style. The villa was designed in 1933 by architecture firm Brinkman and Van der Vlugt for Albertus Sonneveld, a director of the Van Nelle Factory. The architects designed a total concept in which architecture, interior and furnishings are perfectly coordinated and reinforce one another. Light and spacious, the house features numerous balconies and large areas of fenestration that offer views of the surrounding garden. Almost all items of furniture and lamps in the house were made by the firm of Gispen, some of them specially for the Sonnevelds. This customization reveals the family’s appreciation of luxury and comfort. Sonneveld House is therefore not a dogmatic example of functionalism, but a personal environment.

Sonneveld House | Het Nieuwe Instituut

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(via Sonneveld House | Het Nieuwe Instituut)

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That is to say, a building which is truly a work of art (and I consider none other) is in its nature, essence and physical being an emotional expression. This being so, and I feel deeply that it is so, it must have, almost literally, a life. It follows from this living principle that an ornamented structure should be characterized by this quality, namely, that the same emotional impulse shall flow throughout harmoniously into its varied forms of expression — of which, while the mass-composition is the more profound, the decorative ornamentation is the more intense. Yet must both spring from the same source of feeling.

Ornament in Architecture — R / D