Friday, August 31, 2012

het schip



On an overcast morning that promised rain, we were determined to find Het Schip before being drenched.  We kept on walking, got lost, and finally had to ask for help from various passersby, only getting the right direction from a bike store owner...
Het Schip is one of three monumental public housing blocks in the Spaarndammerplantsoen [park] designed by Michel de Klerk, perhaps the most well-known of the architects from the Amsterdam School, an artistic movement founded in 1915 that encompassed all the design and decorative arts and especially a more expressionistic and creative architectural style.
This complex with the post office corner that resembles the prow of a ship, hence the name, was completed in 1921and is wedge-shaped in layout thereby bounding a large triangular courtyard.  It was originally comprised of 102 residences for labourers, a school [that was already there and had to be carefully integrated into the block], an assembly room and a post office [which is now a museum].
Het Schip is distinguished by the innovative use of bricks, tiles, the many charming sculptural ornamentation by Hildo Krop, imaginative window designs, and even the typography is exclusively Amsterdam School.









Wednesday, August 8, 2012

amsterdam slokje


Amsterdam never fails to instil a sense of home, a very delightful sense in fact - and we always look forward to a return... sadly, the grand canal house above [the largest of them on the Amstel Canal] is no longer in the family and we are relegated to stay in a more modest one around the corner on the Prinsengracht [the most lovely Hotel Orlando , below]


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this gracious hallway in another canal house leads into FOAM - Fotografiemuseum - where we wandered around stately rooms full of contemporary and innovative dutch photo-art...


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ever exhilarated by progressive dutch creativity, we tumbled into the moooi wonderland of design delirium with gravity defying artwork to precariously perched furniture to glowing protonic doorknobs to ethereal floating light spheres...



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taste sensations are more traditional, ranging from the elegant street fish stands for a raw herring power snack any time of day to hourly marathon of dim sum in Chinatown to stacked to the attic purveyors of great wheels of cheese to precious patisseries presented like bejewelled baubles in spotlit glass cases...




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dropped dutch diction...

determined dutch-chinese...
[like our mooi kroost!]