The bright white of the buildings designed by Dudok
set them apart from the surrounding buildings in the local brown brick. On the
main thoroughfare (Geldropseweg) the garden village presents itself with
detailed corner buildings with shops behind rounded bay windows.
Monotony is avoided by staggering the building line
and raising portions of the roofline. These are the classic Unwinesk devices of
the Garden City Movement used here together with New Objective Architecture. The
litteral translation of Tuindorp is garden village. This village feel is
emphasised by the use of ample gardens at the front and the back of the houses.
This creates a green setting for people to live in houses filled with air and
light (the modernist ideals for future living).
The trees in the streets are now fully grown and cast
their dappled shade on the roads. The layout of the roads is linear, but
through the clever use of T-junctions the sightlines are kept short. All roads
in the garden village were planted with trees. also all front garden were
planted with privet hedges. This still creates a great sense of coherence
within the "white village".
In the middle of this log row of terraced housing the
roofline is raised to accommodate loggias. On the end the corner building is
brought forward to create a more intimate feel and a gate-like effect. Also
note the balconies that protrude over the entrances as rain awnings and the
round windows.
Another way of ending the rows of terraced houses is
to have these turret-like corners. They effectively break up the horizontal
lines of the buildings and signal a side street.
The corner is made by turning the corner building 90
degrees. Also note the different way in which the windows are set in the
facade. In the long facades the windows form ribbons or large blocks of glass
framed by thin metal strips; on the corners the square and rectangular windows
are regularly distributed across the full height of the facade thus emphasising
the vertical. The buildings Dudok designed were partly inspired by the block
designed by Oud for the Weißenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart.On the inside the layout
is rather conventional, but on the outside several citations of Oud's
architecture were included in the designs. The buildings have not been rendered
like the modernist Bauaus-buildings in Stuttgart, but executed in bricks
painted white on a black strip reminiscent of the designs of Aalto.
The influence of Bauhaus also shines through in these
long facades. Dudok gives them his own twist. As an architect he was a
modernist without the hang-ups of most of his colleagues about shape, colour
and materials. Dudok is best known as an exponent of brick cubism, although his
work always has a subtle, but distinct decorative twist.
The central square (Burghtplein) is a public garden
with a playground. The buildings frame the diamond shaped open green space. On
the west side the offices of the
DAF-factory once stood. Now they have been replaced with houses in a
sympathetic style. In the original plans this small garden square would serve
as a focal point for the western part of the garden village; in the east a much
larger tapering space with (skating) pond an public garden next to the proposed
church was envisaged.
Through clever design, and with little difference in
materials or colours the long rows of terraced housing are never boring and
never give the feel of an urban housing estate.
The redevelopment of the brown field site of the
DAF-factory was done most excellently. The new layout of streets mirror those
on the other side of the garden square. Also the building style is mirrored,
but to distinguish them from the old Dudok-buildings the new housing has dark
roofs and a red trim at the base of the brick facades painted white. This is
how you add new buildings to an area with a strong character!
Huize De Burgh was rebuilt in 1912 in a revival style.
Originally the building faced the other way and consisted of a castle keep.
This medieval donjon is still at the core of the present mansion house. The
house is now in use as a convent and spiritual retreat. The garden village was
built on land adjoining this estate and was named after it.
The postwar portion of Tuindorp De Burgh (phase 3) was
not designed by Dudok and has been built in the dominant brown brick of the
area. Several new types of housing were built here. Some were maisonettes,
indicated by the four doors. The red and white checkered flag is the flag of
Brabant by the way. On the left a type mostly built in the first building campaign
of 1947 with a piano nobile above a half sunken kitchen.
Because of the different colour of the brick facades
and the absence of a lower trim the feel of this part of the garden village is
very different. This part is also colloquially know as het Bruine Dorp (the
brown village). Unwinesk principles are still applied in the design and
placement of the housing.
The Church of Fatima was built alongside an old road
and not according to the original plan of Dudok, by a parish priest who felt
that Catholics should not live in those modernist white houses, but in more traditional
brick structures befitting their inherent nature. This was a sentiment often
vented by the clergy with the aim of keeping their flock meek and abiding. The
building of the church in the "wrong place" was an active act of
defiance. The church (on the left) is presently no longer in use! Most of the
1950s buildings in this part of the garden village have been built in a
traditionalist style.
The last buildings to have been built originally
consisted of small maisonettes, and have since been converted into so-called
boven-onderwoningen. The two upper dwellings have been joined. One door of the
original four has been bricked up.
