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RESEARCH LOG
Michel de Klerk and Liesbeth van der Pol
by Ingeborg de Roode
Fig. 1. Liesbeth van der Pol, design sketch of a cogeneration plant, Utrecht, 2003. Construction completed 2005. Photo: Dok architects.
Fig. 2. Liesbeth van der Pol in the exhibition with a photo of the brick sculpture by Hildo Krop (designed in cooperation with Michel de Klerk) on the corner of the post office/residential building Het Schip in Amsterdam. Photo: Ingeborg de Roode.
With Atelier Zeinstra van der Pol and later Dok architects, of which Van der Pol was cofounder in 2007, she has a large number of completed projects to her name: lots of housing projects, but also schools, a cogeneration plant, depot building, and a parking garage. In the meantime, she was also chief government architect from 2008 to 2011.
In the “architecture” exhibition in Almere, the sketches, designs, and presentation drawings appeared to play the leading role. Van der Pol uses ink drawing and watercolor painting, which she usually combines, as tools in the design phase. Representing her ideas in this way helps her in that process. She draws and paints watercolors everywhere and always, as is evident from the “free” subjects that were also shown: portraits, landscapes and travel memories.
Much more recently, I visited an exhibition about another architect, Michel de Klerk. November 24 marked the 100th anniversary of his death. He was the leader of the Amsterdam School, the expressive architecture and design movement from the early twentieth century. Museum Het Schip in Amsterdam, which is entirely dedicated to this exceptional movement, has an exhibition about him on view until September 1, 2024. The museum has a special bond with the architect because the building in which it is located, the social housing complex Het Schip, is one of the highlights of his oeuvre.
This exhibition includes the early and unique clock from the Stedelijk Museum collection (Fig. 3). The clock was known from photographs, but was “lost” for almost a century. More than ten years ago it was found in England and the Stedelijk was able to acquire it.[2] Another early piece by De Klerk, a lady’s armchair for one of his first private clients J. H. Polenaar, can be seen at the Stedelijk in the permanent collection presentation Yesterday Today – Collection until 1950 (Fig. 4–5).
Fig. 3. Michel de Klerk, clock, design 1914/1915, collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Photo: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
Fig. 4. Michel de Klerk, lady’s armchair, 1912/1913, collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Photo: Petra & Erik Hesmerg, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
Fig. 5. De Klerk armchair and pieces by Margaret Kropholler, Charlotte Perriand and others in the collection presentation Yesterday Today. Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
You may wonder what these two temporary exhibitions have to do with each other, other than that both being about an Amsterdam architect. There appear to be quite a few links. Firstly, there are several examples that show Liesbeth van der Pol is inspired by the Amsterdam School. On Meerhuizenplein in Amsterdam South, amid the Amsterdam School housing blocks, Van der Pol designed a building with curved masonry walls (Fig. 6). For a shop on Amsterdam’s P.C. Hooftstraat, she included a figure in women’s heels on the facade “just like Hildo Krop made his sculptures. (…) With solid masonry” (Fig. 7).[3] Krop became known for his sculptures on buildings and bridges by Amsterdam School architects. Various balconies of Van der Pol’s buildings (for example, in Leidsche Rijn Centrum) also remind me of balconies in a 1923 housing block on Holendrechtstraat by Amsterdam School architect – and the first woman in that profession in the Netherlands – Margaret Kropholler (Fig. 8).
Fig. 6 Liesbeth van der Pol, residential building on Meerhuizenplein, Amsterdam. Construction completed: 2002. Photo: Arjen Schmitz.
Fig. 7. Liesbeth van der Pol, design sketch for a building in PC Hoofstraat, Amsterdam, 2021. Construction to be completed 2024.
Fig. 8. Margaret Kropholler, residential building in Holendrechtstraat, Amsterdam, 1923. Photo: Ingeborg de Roode.
In addition, there is a great similarity between Van der Pol and De Klerk in their love for drawing. Like Van der Pols, De Klerk’s are beautiful. He not only made architectural drawings, but also drew covers for the magazine Wendingen (Fig. 9) and many portraits. It is precisely these less well-known aspects of his artistry that are now being paid a lot of attention at the Het Schip exhibition. All kinds of things have surfaced, such as stage sets.
Fig. 9. Michel de Klerk, cover for Wendingen 1(1918)2, collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Photo: Petra & Erik Hesmerg, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
Other similarities between the two architects include a love for striking colors (De Klerk used, for example, purple and green upholstery for his furniture) and taking inspiration from all over the world. Van der Pol mentions Italy, India, Japan, Egypt, Uzbekistan, and Iran among others. It is known that De Klerk took influences from Scandinavia, North America, and Indonesia (then widely referred to in the West as the Dutch East Indies) in his work. But perhaps the most important similarity is that there is beauty to be found in each of their bodies of work. Van der Pol herself calls beauty one of her “Seven Lamps” (drawing an analogy with John Ruskin’s The Seven Lamps of Architecture, 1849).[4] This way we can all enjoy the work of two very creative architects: their buildings and drawings.
About the Author
Ingeborg de Roode is industrial design curator at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam since 2001. She has organized various exhibitions including Designing for children: Aldo van Eyck’s playgrounds (2002), Marcel Wanders. Pinned Up (2014), Touch and Tweet: interactive installations (2015), Living in the Amsterdam School (2016), Solution or Utopia? Designing for refugees (2017) and, in collaboration with Pao Lien Djie, Studio Drift. Coded Nature (2018). She was co-curator of the exhibition It’s our F***ing Backyard. Designing Material Futures (2022) with Stedelijk’s design curator Amanda Pinatih. Most recently she co-curated MODERN – Van Gogh, Rietveld, Léger and Others with Stedelijk’s researcher Maurice Rummens. Catalogues accompanied several of these exhibitions. She has written for Het Financieele Dagblad, published several opinion pieces in NRC Handelsblad and articles in catalogues of, among others, the Centre Pompidou, MoMA and Vitra Design Museum.
[1] February 4 – July 30, 2023. The exhibition was accompanied by a publication with hundreds of her drawings: Liesbeth van der Pol, Met Karakter!, ed. JaapJan Berg (Almere: Kunstlinie, 2023).
[2] Read more about this in our new collection guide Stedelijk A–Z forthcoming December 2023.
[3] Van der Pol, Met Karakter!, 319.
[4] Ibid., 9.
